Holistic, local, and process-oriented: What makes the University Utah’s Writing Placement Exam work

Zanders, Crystal J.; Wilson, Emily

doi:10.1016/j.asw.2019.06.003

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 5 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…In the pilot study approved by WRS faculty, one-third of incoming students would complete ISP prior to New Student Orientation (NSO). The remaining two-thirds would be invited to complete an at-home Writing Placement Exam (WPE) evaluated by a team of experienced faculty raters-a process adapted from UU's long-standing challenge exam for students who did not have a qualifying Admissions Index score but wanted to enroll directly in WR2 (see Zanders & Wilson, 2019). Incoming students were assigned to either ISP or the WPE based on which NSO session they attended.…”

Section: Designing Ispmentioning

confidence: 99%

Informing Self-Placement: A Polyvocal Narrative Case Study

Toth,

Andrus,

Onwuzuruoha

et al. 2024

Journal of Writing Assessment

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article provides a polyvocal narrative of the development, initial assessment, and ongoing revision of an Informed Self-Placement (ISP) process initially implemented during the COVID pandemic. The authors intersperse collectively narrated description how the ISP unfolded in its first two years with individual reflections on those experiences from a variety of positions and identities. Data so far suggest that this ISP process has narrowed but not fully closed racial equity gaps in first-year writing placement while maintaining enrollments and academic performance in the first-year writing course sequence. Persistent equity issues reside not only in the ISP instrument itself but the systems by which students learn about the ISP and the opportunities they have to complete it.

show abstract

Section: Designing Ispmentioning

confidence: 99%

Informing Self-Placement: A Polyvocal Narrative Case Study

Toth,

Andrus,

Onwuzuruoha

et al. 2024

Journal of Writing Assessment

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In this study, aligned to several other studies (Attali, 2016;Hyland, 2003;James, 2006;Shi et al, 2020;Zanders & Wilson, 2019), we adopted the holistic rating scale to assess independent and integrated writing task outcomes. According to Harsch and Martin (2013), one of the major pros of holistic rating scales is that they concentrate on the strong points of a written product rather than its flaws and weaknesses.…”

Section: Research Articlementioning

confidence: 99%

Experienced and Novice L2 Raters’ Cognitive Processes while Rating Integrated and Independent Writing Tasks

Tavassoli

Bashiri

Pourdana

2022

JLE

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Background. Recently, there has been a growing interest in the personal attributes of raters which determine the quality of cognitive processes involved in their rating writing practice. Purpose. Accordingly, this research attempted to explore how the rating experience of L2 raters might affect their rating of integrated and independent writing tasks. Methods. To pursue this aim, 13 experienced and 14 novice Iranian raters were selected through criterion sampling. After attending a training course on rating writing tasks, both groups produced introspective verbal protocols while they were rating integrated and independent writing tasks which were produced by an Iranian EFL learner. The verbal protocols were recorded and transcribed, and their content was analyzed by the researchers. Results. The six extracted major themes from the content analysis included content, formal requirement, general linguistic range, language use, mechanics of writing, and organization. The results indicated that the type of writing task (integrated vs. independent) is a determining factor for the number of references experienced and novice raters made to the TOEFL-iBT rating rubric. Further, the raters’ rating experience determined the proportions of references they made. Yet, the proportional differences observed between experienced and novice raters in their references were statistically significant only in terms of language use, mechanics of writing, organization, and the total. Conclusion. The variations in L2 raters’ rating performance on integrated and independent writing tasks emphasize the urgency of professional training to use and interpret the components of various rating writing scales by both experienced and novice raters. nced and novice raters.

show abstract