Testing AND Writing

7/28/2019 Testing AND Writing

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Prepared by Sabariah Md Rashid

TESTING WRITING


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The Nature of Writing

- Writing skills: complex and difficult to master

- Includes mastery of grammatical skills,

rhetorical devices and conceptual /judgmental elements

- different types of writing task require differentskills


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5 general components of what entails good

Language use ~ correct/appropriate sts.

Mechanical skills ~ correct conventions oflanguage

Treatment of content ~ think creatively/dev. thoughts

Stylistic skills ~ manipulate sets/paragraphs

Judgmental skills ~ appropriacy of

- audience/purpose

- correct registers

W

W

W

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2 common approaches in testing writing

1. Indirect test of writing

2. Direct test of writing


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Indirect writing test

~ testing the underlying skills of ability made

up of discrete levels, e.g., error recognition

~ using multiple-choice items

~ TOEFL incorporated these items before

the early 80s


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~ getting students to write/perform task

~ e.g. TWE (Test of Written English),which is a supplement

to TOEFL

Direct test of writing


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Problems in Testing Directly

Need to set tasks which are properlyrepresentative of pop and tasks thatstudents are expected to be able toperform

Tasks: to elicit samples of writing, whichtruly presents the writing ability of astudent

Scoring of writing samples reliably


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What different types of writing task arestudents expected to be able to perform?

Examples:

- writing stories (narrative)

- summary

- reports

- letters (informal vs. formal)

- descriptions (descriptive)

- presenting opinions (expository)

- argumentative


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In class ~ teachers need to teachstudents the specified writing tasks& the micro-skills

Micro-skills

- accuracy

- cohesion & coherence

- mechanics


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i. Set as many tasks as are feasible:

~ validity: ideally, should include all the

relevant potential tasks

~ total score best estimate of a candidatesperformance of the test ability

~ all scores on different writing tasks =

ones performance on the same task some people are better at some tasks than

others

How to obtain samples which represent eachcandidates writing ability?


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However, need to balance this against practicality

ii. Test only writing ability and nothing else

~ need to be aware of not testing wide

general knowledge reading composition, etc.

~ instructions: clear/not too long

iii. Restrict candidates

~ provide information that is required

of the writing task


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How to enhance reliability?

Include as many tasks as possible

Restrict candidates

Do not give choice of tasks

Ensure samples which are sufficiently

long

Testing AND Writing

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