Types of writing
We don’t write many of these anymore, but emails, texts, and social media posts have replaced them.
What are letters?
When writing, you think about these two things first.
What are the topic and audience?
To test writing ability, we ask people to do this.
What is write something?
A single overall score is given using this type of scale.
This type of technology is increasingly used to assist in scoring writing.
What are computer-scoring programs?
This is a short, informal type of writing you might send to a friend.
What is a note?
This happens mentally before a writer begins forming sentences.
What is structuring or organizing the piece?
Tests should match these two factors to avoid inaccurate results.
What are the test purpose and the test taker’s context?
Separate scores for grammar, vocabulary, and structure are part of this scale.
What is an analytic scale?
Computer scoring is used alongside this to ensure fairness.
What is human scoring?
When writing for a boss instead of a friend, this changes drastically.
What is the language or tone?
When choosing words to express ideas, you are selecting this.
What is vocabulary?
Asking test takers to write for a specific audience helps assess this aspect.
What is appropriateness of language or tone?
These must align with the decisions we plan to make from the test results.
What are the scale descriptions?
Innovations in writing assessments aim to ensure these three qualities.
What are fairness, accuracy, and appropriateness?
In the real world, we write many types of these to show different abilities.
What are writing tasks?
This is the step where ideas are transformed into physical or digital text.
What is transferring from brain to hand (or fingers)?
These are the two scales often used for scoring writing.
What are holistic and analytic?
This is a teacher's tool for small-scale tests, relying on their expertise.
What is manual scoring?
This organization created the material about assessing writing.
What is the British Council?
Asking teenagers to write this type of formal correspondence is often not suitable.
What is a business letter?
Grammar helps ensure this for the reader.
What is clarity or understanding?
When evaluating casual writing, focusing on this is unnecessary.
What is precision / accuracy?
These professionals score writing in large-scale exams.
Who are trained and accredited raters?
The ultimate goal of writing assessments is to make scoring these three things.
What are systematic, fair, and accurate?