Classroom Assessment of L2 Writing

Scoring and Assessment Procedures

            In my high school AP English courses holistic scoring was used to inform us of what our writing would score during the AP exams, however the teachers came up with another scoring system for the grade book that correlated the holistic score to an analytic one. For example, if a paper is scored a three on a nine-point scale then the corresponding analytic score could range from 68-76. On the other hand, if there was a project due then an analytic score would be given but the overall course used analytic scores. This was the only course that used this method of scoring and in my post-secondary career analytic scoring is used in almost every course.

            In high school, holistic scoring was appropriate to provide practice in improving writing for the basis of the exam students enrolled in the course would be taking at the end of the year, but it wasn’t appropriate in an overall context of composition. The rubric handed out which described what qualities were in each score range wasn’t descriptive enough in what the teacher was looking for so a student could improve his or her score. I will add that as a student we’re more familiar with analytical and multiple trait scoring as we continue in our education.

Scores Improving Quality of Writing

            One of my undergraduate history courses required most, if not all, of the exams in essay form. We had to write about what we knew about an important historical point discussed in prior classes. For one reason or another I was always extremely close to having a 90 on the essay, but I fell short by three or four points. Those few points drove me insane, but I steadily increased my score until I made a 94 on an exam. I felt accomplished that I had met the expectations of an “A” paper. Whenever I wrote papers for professors that had comparatively higher expectations for their papers, I would attempt to approach those papers the same way I did on the paper I scored a 94 on. I knew what I was capable of as a student and writer and I earned every grade.

            I’ve been out of practice writing academic texts for nearly a year so this course is providing me with a refresher of the requirements for the grades that I want. Holistic scoring causes me to devalue the effort I put into a composition task because the score is either too general or has too many requirements to be realistically achievable in a short time frame. Since analytical scoring usually adds up to 100, culturally viewed as complete and the best possible score, then it’s easier to identify with and puts the score in the perspective of completeness.

Assessment Apprehension

            When I’m a pre-service teacher I would be most apprehensive about providing constructive feedback. I also want to grade students fairly with as little bias as possible. In order to give students grades that reflect the quality of the students’ work, I need to be as objective as possible so that when a student asks me why they received a certain grade then I’ll be able to explain what was done well and what needs improvement. As long as it’s possible I would prefer to grade analytically. I feel that holistic grading is too harsh especially if a student leaves out one element that takes them from a five to a three.

Formal Assessment

Formal assessment should be reliable and valid in the evaluation of student literacy and composition. Ferris and Hedgcock (2014) discuss several types of reliability and validity that could influence assessment including student-related reliability and content validity. This reliability involves a student’s mental and physical preparedness for a writing task. While content validity requires the reader to show their mastery of key ideas through writing. Content validity would most likely involve a student taking a Sociology test that has open-ended questions over theories or constructs and providing examples often embedded in current events or major historical markers.

Portfolio Familiarity

I’m not familiar with portfolios at all but I can see their benefits. The portfolio being designed for this course will have my teaching philosophy, examples of informal writing via blog, and examples of a proposed lesson plan and a sample writing activity with a prompt and rubric. All provide different examples of my writing and will be beneficial to show to future employers.

References

Ferris, Dana R. and John S. Hedgcock. Teaching L2 Composition: Purpose, Process,        

     and Practice. New York: Routledge, 2014. Print

Course Design and Instructional Planning

 Syllabi or Outlines in Secondary or Post-Secondary Courses

I remember the general outline of syllabi provided during college. The most important part of it was the parts concerning projects, quizzes, exams, calendar, and total points available for the course. I used all of these things, but mainly the calendar, as a guide of what I’m expected to know and have complete by a certain date. If I know what I must complete within a certain time frame then I’m able to use my agenda to plan out what to do for each day in order to have an assignment or reading completed on the day that it’s due. For the most part I use syllabi as a means of assignment completion, what book I should purchase for the class, and email and office hours if I need them.

Students’ Sociocultural and Educational Needs

On page 152 Ferris and Hedgcock (2014) list several literacy tasks relevant to academic and preacademic L2 writers. A few of these tasks include writing brief academic texts such as journal entries or reading responses, listening to academic lectures and taking notes, and writing under timed conditions. In these activities L2 students can provide personal analysis, refer to other academic texts, or demonstrate how they’re able to form ideas and cohesive essays under a time constraint. In addition to these tasks meeting students’ sociocultural and educational needs through kinds of texts selected through writing, a course plan should reflect an educational institution’s requirements and philosophy. An educator is able to reflect the philosophy and requirements through identifying and addressing gaps in student learning and structuring class discussions or assignments in a way that allows for critical thinking and student participation.

Literacy Courses vs. Content Courses

Literacy or composition courses are more application intensive than other courses such as physics, history, sociology, art, or literature. There aren’t any formulas, theories, dates, painting styles, or reading between the lines in a literacy course. Of course all of these things can be included when writing; however the main focus of a composition or literacy course is to focus on the thought process, familiarity, and formation of sentences and their structure to create essays and reports in content courses.

Essential Components of a Successful Lesson

I feel that a lesson is successful when I have a feeling of being challenged, The classes that I enjoyed the most, regardless of the discipline, challenged me in some way. They didn’t challenge me to the point where I felt frustrated just thinking about the class, but enough of a challenge to where I felt like I was becoming a better student and learning. It didn’t matter if I was being tasked with greater critical thinking or attempting to become a better writer through essay exams. I welcomed each opportunity to think outside of myself and to break limitations I put on myself.

A few activities or tasks that could expose students to critical thinking could be writing narrative, descriptive, expository, and persuasive essays. A way to approach exposure to each type of essay is to present examples of each type of writing and discussing it as a class. Then the students would write their own essays showing each type. These would be addressed to the class in order of increased difficulty. It’s better to start off with something that most students are familiar with and then work our way towards more difficult essays where they may have to use a combination of essay types.

Productive Classroom Instruction

The best hallmarks of productive planning and delivery are when educators are prepared, organized, and show ease of simplifying topics. When a teacher is prepared with handouts, notes, and what they’re going to lecture about the class has direction and seems purposeful. Usually with preparation comes organization and a plan for how the class is supposed to flow for that day. When the teacher is prepared and has read or reread notes for the lecture they’re better able to better explain and simplify something a student came across in the reading that wasn’t easily understood.

In addition to proper preparation, course expectations are an element of effective classroom management. I’ve had professors that were strict about student punctuality and would lock the door or turn students around if they attempted to enter the room outside of an established time frame; some that strictly stuck to the course outline; some only wanted papers turned in APA style formatting. Almost every experience I’ve had with educators, including in primary and secondary education, had expectations for the class that every student was expected to follow. 

References

Ferris, Dana R. and John S. Hedgcock. Teaching L2 Composition: Purpose, Process,        

     and Practice. New York: Routledge, 2014. Print

Reading, Genre Awareness, and Task Design

Reading Skills and L1 Writing Development

Reading provided me with a better understanding of context clues. Whenever I approached an unfamiliar word I would reread the sentences before it and after to give me an idea of what that word means. Most of the time that strategy worked, but when it didn’t I would ask someone I thought would know or look up the word. After having a definition, I would then look at the synonyms to find a word I knew. This activity expanded my vocabulary and now I knew a different word or words that mean the same thing as other words that I already knew. Asking questions about unfamiliar words and doing my own research prepared me to understand what academic journals and similar texts were conveying before entering college. As I became a more developed reader, I would notice sentence structure and attempt a similar style in my writing. This is one of many reasons why I usually write very long, verbose sentences. I think that some of the reading skills I developed can assist multilingual students become proficient writers.

Without being knowledgeable of what I was doing, I was “building meaning” (p.97) and “developing cognitive and linguistic skills” (p.96). Much how I learned to read, I think that L2 writers could learn to become proficient writing students in the same way. Students must learn how to read for fun and be steadily exposed to more complex texts. This provides a way for them to build vocabulary by reading about something they enjoy and then write about it. It’s a way to get L2 students to develop their writing skills.

Encountered Genres

As a nonacademic reader I often find myself reading novels, news articles, and social media posts. All of these readings I do for enjoyment, but I’ll really read just about anything. Two of my favorite novels include Gal, an autobiography, and Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. The news articles provide me with current events and I use that in my daily discussions with friends and family members and social media usually fuels my interest in a topic. Contrastingly, as an academic reader I’ve mainly encountered textbooks and academic articles which are structured very differently from their nonacademic counterparts.

Academic articles, in particular, are written for information to develop or disprove previous research within a specific discourse community. This usually requires the reader to be able to simplify overly complex wording or sentences into simpler ones to get to a direct meaning and, in most cases, analyze data. This is how developing meaning through context clues can influence reading and writing in academia. The vocabulary is often more complex in textbooks and journals because the audience is college students as opposed to the general public interested in science fiction books, comics, or articles on the presidential election. Therefore, college students have examples of what is generally expected of their writing in an academic setting.

Features of Instructional Materials

Instructional materials should be interesting, relevant, and at or slightly above the student’s level of comprehension. Students should be able to understand the assignment—whether it’s writing or reading—with some level of difficulty to foster learning, but not so much that they’re confused or become frustrated. Most readers find it difficult to read something that they have absolutely no interest in. Not all materials will be considered fun, but the lecture or following activity or assignment that supports the text could have a little something extra to make it not as boring as it could be. Instructional materials should also be up-to-date and relevant to the expected learning outcomes of the course. Good textbooks and software applications have the previously mentioned characteristics which are reflected through content understanding exercises such as quizzes, tests, or answering questions after the reading.

L2 Text Criteria

According to Ferris and Hedgcock (2014) in Figure 4.5, prototypical features of academic genres “should present arguments explicitly and define key terms, provide linguistic ‘signposts’…to inform readers of the direction of the argument, and texts must acknowledge intertextual relationships to support their arguments and encourage discussion” (117). An L2 composition or literature textbook should have these same qualities with the addition of appropriate word choice, sentence structure, and topics that reflect the level of L2 learner that is reading the text. An L2 text shouldn’t assume that the reader has the same schema as the reader of an L1 text and should be  written in a simple way that reflects that.

Augmenting Lessons

A composition teacher should augment the textbook with supplemental materials, tasks, and assignments as much is appropriate for class and individual student understanding. If a chapter is too complicated for the class, then it could be taught in a hands-on or lecture approach and avoid reading the text altogether or if it’s very simple or is a compliment to another chapter then it could be combined with or tacked onto the end of another lesson. Handouts, writing assignments, and additional reading could reinforce what a student was taught by providing practice instead of an instructor assuming that they understand.

Activities

Some in-class activities and exercises that could be productive to inexperienced writers include a popcorn style of writing a story where either the entire class or small groups participate in forming a short story and daily journal activities. I remember having a teacher that would pick a paragraph out of the local paper and have us identify different parts of the sentence and identify the type of sentence. Some of the identifiers were prepositional phrases, gerunds, adverbs, articles, adjectives, and complex compound sentences. Of course an activity like this assumes that the person's L1 is English, however, with daily repitition the activity became almost rudimentary, but by then I felt that I had mastered English. 

Out of class students could have a worksheet where they practice just writing to free their thoughts about the class or content learned. There would only be a grade for actually writing and forming cohesive and complete sentences at first. After a while spelling and grammar would be corrected.

References

Ferris, Dana R. and John S. Hedgcock. Teaching L2 Composition: Purpose, Process, and

Practice. New York: Routledge, 2014. Print