WRITING PROFICIENCY AND WRITER'S WORK

Writing Proficiency and Writer's Workshop

Chapter # 2: Literature Review

Inroduction

            One of the foremost anxieties of teachers and parents alike is the down turn in student achievement (as assessed by normalized tests). Recent calls for larger uniformity in US academic standards and assessments are founded on continual discrepancies between state and nationwide evaluation results. Critics propose that breaches between high proficiency levels described for state mandated assessments and reduced proficiency levels described for the federally mandated National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) outcome from dissimilarities in how proficiency is conceptualized. However, little is renowned about how checks alter in the modes that they characterise and assess proficiency. To better realise the environment and significances of such variety in a domain that is progressively part of state evaluation programs in the US, this study compared the constructs of writing skill implicated in 41 state and nationwide high school writing assessments. (Tompkins 1994)

 

Writing proficiency

Few studies have searched to recount how conceptualizations of  writing skill  vary amidst US states. Researchers have analyzed literacy theories inherent principle articles in England, the US  and Canada  but these content investigates have not targeted  writing.  Rather, most research on large-scale  writing  assessments, which has developed blended outcomes, has analyzed task building, inter-rater reliability, and the text characteristics affiliated with high tally grades for a reconsider of research). A  writing  assessment is advised legitimate only when the constructs it assesses are grounded in powerful theoretical underpinnings. Yet we need a very broad comprehending of how US states conceptualize  writing skill  in high-stakes evaluations, to what span these conceptualizations are underpinned by established composition ideas, or how these conceptualizations alter amidst assessments. Those studies that have searched to contrast constructs of  writing skill  that announce state  writing  assessments have analyzed little samples. The investigation display three US states' assessments and proposed that educators would have little use for their progressive textbooks as long as large-scale assessments reflected cautious “current-traditional rhetoric” composition frameworks. (Tudge 1998)

Researchers analyzed four  writing  assessments and proposed that the inclination to aim on a lone genre tapered school room instruction. Researchers analyzed constructs of  writing  competence implicated in three state assessments and discovered that these diverse substantially amidst checks, a finding that proposes a broader evaluation will assist to our comprehending of state and nationwide variability. Variation in how assessments conceptualize  writing skill  is anticipated granted the need of agreement in composition theory on what constitutes “good  writing. ” Rather than viewing  writing skill  in monolithic periods, composition theorists contain distinct outlooks on what kinds of  writing proficiencies  best assist students' interests. Composition theorists are inclined to focus variously the text itself, scribe, direct assembly, or bigger social context in which  writing  occurs in their interpretations of  writing proficiency,  how it evolves, and the reasons of  writing  instruction. (Shnuk 2000)

Aanalysis of composition theory and research literature shows this variety, recognising six theoretical bivouacs, or “discourses of  writing. ” The first, a text-centered set about, is a “skills discourse” that emphasizes the correct submission of ...