Cover: Assigning, Responding, Evaluating, 5th Edition by Edward M. White

Assigning, Responding, Evaluating

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Fifth  Edition©2015  Edward M. White

ISBN:9781319023041

ISBN:9781319007461

About

The advent and innovation of computer technologies for composing has dramatically and rapidly changed the classroom environment and even the curriculum with which writing teachers now find themselves charged to teach writing. Assigning, Responding, Evaluating: A Writing Teacher’s Guide is designed to help the teacher create writing assignments, evaluate student writing, and respond to that writing in a consistent and explainable way. But it also suggests ways that writing programs can take advantage of our new digital environment and meet the increasing demands for accountability, without decreasing the role or creativity of teachers, or the importance of writing instruction to college education.

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Table of Contents

1 Constructing Assignments

PLANNING ASSIGNMENTS FOR DISCOVERY AND REVISION 

A Heuristic for Composition Assignments

SEQUENCIN G WRITING ASSIGNMENTS 

CONSTRUCTING EFFECTIVE WRITING ASSIGNMENTS 

DISCUSSING WRITING ASSIGNMENTS WITH STUDENTS 

A Note on Open Topics

PRE WRITING AND COLLABORATIVE WRITING

Collaborating Using Digital Media

Digital Media and Copyright

AVOIDING PLAGIARISM

LITERATURE AND THE TEACHING OF WRITING

ESL AND CULTURALLY RELEVANT ASSIGNMENT DESIGN 

2 Sample Writing Assignments

THE VALUE AND LIMITATION OF IMPROMPTU WRITING

ASSIGNMENTS BASED ON PERSONAL EXPERIENCE 

Personal Experience Assignment 1: Description and Tone

Personal Experience Assignment 2: Analyzing Values in Objects

ASSIGNMENTS BASED ON TEXTS

Text-Based Assignment 1: Understanding a Single Text

Text-Based Assignment 2: Comparing and Contrasting Two Texts

DIGITAL WRITING ASSIGNMENTS 

Research Assignment 1: Exploring Topics — Considering the Limits and Potentials of Google

Research Assignment 2: Reading Like a Rhetorician

Digital Style Assignment: Twitter &/as Platonic Dialogue

Style Assignment: Spoken Word

ADDRESSING ESL CONCERNS IN ASSIGNING WRITING

PART II RESPONDING 

3 Ways of Responding to Student Writing

PURPOSES AND EFFECTS OF RESPONDING

AUTHORITY, RESPONSIBILITY, AND CONTROL

RESPONDING TO DRAFTS

USING STUDENT RESPONSE GROUPS (PEER REVIEW)

SAMPLE STUDENT PAPER IN TWO DRAFTS

Responding to "Explorer Post 14: Not Intellectually Prepared"

Responding to the Revised "Explorer Post 14: The New World"

RESPONDIN G TO COLLABORATIVE WRITIN G

FOSTERIN G SELF-ASSESS MENT

HANDLING THE PAPER LOAD 

A Note on Presentation Copy

4 Using Assessment as Part of Teaching

ASSESSMENT AND STUDENT MOTIVATION 

MET HODO LOGIES OF SCORIN G WRITIN G: HOLISTIC, ANA LYTIC, AND PRIMARY TRAIT

USING HOLISTI C SCORING GUIDES TO IMPROVE ASSIGNMENTS

Sample Scoring Guide 1: 6-Point Scale for Assigned Topic

Sample Scoring Guide 2: 2-Point Scale for Research-Based Writing

Sample Scoring Guide 3: Close Reading

Sample Scoring Guide 4: Multiple Trait Scoring for Rhetorical Analysis

USING SCORING GUIDES AS PART OF TEACHING WRITING

PART III EVALUATING

5 Grading Writing Using Holistic Scoring Guides

EVALUATING IMPROMPTU WRITING BASED ON PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

Essay Test 1: Personal Experience Assignment

Essay Test 2: Personal Experience Assignment 2

EVALUATIN G IMPROMPTU WRITING BASED ON GIVEN TEXTS

Essay Test 3: Text-Based Assignment 1

Essay Test 4: Text-Based Assignment 2

NOTES ON IMPROMPTU WRITING FOR ASSESSMENT 

6 Using Portfolios

A BRIEF HISTORY OF PORTFOLIOS AND THEIR EVALUATION

problems with holistic portfolio scoring

KEYS TO THE PHASE 2 METHOD: GOALS STATEMENTS AND THE REFLECTIVE LETTE

The Importance of Goals Statements

The Importance of the Student Reflective Letter

TEACHER -GRADED COURSE PORTFOLIOS

Scoring Portfolios Based on the Reflective Letter

STAFF-GRADED COURSE PORTFOLIOS

Content of the Portfolio

Leaving or Removing Original Grades and Comments

Scoring Procedures

Criteria for Scoring Reliably

Appeals Procedures

SAMPLE GOALS STATEMENTS

California State University, San Bernardino, Department of English Goals for English Majors

Northern Arizona University Goals for English 105

Arizona State University Writing Programs Course Goals, Objectives, and Outcomes

University of Arizona, Electrical and Computer Engineering Writing Outcomes

7 Writing Programs and Evaluation

ASSESSMENT AND WRITIN G PROGRAM ADMINISTRATION: PLACEMENT, DIAGNOSTIC, EXIT , AND PROFICIENCY TEST

Instructor Placement

Committee Placement

DIRECTED SELF-PLACEMENT

ADMISSIONS AND TRANSFER CREDIT

WRITIN G ASSESS MENT ACROSS THE DIS CIPLINES

USING IMPROMPTU WRITING AND GROUP SCORING FOR RESEARCH

PROGRAM EVALUATION IN THE FUTURE

EPILOGUE

Appendix: Important Educational Policies for Composition Teachers

GOALS STATEMENTS AND FIRST-YEAR COMPOSITION 

DIGITAL WRITIN G AND TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY LITERACIES

ESL AND SECOND-LANGUAGE WRITING

WPA OUTCOMES STATEMENT FOR FIRST-YEAR COMPOSITION (V3.0)

Index

Edward M. White

Edward M. White is a visiting scholar in English at the University of Arizona and Professor Emeritus of English at California State University, San Bernardino, where he served prolonged periods as English department chair and coordinator of the upper-division university writing program. He has been coordinator of the state-wide CSU Writing Skills Improvement Program and for over a decade was director of the English Equivalency Examination program. On the national scene, he directed the consultant/evaluator service of WPA for fifteen years and in 1993 was elected to a second term on the executive committee of CCCC. His Teaching and Assessing Writing (1985) has been called “required reading” for the profession; a new edition in 1994 received an MLA Mina Shaughnessy award “for outstanding research.” He is author of more than one hundred articles and book chapters on literature and the teaching of writing, and has coauthored five English composition textbooks, most recently Inquiry (2004) and The Promise of America (2006). His Developing Successful College Writing Programs was published in 1989, and his latest book, with Norbert Elliot and Irvin Peckham, Very Like a Whale: The Assessment of  Writing Programs is being published in 2015. He is also coeditor of three essay collections for the  MLA and SIU presses. His work has recently been recognized by the publication of Writing Assessment in the 21st Century: Essays in Honor of Edward M. White (2012) and  by the 2011 Exemplar Award from the CCCC.

Cassie A. Wright

Cassie A. Wright is a Lecturer in the Program in Writing and Rhetoric at Stanford University, where she also serves on the Curriculum Committee, and works as a writing and digital media consultant in the Hume Center for Writing and Speaking. She has helped design the assessment protocol for Stanfords Notation in Science Communication, a communication across the disciplines eportfolio initiative supporting undergraduate technical and professional writing. Her primary research interests focus on composition pedagogy, writing program administration, and assessment. Her previous published work concerns sports media’s pedagogical role in constructing desirable gendered subjectivities; she has a forthcoming first-year reader on sports media for Fountainhead Press’s V-Series and teaches composition courses at Stanford currently focused on sports media and international sport policy and diplomacy rhetorics.