EMA EMITS COLLEGE

PHILIPPINES
(Formerly: Eastern Mindoro Institute of Technology & Sciences)
Del Pilar St. Pinamalayan, Oriental Mindoro
Telefax No. (043) 284-3974

ELT 105

Teaching and Assessment of

Macroskills
Weeks 6 - 10

This module belongs to:

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Modules 6-10 TEACHING AND ASSESSMENT OF MACROSKILLS
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 EMA EMITS COLLEGE PHILIPPINES
(Formerly: Eastern Mindoro Institute of Technology & Sciences)
Del Pilar St., Pinamalayan, Oriental Mindoro
Telefax No. (043) 284-3974

At the end of this Module, you

should be able to:
 Prepare a writing task for
students;
 Identify writing assessment MODULES 6-10
tools and criteria for
evaluation; and
 Prepare assessment tool.
TEACHING AND ASSESSING
WRITING
Telefax No. (043) 284-3974
Time Frame:
Weeks 6-10

Along with the other three skills, writing has developed and accumulated many insights into the nature of language and learning.
However, as well as having much in common with other skills, we shall see that writing differs in some significant ways to do with the
purpose of writing in class and in everyday life, and the relationship between these two settings.
The central section will focus on a number of approaches to teaching writing, particularly as expressed in teaching materials, and will
try to show how perspectives have gradually changed. We shall then move on to the classroom environment itself, including some
possibilities for writing-related activities, the issue of error correction and the role of the teacher.
Writing assessment refers to an area of study that contains theories and practices that guide the evaluation of a writer's
performance or potential through a writing task. Writing assessment can be considered a combination of scholarship from composition
studies and measurement theory within educational assessment. Writing assessment can also refer to the technologies and practices used to
evaluate student writing and learning.
This module also covers guidelines on assessing writing and preparing assessment tools. Topics also include types of writing
performance and scoring.
Go get ready to learn and enjoy doing the task ahead!

ABSTRACTION

Teaching Writing
Implications for the teaching of writing
1. A typical ‘writing profile’ covers a great range of styles. We may just write a list of nouns, or a number, or even simply a
visual representation (a list, taking a phone message, drawing a map). Alternatively, taking notes from a book or a verbal
message will require some
reduction of language structure
into note form in the interests
of speed and efficiency.
Discursive writing has many
different functions (narrative,
persuasion, setting out an
argument etc.) and makes
considerable demands on our
ability to structure an extended
piece of writing carefully. Email
writing is more often
conversational, even when
done for professional purposes,
and is more immediately
interactive.
Moreover, we ourselves
initiate the need to write –

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 different kinds of letters, a shopping list, or a short story, perhaps – whereas in other cases, the writing is a response to
someone else’s initiation, as when we respond to an invitation or a letter. The final point to make here is that our writing
has different audience: family, colleagues, friends, ourselves, officials, students and many more.
Reasons for writing, then, differ along several dimensions, especially those of language, topic and audience.
2. In straightforward terms of frequency, the great majority of people write very much less than they talk and listen, although
the amount of writing may be increasing as people have more access to computers and to email communication.
Nevertheless, it is still the case that many adults do not need to write much in their everyday lives: and if there are few ‘real
world’ reasons for writing in our L1, there are even fewer for doing so in a foreign language. Writing for most of us only
happens to any significant extent as part of formal education.
3. Hedge (2005) offers a more detailed breakdown of types of writing under the six headings of personal, public, creative,
social, study and institutional. Her checklist is self-explanatory, and is reproduced above in full.

Writing Materials in the Language Class

It is now time to ask what part writing can and does play in the language class, given its more limited role for most people
outside an educational setting. ‘Real-world’ language and behavior is regarded as increasingly important in the current English
language teaching climate.
These two issues – the possibilities for reflecting communicative criteria, and the treatment of the skill of writing
resulting from its general educational role – have been significant in the development of materials and methods.
‘Traditional’ writing activities
There are a number of types of writing task that most of us will be familiar with, both as teachers and from our own
language learning experience. Simplifying for the moment, they can be listed under three broad headings.
Controlled sentence construction. If the focus of a language program is on accuracy, then schemes for controlling learners’
writing output will obviously predominate. The range of activity types is considerable, and typical approaches include:
• providing a model sentence and asking students to construct a parallel sentence with different lexical items
• inserting a missing grammatical form
• composing sentences from tabular information, with a model provided
• joining sentences to make a short paragraph, inserting supplied conjunctions (but, and, however, because, although . . . ).
Free composition. A ‘free writing’ task requires learners to ‘create’ an essay on a given topic, often as part of a language
examination. Sometimes, students are simply invited to write on a personal topic – their hobbies, what they did on holiday,
interesting experiences and the like. Other materials provide a reading passage as a stimulus for a piece of writing on a parallel
topic, usually with comprehension questions interspersed between the two activities.
The ‘homework’ function. Particularly in general course books, it is quite common to find writing tasks ‘bunched’ at the end of a
unit, either as supplementary work in class or set for homework and returned to the teacher for later correction.
This brief and generalized summary indicates several trends in the ‘traditional’ teaching of writing from which current
views have both developed and moved away:
• There is an emphasis on accuracy.
• The focus of attention is the finished product, whether a sentence or a whole composition.
• The teacher’s role is to be judge of the finished work.
• Writing often has a consolidating function.
In the 1970’s, many English L2 language program writing classes were, in reality, grammar courses. Students copied
sentences or short pieces of discourse, making discrete changes in person or tense. The teaching philosophy grew directly out
of the audiolingual method: students were taught incrementally; error was prevented and accuracy was expected to arise out
of practice with structures (Reid 2001).
Tribble (1996) makes a distinction between ‘learning to write’ and ‘writing to learn’.
. . . In the former, an apprentice writer is learning how to extend his or her textual knowledge, cognitive capacities, and
rhetorical skills in order to take on social roles, which require the production of certain kinds of text. In the latter, language
learners are using the writing system to practice new language knowledge or are using writing to demonstrate their
knowledge in the context of assessment.
One of the problems facing the writing instructor is the fact that all too often, learners’ main experience writing has been
in writing to learn and that they have had few opportunities to extend their literacy in the target language (Tribble, 2010).

The Written Product

Traditional writing classes were product-oriented. When teachers look at students’ written work, they usually pay special
attention to sentence structure, spelling, word choice and possibly paragraph construction.
Current literature on teaching writing (e.g. Hyland, 2003; Hedgecock, 2005; Hyland and Hyland, 2006; Tribble, 2010) also
considers elements that go beyond linguistic domains, such as genre, purpose and socio-cultural factors, in describing L2
writer’s texts.

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 We now look at some selected examples of activities in materials for the teaching of writing. We shall focus on (1) levels
of writing and (2) audience.
Levels of writing
Most teachers write comments on student work as a regular part of their jobs. You may well recognize this style:
This is quite a good summary, but it would have been a good idea to include more of your own opinions. Think more
carefully about tenses. Your handwriting is also sometimes difficult to read.
Some of the trends in the teaching of
discourse-level writing, and the techniques
used, are readily discernible from a glance
at many of the published materials of the
1980s.
Functional categories include:
 sequencing; chronological order
 comparison and contrast
 classification
 cause and effect
 description of objects and of processes
 definitions
 writing instructions
 predicting and speculating
 expressing opinion
 expressing reasons
 discursive essays
 writing narratives, for example, of events
Linking devices covered include the various connectives associated with these functional categories, and the notions of
lexical cohesion, referencing using pronouns and the article system, ellipsis and substitution.
The techniques used are many, and they usually require learners to understand the overall purpose of a piece of writing.
Here is a small selection of some of the possibilities:
• Providing a text to read as a model for a particular function
• Answering questions on a text, then using the answers as the basis for a piece of writing
• Using non-verbal information in many forms. This may be a simple visual, such as a picture or a drawing; or a table, a
graph, a diagram. Alternatively, the overall structure of a text may be represented visually, as an ‘information-structure’
diagram. The last of these is particularly common with classifications.
• Selecting appropriate connectives in a paragraph
• (Re)constructing a paragraph from sentences given in the wrong order, or a whole text from a set of jumbled paragraphs.
This technique is usually referred to as ‘unscrambling’.
• Paragraph or story completion, which can be done by adding not only an ending, but also a beginning or a middle section
• Parallel writing
• Choosing an appropriate title for a piece of writing, such as a newspaper article
• Working on identifying and creating ‘topic sentences’ as the basis for developing paragraphs
Audience
Writing is a process of encoding (putting your message into words) carried out with a reader in mind. Certainly, the
outermost layer of figure 9.1 – the overall organization – is best considered in relation to audience and purpose. The degree of
‘crafting’ that needs to be done, and at what level, will also be determined to some extent by the audience. Stylistic choices, in
other words, depend on why and for whom we are writing.
It is likely that, in the great majority of situations, our students still write primarily for their teachers, or perhaps for an
examiner, both acting in the role of evaluator. Hedge (2005) makes the very useful point that, although transferring real-life
writing directly to the classroom is problematic, what we should be aiming at is at least the creation of ‘plausible contexts’.
As noted, the classroom has its own purpose and structure, and is not simply a reflection of the outside world. In this
sense, we can think of writing activities both from the ‘instrumental’ perspective of what is useful for external purposes, and
also in terms of their educational function and the reality of the classroom itself. The following audience suggestions reflect
this dual aspect. We have listed audience along with a few suggested topics. Our students, then, can write:
• to other students: invitations, instructions, directions
• for the whole class: a magazine, poster information, a cookbook with recipes from different countries
• for new students: information on the school and its locality
• to the teacher (not only for the teacher) about themselves and the teacher can reply or indeed initiate (Hedge, 2005, for
example, suggests an exchange of letters with a new class to get to know them)
• for themselves: lists, notes, diaries (for a fuller discussion of diary writing see Chapter 12)
• to pen friends
• to other people in the school: asking about interests and hobbies, conducting a survey
• to people and organizations outside the school: writing for information, answering advertisements
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 • If the school has access to a network of computers, many of these activities can be carried out electronically as well.
So far, we have looked at the ‘what’ of writing, particularly at the nature of text and the importance of writing with a
readership in mind. Writing continues to serve as a vehicle for language practice, and necessarily so, but this function should
be integrated into a broader and more diversified perspective. As Hyland puts it:
While every act of writing is in a sense both personal and individual, it is also interactional and social, expressing a
culturally recognized purpose, reflecting a particular kind of relationship, and acknowledging an engagement in a given
community. This means that writing cannot be distilled down to a set of cognitive or technical abilities or a system of rules,
and learning to write in second language is not simply a matter of opportunities to write or revise (Hyland, 2003).
We now turn to the ‘how’.

The Writing Process

We shall now look at the writing process from the two related points of view of the writer and the classroom.
The writer’s perspective
Writers, it seems, do a great number of things before they end up with the final version – the ‘finished product’. For
instance, they jot down ideas, put them in order, make a plan, reject it and start again, add more ideas as they go along, change
words, rephrase bits, move sections around, review parts of what they have written, cross things out, check through the final
version, write tidy notes, write on odd pieces of paper as thoughts occur to them, write directly into a typewriter or a word
processor if they are lucky enough to have one, look at the blank page for a long time, change pens, refer back to something
they have read – and many more things, some of them quite idiosyncratic.
Tribble reminds us of the fact that not all L1 users write extensively.
. . . as teachers of writing, we need to be aware of what exactly we are asking of our students. We may be (a) asking
learners to take on roles that they do not normally have access to in their first language . . . ; or (b) asking learners to
engage with literacy practices that they consider to be superfluous to their primary need to engage with the target
language as a medium for spoken interaction (Tribble, 2010).
The demand must be particularly severe if students are expected to turn in a perfectly polished piece of work. Even if
accuracy is an important and legitimate requirement, it is only achieved after an untidy and stumbling set of procedures, and
the nature of the process itself needs to be acknowledged.
Hedgecock explains how developments in related disciplines have led to promoting ‘process-oriented writing instruction’
in recent years:
. . . process-oriented pedagogies are marked by the following features, among others:
• Discovery and articulation of writers’ authorial voices
• Free writing, journaling, and private writing activities designed to enhance writer’s fluency, creativity, and exploration
of source texts
• Localization of writing process and texts in authentic contexts to develop the writer’s sense of audience and reader
expectations
• Constructing purposeful tasks that engage writers and promote their investment in creating meaningful texts
• Modelling and monitoring of invention, prewriting, and revision strategies
• Recursive practices such as multidrafting, which demonstrate that writing for an authentic audience is often a
nonlinear, multi-dimensional process
• Formative feedback from real readers in peer response workshops, student-teacher conferences, collaborative writing
projects, and so on
• Provision of meaningful content for writing tasks, with a corresponding emphasis on representing ideas, rather than
solely on producing grammatically accurate prose (Hedgecock, 2005).
Materials for teaching writing are increasingly beginning to incorporate these process-based insights in various ways.
Hedge (2005) provides a comprehensive range of process-oriented classroom procedures teachers can make use of.
Teaching writing consists of four sections: Communicating, Composing, Crafting and Improving. Communicating represents the
first stage of the writing process. The activities suggested in this section are designed to help learners become used to writing
as self-discovery and as a means of communication. Examples of activities include producing a class magazine, exchanging
letters with teachers and peers and writing a newscast, all of which require the learners to write within a specific genre and
context to a specific real-life audience.
Composing is the second stage in which the learners experience the mental processes of gathering and organizing ideas
before actually starting to write. Activities in this stage include making mind maps, using a diagram of ideas, brainstorming
and cubing (i.e. considering a topic from six different points of views, such as description, comparison and application).
Crafting is the third stage, in which learners are guided to produce well-structured written work. Activities involve
writing a book review, a description of a person, a biography and an essay with contrast and comparison. In these activities,
the learners are provided with opportunities to raise their awareness of how written language (e.g. paragraph, discourse) is
organized in different kinds of texts.
The final stage is Improving, when the teacher and the class collaborate to improve the quality of writing through
awareness activities such as conferencing on plans and drafts, peer editing, reformulation and checking accuracy.

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Writing in the classroom
Writing, like reading, is in many ways an individual, solitary activity: the writing triangle of ‘communicating’, ‘composing’
and ‘crafting’ is usually carried out for an absent readership. However, we must remember that our students are language
learners rather than writers, and it would not be particularly helpful to have them spend all their time writing alone. Although
there is a need to give learner-writers space and time to operate their own preferred individual strategies, the classroom can
be structured in such a way as to provide positive intervention and support in the development of writing skills.
The classroom can provide an environment for writing at each of the three main stages of (1) gathering ideas: pre-writing
and planning, (2) working on drafts, and (3) preparing the final version. The primary means by which this can be done –
leaving aside for the moment the teacher’s role of marking and commenting – is by establishing a collaborative, interactive
framework where learners work together on their writing in a ‘workshop’ atmosphere. A few typical examples, all involving
oral skills, must suffice:
• ‘Brainstorming’ a topic by talking with other students to collect ideas
• Cooperating at the planning stage, sometimes in pairs/groups, before agreeing a plan for the class to work from
• ‘Jigsaw’ writing, for example, using a picture stimulus for different sections of the class to create a different part of the
story (Hedge, 2005)
• Editing another student’s draft
• Preparing interview questions, perhaps for a collaborative project
In the multidimensional view of writing, there are clearly a number of different possibilities available for the sequencing
of materials and activities. We can reduce these to three:
1. Varying/increasing the size of the linguistic ‘building blocks’, from single lexical items → sentences and sentence
joining → the construction of paragraphs and finally → whole texts. This requires attention to all levels of language,
from sentence and text structure to a sense of the coherence of a completed piece of writing. This is related to the more
traditional progression through a writing scheme from ‘controlled’ to ‘guided’ to ‘free’.
2. Paralleling the stages in the process of putting a whole piece of writing together. Both elementary and advanced
learners can, in principle, plan, draft and redraft, and edit.
3. Task complexity. Personal (expressive) writing is in some sense ‘easier’ than its institutional or professional
counterpart. A letter to a friend, or a short story are not as constrained by rules as, say, a business letter or a report or
an essay.
Obviously, teachers’ attitudes and methods are determined to a certain
extent by their approach to language teaching (whether chosen or imposed),
and by the whole educational climate in which they work. The most common
role for the teacher in traditional writing classes is to be a judge, a critical
evaluator of the finished product. Work is returned to students with
mistakes indicated or corrected: the legendary red pen has always been a
tool of the teacher’s trade. Error feedback or correction assumes that
teachers’ marks and corrections are understood and learned by the students. https://images.app.goo.gl/4jReQonS1awEEAro9

Truscott (1996), in his research, argues that there is no evidence that error Through identifying errors, providing corrections, and praising
feedback in L2 writing instruction is effective. He asserts that ‘correction is well-written sentences, teachers can help students improve
harmful rather than simply ineffective’ and that ‘error correction should be their writing fluency, while monitoring progress toward
abandoned’ when there are no convincing reasons for doing so (Truscott writing goals.
1996).
Ferris (2006), in her studies that support the effectiveness of teacher feedback, points out that teacher intervention in
terms of expressiveness and accuracy seems to have some effect: a more evident short-term effect but a less convincing long-
term effect. She observes that the influential factors on feedback effectiveness include:
• Learners’ proficiency
• Manner of feedback (e.g. direct correction, indirect indication of problems for the learners to solve)
• Kinds of errors (e.g. treatable ones that the learners can overcome, untreatable errors)
• Timing of feedback (i.e. formative feedback during the writing process, post-feedback on errors).
The approaches to writing that we have looked at, from the perspective of both ‘product’ and ‘process’, inevitably lead to
a much more varied view both of the role of the teacher and the classroom environment, and of the criteria for marking and
assessing students’ written work.
Process considerations suggest the usefulness of intervention at all stages of writing, not just at the end. It is unlikely
that a draft will need to receive a grade, so the teacher, by commenting and making suggestions, becomes a reader as well as a
critic. Harmer (2001) regards the teacher as ‘motivator’ and ‘feedback provider’. The feedback given to students is both
‘formative’ (concerned with a developmental process) and ‘summative’ (the evaluation of the end-product). Secondly, this
feedback, whether summative or formative, takes place at a number of different levels of writing, and sentence grammar is not
the only subject of attention. We also need to consider the appropriateness of the writing to its purpose and intended audience
as well as topic and content criteria. Several marking schemes are now used by individual teachers, in materials, and by some
examination boards. These schemes typically involve:
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 • Communicative quality
• Logical organization
• Layout and presentation
• Grammar
• Vocabulary
• Handwriting, punctuation and spelling
After a close evaluation of error correction and feedback research, Ferris (2003), emphasizes the importance of
principled feedback. For example, she proposes feedback guidelines that remind teachers to:
• Prioritize
• Treat students as individuals
• Be encouraging
• Be clear and helpful
• Avoid imposing their own ideas on student writers, leaving the final decisions in the hands of the writer.
The red pen method is inherently negative, but there is no reason why feedback should not be positive as well: for
example, ‘communicates effectively’, ‘excellent control of appropriate vocabulary’ and the like. The issue here is the overall
function of correction. A distinction should be made between ‘mistakes’ (when learners are not using correctly the language
they already know) and ‘errors’ (which are largely the outcomes of a learner’s developing competence). Mistakes may require
direct feedback and remedial treatment, and largely relate to language points already covered; errors may be more
appropriately used for the planning of future work.
Ferris (2003: 122) provides an example of process-orientated feedback procedures:
• 1st draft – in class peer response
• 2nd draft – expert feedback
• 3rd draft – focused editing workshop
• Final draft – careful editing and proof-reading
• Grade and final comments.
Writing is socially situated: each situation requires special consideration of audience, purposes and level of perfection.
L2 writers need to understand expectations and norms of discourse communities or communities of practice of the target
communities as well as their own.
Finally, there are implications for the role
of people other than the teacher in the feedback
process. Using other class members as readers,
and the classroom as a cooperative working
environment, automatically means that
students are involved in the production of each
other’s written work. There is then a natural
extension to peer editing and revision, as well
as the more established procedure of peer
‘correction’. Clearly all these aspects will only
be effective with guidance and focus, but
potentially they can help students to develop a
critical stance towards their own work as well.
Several other procedures might be
developed to involve learners in the ultimate
aim of self-monitoring and self-correction.
These include marking schemes that indicate
mistake type, leaving the learner to identify the
specific problem; the establishment of personal
checklists, which change as proficiency grows;
and the technique of ‘reformulation’, in which
the teacher suggests another wording for what
the student is trying to express. Self-evaluation
will require different criteria at different stages
in the writing process, whereas correctness has
a vital role as the final draft takes shape.

Writing Task
On the right is a sample writing portfolio
a teacher prepares for his/her students.
Prepare a writing task for your students using
the sample as your pattern. Prepare a Checklist
for Final Draft. Use another sheet of paper for
this.

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Assessing Writing
What does it mean to assess writing?
Assessment is the gathering of information about student learning. It can be used for formative purposes−−to adjust
instruction−−or summative purposes: to render a judgment about the quality of student work. It is a key instructional activity,
and teachers engage in it every day in a variety of informal and formal ways.
Assessment of student writing is a process. Assessment of student writing and performance in the class should occur at
many different stages throughout the course and could come in many different forms. At various points in the assessment
process, teachers usually take on different roles such as motivator, collaborator, critic, evaluator, etc., (see Brooke Horvath for
more on these roles) and give different types of response.
One of the major purposes of writing assessment is to provide feedback to students. We know that feedback is crucial to
writing development. The 2004 Harvard Study of Writing concluded, "Feedback emerged as the hero and the anti-hero of our
study−powerful enough to convince students that they could or couldn't do the work in a given field, to push them toward or
away from selecting their majors, and contributed, more than any other single factor, to students' sense of academic belonging
or alienation".

[Assessing Writing: 5’31”] (https://www.britishcouncil.org/exam/aptis/research/projects/assessment-literacy/writing)

If you need to assess your students’ writing skills, there are a number of factors you need to consider. These include
considering the test taker and their needs, the kind of information you want to know about their writing skills and the
most appropriate ways to elicit and assess these skills so that your test is appropriate and accurately scored.

A. BEFORE YOU WATCH

1a. What kind of writing do you think most of us do nowadays?

1b. Is writing in school and outside school different? Why?

2. What kind of things do we think about when we are planning and creating a piece of writing?

B. WHILE YOU WATCH

Decisions that affect test and task design

3. What do we think about before we start writing something? Match the two columns.
A. What? 1. The structure of the text
B. Who? 2. The grammar and vocabulary the text requires
C. How? 3. The audience for the text
D. Which features of language? 4. The topic of the text
4. Look at the table. Decide if each test feature and focus is a good match ( ) or a bad match (X).

Scores and score reporting

5. Who can give the scores to a test? A __________ B _______________

6a. Match the description with the marking scale.

A. Analytic marking scale 1. Single overall score awarded
B. Global or holistic marking scale 2. Separate scores for different features

6b. Which scale would be best for assessing a personal email between teenagers?

If you want to know more about the relevance of scales to a task, watch the video on Assessing Speaking.

7. What three things are important in test or task design?

The task is _______________ for the skill being assessed.

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 The test is _______________ to the test taker.
The test is accurately _______________.

C. AFTER YOU WATCH

8. Read the information about these learners.

Learners are a class of 16 year olds studying English in preparation for college education. They are currently at B1
level.

*B1 Level (Intermediate Level)

CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages))

Which task, A or B, is best? Why?

Task A: Write an essay for your teacher explaining the advantages and disadvantages of travelling. Write 180 words.
OR
Task B: Write a note to friend inviting them to come and visit you at the weekend, describing what you will do and
explaining why you would like to see your friend. Write 70 words.

9. What kind of features do you need to assess for these learners? Why?
Accurate language
Cohesion
Task fulfilment
Range of language
Punctuation

Purpose and Types of Writing

For what purposes can students be asked to write? Here are some:
 Expressive/Narrative: a personal or imaginative expression in which the writer produces stories or essays
 Expository/Informative: used to share knowledge and give information
 Persuasive: writers attempt to influence others and initiate action or change

Types of Writing Performance

Types of writing performance include: Imitative, Intensive, Responsive, and Extensive writing. Each type will be
discussed below including sample activities.
1. Imitative: It is a level at which learners are trying to master the mechanics of writing. Form (letters, words, punctuation,
and brief sentences) is the primary while context and meaning are of secondary concern.
Copying is sometimes presented as the first
stage in a writing program. It helps to teach
spelling or to reinforce sentence structure.
Copying is an aid to retention. We frequently
copy things down in order to have a record.
The following activities mainly involve copying
since the learners do not actually have
to contribute to the text.
a. Putting a list of words in alphabetical
order
b. Putting a list of words in their correct
sequence (for example, days of the week,
months, numbers)
c. Putting words in categories
d. Doing puzzles
e. Playing Bingo
This involves selecting copying and is an excellent way of revising vocabulary sets (e.g. colours, jobs, clothes,
etc.) through a game.
f. Finding the word that is different

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 The students are given a set of 4 – 5 words like those in the diagram and are asked to find and write out the
word that is different. This combines reading with writing.
g. Labelling items
For this, the students use the words listed for them in a box to identify and label, for example, individual objects,
people in a group, objects in a scene, etc.
h. Finding words
The students have to find and write out the words which have been “hidden” in boxes like the one below. The
words may belong to a set (e.g. animals, clothes, etc.) and at a later stage may form a sentence, such as an
instruction. The pupils can also make their own word boxes, working individually or in groups, using words which
they have been given.
i. Filling in speech bubbles
The students have to fill in speech bubbles by matching the sentences with the situation. The activity is more
interesting if the pictures form a sequence.
j. Forming dialogues or stories from jumbled sentences
This makes a good pair work or group activity and can be based on something the pupils have already heard.
Listening cloze selection tasks. Thes
e tasks combine dictation with a written
script that has a relatively frequent
deletion ratio (every fourth or fifth word).
The test sheet provides a list of missing
words from which the test-taker must
select. The purpose of this is to give
practice in writing. To increase the
difficulty, the list of words can be deleted.
Picture-cued tasks. Familiar pictures
are displayed, and test takers are told to
write the word that the picture represents.
Form completion tasks. The use of
simple form (registration, application, etc.) that asks for name, address, phone number and other data.
Converting numbers and abbreviations to words.

2. Intensive: It includes skills in producing appropriate vocabulary, collocations, idioms, and correct grammatical features.
Most assessment tasks are concerned with a focus on form.
A good deal of writing at this level is display writing: students produce language to display their competence in
grammar, vocabulary, or sentence formation, and not necessarily to convey meaning for an authentic purpose.
A form of controlled writing related to dictation is a dicto-comp. Here, a paragraph is read at normal speed, usually
two or three times; then the teacher asks students to rewrite the paragraph from the best of their recollection. In one of
several variations of the dicto-comp technique, the teacher, after reading the passage, distributes a handout with
keywords from the paragraph, in sequence, as cues for the students. In either case, the dicto-comp is genuinely classified
as an intensive, if not a responsive, writing task. Test-takers must internalize the content of the passage, remember a few
phrases and lexical items as key words, then recreate the story in their own words.
Grammatical Transformation Tasks
a. Change the tenses in a paragraph.
b. Change full forms of verbs to reduced forms (contractions).

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 c. Change statements to yes/no or wh-
questions.
d. Change questions into statements.
e. Combine two sentences into one using a
relative pronoun.
f. Change direct speech to indirect speech.
g. Change from active to passive voice.
Picture-Cued Tasks
a. Short sentences
A drawing of some simple action is
shown; the test-taker writes a brief sentence.
b. Picture description
A somewhat more complex picture may
be presented showing, say, a person reading
on a couch, a cat under at able, books and
pencils on the table, chairs around the table, a
lamp next to the couch, and a picture on the
wall over the couch. Test-takers are asked to
describe the picture using four of the
following prepositions: on, over, under, next
to, around.
c. Picture sequence description.
A sequence of three to six pictures
depicting a story line can provide a suitable
stimulus for written production. The pictures
must be simple and unambiguous because an open-ended task at the selective level would give test-takers too
many options. If writing the correct grammatical form of a verb is the only criterion, then some test items might
include the simple form of the verb below the picture. The time sequence in the following task is intended to
https://images.app.goo.gl/rVGePWf8gX9bpHrbA

give writers some cues.

Ordering Tasks https://images.app.goo.gl/qbCpQUzFPwoGzC947

One task at the sentence level may appeal to

those who are fond of word games and puzzles:
ordering (or reordering) a scrambled set of words
into a correct sentence. Here is the way the item
format appears.
3. Responsive: At this level, form-focused attention is mostly
at the discourse level, with a strong emphasis on context
and meaning. Assessment tasks require learner to
connect sentences into a paragraph and create a sequence
of two or three paragraphs.
4. Extensive: It requires using all the processes and strategies of writing to write an essay, a term paper, a project report, or
even a thesis.
Paraphrasing
The initial step in teaching paraphrasing is to ensure that learners understand the importance of paraphrasing: to
say something in one’s own words, to avoid plagiarizing, to offer some variety in expression. With those possible
motivations and purposes in mind, the test designer needs to elicit a paraphrase of a sentence or paragraph.
Guided Question and Answer
Another lower-order task in this type of writing, which has the pedagogical benefit of guiding a learner without
dictating the form of the output, is a guided question-and-answer format in which the test administrator poses a
series of questions that essentially serve as an outline of the emergent written text. In the writing of a narrative that
the teacher has already covered in a class discussion, the following kind of questions might be posed to stimulate a
sequence of sentences.
Guided Questions
1. Where did this story take place? (setting)
2. Who were the people in the story? [characters]
3. What happened first? And then? And then? [sequence of events!
4. Why did__________________do__________________? (reasons, causes]
5. What did__________________think about__________________?
6. [opinion]

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 7. What happened at the end? [climax]
8. What is the moral of this story? [evaluation]
Paragraph Construction Tasks
The participation of reading performance is inevitable in writing effective paragraphs. To a great extent, writing is
the art of emulating what one reads. You read an effective paragraph; you analyze the ingredients of its success; you
emulate it. Assessment of paragraph development takes on a number of different forms:
1. Topic sentence writing.
Assessment consists of:
 specifying the writing of a topic sentence,
 scoring points for its presence or absence, and
 scoring and/or commenting on its effectiveness in stating the topic.
2. Topic development within a paragraph.
Because paragraphs are intended to provide a reader with “clusters” of meaningful, connected thoughts
or ideas, another stage of assessment is development of ideas within a paragraph. Four criteria are commonly
applied to assess the quality of a paragraph:
 the clarity of expression of ideas
 the logic of the sequence and connections
 the cohesiveness or unity of the paragraph
 the overall effectiveness or impact of the paragraph as a whole.
3. Development of main and supporting ideas across paragraphs. As writers string two or more paragraphs
together in a longer text, the writer attempts to articulate a thesis or main idea with clearly stated supporting
ideas. These elements can be considered in evaluating a multi-paragraph essay:
 addressing the topic, main idea, or principal purpose
 organizing and developing supporting ideas
 using appropriate details to undergird supporting ideas
 showing facility and fluency in the use of language
 demonstrating syntactic variety.

Authentic Assessment
Authentic assessment of writing involves: nature
of the task and scoring criteria.

Nature of Task
Prompt is the question or statement students will
address in their writing and the conditions under which
they will rewrite.
 The task has to be specific.
 Teacher can provide opportunity for
revision.
 Students can be involved in the decision
of prompts.
 Teachers need to check the types of
prompts required in grade-level
classroom in the school.
https://www.slideshare.net/anabllafashoonqueen/writing-assessment-63672582
Type of Scoring
Each of this type has a different purpose and focus in instructional will provide different types of information to
teachers and students.

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 Holistic Scoring
Holistic scoring results in a more general
description for categories, but includes the
different elements of writing implicitly or
explicitly. The result is usually a global grade, such
as A, B, C, D, E.

Analytic Scoring
In this mode, students' writing is evaluated
based on detailed grades for elements of writing
such as vocabulary, grammar, composition, or
mechanics. Results are based on multiple sub-
grades (e.g., 4 out of 5 on vocabulary, plus 3 out of 5
on grammar plus 4 out of 5 on content, etc.)

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 Primary Trait Scoring
If the class or the
assignment focuses on a
particular aspect of writing,
or a specific linguistic form,
or the use of a certain
semantic group, primary trait
scoring allows the instructor
and the students to focus
their feedback, revisions and
attention very specifically.

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 Self-assessment is important because it can improve our writing, editing, and critical thinking skills. It allows us to review our
strengths and weaknesses as a writer to see how we can continue to grow. Not just that, but it can also develop stronger writing
habits that can improve our work.

Self-Assessment for Writing Rubric

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 Peer-Assessment for Writing Rubric
References:
Behizadeh, Nadia and George Engelhard Jr. Historical View of the Influences of Measurement and Writing Theories on the Practice of Writing Assessment in the United States. Assessing Writing.
16 (2011) 189-211.
Huot, B. & Neal, M. (2006). Writing Assessment: A Techno-History. In C. A. Macarthur, S. Graham, & J. Fitzgerald (Eds.), Handbook Of Writing Research (Pp. 417-432). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Imitative Writing. Retrieved from http://www2.vobs.at/ludescher/writing/copying.htm on October 06, 2020.
Jo McDonough, Christopher Shaw, and Hitomi Masuhara. Materials and Methods in ELT: A Teacher’s Guide, Third Edition.John Wiley & Sons, Inc.2013
Jumat, 18 Juli 2014. Designing Assessment Tasks: Intensive Writing. Retrieved from http://fitriernawati28393.blogspot.com/2014/07/designing-assessment-tasks-intensive.html on October 06,
2020.
Kamis, 17 Juli 2014. Designing Assessment Tasks: Imitative Writing. Retrieved from http://fitriernawati28393.blogspot.com/2014/07/designing-assessment-tasks-imitative.html on October 06,
2020.
Minggu, 20 Juli 2014. Assessing Writing. Retrieved from http://fitriernawati28393.blogspot.com/2014/07/assessing-student-writing.html on October 06, 2020.
Polio , Charlene and Williams , Jessica. Teaching and Testing Writing. The Handbook of Language Teaching. Blackwell Publishing Ltd. ISBN: 978-1-405-15489-5 (2009)
Sabtu, 19 Juli 2014 . Designing Assessment Tasks: Responsive and Extensive Writing. Retrieved from http://fitriernawati28393.blogspot.com/2014/07/designing-assessment-tasks-
responsive.html on October 06, 2020.
Scott, Virgina M. (1996). Rethinking Foreign Language Writing. Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle. Retrieved from
https://coerll.utexas.edu/methods/modules/writing/04/scoring.php#:~:text=writing%20can%20be%20assessed%20in,different%20facet%20of%20L2%20writing on October 06, 2020.
Teaching Students to Self-Assess. Self-Assessment: Students as Active Learners. Center for Responsive Schools, Inc., (2018). Retrieved from https://www.responsiveclassroom.org/wp-
content/uploads/2018/10/self-assessment-handouts.pdf on October 06, 2020.
Writing Assessment. Retrieved from https://www.slideshare.net/anabllafashoonqueen/writing-assessment-63672582 on October 06, 2020

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 EMA EMITS COLLEGE PHILIPPINES
(Formerly: Eastern Mindoro Institute of Technology & Sciences)
Del Pilar St., Pinamalayan, Oriental Mindoro
Telefax No. (043) 284-3974

Name: ____________________________________________ Date: _________________________ Score: ________________

LONG TEST

Telefax
Answer each question direct to the point and write legibly on theNo. (043)
space 284-3974
below.
1. What do you want to teach your students: ‘learning to write’ or ‘writing to learn’? Justify your answer in five (5)
sentences.

2. Do the writing task found on page 7.

3. Prepare an assessment tool to rate the writing task you prepared on #2. Use the back of this page for this task.

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Modules 6-10 TEACHING AND ASSESSMENT OF MACROSKILLS
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 EMA EMITS COLLEGE PHILIPPINES
(Formerly: Eastern Mindoro Institute of Technology & Sciences)
Del Pilar St., Pinamalayan, Oriental Mindoro
Telefax No. (043) 284-3974

Name: ______________________________________ Course/Major: ____________________________ Score: ____________

MIDTERM EXAMINATION
This is your MIDTERM EXAMINATION. Read each item carefully before answering then encircle the letter of
your answer. Submit this on the next distribution of the modules.
Telefax No. (043) 284-3974
1. ____________________ is a level at which learners are trying to master the mechanics of writing.
a. Imitative* b. Intensive c. Responsive d. Extensive
2. ____________________ is a personal or imaginative expression in which the writer produces stories or essays.
a. Expository/Informative b. Persuasive c. Expressive/Narrative*
3. ____________________ is the gathering of information about student learning. a. Assessment* b. Evaluation
4. At this level, assessment tasks require learner to connect sentences into a paragraph and create a sequence of two or
three paragraphs. a. Imitative b. Intensive c. Responsive* d. Extensive
5. It allows us to review our strengths and weaknesses as a writer to see how we can continue to grow.
a. Self-assessment* b. Peer Assessment c. Teacher Assessment
6. One of the major purposes of writing assessment is to provide feedback to students. a. True* b. False
7. Putting a list of words in alphabetical order is ____________________
a. Cloze selection tasks b. Picture-cued tasks c. Copying* d. Form completion tasks
8. Short sentences, picture description, and picture sequence description are examples of ____________________.
a. Ordering Tasks b. Transformation Tasks c. Picture-Cued Tasks*
9. Students evaluate each other’s writings and find out how each work can be improved.
a. Self-assessment b. Peer Assessment* c. Teacher Assessment
10. Which is NOT true about holistic scoring?
a. It includes the different elements of writing implicitly or explicitly
b. Results are based on multiple sub-grades*
c. It results in a more general description for categories.
11. At what stage do the students produce a well-structured written work, such as a biography or a descriptive essay?
a. Communicating b. Composing c. Crafting* d. Improving
12. If love has love triangle, writing has also writing triangle. What are involved?
a. Communicating, composing, crafting*
b. Gathering ideas, working on drafts, preparing the final version
c. Varying the size of the linguistic blocks, paralleling the stages in the process of putting a whole piece of writing,
task complexity
13. It is characterized by free writing, journaling, and private writing activities; localization of writing process;
constructing purposeful tasks; and formative feedback.
a. Product-oriented b. Process-oriented* c. Task-based d. Content-based
14. The learners use the writing system to practice new language knowledge in a communication setting.
a. Writing to learn* b. Learning to write c. Writing and learning
15. This indicates mistake type, leaving the learner to identify the specific problems.
a. Marking schemes* b. Establishment of personal checklists c. Technique of reformulation
16. What type of writing involves diaries, journals, shopping lists, reminders for oneself, packing lists, and recipes?
a. Personal writing* b. Social writing c. Public writing d. Study writing
17. When you correct your student’s essay, several marking schemes can be used EXCEPT
a. Communicative quality b. Logical organization c. Grammar d. Kinds of errors*
18. When you give feedback to your student’s work, you can do the following EXCEPT
a. Prioritize b. Treat students as individuals c. Be encouraging d. Impose your own ideas on student writers*
19. Which of the following does NOT include in the functional categories?
a. Sequencing b. Answering questions* c. Writing instructions d. Expressing opinion

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20. You want to focus on accuracy of grammar use, so you decide to give you’re your students an activity which involves
combining sentences to make a short paragraph and inserting conjunctions. What type of writing activity is it?
a. Controlled sentence construction* b. Free composition c. The ‘homework’ function
21. _________________ is the gathering of information about student learning.
a. Evaluation b. Analysis c. Assessment* d. Survey
22. A lower-order task type of writing in which the examiner poses a series of questions that serve as an outline of the
written text. a. Guided Question and Answer* b. Paraphrasing c. Paragraph Construction Tasks
23. In authentic assessment, the teacher gives specific writing task and opportunity for revision.
a. True* b. False c. Maybe
24. It is a type of writing performance in which learners try to master the mechanics of writing.
a. Intensive b. Imitative* c. Responsive d. Extensive
25. This type of writing is used to share knowledge and give information.
a. Expressive b. Expository* c. Persuasive
26. What could be the purpose of writing assessment?
a. To mark the student’s paper b. To provide feedback to students* c. To check the student’s understanding
27. What type of task is this: Changing direct speech to indirect speech?
a. Picture-cued task b. Grammatical transformation task* c. Ordering task
28. When you attempt to influence others and initiate a change of mind or behavior, you write a/an _____________.
a. Narrative b. Informative c. Persuasive*
29. Which does NOT involve self-assessment?
a. Dialogue journals b. Learning logs c. Primary trait* d. Surveys of interest and awareness
30. You want to check your student’s idea organization, fluency, word choice and mechanic. What type of scoring are
you going to use? a. Analytic b. Holistic* c. Primary trait scoring

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Modules 6-10 TEACHING AND ASSESSMENT OF MACROSKILLS
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