Assessment and Grading of Writing Performances

Writing assessment in the GUGD falls under the general assessment policies developed in the Department as part of the curriculum renewal. These policies were approved, in their revised form, on Sept. 12, 2002.

Key information about assessing writing performance is assembled in a number of documents. For understandable reasons, not all documents can be provided on this site. However, the following list of documents (all except the scoring rubrics were previously discussed in this section of the curriculum site) should help visitors understand the principles and procedures for writing assessment that are used in the Department:

• level-specific writing tasks specified in writing task sheets;
• an end-of-level prototypical performance writing task;
• end-of-level writing performance profiles that reflect the curricular progression in writing;
• level-specific language foci, including a weighting of features;
• level-specific scoring rubrics (Level I; Level II; Level III; Text in Context)

Taken together, these documents on assessment and grading are intended to support instructors as they assess a particular writing task; provide feedback; and assign a grade both to the draft and to the final revised version. Recommendations are summarized in the next section entitled “Assessing a Particular Writing Performance.”

Dec. 7, 2002 (updated November 17, 2003)