This document discusses writing tests and their components. It defines writing as the act of forming letters and characters to communicate ideas. It then discusses what skills are tested in writing tests, including grammar, organization, content, purpose, and vocabulary. The document outlines the different ways writing can be tested, such as through essays, letters, paragraphs, and rearranging sentences. It provides characteristics of good writing tests, such as authentic tasks that evaluate only writing ability. Scoring of writing tests is also discussed, including using criteria like grammar, organization, content, purpose, and vocabulary, each weighted at 20%.
2. What is writing:
The act or art of forming letters and characters on
paper, wood, stone, or other material, for the purpose of
recording the ideas which characters and words
express, or of communicating them to others by visible
signs.
“Nobody in this world wants to read your diary except
your mother."
(Richard Peck, writer of young adult fiction)
3. A test or examination is an assessment intended
to measure a test-taker's
knowledge, skill, aptitude, physical fitness, or
classification in many other topics.
What is a test
4. What is the testing writing
A test or an assessment intended to measure
writing skill of students.
5. Writing Skills
1) Grammatical Skills – the ability to write correct
sentence
2) Stylistic Skills – the ability to manipulate sentences
and use language effectively
3) Mechanical Skills – the ability to use correctly those
conventions peculiar to the written language
4) Judgment Skills – the ability to write in an appropriate
manner for a particular audience in mind, together
with an ability to select, organize and order relevant
information
6. The components of testing writing
Or What to test
• Grammar
• Organization
• Content/Substance
• Fulfillment of purpose
• Vocabulary/word choice
7. The ways to test writing
• Essay
• Letter
• Paragraph
• Short story
• Matching Items
• Make a synopsis
• Rearrange sentence into paragraph
8. How a writing test should be
• Clearly defined purpose and audience for writing
• Restrict students’ answers
• Test only writing ability, nothing else
• Well-defined and authentic task
• Ensure long enough sample
• Appropriate scales for scoring
9. Factors to consider in Developing Writing
Tasks
• The type of writing
• The function
• The addressee
• Process
• Product
10. Characteristics of writing tests
• Authentic and communicative writing tasks place
emphasis on transmitting authentic/integrative
information in writing.
• Current writing tasks reflect the kind of writing tasks that
the students are required to do in the L2 oral
communicative situations. Thus, there is emphasis on the
type, and function of writing as well as the addressee.
11. • Since current teaching of writing emphasizes also
strategies of writing, the process should get
attention in testing writing as well as the final
product of writing.
Characteristics of writing tests
12. The way to score
No Criteria score
1 Grammar 20%
2 Organization 20%
3 Content/Substance 20%
4 Fulfillment of purpose 20%
5 Vocabulary/word choice 20%
13. Conclusion:
Always bear in mind though that the difficulty of an item may
relate to whether it has been covered in class or it may give
an indication of how well it was understood. Such test
analysis can give us information about how effective our
teaching has been as well as actually evaluating the test.
Evaluating tests carefully can ensure that the test improves
after it is taken and can give us feedback on improving our
test writing…...