This study examines how well the qualities of good essay writing expressed in the British Columbia Ministry of Education's handbook, Using rating scales to evaluate student writing, are transmitted to teachers and students. In asking how well those values are communicated to teachers and students involved in grade twelve English examinations, the study compares the features demonstrated in the writing reference sets and specified in the Holistic scoring guide to the responses of markers, teachers and students who were surveyed concerning their familiarity with those terms and to their beliefs about what constituted a good essay. Most teachers reported instructional practices which utilized these reference sets, and students supported this assertion. The qualities described by teacher-markers such as “command of language, thoughtful, well structured, interesting argument, depth of understanding, engaging, sense of voice” were also compared to salient features of papers which they had just scored and found to correspond quite closely. Students, however, in describing the features they hoped to produce in writing a good essay, did not use the terms of the official rating scale descriptors, but instead, fell back on a vocabulary expressing the most basic features of the process approach to writing, such as “planning, webbing ideas,” and “revising.” Survey instruments used in the study were not sufficiently detailed to provide data on student comprehension of rating scale terms. Observations are made on such aspects of large-scale writing evaluations as recommended scoring practices, the need for thorough marker preparation, the vagueness of some criteria such as “voice”, and on current approaches to high school composition instruction with emphasis on modelling theory as the basis for instruction in a jurisdiction which uses reference sets of student work as standards for its rating scales. Shortcomings of the study are noted and suggestions for future research in this area are offered. The appendices include all survey forms used, results of a feature analysis of over 300 highly-rated examination essays, typescripts of student interviews, and a sample writing reference set with scale-point descriptors. / Graduate
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uvic.ca/oai:dspace.library.uvic.ca:1828/9773 |
| Date | 25 July 2018 |
| Creators | Peach, Ronald Derek |
| Contributors | Johnson, Terry D. |
| Source Sets | University of Victoria |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | Available to the World Wide Web |
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