- Email: [email protected]
Writing assessment in the world
Assessing Writing 9 (2004) 1–3
Editorial
Writing assessment in the world In the Editorial to my first volume of Assessing Writing (Vol. 8, Number 1), I discussed the scope and history of writing assessment. In that discussion I focused on the roots of the US writing assessment movement in the development of assessments through writing in the ‘old world’—China, Europe and the UK. In this second overview Editorial I would like to focus on movements in writing assessment in the modern world outside North America. We also welcome a new Co-Editor to Assessing Writing with this issue—Bill Condon, of Washington State University, is a long-tern colleague and friend of mine and we have written a book together. I am confident that we will work well as Co-Editors of Assessing Writing. Bill will bring a stronger North American perspective to the development of the journal than I currently can, now that I have been outside the US for eight years. In a future Editorial in this volume Bill will look at the current state of writing assessment in the US. In this Editorial I would like to tell you something about initiatives in the European region, which is extremely dynamic in all areas of language assessment at the present time. The European Union is currently facing the enormous task of preparing for the entry of an additional ten countries, making a membership of 25 countries by the end of 2005. Some of these countries have multiple national languages, and there are also very strong minority languages (notably Basque and Catalan) whose speakers argue for linguistic rights as well as political representation. Further, Europe has a very large number of migrant workers and new citizens from outside Europe whose languages are increasingly vigorous within Europe. Not surprisingly, then, language rights are seen as a key component of citizenship rights in Europe, but language issues are also seen as a hurdle to European integration and cooperation. The federal nature of the EU and its multilingual population/workforce has led to the important development of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. The goal is to establish scales that represent “common standards” or benchmarks for all the languages in the European area. As this initiative takes hold across Europe, there are already signs that the ‘common standards’ approach, and indeed the benchmarks themselves, are influencing developments in large-scale testing in other areas too. 1075-2935/$ – see front matter © 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.asw.2004.02.001
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Editorial / Assessing Writing 9 (2004) 1–3
Within this initiative the role of the University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate, Britain’s dominant commercial language testing agency, in developing writing assessments at all the major benchmark levels, has been central. The standards developed by UCLES were applied to other languages in Europe through the Association of Language Testers in Europe (ALTE) and have been the starting point for the framework initiative. UCLES is best-known outside the UK for its IELTS test (International English Language Testing Service) which is increasingly used around the world for making entry or initial placement decisions about international university students. You can learn more about the Common European Framework at www.coe.int/lang. A very different development in Europe is DIALANG, a self-selective diagnostic assessment that second-language learners of any of Europe’s languages can take at their own convenience. This means French learners of Finnish, for example, can self-identify their probable levels in Finnish and take a test that will give them a statement of their actual level. Individuals can collect scores in as many languages as they wish and have these recorded in a ‘language passport’. You can learn more about DIALANG and view the scales, including writing scales in all the European languages, at www.dialang.org. This ‘common standards’ approach is less usual (less common!) outside Europe. Even in a federal nation such as the United States, there seem to be no accepted common standards for, for example, expected proficiency in writing in English at high school graduation: each state (and even district) develops and implements its own. The Program in International Student Assessment (PISA) uniquely looks at what 15-year-olds around the world can do in mathematics, reading literacy and science literacy in their own language. Fifty countries are participating in various components of PISA, including the US, and more than 4000 American students took part in the 2000 reading literacy study. You can learn more about the literacy study by visiting http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pirls. But PISA does not include an international comparison of writing, and the last such study was completed in 1990 (see Gorman, Purves, & Degenhart, 1988; and Purves, 1992). In that study European countries and Japan exceeded the US in written abilities: this is interesting because the approaches to teaching writing could hardly be more different than between Europe and Japan! In Japan learning and forming characters dominates, and “writing” prepared texts is very common. In most European countries writing has been taught through an experiential approach with little overt teaching of forms and genres (such as the ‘five paragraph essay’, a form unknown to me until I moved to the US at the age of 40 after 15 years teaching writing in Europe!), and has never been assessed through multiple-choice or other indirect forms. Looking at work around the world reminds us of how much we still do not know about how people learn to write and write well, nor about how we can most meaningfully assess expertise in writing. In the US, the imposition of No Child Left Behind legislation has distracted attention (and money) from key areas of language use that underpin effective citizenship and social participation, notably writing. This can be seen by a look at the
Editorial / Assessing Writing 9 (2004) 1–3
3
work now being published in journals such as Educational Researcher and Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice (the journal of the National Council on Measurement in Education, USA). The time is right for people like the readers of this journal, who care about quality instruction and assessment of writing, to remind local and state legislators and education bureaucrats of initiatives such as the Common European Framework and DIALANG. It is to be hoped that lessons can be adapted from the work of the Council of Europe so that the US, and other countries in a similar position, such as Australia, can develop a basis for benchmarking levels of writing competence across all states. In this issue of the journal, all our articles happen to come from the US, so it is good to remember that the rest of the world is still out there!! Condon and Kelly-Riley describe a fascinating program that addresses writing issues across faculties and departments around the university, and focuses on the role and evaluation of critical thinking. Lee looks specifically at the writing of ESL students and considers the evidence of whether writing on the computer or writing with a pen and paper offer the better option for nonnative writers. Weigle also looks at the difficult questions of placement assessment for nonnative speaking students at college level, and contrasts a new test developed for her own institution with a large-scale (state level) test, asking questions that are being faced by university writing programs in many places. Finally, Dunn and Williamson review Huot’s 2002 book, (Re)articulating Writing Assessment for Teaching and Learning. I wish to thank the Editorial Board and the following colleagues who were invited to serve as additional reviewers for their support of and contribution to the previous and current issues of Assessing Writing: Winnie Cheng, Dana Ferris and Jun Liu. References Gorman, T. P., Purves, A. C., & Degenhart, E. (Eds.). (1988). The IEA study of written composition I: The International Tasks and Scoring Scales.Oxford, Pergamon Press. Purves, A. C. (Ed.). (1992). The IEA study of written composition II. Education and performance in fourteen countries. Oxford: Pergamon Press.
Liz Hamp-Lyons The Hong Kong Polytechnic University Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong E-mail address: [email protected] (L. Hamp-Lyons)
Editorial
Writing assessment in the world In the Editorial to my first volume of Assessing Writing (Vol. 8, Number 1), I discussed the scope and history of writing assessment. In that discussion I focused on the roots of the US writing assessment movement in the development of assessments through writing in the ‘old world’—China, Europe and the UK. In this second overview Editorial I would like to focus on movements in writing assessment in the modern world outside North America. We also welcome a new Co-Editor to Assessing Writing with this issue—Bill Condon, of Washington State University, is a long-tern colleague and friend of mine and we have written a book together. I am confident that we will work well as Co-Editors of Assessing Writing. Bill will bring a stronger North American perspective to the development of the journal than I currently can, now that I have been outside the US for eight years. In a future Editorial in this volume Bill will look at the current state of writing assessment in the US. In this Editorial I would like to tell you something about initiatives in the European region, which is extremely dynamic in all areas of language assessment at the present time. The European Union is currently facing the enormous task of preparing for the entry of an additional ten countries, making a membership of 25 countries by the end of 2005. Some of these countries have multiple national languages, and there are also very strong minority languages (notably Basque and Catalan) whose speakers argue for linguistic rights as well as political representation. Further, Europe has a very large number of migrant workers and new citizens from outside Europe whose languages are increasingly vigorous within Europe. Not surprisingly, then, language rights are seen as a key component of citizenship rights in Europe, but language issues are also seen as a hurdle to European integration and cooperation. The federal nature of the EU and its multilingual population/workforce has led to the important development of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. The goal is to establish scales that represent “common standards” or benchmarks for all the languages in the European area. As this initiative takes hold across Europe, there are already signs that the ‘common standards’ approach, and indeed the benchmarks themselves, are influencing developments in large-scale testing in other areas too. 1075-2935/$ – see front matter © 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.asw.2004.02.001
2
Editorial / Assessing Writing 9 (2004) 1–3
Within this initiative the role of the University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate, Britain’s dominant commercial language testing agency, in developing writing assessments at all the major benchmark levels, has been central. The standards developed by UCLES were applied to other languages in Europe through the Association of Language Testers in Europe (ALTE) and have been the starting point for the framework initiative. UCLES is best-known outside the UK for its IELTS test (International English Language Testing Service) which is increasingly used around the world for making entry or initial placement decisions about international university students. You can learn more about the Common European Framework at www.coe.int/lang. A very different development in Europe is DIALANG, a self-selective diagnostic assessment that second-language learners of any of Europe’s languages can take at their own convenience. This means French learners of Finnish, for example, can self-identify their probable levels in Finnish and take a test that will give them a statement of their actual level. Individuals can collect scores in as many languages as they wish and have these recorded in a ‘language passport’. You can learn more about DIALANG and view the scales, including writing scales in all the European languages, at www.dialang.org. This ‘common standards’ approach is less usual (less common!) outside Europe. Even in a federal nation such as the United States, there seem to be no accepted common standards for, for example, expected proficiency in writing in English at high school graduation: each state (and even district) develops and implements its own. The Program in International Student Assessment (PISA) uniquely looks at what 15-year-olds around the world can do in mathematics, reading literacy and science literacy in their own language. Fifty countries are participating in various components of PISA, including the US, and more than 4000 American students took part in the 2000 reading literacy study. You can learn more about the literacy study by visiting http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pirls. But PISA does not include an international comparison of writing, and the last such study was completed in 1990 (see Gorman, Purves, & Degenhart, 1988; and Purves, 1992). In that study European countries and Japan exceeded the US in written abilities: this is interesting because the approaches to teaching writing could hardly be more different than between Europe and Japan! In Japan learning and forming characters dominates, and “writing” prepared texts is very common. In most European countries writing has been taught through an experiential approach with little overt teaching of forms and genres (such as the ‘five paragraph essay’, a form unknown to me until I moved to the US at the age of 40 after 15 years teaching writing in Europe!), and has never been assessed through multiple-choice or other indirect forms. Looking at work around the world reminds us of how much we still do not know about how people learn to write and write well, nor about how we can most meaningfully assess expertise in writing. In the US, the imposition of No Child Left Behind legislation has distracted attention (and money) from key areas of language use that underpin effective citizenship and social participation, notably writing. This can be seen by a look at the
Editorial / Assessing Writing 9 (2004) 1–3
3
work now being published in journals such as Educational Researcher and Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice (the journal of the National Council on Measurement in Education, USA). The time is right for people like the readers of this journal, who care about quality instruction and assessment of writing, to remind local and state legislators and education bureaucrats of initiatives such as the Common European Framework and DIALANG. It is to be hoped that lessons can be adapted from the work of the Council of Europe so that the US, and other countries in a similar position, such as Australia, can develop a basis for benchmarking levels of writing competence across all states. In this issue of the journal, all our articles happen to come from the US, so it is good to remember that the rest of the world is still out there!! Condon and Kelly-Riley describe a fascinating program that addresses writing issues across faculties and departments around the university, and focuses on the role and evaluation of critical thinking. Lee looks specifically at the writing of ESL students and considers the evidence of whether writing on the computer or writing with a pen and paper offer the better option for nonnative writers. Weigle also looks at the difficult questions of placement assessment for nonnative speaking students at college level, and contrasts a new test developed for her own institution with a large-scale (state level) test, asking questions that are being faced by university writing programs in many places. Finally, Dunn and Williamson review Huot’s 2002 book, (Re)articulating Writing Assessment for Teaching and Learning. I wish to thank the Editorial Board and the following colleagues who were invited to serve as additional reviewers for their support of and contribution to the previous and current issues of Assessing Writing: Winnie Cheng, Dana Ferris and Jun Liu. References Gorman, T. P., Purves, A. C., & Degenhart, E. (Eds.). (1988). The IEA study of written composition I: The International Tasks and Scoring Scales.Oxford, Pergamon Press. Purves, A. C. (Ed.). (1992). The IEA study of written composition II. Education and performance in fourteen countries. Oxford: Pergamon Press.
Liz Hamp-Lyons The Hong Kong Polytechnic University Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong E-mail address: [email protected] (L. Hamp-Lyons)