Relating Performance on a Standardized Writing Assessment to Performance on Selected Academic Writing Activities |
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| Abstract: | Our objective was to study the relation between (a) the kinds of writing skills that can be elicited in a relatively brief, standardized writing assessment and (b) several nontest indicators of prospective graduate students' writing skills. Various nontest indicators were considered as criteria, but a particular focus was the quality of students' course-related writing samples. Two such writing samples were collected from each participant, along with considerable information about the nature of these samples. Thus, we were able to analyze the conditions and circumstances under which performance on a standardized writing assessment is (and is not) related to performance on course-related assignments. The results reveal modest relations between writing assessment essays and the various nontest indicators of writing skill. Performance on the writing assessment exhibited the strongest relation with course-related writing samples, arguably the most compelling of the nontest indicators of students' writing ability. There was no indication that the relation between performance on the writing assessment and the quality of course-related writing samples may depend on particular characteristics of the writing samples. |
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