SCORING METHODS FOR RESPOSIVE AND EXTENSIVE WRITING

At responsive and extensive levels of writing, three major approaches to scoring writing performance are commonly used by test designers: holistic, primary trait, and analytical.

Holistic Scoring

Each point on a holistic scale is given a systematic set of descriptors, and the reader-evaluator matches an overall impression with the descriptors, and the reader-evaluator matches an overall impression with the descriptors to arrive at a score.

Advantages

• fast evaluation,
• relatively high inter-rater reliability,
• the fact that scores represent “standards” that are easily interpreted by the lay persons,
• the fact that scores tend to emphasize the writer’s strengths,
• applicability to writing across many different disciplines.

Disadvantages

• One score masks differences across the subskills within each score.
• No diagnostic information is available (no washback potential).
• The scale may not apply equally well to all genres of writing.
• Raters need to be extensively trained to use the scale accurately.

Primary Trait Scoring

Primary trait focuses on “how well students can write within a narrowly defined range of discourse”. This type of scoring emphasizes the task at hand and assigns a score based on the effectiveness of the text’s achieving that one goal. In summary, a primary trait score would assess

• the accuracy of the account of the original (summary),
• the clarity of the steps of the procedure and the final result (lab report),
• the description of the main features of the graph (graph description), and
• the expression of the writer’s opinion (response to an article).

Analytic Scoring

For classroom instruction, holistic scoring provides little washback into the writer’s further stages of learning. Primary trait scoring focuses on the principal function of the text and therefore offers some feedback potential, but no washback for any of the aspects of the written production that enhance the ultimate accomplishment of the purpose. Classroom evaluation of learning is best served through analytic scoring, in which as many as six major elements of writing are scored, this enabling learners to home in on weaknesses and to capitalize on strengths.

Analytic scoring of compositions offers writers a little more wash back than a singles holistic or primary trait score. Scores in five or six major elements will help to call the writers’ attention to areas of needed improvement.