Writing Skills Testing and Assessment Research Assignment

Writing Skills Testing and Assessment
Your Name
September 29, 2016
Your Institution of Affiliation
Writing Skills Test
—O—
General description
One of the most important considerations that test-makers should remember in creating a test is ‘usefulness’. This aspect should be evaluated even before drafting the test itself since doing this would help to eliminate any wasted time and energy in creating inaccurate and inadequate test questionnaires that would fail to assess the things that it tries to measure in the first place CITATION Bac96 \l 1033 (Bachman & Palmer, 1996). In this section, usefulness is given much consideration in creating a Writing skills test. In order to do this, two tasks are strategically employed in order to completely capture the student’s writing skill and knowledge.
Specific objective:
Writing task 1:
The first task aims to assess and help the students write logical, comprehensible, varied, and grammatically correct sentences. The main goal of this task is to assess the student’s skills in writing a letter or a note to a friend.
Writing task 2:
This would be done in the form of an ‘open-ended-story-telling manner’ to capture their attention fully and so that they can use it immediately in day-to-day settings. More particularly, this is to (1) assess the student’s ability to make, accept, and decline an invitation, and (2) to utilize the use of ‘might’.
Sample items:
WRITING TASK 1 – STORY TELLING
Briefly answer in one (1) paragraph (100 words)
* Write an invitation for a special event to your friend: __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Writing task 2
* Complete the conversation between you and your friend Michael in one to two sentences. How would you accept his invitation? How would you refuse his invitation?
¯ Michael: Can you come to my birthday?
í Refuse: ____________________________________________________________because, ____________________________________________________
í Accept:
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
* Michael is inviting you to watch a movie this Monday. Answer the question using ‘might’
¯ Michael: Hey, will come with me to the cinema this Monday?
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Prompt attributes:
Task 1:
* The task which prompts the student to write a letter based to a particular someone is to help him/her become more familiar and fluent in developing his day-to-day conversational skill
* This is a formal way of assessing the student’s ability to write letters or notes
* Prompts are aimed are mainly to assess and develop the student’s fluency in writing a letter or a note which is addressed to a person with who he/she has close relationships with
Task 2:
* The open-ended response is to help the student converse in his own language.
* This is a more personal way of assessing the student’s response
* Prompts are aimed are mainly to assess and develop the student’s fluency in accepting, refusing, and using might in constructing sentences
Response Attributes (RA):
In this exam, students are expected to write their answers in the blue booklet provided for them. The front page, have a space for them to write their name, student number, date, and signature. Students have to complete the writing tasks 1 and 2 which is aimed at assessing their ability to write in both formal and casual tone. Furthermore, both of these tasks are focused at assessing their grammar, vocabulary, mechanics, and fluency.
For writing task 1, the student is required to write a letter or a note to someone with whom they have close relationships with. Because of this, the letter is supposedly constructed in a semi-formal, but logical, and grammatically correct manner. They will be assessed based on the four criteria given above (grammar, vocabulary, mechanics, and fluency). The letter should be written in only one paragraph (100 words).
For writing task 2, the student is required to answer two sets of questions. The first question is to help the instructor assess their ability to respond to a request by a friend, colleague, family member, etc. This elicits a response from them that is less formal and with a more conversational tone. However, the student must also be able to provide two sets of answer where, (1) they accept and (2) they deny the request. The second question for writing tasks 2 helps assess the students use of ‘might’ in everyday conversational manner. Just like the first question in task 2, this one is less formal and more conversational in tone, but requires the use of ‘might’ in constructing a response. This response for this part has not word limitation.
Specification Supplement (SS):
Writing skill (30 minutes for four set of writing tasks 1&2)
Format: Prompt for a topic
¯ Writing tasks 1 –
í Briefly answer in one paragraph (100 words)
í Accept, refuse, and use ‘might’ in the cases stated
¯ Writing tasks 2 –
í Accept and reject an invitation or a request from a friend
í Utilize the use of might in answering a statement that is directed to you
¯ Location – Test site 2
Witting test booklet:
Writing task1:
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