What We Don't Know about the Evaluation of Writing

James C. Raymond

doi:10.2307/357952

College Composition and Communication Dec 1982

What We Don't Know about the Evaluation of Writing

James C. Raymond

Abstract

Nineteen years ago, Braddock, Lloyd-Jones, and Schoer compared research in written composition to chemical research as it emerged from period of alchemy,1 an image that continues to haunt us, leading us to expect research in composition to evolve as a discipline, like each of sciences, with universally accepted methods and neat boundaries around its subject. Since that time a great deal of important research has occurred, much of it supported by methods and insights imported from social and behavioral sciences. But evolution suggested by image has not occurred. In particular, we certainly know more about evaluation than we did twenty years ago; but what we know is not definitive, nor is it an orderly and systematic corpus. It may be described as a growing list of terms and techniques, such as the general impression scales a system used by ETS;2 and analytic scales, guided scoring procedure developed by Paul Diederich;3 and Primary Trait Scoring, system developed by Richard Lloyd-Jones for National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP);4 and T-unit analysis, measure of syntactic fluency invented by Kellogg Hunt;5 and holistic scoring, a generic term that, as Charles Cooper defines it, includes a variety of guided scoring methods;6 and relative readability, focus of measurement proposed by E. D. Hirsch in The Philosophy of Composition.7 What is remarkable about this list is that it would make as much sense to study it in alphabetical order as chronological. Each of items is so thoroughly independent of others that not even order of their invention is logical or necessary. To items I have mentioned might be added others so disparate in what they purport to measure as to suggest that we have not even agreed on what it is we are trying to evaluate--whether it is mastery of editorial skills, or indices of cognitive development, or success in communicating a semantic intention. In evaluation of writing, old systems survive invention of new ones; nothing supersedes or replaces anything else. There are a few gains in precision, but always at expense of

Journal: College Composition and Communication
Published: 1982-12-01
DOI: 10.2307/357952
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Open Access: Closed
Topics: assessment
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What We Don't Know about the Evaluation of Writing

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