View Content #1909
| Contentid | 1909 |
|---|---|
| Content Type | 1 |
| Title | Assessing voice in writing - using rubrics |
| Body | Could you explain how you measure "voice"?" Good question. Assessing voice, or any other aspect of writing, even by following descriptive rubrics, is quite subjective. For example, what is "some attempt" for one assessor may be a "reasonable attempt" to another and a "clear attempt" to a third assessor. The problem with descriptors is that they give the illusion of objectivity. I have used descriptive rubrics to assess EFL and undergraduate essays for language and structure, undergraduate and postgraduate essays in linguistics and ELT methodology, as well as observed lessons during teacher training courses. Whenever I took part in standardisation sessions, I realised that different assessors working with the same descriptors would come up with widely differing assessments of the same script or lesson. Of course, rubrics are much more preferable to counting mistakes or impression marking, but some sort of standardisation has to take place. If teachers share the same class, then they need to mark a number of scripts and then compare their marks and discuss their reasons - and their interpretation of descriptors - until their assessments converge. The same approach can be used with learners. Just giving the rubric to learners is not enough; they need to also understand what the rubrics actually describe. I have found it helpful to give learners anonymised scripts from last year's class and ask them to mark them according to the rubric. The ensuing feedback discussion is very illuminating for them, gives the teacher invaluable insights into what learners perceive as good writing, and gives the learners the opportunities for purposeful communication. Gabrielatos, C. Re: rubrics, descriptors and subjectivity. Teachers of English to speakers of other languages electronic list. TESL-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU (28 Jul. 2004). It is worth reading Rena Helms Park and Paul Stapleton's article in JSLW 2003 on the correlation of voice and good writing. Those whose institutions have access to Science Direct can read the article online at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science I don't remember the full details, but the researchers isolated features most theorists on voice mentioned, had independent markers grade a batch of essays for these, then had another group of markers grade the essays for quality of writing, not mentioning voice. Their findings were that there is a slight negative correlation between strong voice and good writing. In other words, the writers who were assertive, confident in their tone and used 'I' a lot performed slightly less well than those who did not. Harbord, J. Re: measuring voice. Teachers of English to speakers of other languages electronic list. TESL-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU (29 Jul. 2004). |
| Source | TESL-L |
| Inputdate | 2004-08-12 12:16:00 |
| Lastmodifieddate | 2004-08-12 12:16:00 |
| Expdate | Not set |
| Publishdate | Not set |
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| Active | 1 |
| Emailed | 1 |
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