Writing Skills - How Shall We Assess Them?

There is much talk about declining literacy standards in schools and in universities; lecturers complain about having to mark essays and reports that lack a coherent structure or are riddled with poor grammar and spelling, and employers of graduates are sometimes perplexed that degrees are awarded to people whose basic written communication skills appear to be lacking. If university graduates are expected to have a high degree of literacy skills and if our students are to 'develop the ability and desire to write and speak clearly, concisely and logically' (UWA Mission Statement), how might these skills be assessed?

In some cases, it is the content of the writing that is assessed. For example if the students is able to communicate an understanding of the chemistry or engineering being taught, the fact that the English expression or the organisation of the writing is poor may be overlooked. For some teachers and in some disciplines, the focus may be on the conventions of academic writing within a particular discipline. In other disciplines, particularly in the Arts, grammar, syntax and structure tend to be taken into consideration in assessing written work. Nightingale et al. describe the difficulty in separating content and written communication skills as follows: "The problem with trying to separate assessment of content from assessment of communication skills is that it fails to recognise just how deeply intertwined are the effectiveness of communication and a student's understanding of the content" (1996, p. 207).

Some questions to consider in relation to assessing written work include

• What are you assessing - content, organisation, style, etc.? How are these weighted in the overall assignment mark?
• How are students made aware of the assessment criteria and the standard expected of them?
• If "...all the University graduates would, by virtue of gaining their degrees, be certified as literate both contextually in the subjects in which they have majored and generally in terms of their ability to communicate effectively in English" (UWA Guidelines on Literacy), would students from non-English speaking backgrounds whose English is poor receive lower marks than native speakers of English?

• Nightingale, P. et al. (1996). Assessing Learning in Universities. Sydney: Professional Development Centre, the University of New South Wales.
• The University of Western Australia Guidelines on Literacy: <http://www.teachingandlearning.uwa.edu.au/page/19500> (26 November 1997)
• The University of Western Australia Mission Statement: <http://www.acs.uwa.edu.au/reg/mission.html> (version current at November 1996)