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Communicative Writing Profiles: An Investigation of the Transferability of a Multiple‐Trait Scoring Instrument Across ESL Writing Assessment Contexts *
Author(s) -
HampLyons Liz,
Henning Grant
Publication year - 1991
Publication title -
language learning
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.882
H-Index - 103
eISSN - 1467-9922
pISSN - 0023-8333
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-1770.1991.tb00610.x
Subject(s) - writing assessment , psychology , transferability , rating scale , rhetorical question , trait , test (biology) , scale (ratio) , rhetorical modes , linguistics , mathematics education , developmental psychology , computer science , paleontology , philosophy , physics , logit , quantum mechanics , machine learning , biology , programming language
This study investigated the validity of using a multipletrait scoring procedure to obtain communicative writing profiles of the writing performance of adult nonnative English speakers in assessment contexts different from that for which the instrument was designed. Tran sferability could be of great benefit to those without the resources to design and pilot a multiple‐trait scoring instrument of their own. A modification of the New Profile Scale (NPS)was applied in the rating of 170 essays taken from two non‐NPS contexts, including 91 randomly selected essays of the Test of Written English and 79 essays written by a cohort of University of Michigan entering undergraduate nonnative English speaking students responding to the Michigan Writing Assessment. The scoring method taken as a who leappeared to be highly reliable in composite assessment, appropriate for application to essays of different timed lengths and rhetorical modes, and appropriateto writers of different levels of educational preparation. However, whereas the subscales of Communicative Quality and Linguistic Accuracy tended to show individual discriminant validity, little psychometric support for reporting scores on seven or five components of writing was found. Arguments for transferring the NPS for use in new writing assessment contexts would thus be educational rather than statistical.