Hello Doug,
I too have recently had cause to consider the issue of mass testing methods
of literacy/writing competance and have found some help in an article
written by Casey Jones : "The Relationship Between Writing Centers and
Improvement in Writing Ability: An Assessment of the Literature"
_Education_Vol. 122 No.1. I found access to this article in full text PDF
format on-line, but no longer remember where (possibly EBSCO). (it is worth
tracking down as it is couched in terms likely to be meaningful to those who
put a good deal of faith in quantative testing-if you can't locate it or the
journal easily I would be willing to fax it to you. ). I also found useful
the
articles found at the following links:
http://wac.colostate.edu/llad/v3n2/olds.pdf
http://wac.colostate.edu/journal/vol5/lord.pdf
http://wac.colostate.edu/llad/v6n1/carter.pdf
http://wac.colostate.edu/llad/v6n1/carson.pdf
Hope this is helpful,
Pat
Doug Brent wrote:
> A bit of a plea for help here.
>
> I keep looking for literature that addresses the larger philosophical
> and pedagogical issues surrounding mass writing competence testing. I
> find that most of the literature seems to be written by people who more
> or less approve of competence testing and want to discuss how it can be
> improved or to share war stories. There seems to be a fairly large camp
> of sentiment that suggests that the entire enterprise of mass competence
> testing is flawed for a number of reasons,. the most common being that
> it fails to take account of what most of us believe about writing being
> centred in discourse communities, recursive, social, messy, and all
> those things that no "competence test" can by its nature measure. But
> as far as I can see (after searching ERIC, COMPILE, etc), most of this
> material is "anecdotal," ie. argued on listserves like CASLL but seldom
> shared in peer-reviewed papers. The people who have serious doubts
> about competence testing seem to keep it to themselves, working against
> these tests at home when they can but seldom writing seriously about
> their misgivings, perhaps because they aren't interested in writing
> about something they don't believe in.
>
> Or do they? It seems to me that there was a thread on CASLL a long
> while ago that was originated by the McGill crowd when they were trying
> to fend off competence testing. Anthony, I think it was, asked whether
> anyone had any literature on the subject that they could share. I don't
> remember if any emerged, though plenty of discussion ensued.
>
> Now I'd like to ask again. Does anyone have any references to published
> work on the larger issue of whether we should test (not just how we
> should test)? I'm particularly interested in the uneasy relationship
> between competence testing and WAC, a subject which (not
> co-incidentally) I want to address for my presentation at the CCCC
> Canadian Caucus. (OK, you're right, I'm trying to shore up my anecdotal
> resentation with a little more reference to published literature.)
>
> Thanks!
>
> Doug
>
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For the list archives and information about the organization,
its newsletter, and the annual conference, go to
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