Passing the Test
To pass the Effective Writing Test, students do not have to produce an error-free essay, but they must demonstrate university entrance-level competence in expressing and supporting their ideas clearly and logically, using well-developed paragraphs, well-constructed sentences, and correct word use, grammar, spelling, and punctuation.
Each essay is assessed independently by two instructors in the Effective Writing Program. The markers do not know the writer's name or whether the test is a first attempt or a retest. In determining whether an essay passes or fails, the markers consider its relative strengths and weaknesses in seven equally-weighted categories: content, structure, paragraph development, sentences, grammar, word use, and spelling and punctuation. If the markers disagree about whether an essay should pass, the essay is assessed by a third marker, who makes the final decision.
Effective Writing exams are assessed according to a common code and standard. The first assessment is based on a holistic reading, while the second assessment is a detailed marking, in which each error is marked and recorded. In determining whether an essay passes or fails, markers take into account the gravity, the range, and the frequency of errors in each category. Once or twice a year, all instructors in the Effective Writing Program participate in a reliability testing session intended to ensure that marking standards for the Effective Writing Test remain consistent among the markers. Current reliability figures indicate an agreement rate in the range of 75 to 80%.
Content
Writers are not expected to demonstrate detailed knowledge of a topic, nor are they required to display originality in their response to a test question. Because the test questions have no right answer, content is judged on the basis of whether an essay addresses a topic adequately. Typical problems in this category include inadequate development because of insufficient length, excessive repetition of ideas, or a lack of supporting details and discussion. Logical flaws in the argument are also considered content problems. Finally, an essay's content is faulted if an entire essay, or a significant portion of it, does not relate clearly to the chosen topic.
Structure
This category refers to the organization of an essay into a comprehensible whole. No standard form is required; all that is necessary is an organizing idea for the whole composition and coherence and unity in the presentation of supporting arguments. Errors in this category include an unclear thesis, poor transitions between ideas, and a weak introduction or conclusion.
Paragraphs
Paragraphs are assessed in terms of whether the writer has maintained focus on the organizing idea of the paragraph, expressed ideas in a coherent order with clear relationships among the sentences, and developed the paragraph sufficiently to make its point. All paragraphs need not have a topic sentence, although, of course, that technique is recognized as one valid way of constructing a paragraph.
Sentences
The principal sentence errors include sentence fragments, comma splices, fused or run-on sentences, mixed constructions, faulty parallelism, dangling modifiers, misplaced sentence elements, and inappropriate shifts of number, person, tense, mood, and voice. Illogical or unclear sentences are also considered errors in this category.
Grammar
This category covers all accepted violations of English grammar, including incorrect tense, verb form, or part of speech and incorrect agreement of subject and verb, pronoun and antecedent, and demonstrative adjective and noun. Errors in article use, prepositions, word order, idiom, and usage are also noted; however, these violations are considered to be more minor problems.
Word Use
Misused words, invented words, wordiness, and inappropriate or repetitious diction are all considered errors in this category. Markers are more interested in the accurate use of words than in a broad and impressive vocabulary.
Spelling and Punctuation
Besides misspellings, confusion of homonyms and errors in apostrophe use and capitalization are recorded as spelling errors. Punctuation errors include missing or misused periods, commas, semi-colons, colons, dashes, parentheses, hyphens, question and quotation marks, and exclamation points.
Although all errors in an essay are marked and recorded, the actual number of errors in an essay does not determine whether it passes or fails; more important than the sheer number of errors are the seriousness and the range of errors in each category. Moreover, in determining whether an essay demonstrates university entrance-level writing competence, markers take into account the fact that long, ambitious essays--ones that attempt a complicated argument and use sophisticated vocabulary and sentence structure--may contain more errors than essays that are short and unambitious in terms of content development and expression.
After considering an essay's relative strengths and weaknesses in each of the seven cate-gories, each marker assigns one of the follow-ing grades to the essay as a whole: Satisfactory (S), Marginally Satisfactory (MS), Marginally Unsatisfactory (MU), and Unsatisfactory (U). A student who is given a failing grade (MU or U) has serious problems with several elements of composition and is not adequately prepared for university-level written work. Students who receive a failing grade or a grade of MS are advised to come in to review their tests so that they may take appropriate steps to improve their writing.