Written Language Assessment

Assessments of written language are used to gauge language and writing development for various formative and summative purposes. They have an important role in educational research, measurement, and evaluation, as they provide information about language and literacy development via analysis of writers’ use of language through performance. Moreover, analysis of written language is important in teaching language and literacy as well as in researching linguistic development and differences across writers, learners, and languages.

The assessment of written language falls into the category of performance-based assessment, wherein test takers respond in written form to prompts. For example, a written language assessment might prompt a test taker to compose a short story about a picture or to summarize content from a text the test taker has read. These performances would then be evaluated and scored by a qualified person trained to rate performances often using a rubric that describes features of a written language.

As a performance assessment, these constructed response test tasks are considered to be robust in terms of validity, as they can elicit processes of language use potentially similar to target language use situations. However, they can create challenges for reliability as scoring entails stages of judgment and interpretation. Performance assessments do not have readily objective scoring like selected response test items, such as multiple-choice questions, which have efficient and clearly identified correct answers. Given this trade-off, written language assessments require careful development in order to produce meaningful writing and useful outcomes.

In the past, written language was assessed indirectly and used as a vehicle to assess other aspects of language development. In the mid-20th century, multiple-choice items were employed to test knowledge of writing, perhaps better described as knowledge of language structure. Tests would include items that required test takers to select the correct structure of a sentence from several options, thus assessing writing indirectly. In foreign language teaching, writing was used frequently to show the ability to translate between a learner’s first language and the target language. These forms of writing assessment still occur and can be useful depending on purpose and the construct. However, in general, writing assessment has moved toward more direct methods of assessment and has expanded the construct well beyond the grammatical structure of language. This entry reviews the development of written language assessment, including identifying constructs of written language, creating prompts, and establishing a means of providing feedback. The entry concludes with a discussion of innovations in written language assessment.