Assessing academic writing

In assessing writing, it is important that students know and agree to what criteria they will be assessed against ahead of time (Hyland, 2007, p. 161). Assessment can be diagnostic, like in a language placement test. Assessment can be formative, like in ongoing assessment taken during a course that provides progress feedback to students and teachers. Assessment can be summative, like a final assignment or examination that occurs at the end of a course and results in a final grade (Charles Sturt University, 2020).

Writing assessment is usually based on writing performance. It is ‘performance-based’. For example, the four criteria in an IELTS Writing Task 1 rubric are: Task Achievement, Coherence and Cohesion, Lexical Resource, and Grammatical Range and Accuracy (British Council, 2020). Many academic writing assessment rubrics in academic institutions are similar to the IELTS rubrics.