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“In My Humble
Opinion”:
Assessing L2 Writing
in the First Year
Writing Classroom
Amanda Athon
Bowling Green State University
[email protected]
CCCC Position Statement
 In 1972, the Conference on College Composition and
Communication passed the resolution “Students’ Rights
to Their Own Language”:
“We affirm the students' right to their own patterns
and varieties of language -- the dialects of their
nurture or whatever dialects in which they find their
own identity and style.” (SRTOL).
What is Basic Writing and Who are
Basic Writers?
 Courses typically offer no credit (Trimmer)
 May emphasize grammar (Trimmer; Rose)
 Students struggle with issues of conceptualization (AdlerKassner)
 More distance between their dialects and traditional
academic dialects(Bizzell)
Research Participants
 Two sections of First-Year Writing 1100 at Midwestern
University
 One section enrolls international nonnative speakers of
English; both sections enrolled nonnative speakers
 Higher percentage of “nonstandard” dialects in basic
writing courses (Bizzell)
 Instructor Participant “Kay”: self-identifies as nonnative
speaker of English
 Instructor Participant “May”: a graduate instructor in the
English department
Methodologies
 Largely influenced by feminism’s recognizing of the
personal narrative and ethic of care toward research
participants
 Value on the experiences of participants rather than just
the researcher’s observations
 Development of a research website to share findings and
provide updates on visits
Research Questions
 What are heuristics for designing classroom-based
assessment practices for nonnative speakers of English or
speakers of dialects?
 How can we design assessment practices that are
culturally sensitive to speakers of nonstandard English?
 How do students with diverse language backgrounds
experience the assessment process?
Data Results
 Students model their views of “good” writing based on
the language of the program rubric.
 Instructors and students tend to think of “error” as
referring to sentence-level mistakes.
 Students desired more language diverse writing models
and assessments that specified how writing had
progressed.
Error Patterns in Student Writing
 May noted that students struggle with writing words as
they hear them; Geoffrey Pullum calls these “eggcorns.”
 Kay’s international students struggled with verb issues and
syntax errors due to structural differences between home
languages and English.
 What may appear to be a mistake may actually be due
to language difference.
Influence of Program Rubrics
• Although students, instructors, as well as the program
guidebook, expressed that instructor feedback was the
most valuable form of assessment, the language of the
rubric was the most influential to students.
• Balester categorizes writing rubrics as acculturationaism,
those which count errors to determine correctness;
accomodationism, which make some attempt to
accommodate second-language writers; and
multiculturalism, which incorporate principles of the
CCCC position statement on language diversity through
the emphasis of “writerly agency” (72).
Rubrics that Foster Language Diversity
 University of Southern Florida First Year Writing Rubric
Questions or Comments?