This study explores using transfer learning in machine learning for natural language processing (NLP) to create generic automated essay scoring (AES) models, providing instant online scoring for statewide writing assessments in K-12 education. The goal is to develop an instant online scorer that is generalizable to any prompt, addressing the…

According to creative writing pedagogies academic Susanne Gannon ("English in Australia, 54"(2), 43-56, 2019), and the Federal government-commissioned NAPLAN review (McGaw et al., 2020), NAPLAN has restricted how writing is taught in secondary schools. A NAPLAN-influenced structural approach to teaching writing has subsumed the…

In 1989 the Portland (Oregon) Public Schools conducted a Direct Writing Assessment of approximately 6,000 students. A voluntary portion included 103 ninth graders who wrote essays on the same topic. The papers were scored twice: once in each student's handwriting and once in word-processed form. Papers were separated into short and long categories…

A study examined the effects of peer evaluation on writing fluency and writing attitudes. Subjects, 177 ninth grade students from seven classrooms, were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. Subjects in both groups wrote a first draft of a paper. Those in the experimental group then received peer evaluation training and rewrote…

Four experimental reading-treatment classes (n=94) and four control classes (n=100) wrote pre- and post-compositions which were evaluated for overall quality, syntactic density, T-unit length, productivity, and selected grammatical errors. Analysis of results found significant differences in reading skills but no differences in writing skills. The…

A study was conducted to identify and analyze the writing strategies of eighth- and ninth-grade black and white students on the 1983-84 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Black students, who were from an urban area in New Jersey, had also taken the New Jersey High School Proficiency Test (NJHSPT). Following an initial study that…