Introduction:  Test for Improvement in Key Writing Skills

For the kind of thinking I want my students to do in L216, the analytical synthesis essay is the most appropriate, as it asks students to invent their own original thought about a topic related to the course and to use some of the many texts explored in class to support that thought.  In other words, it allows for intellectual creativity while at the same time requiring students to use the materials that constitute the content of the course.  The hallmarks of a good analytical synthesis essay are 1) a solid argumentative thesis that summarizes the main thrust of the essay and guides its purpose and 2) an effective use of evidence to support that thesis.  Since these are key writing skills in which I wished students to make progress in L216, I designed the second half of this classroom research project to measure the extent to which students were improving with respect to these skills.

This test was designed to track the progress of the class as a whole in both skills (thesis and evidence) from essay I through essay IV; yet like the test for intellectual development, different samples carried different weight for students’ grades.  Essay I was worth 2% of the students’ final grade; essay II was worth 10%; essay III, 15%; and essay IV, 20%.  Hence, students had more incentive to perform at higher levels as the semester progressed.  Once again, however, the final research data leads me to reject the notion that effort and quality are linked to the relative weight of the assignment’s grade.  There were, in fact, great increases between essays I, II, and III, but not much change between essays III and IV.  Rather than confirm the potential problem of comparing an essay worth 2% of the final grade to essays worth much more, this pattern instead suggests a learning curve for the class as a whole with the upper limit being approached by the third essay.  Since I taught writing skills throughout the semester in an evenhanded manner, this curve leads me to think that perhaps learners can only realistically make a fixed amount of progress in a given period (here a fifteen-week semester).