Composition assessment

Abstract EN

Evaluating composition is different from evaluating any other subject or any other activity not in the field of writing.

Evaluating scientific subjects, for instance, is more objective than subjective ; whereas evaluating composition is subjective.

That is why two evaluators differ in the grade they give to one piece of writing.

This is due to the difference in their moods, education, and the criteria they adopt in their evaluation.

This has made composition teachers try to make the assessment of any text as objective as possible.

They, therefore, tried, and still trying, to analyze what their students write into a number of components which they evaluate individually.

Still, the process of evaluating any of these components is subjective and not objective.

But the final result is less subjective than when the composition is evaluated as a whole. The researcher tries in this study to review the attempts made by educators to analyze the writing material into its components and the systems used by them to grade the material.

Also, the researcher makes some suggestions to improve students' level in writing English, what the department can offer, and what the students should do in this respect. At the end of this study, the researcher presents a number of correction charts with symbols representing students' written language errors, and suggests an appropriate chart covering almost all the common writing pitfalls.