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Linguistic Discrimination In Writing Assessment: How Raters React To African American “Errors,” Esl Errors, And Standard English Errors On A State-Mandated Writing Exam, David M. Johnson, Lewis Vanbrackle Jan 2012

Linguistic Discrimination In Writing Assessment: How Raters React To African American “Errors,” Esl Errors, And Standard English Errors On A State-Mandated Writing Exam, David M. Johnson, Lewis Vanbrackle

Faculty and Research Publications

Raters of Georgia''s (USA) state-mandated college-level writing exam, which is intended to ensure a minimal university-level writing competency, are trained to grade holistically when assessing these exams. A guiding principle in holistic grading is to not focus exclusively on any one aspect of writing but rather to give equal weight to style, vocabulary, mechanics, content, and development. This study details how raters react to “errors” typical of African American English writers, of ESL writers, and of standard American English writers. Using a log-linear model to generate odds ratios for comparison of essays with these error types, results indicate linguistic discrimination …


Teaching Grammar And What Students Errors In The Use Of The English Auxiliary "Be" Can Tell Us, Arshad Abd Samad, Hawanum Hussein Jan 2010

Teaching Grammar And What Students Errors In The Use Of The English Auxiliary "Be" Can Tell Us, Arshad Abd Samad, Hawanum Hussein

Arshad Abd Samad

In teaching grammar, teachers often are faced with the dilemma of either emphasising the formal properties of the language or its meaning aspect. One of the more popular language teaching approaches of the last three decades has been the communicative approach. This approach has had a signifi cant impact on the teaching of grammar as its objective of communicative competence has led to a diminished role for grammar teaching. However, of late, numerous voices have advocated a more prominent role for grammar in achieving this objective. The question of whether to emphasise form or meaning remains central. Several theorists have …