Writing for publication: Writing about writing assessments and about research that uses writing assessment as a research tool
ASSESSING WRITING AND JOURNAL OF ENGLISH FOR ACADEMIC PURPOSES
Liz HampLyons
CRELLA, University of Bedfordshire
My curious role as Editor of two journals, the Journal of English for Academic Purposes and Assessing Writing , can be explained by my careerlong interest in the assessment of academic writing. In this presentation I draw on what I’ve learned in editing these two journals for more than 12 years to show how assessments (in this case, writing assessments specifically) can be the core of a research study, or valuable tools within research into writing for academic purposes. There is little good quality research being done into the development, use and validation of writing assessments, and less still into the development, use and quality assurance of classroom writing assessments. That may be the bad news—but the good news is that that leaves a gap in the journals market for both strong research articles and high quality reporting of teacherled writing assessment project in educational programmes. Research on academic writing, as well as classroombased action research projects into academic writing, is too often weakened by the use of measures of writing proficiency, progress or needs that are not fit for purpose. Through the use of several examples I will illustrate good practice in the use of writing assessments for and in research, and discuss how such good practice can be reported in writing up research for publication.