Microsoft Word language assessment theory with practice

(Why=reasons, causes)
(5) 
Were there any people/organisations trying to 
prevent the situation from worsening? 
(Who=characters)
(6) 
What do you think about the developments of the 
events and the current state of the problem? 
(Opinion)
(7) 
What is the lesson that we should learn from the 
situation you described? (Evaluation) 

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3.1.4. Extensive Writing
Extensive writing (also known as freewriting) is a type of writing 
performance that leads to the creation of long texts such as full-length 
essays, articles, term papers, project reports, and even theses and 
dissertations. To create such texts, writers must be able to manage all 
processes and strategies of writing successfully. Freewriting is a useful and 
motivating assessment tool if the topics are realistic and carefully selected 
because it provides students with the opportunity to “demonstrate their 
ability to organise language materials, using their own words and ideas, and 
to communicate” (Heaton, 1990, p. 137). 
Formative assessment is expected to serve as a scaffolding tool that 
supports learning improvements. Therefore, according to Heaton (1990), 
extensive writing tests/tasks creators should “find out how composition is 
tested in the first language” of the students (p. 136). He accepts that the 
skills emphasised in teaching and testing the writing skill in English as a 
foreign/second language may be quite different from the skills in the first 
language. However, he still underlines that it is “clearly ludicrous, for 
instance, to expect in a foreign language those skills which the students do 
not possess in their own language” (Heaton, 1990, p. 137). Therefore, in 
writing classes, foreign language teachers are advised to work closely with 
first language writing teachers. 
Instructors following formative assessment rules should also be careful 
not to expect and require their students to create free composition work too 
early. Only learners who have successfully mastered controlled and semi-
controlled compositions should be asked to produce free writing texts.
Freewriting tests developers should
(i) 
give students authentic, meaningful situations/contexts that 
include well-defined problems that will motivate students to 
write; 
(ii) 
get to know the group they are assessing well and make sure that 
those students have something to say about the given topics and 
a reason to say it; 
(iii) specify the audience to whom the text is addressed;

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(iv) indicate the genre in which the students are expected to write 
(e.g., formal vs informal; a short story, a newspaper article, an 
email, a personal letter); 
(v) 
avoid giving students composition titles that fail to guide them as 
to what is expected from them (e.g., A pleasant day; My 
weekend); 
(vi) avoid topics/titles that are controversial or distressing for the 
students completing the tasks (e.g., Genocide; Racial Inequality; 
Religious Beliefs). 
(vii) ensure that students taking the test are neither advantaged nor 
disadvantaged by the topics included in the exam (Jennings et al., 
1999). 
For more reliable results and to be able to assess a wider variety of 
language skills, students should be asked to write two or three short distinct 
compositions (e.g., a book review and a newspaper article) rather than one 
long essay. When the aim is to assess and compare students’ progress, they 
should not be asked to choose among the topics included in the assessment 
because: 
(i) 
research shows that students may waste valuable writing time 
while trying to select the topic they would like to develop further 
(Barry & Nielsen, 1996);
(ii) 
when students choose different topics assessing different 
registers, exam markers might lose the common basis for 
comparison and evaluation of the students. 
Example 7 shows how B1-B2 level students can be guided to create 
extensive writing texts and how, through self-, peer- and teacher evaluation, 
a collaborative classroom environment benefiting all participants can be 
built. The example also shows how parents and other grade-level students 
can be included in the journey aiming to show students that English is not 
only a school subject but a tool that can connect and unite communities. 

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