TAILIEUCHUNG - An Analysis of the Argumentative Writing Skills of Academically Underprepared College Students

Specific writing prompts administered during testing are developed with the assistance of external prompt writers who are recruited on the basis of their expertise and to reflect the diversity of the populations served by the ACT. ACT prompt writers are male and female educators from both high schools and colleges, and they represent a variety of geographical regions, racial and ethnic backgrounds, and educational philosophies. All potential writing prompts are reviewed for accessibility of concepts and language, appropriateness, and fairness by content experts and teachers at postsecondary institutions and high schools, and by persons sensitive to issues of test fairness. Prompts found to be accessible, proper in form, and fair to all examinees are field-tested on a population. | An Analysis of the Argumentative Writing Skills of Academically Underprepared College Students Beth Jillian Chase Submitted in partial fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy under the Executive Committee of The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2011 2011 Beth Jillian Chase All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT An Analysis of the Argumentative Writing Skills of Academically Underprepared College Students Beth Jillian Chase The present study was conducted to extend what is known about the writing skills of low achieving postsecondary students. Using an archival data set a sample of argumentative essays written by community college developmental remedial education students was analyzed. Scoring procedures for argumentation development were implemented based on a framework developed by Ferretti Lewis and Andrews-Weckerly 2009 and adapted by the current author to accommodate the tasks of the writing prompt. The goals of the study were 1 to determine to what extent the argumentative essays written by community college remedial students are inclusive of functional argumentative elements coherent cohesive and of high quality and 2 to determine to what extent the written components . coherence cohesion inclusion of functional elements length and demographic characteristics of the writer . reading ability science interest science knowledge gender native language contribute to the overall quality of argumentative essays. Descriptive statistics and ordinal logistic regression were used to analyze a total of 112 writing samples. It was found that on average the argumentation in the essays was only partially developed and coherent the essays contained a relatively moderate amount of functional elements and included a minimal amount of cohesive ties. The results also indicated that the written components of the argumentative essays and the demographic characteristics of .

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