Developing Standards for Assessing
Argumentative Writing: Balancing Process and Product
Refnaldi
Assessing Writing involves
both teacher responses and more formal mechanisms for student evaluation, and
it occurs in two contexts: the classroom context and the standardized testing
context. This paper aims at proposing the standards for assessing students'
argumentative essays in the classroom context, and the focus of the discussion
is on balancing between the process and the product. This is because the
university writing assignments are usually carefully controlled, both in topic
selection and rhetorical organization, and that they rarely deal with personal
or expressive writing (product oriented). However, to obtain better results, a
well-established process is equally important. The assessment on writing
process involves the teacher's checklists on what students do in prewriting,
drafting, editing, and revising. The assessment on writing product, on the
other hand, cannot be neglected because it is the finished composition that the
teachers and other people use to judge one's writing ability. Finally, through
balancing process and product in assessing students' argumentative essay, it is
expected the standards of an acceptable argumentative essay can be obtained.
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Refnaldi.
(2003, October). Developing standards for assessing argumentative writing:
Balancing process and product. Paper presented at the 51st
TEFLIN International Conference,
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