Assessing writing in fourth grade: Rhetorical specification effects on text quality

In writing instruction, specifying writing assignments in terms of purpose, audience, and medium is considered good practice. Earlier studies that found positive effects of such rhetorical specification were usually conducted with older participants. The benefits of rhetorical specification for novice writers are not yet clear, especially in the context of assessing writing. Thus, this study examined the effects of rhetorical specification on text quality of descriptions in an assessment prompt for fourth graders. Austrian fourth graders were assessed with the same paper-pencil-based L1-writing prompt but were randomly assigned within classrooms to one of three different conditions: high-level rhetorical specification (n = 78), medium-level rhetorical specification (n = 44), or no rhetorical specification (n = 44). The texts written by participants were rated holistically and analytically. The analysis revealed no differences between texts written by students under these three different conditions of rhetorical specification levels except for one single analytic indicator of text quality. Texts written in response to medium-level rhetorical specification scored higher on the rating of the criterion Adaptation to the audience than texts written under the other two conditions. The pros and cons of (high-level) rhetorical specification and good assessment practice with novice writers are being discussed in the findings.