The title of the article is Defining Writing Ability for classroom writing assesment in high schools. It was published  in 2009 in Journal of Pan Pasific Association of Applied Linguistics. The author of the article is Jyi-Yeon Yi. It was retrieved from http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/S15324818AME1503_5

The article is about How to test writing skills in high schools. The author says that the importance of writing skills is growing, so we should cover this skill in compulsory sections of tests. In order to administer valid and appropriate writing assessments,We should develop a test to start by defining the construct. In writing, the contexts include five aspects: task, situation organizer, writer, setting and material. We should consider these five aspects, while defining the writing ability. We should also consider charecteristics of the learners and pedagocical aims in constructing writing skills. The author gives definitions of writing ability formulated according to the three main approaches to the teaching of writing. (product-based

approaches, process-based approaches and reader/genre-based approaches) there are different definitions of it given by different teachers. The author also mentions about that we shoul consider learners’ features and the teaching objectives while assessing their writing skills. This makes a positive backwash effect on students. We should also be careful about whether there is construct validity or not in our tests, because It has been the main concern in measurement. When devising writing assessments, therefore, teachers need to consider the definition of writing ability and use it as a pivotal point, in order to be sure of their inferences about students’ writing ability and their decisions based on these inferences.

From this article I have learnt, I should have a description of writing skills at first in order to make good assesment in writing. I also learnt validity is important in assessing writing skills, so we should consider it. We also should consider our students’ level and interest. This makes positive backwash effect on students. We can use these informations in Turkey, while preparing writing tests.