oa Diagnose en remediëring van schrijfvaardigheidsproblemen bij eerstejaarsstudenten Geesteswetenschappen

Diagnosis of writing ability and remedial teaching of writing problems of first-year students in the Humanities

First-year students at the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Amsterdam have to take the Diagnostic Test of Writing Skills; this productive test for measuring writing ability is designed to track down students with poor writing skills, mapping out their deficiencies and giving them a specific remedial advice. This article describes the development of this Diagnostic Test: the format, the required minimum level of writing ability, the nature of the texts presented and the related questions, and so on. Next, the results of various empirical studies are reported pertaining to the predictive validity, the concurrent validity and the known group validity. Subsequently it is investigated how many percent of the freshmen fail to attain the minimum level: on average the writing skills of some 20% of the students is not up to the standards. The article concludes with a discussion of the nature of the remedial courses offered to students who fail to pass the test.