Each summer faculty of The University of Michigan's English Composition Board (ECB) read and evaluate holistically over 4,000 impromptu essays written by students entering the University. Two evaluators (three if judgments differ) read and rate each essay according to stated criteria, and the ratings are used to place students either in Introductory Composition (a semester course) or in Tutorial Composition (a half-semester course prerequisite to Introductory Composition) or to exempt them from any introductory-level writing course at the University. The essay examination requires students to write on a given topic of general knowledge to a simulated audience and for a specified purpose the Board assumes are real or realistic to them; it asks students to begin their writing with two given sentences that signal to them the tone, level of diction, and language conventions to be used.2 The following essay prompt is one of those that have been used to elicit students' writing.
No takes yet. Share an insight, caveat, or question.
Barritt et al. (1986) studied this question.