Teaching Writing Writing Assessment

National Writing Project Offers High-Quality Writing Assessment Services

 

The Analytic Writing Continuum (AWC) Assessment System is a well-tested system that has been used at 9 national events to score more than 40,000 student writing samples.

Adapted from the Six + 1 Trait Writing Model, the AWC has been continuously refined over the past 8 years; it is an assessment system appropriate for evaluating the NWP professional development program and providing data to teachers to inform writing instruction.

The AWC applies both holistic and analytic scoring procedures, producing a holistic score that is a single summary judgment about the quality of writing, and 6 analytic scores on fundamental attributes of writing: Content, Structure, Stance, Sentence Fluency, Diction, and Conventions.

This brief highlights the key features of the AWC assessment system, summary evidence of its technical rigor, as well as an outline of NWP services offered for those wishing to use the AWC.