Assessment-Relevant Stimuli and Judging of Writing Performances – From Micro-Judgments to Macro-Judgments

Abstract

The contemporary practice of rating writing performances is grounded in an approach known as judging, which is done to avoid paying conscious attention to discrete elements in texts. Instead, it involves accounting for the overall impression made by a writing performance. However, studies have indicated that while this may be true on a conscious level, the concrete stimuli in texts still preconsciously influence the forming of such overall impressions. What is left largely unnoticed is that most assessment-relevant stimuli require the use of judging to be perceived as such. This implies that an overall, macro-judgment of a writing performance (expressed normally as a score) comprises individual (and largely preconsciously generated) micro-judgments coming together into a complex and non-linear combination-count. The paper presents an argument in favour of such a composition of judgments, demonstrates it empirically by means of a case study, and then discusses the wider consequences of this different perspective on judging.