Abstract
The present study assessed the relationship among holistic writing ability, the Test of Standard Written English (TSWE), and the following tests of organizational ability: anagram solving, word reordering, sentence reordering, and paragraph assembly. Based upon a sample of 105 undergraduate students, the main findings were that writing ability, as measured by the holistic method of scoring, was significantly correlated with performance on the TSWE and the four tests of organizational ability. A composite score on all four organizational tests was found to have the highest zero‐order correlation with the measure of writing ability. A stepwise regression analysis, with the measure of writing ability as the criterion, also indicated that the composite score explained a significant proportion of the variance beyond that explained by the TSWE. The results are discussed in terms of the Kintsch and van Dijk model of strategic discourse processing, which suggests that different organizational strategies operate at the levels of words, sentences, and paragraphs. It is concluded that tests assessing organizational strategies ought to be included in assessments of writing ability.
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