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August 25, 2006 > News > One third of freshmen fail writing exam

One third of freshmen fail writing exam

By David Brown | Thresher Editorial Staff

About twice as many new students failed the English Composition Exam as usual after a revamped online test challenged students with an additional, second essay and required analyzing complex topics.

Dean of Undergraduates Robin Forman said Wednesday that while some of the exams had not yet been graded, about a third of new students failed the test, about 55 percent received a grade of “low pass” and about 15 percent a grade of “pass.”

Last year — the first year the exam was offered online and before orientation — 17 percent failed, 40 percent received a “low pass” and 43 percent received a “pass.” In most previous years, somewhere between 10 and 20 percent of students failed the exam.

Students who fail are required to take ENGL 103: Argumentation and Writing to graduate.

Last year the exam was scored by graders affiliated with the MIT-based consortium that runs the online exam, and the grades were not returned before students registered for fall classes. This year, Rice graduate students graded the exams and provided in-depth feedback to each student.

Prior to last year, students took the exam in a Rice classroom during Orientation Week and received grades without any comments.

Forman said enough sections of ENGL 103 will be added between this semester and next semester for every new student who failed the exam to take the course this year. Forman said he was very pleased with the way the exam went this year.

“I’m convinced that more attention was paid to every single essay this year than has ever happened in the past and that our freshmen will get more helpful comments than they received in the past,” Forman said.

In April, Forman selected Director of Managerial Communication Deborah Barrett to take over the English Composition Cxam from the English Department. Barrett also works with the CAIN Project, which aims to improve engineering students’ communication skills.

Barrett decided to keep Rice enrolled in the MIT project — in order to use the program’s online technology. MIT offered the use of its graders last year as a favor to Rice in its first year in the consortium, so Barrett decided to use Rice graduate students as graders this year. Barrett selected 21 graduate students of 32 who applied based on resumes and writing samples. Most of the graders were from the history department, but the English, philosophy, economics and linguistics departments were also represented. When the English department ran the exam, only English graduate students graded. This year, Barrett said, graders were paid $40 an hour and spent 30 to 40 minutes grading each essay.

Using its own graders allowed Rice to not only set its own grading standards, but also to use its own essay topics. Last year and in previous years, the exam called for students to write one argumentative essay on a popular topic covered in given articles. This year, another essay was added. Students were asked to read a set of articles and write an analytical summary.

In another change, students were able to choose from three different weeklong timeframes to take the exam: one in June, one in July and one in August, Barrett said. Students first registered online on a specified day. Two days later, they downloaded articles for both essays. Two days after that, they would sign on to get their writing prompts. Finally, two to three days later, they uploaded their essays. The question topics varied each month, Barrett said. The three argumentative essay topics were on radio frequency identification, computer technology in the classroom and podcasting. The analytical essay topics were sleep and adolescence, nutrition and health, and robotics in space exploration.

Barrett said all but about 50 of the incoming students required to take the test did so in one of the three summer periods. Those who did not made up the exam during Orientation Week and will not receive the results of the exam until after classes begin. Barrett said the analytical summary was more difficult than the argumentative essay, and its addition contributed to this year’s drop in scores. Nevertheless, both assignments were demanding, she said.

“The articles they had to use were different and tended to be on topics we felt students should know something about, but they tended to be pretty complex,” Barrett said.

Forman said the increase in the number of failures is not reflective of the overall abilities of incoming students.

“This exam tests the students’ ability to write a certain type of academic essay, and need not be at all reflective of their ability to do other types of writing or other creative or scholarly activities,” Forman said.

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