English Composition
Description of the Examination
The English Composition examination assesses writing skills taught in most first-year college composition courses and, in particular, skills for college assignments requiring writing that explains, interprets, analyzes, presents, or supports a point of view. The examination does not cover some topics included in many first-year college writing courses, nor does it require knowledge of grammatical terms. However, the student will need to apply the principles and conventions expected of academic writing discourse.
Two versions of the test are offered. One is all multiple-choice, and the other is multiple-choice with an essay. In both versions, some of the multiple-choice questions are pretest questions that will not be scored. The all multiple-choice version contains approximately 90 questions to be answered in 90 minutes.
The version with the essay has two separately timed sections. Section I contains approximately 50 questions to be answered in 45 minutes. Section II contains one essay question to be answered in 45 minutes. In either version, any time candidates spend on tutorials or providing personal information is in addition to the actual testing time.
The essay is scored by college faculty who teach writing courses. Each essay is read and assigned a rating by two scorers; the sum of the two ratings is weighted and then combined with the candidate's multiple-choice score. The resulting combined score is reported as a scaled score between 20 and 80. Separate scores are not reported for the multiple-choice and essay sections.
Policies of colleges differ with regard to their acceptance of the two versions of the English Composition examination. Some grant credit only for the version with essay; others grant credit for either version. A number of schools supplement the all-multiple-choice version with a writing assignment that they administer and score themselves. Many colleges grant six semester hours (or the equivalent) of credit toward satisfying a liberal arts or distribution requirement in English; others grant six credit hours of course credit for a specific first-year composition or English course that emphasizes expository writing.
Knowledge and Skills Required
The multiple-choice questions measure candidates' writing skills both at the sentence level and within the context of passages. The current examination in English Composition places a greater emphasis on revising work in progress than did previous forms of the test.
Skills at the Sentence Level
The examination measures the candidate's knowledge of a variety of logical, structural, and grammatical relationships within a sentence; these skills are tested by approximately 55 percent of the all-multiple-choice version and 30 percent of the multiple-choice questions in the version with essay. Questions test recognition of standard written English relating to
- Sentence boundaries
- Clarity of expression
- Agreement: subject-verb; verb tense; pronoun reference, shift, number
- Active/passive voice
- Diction and idiom
- Syntax: parallelism, coordination, subordination, dangling modifiers
- Sentence variety
The following kinds of question format assess sentence-level skills throughout the test:
Identifying Sentence Errors—This type of question appears in both versions of the exam. It requires the candidate to identify wording that violates the standard conventions of written discourse.
Improving Sentences—This type of question appears in both versions of the exam. It requires the candidate to choose the phrase, clause, or sentence that best conveys the intended meaning of the sentence.
Restructuring Sentences—This type of question appears only in the all-multiple-choice version. The candidate is given a sentence to reword in order to change emphasis or improve clarity. He or she then must choose from five options the phrase that would most likely appear in the new sentence.
Skills in Context
Questions in approximately 45 percent of the all-multiple-choice version and 20 percent of the version with essay measure recognition of the following in the context of works in progress or of published prose.
- Main idea, thesis
- Organization of ideas in the paragraph or essay
- Relevance of evidence, sufficiency of detail, levels of specificity
- Audience and purpose (effect on style, tone, language, or argument)
- Logic of argument (inductive, deductive reasoning)
- Coherence within and between paragraphs
- Rhetorical emphasis, effect
- Sustaining tense or point of view
- Sentence combining, sentence variety
The following kinds of questions measure writing skills in context:
Revising Work in Progress—This type of question appears in both versions of the exam. The candidate identifies ways to improve an early draft of an essay.
Analyzing Writing—Two prose passages written in very different modes appear only in the all-multiple- choice version. The candidate answers questions about each passage and about the strategies used by the author of each passage.
The Essay
This section comprises 50 percent of the version of the exam with essay. The candidate is expected to present a point of view in response to a topic and to support this point of view with a logical argument and appropriate evidence. The essay must be typed on the computer.
Scoring the Essay
Shortly after each administration of the CLEP English Composition with Essay examination, college English faculty throughout the country score the essays. Each essay is scored independently by two different readers, and the two scores are then combined. This score is weighted approximately equally with the score from the multiple-choice section, then combined with it to yield the reported score for the test.
The college English teachers who score the essay expect that the writer has a command of English grammar and sentence structure and can use words precisely; they also expect that the essay will be organized, the ideas will be presented logically, and the examples will be pertinent. These qualitative descriptions are linked to a 6-point rubric, or scoring guide.
Each reader awards an essay a score on a scale of 1 to 6; the sum of the two independent scores ranges from 2 to 12. In addition, a score of zero is given to off-topic essays and blank responses; this score can be assigned only by the Scoring Leader (a faculty member who is a scoring expert).
