ABSTRACT
A significant part of grammar instruction is coming up with assessments that provide accurate and meaningful measures of student learning. Because it’s important to connect assessment and instructional practices (Bratcher & Ryan, 2004), the best grammar assessments are those that are tied to the kinds of instruction provided to students. In this chapter, I discuss two kinds of assessment methods that are related to the instructional practices described in this book. The first involves providing students with examples from literature that contain particular grammatical concepts and asking students how those grammatical concepts enhance the writing. The second involves asking students to create works that contain specific grammatical concepts and then having them explain the importance of those grammatical concepts to the texts they created. In this chapter, I discuss these assessment practices and explain how each can be used as both summative and formative assessments. These assessment methods were designed to measure students’ understandings of the hows and whys of grammar, specifically, how authors use grammatical concepts and why these concepts can enhance writing. The assessments move past the basic drills and textbook exercises that Robb (2001), Weaver (1998), and others caution against, instead asking students to utilize higher-order thinking skills and metacognitive thinking while completing grammar assessments. Let’s look at each of these methods in more detail.
