| This qualitative study investigates the talk of seven holistic raters, as they read the placement essays of first year college students, written during summer orientation sessions at a mid-sized, state-supported university. All of the raters were experienced teachers of composition but had varying degrees of experience with holistic scoring. Using qualitative methods common to ethnographic study, the researcher, in the role of participant/observer, collected sound-image recordings (video tapes) of the raters' interactions. Selected data from these recordings were transcribed, coded, analyzed, and reported, according to analytic frameworks suggested by the ethnography of communication in combination with language in use discourse analysis, in an effort to describe the conversational norms the raters used to establish a common ground for making their placement decisions.;Findings suggest that the raters quickly established patterns of talk unique to the particular speech situations associated with the placement process. These patterns of talk reflected the common ground upon which the raters calibrated the entire placement process. In the training sessions, rater talk focused on the specific task of reaching agreements concerning placements of the day's anchor papers, based upon how well specific features of student texts met the rhetorical and technical demands of the prescribed rubric. In the ensuing rating sessions, the raters' talk reflected less upon the rubric and more on their personal perceptions of the student writers as potential students in their composition classes. Raters linked these personal perceptions of student writers to a common ground of rater knowledge, or reflective context, by telling stories about their past literacy learning and teaching experiences. Analysis of linguistic evidence, in the forms of definite reference, contextual expressions, speech acts, and context cues, helped to determine the common ground of rater knowledge that fundamentally informed the course and adequacy of their placement decisions. In other words, what each rater knew about assessing and placing students in first year writing classes became mutually known by all raters, and that common ground was reflected in what they said. |
