General Description
Holistic scoring is based on the assumption that an essay conveys a total impression and the score an essay earns is based upon that overall impression. After reading an essay quickly, readers should base their scores on the general quality of the essay (organization, development, expression) without paying attention to minor errors.
Therefore, this holistic approach assumes that each of the factors that make up someone's writing skills is related to all of the other factors and that one factor cannot easily be separated from the others. It views a piece of writing as a total work, the whole of which is greater than the sum of its parts--i.e., a piece of writing is more than diction, style, the use of evidence, control of standard idiom, and a host of other elements that make up a composition.
Earlier modes of scoring papers relied heavily on the identification of errors. The emphasis, naturally, fell on the kinds of writing problems that lent themselves most easily to quantification--for example, errors in spelling, punctuation, subject-verb agreement, etc. But scoring methods based on error identification all too often ignored the rhetorical aspects of the paper. We have all seen papers that are virtually "clean" of errors and that are, nevertheless, totally lacking in development or that have nothing new or interesting to say about the topic.
One of the most important aspects of holistic scoring is that the reader who uses this approach is encouraged to look at what students have done well rather than what they have failed to do.
Two readers score each essay independently, using the six-point scale. Scores of 4, 5, and 6 are upper-half scores; 1,2, and 3 are lower-half scores. A third reader resolves split (3/4) essays. A total score of 8/12 is required to pass.