1. The CUNY Assessment Test in Writing (CATW) for ESL 95 Students
Focus of this presentation:
What is the CATW?
How can you prepare for it?

2. The CATW—Context
The CATW serves as an English and ESL placement test for entering freshmen and transfer students and as an exit test for those students placed in a developmental English class.
Students must pass the test before enrolling in freshman English courses.
Entering freshmen and transfer students who fail the CATW will be required to take developmental English courses or ESL courses to strengthen their English language proficiency.

3. Structure of the CATW Reading Passage
250 – 300 words
10th – 12th grade reading level
Familiar topics
Writing Directions (always the same)
Reflect the 5 domains of the analytic rubric

4. CATW Prompt
The CATW test consists of a writing prompt and a reading passage. The writing prompt for all CATW exams is the same: Writing Directions Read the passage above and write an essay responding to the ideas it presents. In your essay, be sure to summarize the passage in your own words, stating the author’s most important ideas. Develop your essay by identifying one idea in the passage that you feel is especially significant, and explain its significance. Support your claims with evidence or examples drawn from what you have read, learned in school, and/or personally experienced. Remember to review your essay and make any changes or corrections that are needed to help your reader follow your thinking. You will have 90 minutes to complete your essay.

5. CATW Sample Passage Hype
Advertisements are the most prevalent and toxic of the mental pollutants. From the moment your alarm sounds in the morning to the wee hours of late‐night TV, commercial pollution floods your brain at the rate of about three thousand marketing messages per day. Every day an estimated 12 billion display ads, 3 million radio commercials, and more than 200,000 TV commercials are dumped into North America’s collective unconscious. The increase in commercial advertising has happened so steadily and relentlessly that we haven’t quite woken up to the absurdity of it all. No longer are ads confined to the usual places: buses, billboards, stadiums. Anywhere your eyes can possibly come to rest is now a place that, in corporate America’s view, can and ought to be filled with a logo or product message.
You fill your car with gas, and there’s an ad on the nozzle. You wait for your bank machine to spit out money and an ad scrolls by in the little window. You drive through the countryside and the view of the wheat fields is broken at intervals by enormous billboards. Your kids watch Pepsi and Snickers ads in the classroom. A company called VideoCarte installs interactive screens on supermarket carts so that you can see ads while you shop. (A company executive calls the little monitors “the most powerful micromarketing medium available today.”) There is nowhere to run. No one is exempt and no one will be spared. In the silent moments of my life, I often used to hear Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony play in my head. Now I hear that kid singing the Oscar Meyer wiener song.
Excerpted from Kalle Lasn. “Hype,” Signs of Life in the USA: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers, 4th ed. (Sonia Maasik & Jack Solomon, eds.) Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, ‐220.

6. The CATW Rubric Description of performance levels
Analytic scoring of 5 assessment domains:
Critical Response to Text and Writing Task
Development of Writer’s Ideas
Structure of the Response
Language Use: Sentence and Word Choice
Language Use: Grammar, Usage and Mechanics
Explain what analytic scoring is; how it is different from holistic scoring. Advantages? Disadvantages?
key descriptors of each level (effective, good, consistent, etc.)

7. 1. Critical response to the writing task and text
Students have to…
Show understanding of the text and response to the main ideas in the text.
Readers look for…
Integration of a critical discussion of ideas in the text and relevant elements of the writer’s reading and experience
Demonstrated understanding of the main ideas

8. 2. Development of the writer’s ideas
Students have to…
Use approaches to development and make specific references to the text.
Readers look for…
Development of ideas with use of approaches to development (e.g., summarizing, evaluating, narrating)
Reasons and specific details and examples from the text and from the writer’s reading and experience

9. 3. Structure of the response
Students have to…
Organize ideas to support a central focus, or thesis
Readers look for…
A progression of ideas that supports a central focus
Transitions that convey relationships among ideas

10. 4. Language use: Grammar, usage, and mechanics
Students have to…
Employ conventions of Standard Written English so that meaning is clear.
Readers look for…
Command of language, extent to which errors impede understanding

11. 5. Language use: Sentences and word choice
Students have to…
Demonstrate sentence control and variety and clarity of expression.
Readers look for…
Control and variety of sentences
Clarity and effectiveness of word choice

12. Scoring the CATW Scored independently by two raters
Scores in a range of 1 to 6 points
1 & 2: Weak
3 & 4: Mid-level
5 & 6: Good and/or superior
Explain what analytic scoring is; how it is different from holistic scoring. Advantages? Disadvantages?
key descriptors of each level (effective, good, consistent, etc.)

13. Score Calculation
Three content domains – Critical Response, Development of Ideas, and Structure of Response – are weighted twice.
Two language use dimensions – Sentence and Word Choice, and Grammar; and Usage and Mechanics – are added.
Passing score = 56
Three content domains—Critical Response, Development of Ideas, and Structure of Response—are weighted twice.
A passing score on the CATW is 56, which can be obtained by getting a combination of 3’s and 4’s in each of the scoring categories: 2(3+4) + 2(3+4) + 2(3+4) + (3+4) + (3+4) = 56.
To achieve the passing score: getting at least a 4 from at least one of the raters in each of the scoring categories and having no one give you a 2 in any category.

14. Calculating the score – an example
Domain 1
Domain 2
Domain 3
Domain 4
Domain 5
Reader 1 4
Reader 2 3
Totals
(proposed weighted calculation)
2(4+4)
= 16
2(4+3)
= 14
4+4
= 8
4+3 =7
Final Score: 61

15. Helping Students Prepare for the CATW

16. Summarizing the Text
Four Criteria for a Good Summary
1. A good summary acknowledges the original author.
2. A good summary contains only the most important information.
3. A good summary is much shorter than the original text.
4. A good summary paraphrases any information taken from the original text.

17. Verbs for Summary Neutral Argumentative Inference Comments Mentions
Reports
Explains
Thinks
Notes
Claims
Insists
Argues
Alleges
Maintains
Contends
Suggests
Infers
Implies

18. Summary Templates
Adapted from “They say, I say” (Graff & Birkenstein, 2006)

19. One-Sentence Summary
In "Coping with Procrastination," Moore, Baker, and Packer explain the fundamental reasons why people put off doing things and how to overcome these issues.
In their article "Coping with Procrastination," Moore, Baker, and Packer suggest that, in order to change the habit of procrastination, it is essential to look below the surface for the real reasons why one puts off doing things.
Adapted from Sourcework: Academic Writing from Sources (Dollahite & Huan, 2006)

20. The Thesis Advertising is not good.
The response essay must have a clear thesis that includes
TOPIC + STANCE
Sample Activity: Which thesis statement is a strong thesis?
Advertising is not good.
Advertising is everywhere, from banking machines to supermarket carts.
I think that we are inundated with advertising in our daily lives.
We are constantly exposed to commercials everywhere we look; this pervasiveness of advertising has several negative effects.

21. Development of Response
The development (the body) of the response essay must continue the thread of the thesis statement (coherence) – it must maintain the writer’s stance.
The supporting ideas (in the body) can consist of:
General discussion of the topic
Personal narratives or the relating of stories the writer knows (from the news or other texts)
Reflection on the topic

22. Paragraph Development
The P.I.E. Model
P – Point
What is the point or the argument of the paragraph/example? How does this aspect/reason/example/solution relate to the thesis?
I – Illustration
Example, reference to other text(s), statistic, writer’s prior knowledge
E – Explanation / Evaluation
Explain the illustration in the context of your argument.
Provide analysis on how it supports your point.
End with a sentence summarizing your point.

23. An example of P.I.E.
An example of P.I.E. (based on the sample text, Hype):
Some advertisements are so attention-getting that they are dangerous. One example of this is the new trend in “moving billboards” where advertisements near the streets are on digital displays and play short movies or commercials. This is dangerous because drivers don’t pay attention to what they are doing and can get into accidents or even hit pedestrians. Advertising agencies need to consider the repercussions of such distractions and govern their own commercials to protect consumers’ safety.