Neal, M. R. (2011). Writing assessment and the revolution in digital texts and technologies. New York, NY: Teachers College Press, 168 pp., paperback.

Michael R. Neal’s Writing Assessment and the Revolution in Digital Texts and Technologies tackles what is for many writing instructors the elephant in the room: digital texts. He focuses on how instructors are confronted with new text forms as well as new technology-based writing assessment instruments. Though either of these could be the basis for a single book, Neal provides cogent definitions and descriptions, rendering each not only accessible but also useful to the nonspecialist.

Neal’s solid background in the field of writing shows. The book is well-written, well-researched, and well-documented. The sources (ranging from 1968 to the present) are seamlessly integrated and provide the reader with a good grounding in the history of writing assessment and the impact of technology on writing and writing assessment.

One theme that runs through the book is Neal’s contention that writing cannot be divorced from writing assessment. His writing is informed by two questions: What does it mean to assess writing? and What is writing? He advocates viewing writing as communication. Writing presupposes a reader. Given this, how can a teacher help a student grow as a writer without thoughtful input (i.e., assessment)? Neal provides the reader with examples of his own assessment of student work, which is quite detailed and complex. He also explains his concept of an ePortfolio and describes how it can be used to help students improve.

Once he has made his point that writing and writing assessment are fundamentally linked, Neal goes on to discuss various assessment technologies, including Educational Testing Services’ essay raters and a plagiarism detection program. Though many of these programs claim to actually read essays, Neal makes the counterclaim that machines can’t read. He acknowledges that, because the algorithms are proprietary, we cannot really know how text is processed. However, in his view, the text analysis must reduce the text to quantifiable pieces. He cites various works that have assailed the validity of these raters by demonstrating how easily manipulable they are and how easily the results can be skewed based on quantifiable factors, such as essay length and surface grammatical errors. He then notes that, in many cases, writing instructors are not involved in the selection or purchase of machine raters. Rather, they are bought by administrators in the search for efficiency.

He points out there are two areas in which these raters are used: placement and regular classes. In each of these, the use of machines to rate student essays does a disservice to students. In addition, he feels that, in the classroom setting, the introduction of machine raters denigrates a significant portion of the writing teacher’s job. Neal contends that writing teachers should make their voices heard and at least be a part of the dialogue before, rather than after, these machine raters are forced on them. Though I commend his commitment to students’ education and growth, growing enrollments are forcing both administrators and teachers to find ways to accommodate increasing demands on faculty time. I agree that machine raters are mechanistic and skewed toward very basic writing. However, I know that students have to be placed; student essays have to be graded; and faculty members have only so many hours in a day they can devote to this. Machine raters may not be the answer. However, what is? This is an issue we all need to be concerned with.

The final piece of the puzzle is the dazzling array of digital technologies that our students are able to manipulate and we often find simply puzzling. This brings Neal full circle, back to the question of what writing is. Is Facebook writing? What about Twitter? How do video and audio fit in? Finally, after a discussion of validity, Neal ends by encouraging us to stay “out ahead of the technological curve” (p. 133). After all, that is the trick, isn’t it?

Cynthia A. Walker, PhD, cwalker@eli.uta.edu, is currently grammar/writing coordinator for the University of Texas at Arlington’s English Language Institute. She completed her MA in TESL and PhD in applied linguistics at the University of California, Los Angeles.