The Writing Proficiency Exam pass results have come in at a record high this semester with a 79 percent pass rate.

Writing and Literature Professor Tyrone Shaw, the exam coordinator believes the improved pass rate possibly reflects a variety of elements, including increased preparedness among the students, more participation in preparatory sessions offered in the two weeks prior to the exam, and linking the exam more closely to the Exposition and Analysis courses.

Pass rates aren’t the only numbers that have recently risen. According to Shaw, about 90 students usually take the Writing Proficiency Exam, or WPE, each semester. This fall 140 students took it.

“There are at least two possibilities contributing to the higher pass rate, one of which is [Writing and Literature Professor] Dan Towner’s two Expo classes,” said Shaw. He noted that 40 of the students taking the exam were enrolled in Towner’s Exposition and Analysis courses—which focus on persuasive writing—and that the pass rate for those students was “very high.”

Another contributing factor in the pass rate could also be the increase in the number of students who visit on of Shaw’s “prep sessions.”

“Out of all of the students —and there were at least 35, maybe more—who took the prep sessions, all but two passed,” he said. “If  you go in for a prep session, your odds are going to be much higher because you’ll learn exactly what the readers are looking for. The odds will also be higher coming out of an Expo class that focuses for a part of the course on the Writing Proficiency Exam.”

Shaw noted that by spring 2014, the exam will probably become embedded into all the Expo sections.

“Three of us are teaching Expo in the spring, Jacque Langley, Jeff Bickerstaff, and I,” said Shaw. “We are embedding into our syllabi language related directly to the writing proficiency exam.”

He said he hopes that eventually the WPE will serve as the final exam for Expo classes, worth perhaps 20 percent of the final grade. This is to encourage more students to take the test when they take the class, and to prevent having seniors trying to pass the graduation requirement in their last semester prior to graduation.

Students who fail the exam get one more chance in another semester before having to take the class Self-Sufficient Writer, which will also fulfill their requirement.  Students can also elect to take Self-Sufficient Writer after failing the exam once.  “It is important to note,” Shaw said, “that to qualify for Self-Sufficient Writer, you must have taken that exam at least once.”
Shaw also hopes to streamline and quicken the grading process for the exam.

Currently, students have to wait about three weeks to find out if they passed, which can be problematic if they are trying to figure out schedules for next semester and suddenly have to fit in Self-Sufficient Writer.

The current system of grading involves having each exam read by two professors from a wide range of departments—including Writing and Literature, Humanities, Behavioral Sciences, Education, Mathematics, and Environmental Sciences. Each professor grades the exam individually, and if there is disagreement  on whether it passes or not, it goes on to a third reader. The authors of the exams are kept confidential.

“We get a packet of exams and  we have a week to read them and turn them around,” said Shaw. “Then you get another packet.And then there is a third packet consisting of exams needing a third reader. So that’s three weeks.”

Shaw would like to set up the grading of the WPE so it can all be graded in one day, by a group of professors sitting around a table working on it together.

“What we would like to see is almost a hundred percent pass rate; obviously we would like to see that,” he said. “All of us readers hope each exam we pick up is going to be lovely and brilliant and pass. We really want people to succeed.”