Writing assessment is an important research area all (if not most) rhetoric and composition scholars value, regardless of our personal areas of interest, but defining this evaluation method proves difficult. For rhetoric and composition scholars, writing is understood as a cognitive process associated with communication resulting in the sharing and producing of knowledge, whether written (in all its forms) or spoken. Assessment, then, is an attempt at quantifying an activity because we assign numerical scores and letter grades to student writing. The problem writing assessment constantly experiences is how to evaluate using a universal system (grades) without losing writing's tradition of being a communication process.
A common misconception about writing assessment typically expressed by colleagues outside of rhetoric and composition is that assessing writing only involves grammatical correctness. As Norbert Elliot proves in On a Scale: A Social History of Writing Assessment in America, such a misconception once existed as a status quo, but rhetoric and composition scholars no longer approach writing assessment through such a narrow lens. However, if we understand why most colleagues prefer viewing writing assessment as a simple grammar check, then we might also understand our students' attitude toward writing assessment as well.
Our colleagues might associate writing assessment and grammar because they believe in what Kenneth Burke identifies in A Rhetoric of Motives as binary opposites. Burke theorized that a binary opposition is a truth construction we create within our surroundings while we actively pursue meaning and identification. A few examples include concepts such as up / down, left / right, day / night, pass / fail. Our colleagues' association between writing assessment and grammar is a logical one, then, because grammar is one of a few areas in English studies where things boil down to right / wrong.
