Yes, please!

We grade them really quickly but we are looking for specific things. But, two people read each response and if they are not on the same side of the 1-4 fence, it goes to the facilitator to be adjudicated. So if a response gets a 3 and a 4, it ends up with 3.5. But if it gets a 2/3, then it gets adjudicated. Let me tell you, you would DIE if you saw some of the stuff people write. It's scary. The Teaching Wiriting question shows a student essay and then asks for two errors in conventions, overall problem with organization, and then two strategies that you would use to help the student. Well, there's a lot of English teachers out there that apparently didn't know what conventions were. They wrote about all kinds of things, which I don't understand because the second part was for overall organizational problems.

As graders, we all loved it when the candidates would just list 1. and 2. for conventions. Like
1. Sentence Fragments
2. pronoun and antecedent disagreement

that's all you need. you don't have to put where it was or explain it. The grader likes it because she doesn't have to read a bunch of crap to figure out if you hit it or not. Also, we are trained not to count insignificant convention errors, like spelling or use of contractions or semicolon misuse.

The organizational part is pretty straightforward, again, you don't really have to write a book. Two or three sentences, if they're dead on specific, are perfect.

On the strategies, since it asks for two, go ahead and break it up like

1. blah blah blah

during the prewriting stage

Rationale: blah blah blah

2. blah blah blah

after the first draft

Rationale: blah blah blah

If we have to read one giant paragraph, sometimes we get frustrated when we have to look all over the place for each part of your answers. The test isn't formatted like that for you so you have to actually type it up like that. Make sure you could understand the strategy as if the reader had never heard of it before. You wouldn't believe how many unexplained cutesy acronyms I saw. Make sure the rationale relates back to what you said the student had problems with. Don't be vague about the strategies. Like : "I would have the student make some kind of graphic organizer. This would help him to organize his thoughts better" I saw a lot that said stuff like that.

Like I said, I only saw the one question, but maybe this helps somewhat. The graders really are just looking for specific things and they really don't care about you writing a whole slew of other stuff.

*disclaimer: I'm not supposed to advise people on this test- the test could change and/or the grading could change. Don't be upset with me if this is no longer accurate when you take the test. We had to sign an agreement about it.

Also, if you've been teaching English for three years, you can be an assessor. It's a great summer gig. It only pays $150 a day, but they fed us really good linches and snacks and it was a nice atmosphere. I really enjoyed it. Plus, if you take the test someday, you will understand the grading process.