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Types
of rubrics: Holistic scales
In
holistic evaluation, raters make judgments by forming an overall
impression of a performance and matching it to the best fit from
among the descriptions on the scale. Each band on the scale describes
performance on several criteria (e.g., range of vocabulary + grammatical
accuracy + fluency). Four or six levels of performance are commonly
found in holistic rubrics. Holistic scales may be either generic
or task-specific. Large-scale assessments are often evaluated holistically,
but teachers find holistic rubrics easy and efficient to use for
classroom assessment as well.
 Figures
1a-d present two holistic rubrics for speaking tasks (both generic)
and two holistic rubrics for writing tasks (one generic, one task-specific).
Click the icon at left to open a new window displaying Figures 1a-d.
Advantages:
- They are often written generically and can be used with many
tasks.
- They emphasize what learners can do, rather than what they cannot
do.
- They save time by minimizing the number of decisions raters
must make.
- Trained raters tend to apply them consistently, resulting in
more reliable measurement.
- They are usually less detailed than analytic rubrics and may
be more easily understood by younger learners.
Disadvantages:
- They do not provide specific feedback to test takers about the
strengths and weaknesses of their performance.
- Performances may meet criteria in two or more categories, making
it difficult to select the one best description. (If this occurs
frequently, the rubric may be poorly written.)
- Criteria cannot be differentially weighted.
[Tedick
(2002), Mueller (2002), and TeacherVision.com
(2000-2002).]
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