An Instrument to Aid in Assessing Editorials.

Assessing editorials has posed a problem for many journalism teachers, who can't always say explicitly how or why the changes they suggest will improve a student's story. This can leave students frustrated.This paper presents a primary-trait scoring instrument that has been used to judge editorials by breaking down the analysis into three essential components: claims, data, and warrants (Toulmin, 1958). It is not meant to supplant the judgment of the teacher; only a holistic assessment can take all aspects of an essay into account. Rather, it gives students a scale by which they can measure progress on three crucial elements of an editorial.Assessing editorialsWhile all good writing shares features, certain genres have special, essential components. A good editorial, for instance, is made up of a strong claim, topic sentences that support that claim, and facts, anecdotes, and illustrations that enhance the strength of the claim. The stronger these pieces ofthe essay, the more persuasive the editorial.A primary-trait scoring instrument works quite well when assessing an editorial since these global elements, while in some ways are discrete, are interdependent. In comparison, the atomistic features of punctuation and spelling have no direct relation to the persuasiveness of an essay and certainly are at too specific a level to even consider relevant in measuring, say, the strength of an argument.The instrument detailed in Figure 1 was adaptsd from Connor's (1990) and McCann's (1989) instruments to judge essays of developing writers. It evaluates editorial writing according to the claims, data, and warrants the student includes.Claims (a.k.a. proposition) are "conclusions whose merits we are seeking to establish" (Toulmin, 1958, p. 97) and "assertions put forward publicly for general acceptance" (Toulmin et al., 1984, p. 29). A claim can be identified by asking these questions: What are you claiming? Where do you stand? What position are you asking us to agree to? (Toulmin, Rieke, Janik, 1979). [See Porter (1989) for a deeper discussion of claims.]Data (a.k.a. evidence and grounds) are interpreted as support for the claim, in the form of facts, experience, statistics, or occurrences. Data answer the question: On the strength of what information do you make such a claim?Warrants amplify or explain the data, and clearly connect the data to the claim. Warrants arise from laws of nature, legal principles, rules of thumb, engineering formulas, and so on. They can be skillfully implied but are often stronger if stated overtly. Warrants tell the reader how the facts presented would lead any reader to conclude what is stated in the claim.Claims, data, and warrants are not equally weighted in judging the essay's success. A claim, for instance, is more akin to the thesis statement of any good composition. It makes assertions or declarations and can proven true or false. Ifwell stated, a claim orients the reader to the subject and to the writer's uiewpoint.Data are more important since they delineate the major points the writer wants to advance in favor of the argument. Usually, the fewer points mentioned, the less convincing the arguments; however, more points do not necessarily guarantee success. They must be relevant and strong.Warrants are by far the most difficult aspect of persuasive writing. They are also the most crucial in convincing one's audience. Warrants are difficult because they require a writer to respond to any possible objections to the claim, and they require a writer be exhaustive in listing facts, illustrations, and anecdotes. Previous research (Burkhalter, 1992) has shown that students have more difficulty with warrants than with any other aspect of persuasive writing. See Burkhalter (1993) for a discussion of the reasons underlying this difficulty.Applying the instrumentThe essays reproduced as Figures 2 and 3 were written to support opposing views on the same subject. …