Research Paper: ‘The Reliability of the OWLS Written Expression Scale with ESL Kindergarten Students’by Gina L. Harrison, Keira C. Ogle & Megan Keilty

[ELTWeekly Volume 6, Issue 3 | January 27, 2014]

A reliability analysis was conducted on the Written Expression Scale from the Oral and Written Language Scales, (OWLS, Carrow-Woolfolk, 1996), with 68 ESL and 56 non-ESL kindergarten students. Interrater and internal consistency estimates for the Written Expression Scale were examined separately for each language group. Despite lower oral English vocabulary and syntactic knowledge, ESL students performed similarly on the writing measure and reliability estimates were comparable across language groups. The results support the use of the OWLS-Written Expression Scale as an early norm-referenced measure to reliably gauge ESL students’ early English writing skills. (Contains 1 table.)

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