Assessing Writing is a refereed international journal providing a forum for ideas, research and practice on the assessment of written language. Assessing Writing publishes articles, book reviews, conference reports, and academic exchanges concerning writing assessments of all kinds, including traditional ('direct' and standardised forms of) testing of writing, alternative performance assessments (such as portfolios), workplace sampling and classroom assessment. The journal focuses on all stages of the writing assessment process, including needs evaluation, assessment creation, implementation, and validation, and test development; it aims to value all perspectives on writing assessment as process, product and politics (test takers and raters; test developers and agencies; educational administrations; and political motivations). The journal is interested in review essays of key issues in the theory and practice of writing assessment.

Assessing Writing embraces internationalism and will attempt to reflect the concerns of teachers, researchers and writing assessment specialists around the world, whatever their linguistic background. Articles are published in English and normally relate to the assessment of English language writing, but articles in English about the assessment of writing in languages other than English will be considered. While Assessing Writing frequently publishes articles about the assessment of writing in the fields of composition, writing across the curriculum, and TESOL (the teaching of English to speakers of other languages), it welcomes articles about the assessment of writing in professional and academic areas outside these fields.

The scope of the journal is wide, and embraces all work in the field at all age levels, in large-scale (international, national and state) as well as classroom, educational and non-educational institutional contexts, writing and programme evaluation, writing and critical literacy, and the role of technology in the assessment of writing. Through this scholarly exchange, Assessing Writing contributes to the development of excellence in the assessment of writing in all contexts, and, in so doing, to the teaching and appreciation of writing.