Quill currently has 16 different assessments you can assign to determine which writing skills your students have mastered and where they need additional practice. These assessments will generate follow-up recommended practice activities based on your students’ needs.
Table of Contents
Diagnostic Information
We offer a sequence of baseline diagnostics (pre) and growth diagnostics (post)
💡 Baseline diagnostics (pre) assess students' skill proficiency in different writing concepts to create personalized plans of practice recommendations. A baseline diagnostic is your first step in assessing your students' writing skills.
📈 Growth diagnostics (post) help you measure skill growth after students have submitted a baseline diagnostic and completed some or all of their recommended practice activities. It functions as a post-test and it helps you gain insight into students' skill gains and remaining writing gaps.
Additionally, we offer baseline writing skills surveys for SpringBoard®, Pre-AP®, and AP® classes. These writing skills surveys were developed in partnership with CollegeBoard® to identify what skills students are doing well in, where they need additional practice, and to provide follow-up recommended practice activities based on the results of the writing skills survey.
Skills Assessed on Each Diagnostic
Our diagnostics and writing skills surveys assess student knowledge across various skill groups. You can view the skills assessed on the card before you assign the diagnostic.
In the sections below, you will find information about each diagnostic/survey, including who the assessment is designed for, what skills they cover, and how many questions are on it.
Starter Baseline and Growth Diagnostics
Who was it designed for?
Middle or high school students who need a refresher in the basics.
Middle or high school students who are new to Quill or new to sentence combining.
Elementary school students who are learning the basics for the first time.
What skills does it cover?
Plural vs. possessive nouns
Capitalization
Single adjectives
Comparative and superlative adjectives
Prepositional phrases
Coordinate and cumulative adjectives
Adjectives and adverbs
Adverbs of manner
Compound subjects and predicates
Commonly confused words
Subject-verb agreement
Listing objects (commas in lists)
How many questions are there and how long will it take students to complete?
There are 25 questions. The diagnostic should take students about 20-40 minutes to complete.
Intermediate Baseline and Growth Diagnostics
Who was it designed for?
Upper elementary, middle, or high school students who have completed the Starter Diagnostic and the recommended follow-up practice.
Middle or high school students who have mastered the basics (like adverbs, prepositions, and capitalization) and are ready to work on constructing sentences to express relationships.
What skills does it cover?
Advanced capitalization
Compound subjects, objects, and predicates
Simple parallel structure
Pronouns in compound subjects and objects
Compound sentences
Complex sentences
Conjunctive adverbs
Plural possessives
Subject-verb agreement with indefinite pronouns and collective nouns
How many questions are there and how long will it take students to complete?
There are 25 questions. The diagnostic should take students about 20-40 minutes to complete.
Advanced Baseline and Growth Diagnostics
Who was it designed for?
Students who have completed the Intermediate Diagnostic and the recommended follow-up practice.
Students who are familiar with sentence combining.
Students who have mastered basic sentence construction like writing compound and complex sentences.
What skills does it cover?
Compound-complex sentences
Relative clauses
Appositive phrases
Participial phrases
Advanced parallel structure
Advanced sentence combining
How many questions are there and how long will it take students to complete?
There are 15 questions. The diagnostic should take students about 20-40 minutes to complete.
ELL Starter Baseline and Growth Diagnostics
Who was it designed for?
Quill's ELL Starter Diagnostic is designed specifically for newcomers who are working on basic foundational grammar skills.
Directions are available in Spanish, French, German, Chinese (Simplified), Japanese, Korean, Urdu, Tagalog (Filipino), Vietnamese, Russian, Thai, Ukrainian, Portuguese, Dari (Eastern Farsi), Arabic, and Hindi to provide extra support; however, the assessment is appropriate for native speakers of any language.
What skills does it cover?
Simple verb conjugation (to be, to want, and to have)
Articles
Subject-verb agreement
Simple word order
Singular vs plural nouns
Yes/No questions
Adjective placement
How many questions are there and how long will it take students to complete?
There are 22 questions. The diagnostic should take students about 20-40 minutes to complete.
ELL Intermediate Baseline and Growth Diagnostics
Who was it designed for?
Students who are newcomers or beginner English language learners who have an understanding of simple sentence structure but need practice with tenses, prepositions, and other foundational skills.
Directions are available in Spanish, French, German, Chinese (Simplified), Japanese, Korean, Urdu, Tagalog (Filipino), Vietnamese, Russian, Thai, Ukrainian, Portuguese, Dari (Eastern Farsi), Arabic, and Hindi to provide extra support; however, the assessment is appropriate for native speakers of any language.
What skills does it cover?
This diagnostic is more difficult than the ELL Starter Diagnostic and covers the skills that tend to be particularly challenging for language learners:
Subject-verb agreement
Possessives
Prepositions
Future Tense
Articles
Intermediate Questions
How many questions are there and how long will it take students to complete?
There are 23 questions. The survey should take students about 20-35 minutes to complete.
ELL Advanced Baseline and Growth Diagnostic
Who was it designed for?
Students who are beginner or intermediate English language learners. They have a foundational understanding of basic English grammar but need more practice with certain concepts.
Directions are available in Spanish, French, German, Chinese (Simplified), Japanese, Korean, Urdu, Tagalog (Filipino), Vietnamese, Russian, Thai, Ukrainian, Portuguese, Dari (Eastern Farsi), Arabic, and Hindi to provide extra support; however, the assessment is appropriate for native speakers of any language.
What skills does it cover?
Regular and irregular past tense verbs
Progressive tenses
Phrasal verbs
Prepositions
Responding to questions
Commonly confused words
How many questions are there and how long will it take students to complete?
There are 23 questions. The survey should take students about 20-35 minutes to complete.
After students complete the ELL Advanced Diagnostic and recommended practice activities, they will be ready to move on to the Quill Starter Diagnostic (with vocabulary help as necessary).
SpringBoard® Writing Skills Survey
Who was it designed for?
Students in SpringBoard ELA grades 6-8.
Keep in mind that you may want ELL students in Pre-AP, AP, or SpringBoard courses to begin with an ELL Diagnostic.
What skills does it cover?
Subject-verb agreement
Pronoun-antecedent agreement
Compound subjects, objects, and predicates
Compound sentences
Complex sentences
Prepositional phrases
Verb tense
Subject and object pronouns
Commonly confused words
How many questions are there and how long will it take students to complete?
There are 25 questions. The survey should take students about 20-35 minutes to complete.
Which Quill diagnostic is this survey similar to?
The SpringBoard Writing Skills Survey has the most overlap (in terms of skills covered and follow-up practice recommended) with the Intermediate Diagnostic, although it also overlaps somewhat with the Starter Diagnostic.
Pre-AP® Writing Skills Survey 1
Who was it designed for?
Students in Pre-AP English 1, Pre-AP English 2, and SpringBoard ELA grades 9 and 10.
Keep in mind that you may want ELL students in Pre-AP, AP, or SpringBoard courses to begin with an ELL Diagnostic.
Please note: We recommend you first assign Pre-AP® Writing Skills Survey 1 to your 9th or 10th graders. Survey 1 is the recommendation for BOTH 9th and 10th graders to ensure that no skill is glossed over.
What skills does it cover?
Subject-verb agreement
Pronoun-antecedent agreement
Compound subjects, objects, and predicates
Compound sentences
Complex sentences
How many questions are there and how long will it take students to complete?
There are 12 questions. The survey should take students about 10-20 minutes to complete.
Which Quill diagnostic is this survey similar to?
Pre-AP Writing Skills Survey 1 has the most overlap (in terms of skills covered and follow-up practice recommended) with the Intermediate Diagnostic.
Pre-AP® Writing Skills Survey 2
Who was it designed for?
Students in Pre-AP English 1, Pre-AP English 2, and SpringBoard ELA grades 9 or 10 who have completed Pre-AP Writing Skills Survey 1 and all its recommended follow-up practice.
What skills does it cover?
Conjunctive adverbs
Relative clauses
Appositive phrases
Participial phrases
Parallel structure
How many questions are there and how long will it take students to complete?
There are 12 questions. The survey should take students about 10-20 minutes to complete.
Which Quill diagnostic is this survey similar to?
Pre-AP Writing Skills Survey 2 has the most overlap (in terms of skills covered and follow-up practice recommended) with the Intermediate Diagnostic and the Advanced Diagnostic.
AP® Writing Skills Survey
What skills does it cover?
Complex sentences
Relative clauses
Appositive phrases
Participial phrases
Compound-complex sentences
Parallel structure
Advanced sentence combining
Who was it designed for?
Students in AP (any subject) and SpringBoard ELA grades 11-12.
You may also want to consider assigning this survey to students who have completed Pre-AP Writing Skills Survey 1 and 2 and all its recommended follow-up practice.
Keep in mind that you may want ELL students in Pre-AP, AP, or SpringBoard courses to begin with an ELL Diagnostic.
How many questions are there and how long will it take students to complete?
There are 17 questions. The survey should take students about 15-25 minutes to complete.
Which Quill diagnostic is this survey similar to?
The AP Writing Skills Survey has the most overlap (in terms of skills covered and follow-up practice recommended) with the Advanced Diagnostic. It also has some overlap with the Intermediate Diagnostic.
AP®, Pre-AP®, and SpringBoard® are registered trademarks of College Board.
How To Assign a Diagnostic
Click here to learn how to find and preview the available diagnostics.
Have more questions?
Please feel free to send a message to the Quill team using the green message bubble on the bottom right corner of the screen or email us at support@quill.org.