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Introduction
Testing writing skills appears familiar to students from the time of learning how to write. Teachers make them hand in different papers: argumentative essays, tests, reaction or research papers. These testing methods examine writing skills directly, in essay writing tests, or indirectly, in a multiple choice test with questions about punctuation, for example. Essay tests appear as a traditional way of testing writing skills, as students produce a sample of connected writing. These vary in length and topics (Weir 60).

In this paper, I will present Proficiency Test essays, as representatives of testing writing skills at JPU, Pécs, for first year English majors. I will examine the role of focus in five writings, and how it expands its effect on the assessment, because this is how I can learn from the essays, and improve my writing skills.

Method
For this paper I chose five Proficiency Test essays, and read them three times each with extra attention to focus. As an aid, I read the assessor’s evaluation and notes, too. I chose students’ essays, because I had felt curiosity about how they develop ideas in Proficiency Test essays. I also made a research about Proficiency testing: what components these tests have, and what they measure.

Results and Discussion
Since 1993, the English Department of JPU has used Proficiency Testing to select students whose level of English stood below what has been considered appropriate. This test mix the characteristics of filter and proficiency tests (Szabó 77). It satisfies the need for an overall evaluation of students’ language abilities through Reading and Listening Comprehension, Essay Writing Test, and Grammar and Usage Test (Horváth 89).

Within essay writing tests, Proficiency Tests represent special forms: they have been developed for measuring people’s ability in a language, regardless of any training they may have had in that language. Their content does not cover up the content of objectives of language courses, rather what the candidates have to be able to do in the language in order to be considered proficient (Hughes 9).

Students take the Test anonymously, which compensates the two cross-makers’ subjective scoring. The two cross-makers answer these questions: “Does the essay define a specific idea in the first paragraph?”, and “Does the essay discuss this idea with specific examples?” (Horváth 92).

The evaluation of the essays follows a pattern containing five categories: focus, accuracy, vocabulary, paragraph organization and essay organization, each getting a maximum 2 points.
In the following table I introduce the five essays that I selected.

Table 1: Proficiency Test Essay Titles and Evaluation

Each essay test paper had a theme table on its front page. The tables appeared in three-column grid format, each column containing five rows. The columns had the names: Type of publication, Title One, and Title Two. Within each rubric the candidates found on element of a theme that they had to join. The instruction required students to select and underline one phrase in each of the three columns, then write a 400-450-word-essay on the theme they had chosen. The number of possible choices emerged to 125 by using this theme table (Horváth 91).

The test papers I chose offered the possibilities shown in the following table.

Type of Publication Title One Title Two

The What’s Hot section of a web site No Pain, No Gain: The University Student
The Features Section of a teenage magazine The Amazing Success of the High-school Barbie
The Opinions Column of a European weekly Forever Young? The Superstar
The Current Affairs section of a daily Try This: How to Embarrass a Know-all
The Cover Story of a student magazine Three Easy Steps to Become a Sixties Child
Table 2: Proficiency Test Essay Topic Table

The compilers of the Proficiency Test Essay, the teachers in the English Department, gave a definition of focus as defining and then discussing the relevant aspects of the candidates’ selected assignments. Focus in more detail means having a concrete audience in mind, not just the human race in general, which appeared in essay #24 in addresses like we or they, or in mentioning events and thoughts without any explanation and detailed description. This would suggest that the author did not have a final idea what to write about, so the reader easily got confused. The two scores given for the essay with the title “Try This: How to Embarrass a University Student” reflected this.

The title had no connection with the essay: the author wrote about a Stanislaw book discussing an intelligent ocean producing “creatures perfectly similar to certain people from our past.” After stating this, the writer developed a story with a university student and his professor, who rose again from the dead. The shifts in themes: description of a book, reference to a student-professor relation confused me. Though the title suggested concrete tips – “Try This: How to Embarrass…” - the author did not offer even one.

The second essay I examined got six points overall, and more positive remarks on focus. In the first paragraph the author stated the topic of the essay: “Three Easy Steps to Become a University Student”, and to whom the essay was dedicated - “mainly for learners who have failed the exam or who do not (dare to risk their time) want to bother with it.” By this the author guided the reader into a concrete direction, indicating what to expect: exact tips. The three steps built up a fluent sequence: first by pointing out a person to sit the entrance exam instead of the real examiner, second by pretending to have a student’s experience at university, and third by giving extra money to teachers. These tips did not allow the text to treat any incoherent subjects, so the reader’s attention stuck to the whole essay.

The essay “The Amazing Success of the Superstar” impressed me: it introduced a believable and concrete event about a contest between Richard Gere and Bill Clinton. The author gave a detailed discussion of the relevant aspects of the topic. The title which the two men fought for was called “Success and Fame”. The competitors had to smile charmingly and confess love. Gere turned out as winner, as most women loved him previously, and their number even rose during the competition.

The last two essays appeared special because they had the same title: “Three Easy Steps to Become a High-school Barbie”, but the type of publication differed: #28 joined “The What’s Hot section of a web site”, while #41 “The Features section of a teenage magazine.” Both essays got nine points. Though the essays had these common characteristics, the authors approached the theme differently: #28 included the history and the description of Barbie dolls in the introduction, which received good remarks on focus. Then the writer gave an informative discussion about how a high-school Barbie should look. Make-up, smart hairstyle, slim figure, elegant clothing style, blonde hair and blue eyes appeared as essential elements, while “intelligence, manners, grades, speaking abilities and humor” did not fulfill this role.
The other author, #41, segmented the process into three parts: “Step One: Changing Appearance… Step Two: Changing the Mind (and its content)… Step Three: Changing the Soul.” A high-school Barbie looked similar to the one described in #28’s essay, though #41 highlighted personal aspects and experiences more. The text showed much focus by sticking to these private memories at high-school, the author gained the assessor’s attention, maybe because the topic related to an exact person.

Conclusion
I have presented five Proficiency Test essays with extra emphasis on focus, and have examined how focus influenced the evaluation of these writings. The less focus an essay had, the fewer points it received overall. If a student switched themes, or did not stick to one aspect of the chosen topic, the score for focus decreased.

I found reading these essays useful and entertaining. Useful, because in my further writings I can apply the knowledge that I acquired from the essays and their evaluation on focus. Entertaining, because the authors developed their ideas in various and colorful ways.