Rating scales for writing assessment are critical in that they determine directly the quality and fairness of such performance tests. However, in many EFL contexts, rating scales are made, to certain extent, based on the intuition of teachers who strongly need a feasible and scientific route to guide their construction of rating scales. This study…

Through Many-Facet Rasch analysis, this study explores the rating differences between 1 computer automatic rater and 5 expert teacher raters on scoring 119 students in a computerized English listening-speaking test. Results indicate that both automatic and the teacher raters demonstrate good inter-rater reliability, though the automatic rater…

Cooper's (1989) LPP framework focuses on 'who' the policy planner is and 'who' implements the policy to 'whom.' These are particularly significant factors in a highly centralized education system such as China's, where the effect of different individuals as actors in LPP remains largely unexplored. This article examines the controversy around the…

This article examines variations in beliefs and practices between British English language teaching (ELT) specialists and their Chinese colleagues in a cross-cultural educational development project which used interviews and a questionnaire survey to gather the perceptions and retrospective experiences of Chinese tertiary teachers and expatriate…