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…

This study applied a Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) model to explore how 27 first-year university students in two different English proficiency groups improved their lexicogrammatical choices and metafunctions for writing analytical exposition essays during a 15-week course. To explore how "the teaching learning cycle" influences…

This paper investigates the performance of holistic and analytic scoring rubrics in the context of EFL writing. Specifically, the paper compares EFL students' scores on a writing task using holistic and analytic scoring rubrics. The data for the study was collected from 30 participants attending an English undergraduate program in a Yemeni…

Along with a more humanitarian movement in language testing, accountability to contextual variables in the design and development of any assessment enterprise is emphasized. However, when it comes to writing assessment, it is found that multiplicity of rating scales developed to fit diverse contexts is mainly headed by well-known native testing…