The halo effect is raters' undesirable tendency to assign more similar ratings across rating criteria than they should. The impacts of the halo effect on ratings have been studied in rater-mediated L2 writing assessment. Little is known, however, about the extent to which rating criteria order in analytic rating scales is associated with the…

This study examined the rater severity of instructors using a multi-trait rubric in a freshman composition course offered in a private university in Kuwait. Use of standardized multi-trait rubrics is a recent development in this course and student feedback and anchor papers provided by instructors for each essay exam necessitated the assessment of…

Student self-assessment has been heralded as a way of increasing student ownership of the learning process, enhancing metacognative awareness of their learning progress as well as promoting learner autonomy. In a university setting, where a major aim is to promote critical thinking and attentiveness to one's responsibility in an academic…

The research reported here suggests that raters, when involved in writing assessment, are more concerned with their own criteria to set a basis for their judgment rather than the standards provided by scale descriptors. This study sampled think aloud of eight raters who scored 15 essays in accord with Test of Written English (TWE) holistic scoring…

Whether foreign language writing is rated using analytic rating scales or holistically, the organization of ideas is invariably one of the aspects assessed. However, it is unclear what raters are sensitive to when rating writing for organization. Which do they value more highly, the physical aspects of organization, such as paragraphing and the…