Writing comprehensibly, dynamically, and persuasively in a foreign language is a significant challenge for learners. Written communication assesses language and writing progress for various summative and developmental goals. Scenario-based assessment (SBA), as one of the methodologies of classroom-based assessment (CBA), aims to elicit both…

Achieving a sufficient IELTS band score for academic purposes has been a major goal of many L2 learners around the world, especially those in Asia. However, IELTS writing scores were consistently reported to be the lowest when compared to the scores in speaking, reading, and listening. Despite a growing body of research in IELTS writing, little…

Background: Marking of essays is mainly carried out by human raters who bring in their own subjective and idiosyncratic evaluation criteria, which sometimes lead to discrepancy. This discrepancy may in turn raise issues like reliability and fairness. The current research attempts to explore the evaluation criteria of markers on a national level…