This study aims to analyse how Japanese first-year university students' writing anxiety in academic writing classes changed over nine months. A total of 102 Japanese first-year university students participated in an academic writing class. Two assessors evaluated the students' compositions, using the same writing assessment rubric. The students…

Exemplars are powerful in clarifying assessment criteria, and their positive impacts on criteria understanding and performance have been empirically verified. However, the implementation modes are highly varied, resulting in a complicated class context which calls for further investigation. Less is known as to how exemplar-based instruction works…

Feedback is generally regarded as an integral part of EFL writing instruction. Giving individual feedback on students' written products can lead to a demanding, if not insurmountable, task for EFL writing teachers, especially in classes with a large number of students. Several Automated Writing Evaluation (AWE) systems which can provide automated…

Task design has been viewed to be essential in the context of language assessment. This study investigated whether increasing task complexity affects learners' writing performance. It employs three writing tasks with different levels of complexity based on Robinson's Componential Framework. A cohort of 278 participants was selected using a simple…

Screencast technology in English writing assessment offers personalized, detailed feedback, but not dialogic. However, integrating it with ipsative assessment (IA) principles may sustain conversations between teachers and learners on students' writing development. This study explored the impact of screencast-based ipsative assessment (SIA) on…

With technological advancements, Automated Writing Evaluation (AWE) has garnered increasing interest in L2 writing research, significantly enhancing our understanding of AWE tools' practices and efficacy in L2 writing instruction. However, the relationships between feedback types (teacher vs. AWE) and different dimensions of engagement (cognitive…

Enhancing writing pedagogy in university-based courses for students of English as a foreign language has been a long-term goal of educators and researchers. Most recent work, however, has relied on qualitative methodologies that limit our capacity to generalize findings. In this quantitative study, the authors adopted a quasi-experimental control…

Background: South African primary school learners have participated in several national and international literacy (reading and writing) studies that measure learners' achievement in different grades and at different intervals. Numerous scholars have analysed the results of these assessments. We extended their analyses by investigating the grade…

This exploratory study investigated the effect of assessing both process and product compared to assessing written products alone. Two groups of students received teacher feedback over a one-year period. One group was assessed on their revisions in addition to the quality of final drafts, while a second group was assessed on the quality of final…

Writing is a demanding, multidimensional process that is, cognitively and socially, highly complex. Success in writing is vital to success in education and in the workforce. Writing is increasingly used to demonstrate learning through schooling and has the potential to contribute toward understanding and learning in the content areas. The project…

While there has been a proliferation of research on assessment for learning (AFL) over the past two decades, L2 writing assessment has tended to focus much more on assessment of learning (AOL) than AFL. This study seeks to investigate the implementation of AFL for EFL writing within an examination-driven AOL system in Hong Kong, its possible…

Major curriculum and assessment reforms in Australia have generated research interest in issues related to standards, teacher judgement and moderation. This article is based on one related inquiry of a large-scale Australian Research Council Linkage project conducted in Queensland. This qualitative study analysed interview data to identify…

The impetus of the present study was to scrutinize the impact of planning and proficiency on 172 EFL learners' written task performance regarding concept load, fluency, complexity and accuracy. Planning was operationalized at two levels: pretask planning (PTP) and online planning (OLP). Participants of this study were two groups, high and low…

Describes the ramifications of developing a Year 10 Literacy Certificate of Achievement whereby teachers from all curriculum areas were led to pay closer attention to both the amount and types of literacy-based work that they assigned. Appends a list of eight criteria and explanations of what it means to be "progressing" or…

Discussing results of the third Assessment of Achievement Programme (AAP) survey of attainment in English language of a representative sample of pupils throughout Scotland, this leaflet highlights areas where improvement in the performance could be made. The leaflet covers the four outcomes--listening, talking, reading, writing--in four columns.…