The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of explicit corrective feedback (CF) strategies (i.e., metalinguistic feedback and explicit correction) versus implicit CF methods (i.e., recasts and explanation questions) in helping English language learners acquire the that-trace filter. To this end, one hundred twenty intermediate…

A prompt can be used as a medium to help students write a descriptive text. There is a lack of research on the type of prompts which can help students formulate and organize their ideas. Therefore, this study aims to determine whether there was a significant difference in the score of idea formulation and organization in a descriptive text between…

The present study aimed at investigating whether academic IELTS candidates perform differently in writing on either a chart topic or a table topic of the IELTS writing task 1 with regard to the four IELTS writing marking criteria i.e. task achievement, coherence and cohesion, lexical resource, and grammar range and accuracy. The study adopted a…

The continuation task, a new form of reading-writing integrated task in which test-takers read an incomplete story and then write the continuation and ending of the story, has been increasingly used in writing assessment, especially in China. However, language-test developers' understanding of the effects of important task-related factors on…

This study aimed to investigate how Grade 1-2 English language learners (ELLs) differ in their performance on a writing test in two test modes: paper and online. Participants were 139 ELLs in the United States. They completed three writing tasks, representing three test modes: (1) a paper in which students completed their writing using a…

This mixed-methods study investigates writers' task representation and the factors affecting it in test-like and non-test-like conditions. Five advanced-level L2 writers wrote two argumentative essays each, one in test-like conditions and the other in non-test-like conditions where the participants were allowed to use all the time and online…

Background: While numerous articles on Criterion® have been published and its validity evidence has accumulated, test users need to obtain relevant validity evidence for their local context and develop their own validity argument. This paper aims to provide validity evidence for the interpretation and use of Criterion® for assessing second…

This study aims to examine the EFL learners' perception and process of writing development through using a digital storytelling tool, called "Storyjumper." To do so, 15 intermediate-level students were participants of the study. The participants' writing development was frequently assessed through a series of repeated writing tests…

Previous research has shown that high frequency lexical items, such as AWL words and formulaic expressions, may differentiate between texts written by expert and novice writers (Chen & Baker, 2010; Hancioglu, 2009), and that lexical features related to breadth, depth, and accessibility differentiate among texts from L2 writers of different…

This article reports on an 8-week study that investigated the differential effects of two written corrective feedback (CF) options on 92 low-intermediate EFL students' explicit and implicit knowledge of English articles and the extent to which language analytic ability might influence the effect of written CF. The study used a…

This study investigates the effects of topical knowledge on ESL (English as a Second Language) writing performance in the English Language Proficiency Index (LPI), a standardized English proficiency test used by many post-secondary institutions in western Canada. The participants were 50 students with different levels of English proficiency…

The purpose of this study was to investigate ESL students' performance and strategies when writing direct and translated essays. The study also aimed at exploring students' strategies when writing in L2 (English) and L1 (Arabic). The study used a mixture of quantitative and qualitative procedures for data collection and analysis. Adapted strategy…

The main purpose of the study was to investigate the distinctness and reliability of analytic (or multitrait) rating dimensions and their relationships to holistic scores and "e-rater"® essay feature variables in the context of the TOEFL® computer-based test (CBT) writing assessment. Data analyzed in the study were analytic and holistic…

Performance assessments have become the norm for evaluating language learners' writing abilities in international examinations of English proficiency. Two aspects of these assessments are usually systematically varied: test takers respond to different prompts, and their responses are read by different raters. This raises the possibility of undue…

For many purposes, it is useful to collect a corpus of texts all produced to the same stimulus, whether to measure performance (as on a test) or to test hypotheses about population differences. This paper examines several methods for measuring similarities in phrasing and content and demonstrates that these methods can be used to identify…