There are several student performances assessed in Intensive English Programs (IEPs) worldwide in each academic year. These student performances are mostly graded by human raters with a certain degree of error. However, the accuracy of these performance assessments is of utmost importance because they feed data into some high stakes decisions…

Writing assessment becomes an interesting issue lately since it is not a simple task for the teachers and English intructors. There are some important considerations for the teachers in conducting writing assessment such as time limitation for the students to write, and how to give a score. Previous research had discussed the issue of validity and…

Background: For language teachers, using rubrics has become the norm in assessing performance-based work. When using rubrics, one question stakeholders have is to what extent teachers are true to the rubrics. For classroom teachers, the correct use of rubrics is crucial. Rater training and rater calibration are not commonly offered to…

Raters are central to writing performance assessment, and rater development--training, experience, and expertise--involves a temporal dimension. However, few studies have examined new and experienced raters' rating performance longitudinally over multiple time points. This study uses operational data from the writing section of the MELAB (n =…

Portfolios have gained great popularity as a method of process-oriented writing assessment in the last 20 years. Despite the apparent advantages, as with other new methods of assessment, they still raise many controversies, particularly those regarding the validity of their contents and assessment. This article describes the first stages in the…

Despite the increasing interest in and need for test information for use in instructional practice and student learning, there have been few attempts to systematically link a diagnostic approach to English for academic purposes (EAP) writing instruction and assessment. In response to this need for research, this study examined the extent to which…

Language performance assessments typically require human raters, introducing possible error. In international examinations of English proficiency, rater language background is an especially salient factor that needs to be considered. The existence of rater language background-related bias in writing performance assessment is the object of this…

This investigation examined the impact of opportunity to learn content and skills targeted by a writing assessment on the achievement of English learners (ELs), including the potential for differential impact of increased exposure to literary analysis and writing instruction. Results revealed several factors contributing to students' writing…

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…