Writing is one of the most crucial skills for EFL students and also one of the most difficult to acquire. Many students face difficulties when it comes to writing in English. To address this challenge, this study examined whether or not combining inquiry-based learning with visual literacy could enhance EFL students' writing proficiency in four…

Integrated writing is increasingly used in language assessment programmes. As a hybrid task, it requires students to coordinate different language skills, i.e. listening, reading and writing, to retrieve information from multiple sources, and compose an essay for a specific purpose. Tapping into the varied skills that contribute to successful…

This longitudinal study (2002-2014) investigates the stability of rating characteristics of a large group of raters over time in the context of the writing paper of a national high-stakes examination. The study uses one measure of rater severity and two measures of rater consistency. The results suggest that the rating characteristics of…

The study aimed at examining the effect of Paragraph Punch on developing EFL students' writing paragraphs. The participants were eighty English language students of the English Department, Al-Balqa Applied University, who had enrolled in the Writing paragraph course. They were distributed into two assigned sections: the experimental group of (40)…

This paper investigates what matters to medical domain experts when setting standards on a language for specific purposes (LSP) English proficiency test: the Occupational English Test's (OET) writing sub-test. The study explores what standard-setting participants value when making performance judgements about test candidates' writing responses,…

This study investigated common written errors and the causes that language learners frequently commit. A descriptive qualitative approach was conducted with the participation of 57 eleventh-graders at a high school in Hung Yen province during the second term of the academic year 2021-2022. The respondents were requested to participate in five…

Purpose: This paper aims to explore the impact of differences in educational traditions on conventions of teaching and learning, and on the measurement of learning outcomes. These are critical issues within the context of business schools that are steeped in one dominant tradition but have a large population of international students previously…

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…

This study examines the washback effects of a national test in Swedish at upper secondary schools. The test consists of three parts--reading, writing and speaking--and this study specifically focuses on the washback effects in relation to Stephen Ball's theory of policy enactment. The study draws on qualitative data from a total of 21 interviews…

Summative assessment of students' writing predicts not only the extent to which the course learning objectives have been achieved but also reveals the relevance of the assessment design with the construct of writing being assessed. Any dichotomy between the assessment criteria and the construct of writing or between the assessment criteria and…

This study explores the impact of mind mapping on the writing of English as a Foreign Language [EFL] among Saudi learners and the bilateral effects of mind mapping and other writing processes. Little research has been devoted to the effect of electronic mind mapping as a mediating tool. Despite the cyclical nature of writing processes, the…

As a result of the Japanese Ministry of Education's recent edict that students' written and spoken English should be assessed in university entrance exams, there is an urgent need for tools to help teachers and students prepare for these exams. Although some commercial tools already exist, they are generally expensive and inflexible. To address…

The aim of this study is to determine the effect of writing education carried out according to the self-regulation strategy development model on the self-regulation writing skills, self-efficacy perceptions, and creative thinking skills of gifted and talented students. In this study, a pre-test and post-test design with a control group was…

Severity and centrality are two main kinds of rater effects posing threats to the validity and fairness of performance assessments. Adopting Jin and Wang's (2018) extended facets modeling approach, we separately estimated the magnitude of rater severity and centrality effects in the web-based TestDaF (Test of German as a Foreign Language) writing…

This article examines the publicly available English Examination Notes from the New South Wales Higher School Certificate (HSC) Marking Centre, alongside past research on writing development, to understand the summative assessment of writing and the qualities of writing that examiners identified as discriminating between samples of different…