In this Brief Report, we describe an evaluation of and revisions to a rubric adapted from the Jacobs et al.'s (1981) ESL COMPOSITION PROFILE, with four rubric categories and 20-point rating scales, in the context of an intensive English program writing placement test. Analysis of 4 years of rating data (2016-2021, including 434 essays) using…

For agencies that deliver high-stakes Second Language (L2) proficiency exams, a research agenda has been undertaken for years to examine the role of rater, task, and rubric as sources of variability into their performance assessments (Lee, 2006; Sawaki & Sinharay, 2013; Xi, 2007; Xi & Mollaun, 2006). However, these challenges are more…

This paper reports findings from a project called "The National Panel of Raters" (NPR) that took place within a writing test programme in Norway (2010-2016). A recent research project found individual differences between the raters in the NPR. This paper reports results from an explorative follow up-study where 63 NPR members were…

Previous research in second language writing has shown that when scoring performance assessments even trained raters can exhibit significant differences in severity. When raters disagree, using discussion to try to reach a consensus is one popular form of score resolution, particularly in contexts with limited resources, as it does not require…

A short training program for evaluating responses to an essay writing task consisted of scoring 20 training essays with immediate feedback about the correct score. The same scoring session also served as a certification test for trainees. Participants with little or no previous rating experience completed this session and 14 trainees who passed an…

In the present study, aspects of the measurement of writing are disentangled in order to investigate the validity of inferences made on the basis of writing performance and to describe implications for the assessment of writing. To include genre as a facet in the measurement, we obtained writing scores of 12 texts in four different genres for each…

The "e-rater"® automated essay scoring system is used operationally in the scoring of "TOEFL iBT"® independent and integrated tasks. In this study we explored the psychometric added value of reporting four trait scores for each of these two tasks, beyond the total e-rater score.The four trait scores are word choice, grammatical…

This paper attempts to demonstrate the differences in writing between International English Language Testing System (IELTS) bands 6.0, 6.5 and 7.0. An analysis of exemplars provided from the IELTS test makers reveals that IELTS 6.0, 6.5 and 7.0 writers can make a minimum of 206 errors, 96 errors and 35 errors per 1000 words. The following section…

Whether foreign language writing is rated using analytic rating scales or holistically, the organization of ideas is invariably one of the aspects assessed. However, it is unclear what raters are sensitive to when rating writing for organization. Which do they value more highly, the physical aspects of organization, such as paragraphing and the…

This report presents work on the development of a new corpus of non-native English writing. It will be useful for the task of native language identification, as well as grammatical error detection and correction, and automatic essay scoring. In this report, the corpus is described in detail.

In this research, we investigated the suitability of implementing "e-rater"® automated essay scoring in a high-stakes large-scale English language testing program. We examined the effectiveness of generic scoring and 2 variants of prompt-based scoring approaches. Effectiveness was evaluated on a number of dimensions, including agreement…

Business schools are often criticized for the inadequate writing skills of their graduates. Improving writing skills involves first understanding the current skill level of students. This research attempts to provide insights into the effectiveness of the current method of assessing writing skills in a school of business at a large regional…

Across the field of educational assessment the case has been made for alternatives to the multiple-choice item type. Most of the alternative types of items require a subjective evaluation by a rater. The reliability of this subjective rating is a key component of these types of alternative items. In this paper, measures of reliability are…