Student writing assessment: looking into teachers´ criteria and beliefs

San Juan

Conferencia; 41st FAAPI Annual Conference. EFL as a Multidisciplinary Endeavour: Growing through Collaboration; 2016

Asociación San Juan de Profesores de Inglés, San Juan

Assessment and evaluation are essential components of the learning process, as they determine the necessary accreditation for students to participate actively and properly in the educational community. The impact of evaluation is a problem that continues to be explored, since it is a reality on which teachers and researchers should reflect in a systematic way. In the case of the process of evaluation of writing in a foreign language, many specialists stress the multiplicity of external and internal factors that intervene in such process, among which teachers? conception of the writing ability stands out. In this presentation, we will first make reference to current research on writing assessment and to different ways of assessing and grading student writing. We will continue by describing the objectives and procedure of a research project we are currently conducting at a higher education institution in Argentina, the purpose of which is to study the practices, attitudes and beliefs of the teachers that carry out the process of evaluation of writing. The data gathered from teacher reports as well as from interviews will be presented and the results analyzed in the light of previous research in the field and the specific characteristics and needs of our educational context. Finally, we will communicate the results of our research, together with a reflection on the importance of ensuring the validity and uniformity of evaluation criteria in academic writing in English as a foreign language.