The effectiveness of learner-oriented assessment on source use of reading-to-write tasks among secondary school EFL writers

Integrated writing essays which require students to write an essay based on given reading source(s) have gained in popularity in assessing second language writing because they are similar with the actual academic writing tasks that students often encounter at universities. However, previous scholarship on integrated writing tasks focused on the context of large-scale language assessment where the assessment outcomes are often used to make high-stakes decisions, such as admitting into a university program. There is a scarcity of research that investigates the context of classroom-based assessment where the assessment outcomes are used to inform teaching and learning. This dissertation aimed to fill the gap by studying learning-oriented assessment (LOA), a classroom-based assessment process in which assessment is used to promote better learning. Specifically, the study investigated whether and to what degree LOA improved secondary school English as a foreign language (EFL) writers’ source use on integrated writing essays in a writing workshop. The reason for focusing on source use was because reading sources(s) play a crucial role in shaping writing in the integrated writing tasks.

Ten secondary school EFL writers at an international high school in China participated in the study. Their language proficiency ranged from beginning to high-intermediate levels. The reason for targeting secondary school EFL learners is due to the dearth of scholarship on the use of integrated writing tasks with this population as current research mainly focuses on adult English language learners (ELLs). These participants attended a brief introduction and assessment training, wrote three reading-to-write tasks, conducted self-assessment, received my assessment and feedback, and submitted a revision for each essay. A post-task interview was conducted with each participant at the end of the study to explore their perceptions of the LOA approach. Data was analyzed qualitatively.

The results indicated that participants benefitted differently from this LOA-structured writing workshop, including those who made consistent progress, those who made fluctuating progress, and those who made limited progress. All writers demonstrated their efforts in incorporating instructor feedback in immediate revision and subsequent writing. However, their development, especially the development of those who made limited progress by the end of the study, was greatly hindered by their lack of an in-depth understanding of the evaluation criteria. Their confusion about the criteria made both their self-assessment and their understanding of instructor feedback less effective. Although not all participants benefited greatly from the study, the research contributed to the current understanding of both integrated writing tasks and LOA because it is one of the few that looks at learning within integrated skill assessment. It also provides the impetus for further examination on the effectiveness of LOA. Moreover, the research has the potential to open conversations for considering when to prepare EFL writers to succeed in writing academic papers in a western country.