Developing and Validating Scoring Rubrics for Assessing Research Papers Writing Ability of EFL/ESL Undergraduate Students
Universiti Sains Malaysia
ABSTRACT
To avoid the subjectivity and a risk of reliability, selecting the most suitable method of scoring written texts is important in the evaluation of academic writing ability. Thus, previous authors proposed several methods of marking, namely holistic method, the impression method, error count method, analytic method, etc., for scoring academic writing texts in different genres at various levels. However, very little attention has been paid to identifying effective methods of scoring research papers writing ability. Therefore, this paper aims to propose using analytic method including an attempt to separate various aspects of a composition. Specifically, in this study, analytic scale is proposed to evaluate research papers writing ability of EFL/ ESL undergraduate students. According to this marking scale, writing components, namely content (relevant ideas), organization (structure and coherence), language use (vocabulary and grammar choice), and mechanics use (punctuation and spelling based on APA style) are graded separately. Delphi technique (DT) was used to validate it through the interviews of experts including two boards of ten experienced and qualified lecturers of TESOL and curriculum studies in Can Tho University (CTU), Vietnam and Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM). The results from the interviews revealed that scoring rubrics for the assessment of research papers writing ability were determined. This paper is, therefore believed to contribute to practical applications for research papers reviewers, lecturers, examiners and undergraduate and postgraduate students in EFL/ ESL contexts.
KEYWORDS
Research papers writing ability; scoring rubrics; EFL/ ESL undergraduate students