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Published:
Oct 18, 2013DOI:
10.4314/jlt.v47i1.4Keywords:
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Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
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The development and validation of a rating scale for ESL essay writing
Abstract
This article describes an empirical procedure for developing and validating
a rating scale for assessing essays in English as a second language. The
study was motivated by a concern for the validity of the scoring grid currently used to assess ESL essay writing at Grade 12 in the final end-of-year examination in South Africa. Following an argument-based validation framework based on the work of Kane, we describe the development, trialling and revision of a rating scale. An empirical procedure, based on an analysis of a sample of Grade 12 ESL essay writing, was followed to develop a new rating scale. The validation process is presented in four phases as part of a specification of an evaluation inference.
Keywords: writing assessment, validation, scoring validity, rating scale
development, ESL writing, multi-faceted Rasch measurement
