Reflections upon the Writing Activities in the ELT Textbook New Prospects

Abstract

Assessment covers all sorts of activities that teachers engage in to evaluate their pupils’ progress and learning needs. Though it is an integral component of teaching, it is regrettable that many programmes in EFL teaching do not require assessment courses. Thus, several teachers enter the classroom without a thorough grounding in assessment issues. Yet, courses on teaching writing often devote a limited amount of time to the discussion of assessment. Therefore, it is too complex to choose rating scales and delineate criteria for valid and reliable essay evaluation. Furthermore, teachers need to determine an effective and formal method of assessing writing ability and specify an appropriate rating scale to serve in the teaching-learning assessment process in the writing classroom. The present study is an attempt to investigate the pedagogical tools for improving our pupils’ writing ability through an atomistic assessing system. In terms of the general layout, the work comprises four chapters. Chapter one introduces the purpose of this study and offers a contextual background and pedagogical instructions related to the textbook New Prospects. It also describes variables, tools and procedures the researcher has relied on to shed light on the problematic. Chapter two reviews relevant studies related to the research topic. It explains test approaches, formats and specifications in assessing writing ability. It also introduces attributes of grading methods, describes the holistic and analytic scoring scales. The second method has been given clear emphasis. Chapter three addresses the methodology, describes the study participants, data collection procedures and the data analysis. It offers conclusions and implications based upon study results with an emphasis on the different essay tests. Chapter four makes recommendations regarding the findings mentioned in chapter three. It calls for an attempt to realize an effective writing teaching and assessment through testing and scoring guidelines.