Analytical Assessments of Foreign Students' Writing

This study investigated the assessment of foreign students' writing by native speaker ESL teachers. The assessment used an analytical scoring technique based on the ESL Composition Profile which contains the following features : Content, Organization, Vocabulary, Language Use, and Mechanics. 210 writing samples were used and evaluated by at least 2 raters each. A multiple regression analysis was performed to investigate how much each component contributed to the total score variance. The analysis indicated that Vocabulary accounted for the largest amount of variance in the total scores (83.75%), with Content, Language Use, Organization, and Mechanics accounting for 8.06%, 4.05%, 2.48% and .29%, respectively. The results are discussed in terms of appropriate instructional strategies for teaching ESL writing.