Assessors’ Bias in the Assessment of Writing Skills

This paper is based on a study conducted to understand if there is an assessor’s bias while scoring writing skills at the college level. It starts with the hypothesis that the assessor’s bias plays a role in assessing writing skills. A group of experienced teachers of English at a reputed higher educational institution in Coimbatore, India, were asked to respond to a questionnaire. The results were converted into a pie chart and analysed by comparing percentages using four different criteria – ideas and topic development, cohesion and paragraphing, grammar and punctuation, spelling and vocabulary, and whole vs the parts. The analysis and discussion of results seem to prove our hypothesis right. There seems to be a positive bias favouring ideas and topic development and grammar and punctuation over cohesion and paragraphing, spelling and vocabulary.