Development and Preliminary Validation of a CEFR-Aligned Evaluation Checklist for Job Application Writing

This study presents the development and preliminary validation of the Job Application Writing Evaluation Checklist (JAWEC), a CEFR-aligned instrument designed to assess job application letters produced by graduating university students in an English for Professional Purposes (EPP) course. Although the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) has been extensively applied to academic writing assessment, its application to professional writing genres, such as job application letters, remains underexplored. To address this gap, the JAWEC was developed through the integration of CEFR B2+ descriptors, established genre frameworks for job application writing, and established principles of checklist-based assessment design. The instrument was refined through expert consultation to ensure content relevance, clarity, and applicability. To provide preliminary empirical support, the JAWEC was piloted with 25 student-produced job application letters independently assessed by two experienced EPP instructors. Inter-rater reliability analysis revealed good agreement, suggesting that the instrument can be applied with reasonable consistency across raters in this pilot context. The results suggest that the JAWEC provides a theoretically grounded and pedagogically practical instrument for formative and summative assessment of job application writing, with the potential to enhance feedback practices and support students’ workplace communication readiness.