A Rating Scale Development for Writing Assessment for Korean Learners of English

Jyi-Yeon Yi

The aim of this study is threefold: to show what current circumstances for writing assessment of special- purpose-secondary school students in Korea are like; to deal with why a rating scale for them should be developed separately even though there are many published rating scales available; and to show how this could be approached.

The first part of this study points out that there is not any suggested rating scale for English teachers to use in practice, even though the course of English Writing and its textbooks have been established under the national curriculum by the Ministry of Education of Korea. However, in the light of the results of a questionnaire survey, as well as several theoretical observations, existing rating scales are not seen as desirable for these students. Given this context, development of a separate rating scale for this population is a legitimate issue which will be examined in this study through a data-based approach in which the rating scale development is based on the analysis of the students’ writing samples, rather than by a priori methodologies. The second part of this study deals with how writing samples were obtained and how they would be analysed to develop a scale.