Chapter3　Rater Judgments in Writing Assessment

3.1 Introduction

In the previous chapter,the writing proficiency of pre-service EFL teachers has been discussed from two perspectives:the construct derived from the requirements/standards of language teachers regarding the writing proficiency;and the discourse-analytic measures of each feature for quantitative analysis.The purpose of this chapter is to extensively review studies devoted to rater judgments in the context of writing assessment.The review will be organized from three perspectives.One is concerned with raters'evaluations and interpretations regarding their scoring decisions and thought processes in the rating process.Rather than focusing on the final rating scores,this orientation to investigating rater judgments perceives raters as people who might follow different criteria and mental activities to arrive at a final judgment.Major findings of these studies are discussed together with limitations,further justifying the significance of the current study.Second,potential factors that affect raters'rating behaviors are identified and examined.Third,the applications of the Many-Facet Rasch Model(MFRM)and think-aloud protocols in examining rater judgments in writing assessment are also discussed.