1.4 Potential contributions

The current study has been designed with a view to contribute in the following four perspectives.

First,results of the study will contribute to building up comprehensive profiles of the writing performances of pre-service EFL teachers characterized by their actual writing performances.Moreover,the link between pre-service EFL teachers at different levels of writing proficiency and their judgments of student writing will be established.Research on teachers'writing proficiency stands to have an important impact at all levels of language education,and implications of teachers'proficiency for student learning have the potential to connect various research strands in the field.

Second,previous studies have indicated differences existing in teachers'qualitative assessment criteria on students'writing.The research design of the present study is expected to offer a comprehensive and diverse illustration of the scoring behaviors of pre-service teachers in their judgments of student writing.

Third,the study will identify distinguishing features of pre-service EFL teachers'writing performances through discourse analysis.In addition,think-aloud protocols are used to elicit teachers'verbalized behaviors of assessment of students writing instead of relying solely on analysis of written products of students.This will provide direct evidence of how pre-service EFL teachers judge student writing in terms of their focus on aspects of writing and of their decision-making processes to arrive at a final score.

Fourth,findings derived from the analysis will contribute specifically to L2 writing instruction,training of teacher language proficiency,and improvement of teachers'assessment literacy in the context of both high-stakes and classroom writing assessments.