The effects of learning oriented assessment on academic writing

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of learning-oriented assessment (LOA) on the academic writing ability of EFL students (N:40) during a 12-week in the semester of 2019-2020 academic year in the context of a higher education. Within a pretest-posttest intact group design, the experimental group received instruction following the principles of LOA, and the comparison group received routine procedures for academic writing. This is a quantitative experimental design. The test of normality, Kolmogorov-Smirnov, Mann-Whitney Tests and Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test were administered in order to see the significance of the intervention the data for this study included scores of a pretest, several assessments, and a posttest at the beginning, during, and at the end of instruction, respectively. The prompt for both pre and post-tests required participants to write argumentative essays. To rate the writing tasks, we followed the rubrics developed by the testing office of the institution. The findings revealed that the experimental group outscored the comparison group indicating the effectiveness of LOA procedures in student learning. Further, the findings indicated that implementing LOA could have significant implications and applications for EFL writing education.