Filling the understanding gap of the misplacement of ESL learner's writing placement test

ESL 학습자의 쓰기배치고사상의 오배치에 따른 이해도 차이 연구

This study investigates the effect of misplacement in a written Computer-delivered ESL Placement Test (CEPT) context. The study aims to address the following two research questions: a) which scoring rubric features cause the misplacement of ESL learner's writing scores? and b) which scoring rubric features improve ESL learner's writing scores? Thirty-four international examinees took the test and participated in surveys at the University of Illinois. Twelve examinees of them attended the CEPT workshop test. In the workshop test, they carried out self-evaluation on their first essays using a scoring rubric and compared with expert raters' results. After the workshop, the examinees responded to a survey and interview. For the first research question, the results of the survey and interview addressed that the majority disagreed with the raters' rating results. The self-evaluation results also indicated that their misunderstanding of organization feature caused the misplacement. For the second question, the CEPT workshop scores were improved due to the score improvement in the organization feature while the contribution of other features to the total scores was little. Most of the examinees pointed out that a lesson on the scoring rubric enhanced their understanding of the writing features of the rubric so that their placement scores were generally improved.