هومن بیژنی

Due to subjectivity in oral assessment, much concentration has been put on obtaining a satisfactory measure of consistency among raters. However, obtaining consistency might not result in valid decisions. One matter that is at the core of both reliability and validity in oral performance is rater training. Recently, Multifaceted Rasch Measurement (MFRM) has been adopted to address the problem of rater bias and inconsistency; however, no research has incorporated the facets of test takers’ ability, raters’ severity, task difficulty, group expertise, scale criterion category, and test version together in a piece of research along with their two-sided impacts. Moreover, little research has investigated how long rater training effects last. Consequently, this study explored the influence of the training program and feedback by having 20 raters score the oral production, as measured by the CEP (Community English Program) test, produced by 300 test takers in three phases, i.e., before, immediately after and long after the training program. The results indicated that training can lead to higher degrees of interrater reliability and diminished measures of severity/leniency, and biasedness. However, it won't lead the raters into total unanimity, except for making them more self-consistent. Although rater training might result in higher internal consistency among raters, it cannot eradicate individual differences. That is, experienced raters, due to their idiosyncratic characteristics, did not benefit as much as inexperienced ones. This study also showed that the outcome of training might not endure in long run after training; thus, it requires ongoing training letting raters regain consistency.

Performance testing including the use of rating scales has become widespread in the evaluation of second/foreign oral language assessment. However, no study has used Multifaceted Rasch Measurement (MFRM) including the facets of test takers’ ability, raters’ severity, group expertise, and scale category, in one study. 20 EFL teachers scored the speaking performance of 200 test-takers prior and subsequent to a rater training program using an analytic rating scale consisting of fluency, grammar, vocabulary, intelligibility, cohesion, and comprehension categories. The outcome demonstrated that the categories were at different levels of difficulty even after the training program. However, this outcome by no means indicated the uselessness of the training program since data analysis reflected the constructive influence of training in providing enough consistency in raters’ rating of each category of the rating scale at the post-training phase. Such an outcome indicated that raters could discriminate the various categories of the rating scale. The outcomes also indicated that MFRM can result in enhancement in rater training and functionality validation of the rating scale descriptors. The training helped raters use the descriptors of the rating scale more efficiently of its various band descriptors resulting in a reduced halo effect. The findings conveyed that stakeholders had better establish training programs to assist raters in better use of the rating scale categories of various levels of difficulty in an appropriate way. Further research could be done to make a comparative analysis between the outcome of this study and the one using a holistic rating scale in oral assessment.

Learners’ perception of culture on receptive skills more specifically on reading comprehension has been an area facing a big challenge contemporarily. The current research aimed to investigate the cultural perception of Iranian EFL learners on reading comprehension ability. To conduct the study, a mixed-methods design consisting of a questionnaire and interview study was used. Participants, 50 intermediate EFL learners (25 males, 25 females), were randomly selected using Oxford Placement Test. The participants were provided with two passages with different cultural contents (one containing Iranian culture and another containing culture of English spoken countries). Then participants were required to fill in a Likert-scale questionnaire which was distributed through Google form online platform. Also, an interview session was conducted to gather more detailed data. Interviews were recorded, transcribed, and coded to find common themes. Analysis of interview and questionnaire data showed that learners hold similar cultural perceptions on reading comprehension ability by gender and social class has no significant impact on learners' perceptions. The results of the study specified that Iranian EFL learners held a positive attitude towards the integration of cultural materials into reading passages to better comprehend the target language. Moreover, it was seen that gender and social class did not impact significantly learners' cultural perceptions of English reading comprehension. The findings imply that ESL students with various reading levels or capabilities can learn from materials that are culturally diverse, specifically the ones at higher reading proficiency levels.

Although the use of verbal protocols is growing in oral assessment, research on the use of raters’ verbal protocols is rather rare. Moreover, those few studies did not use a mixed-methods design. Therefore, this study investigated the possible impacts of rater training on novice and experienced raters’ application of a specified set of standards in rating. To meet this objective, the study made use of verbal protocols produced by 20 raters who scored 300 test takers’ oral performances and analyzed the data both qualitatively and quantitatively. The outcomes demonstrated that through applying the training program, the raters were able to concentrate more on linguistic, discourse, and phonological features; therefore, the extent of their agreement increased specifically among the inexperienced raters. The analysis of verbal protocols also revealed that training how to apply a well-defined rating scale can foster its use for raters both validly and reliably. Various groups of raters approach the task of rating in different ways, which cannot be explored through pure statistical analysis. Thus, think-aloud verbal protocols can shed light on the vague sides of the issue and add to the validity of oral language assessment. Moreover, since the results of this study showed that inexperienced raters can produce protocols of higher quality and quantity in the use of macro and micro strategies to evaluate test takers’ performances, there is no evidence based on which decision makers should exclude inexperienced raters solely because of their lack of adequate experience.