Assessing Advanced Persian Language Learner's Written Production:Developing a Detailed Rubric

Designing and preparing of items for writing tests is not too difficult, but after the test session, assessing the learners’ written productions could be a burdensome task which would make it difficult to judge their performance. Sometimes this difficulty is mainly due to the lack of or inappropriateness of detailed assessment rubrics which would provide raters with clear criteria and assessment guidelines. The present research aimed to design a detailed assessment rubric for evaluating student writings which included three categories of grammar, vocabulary size, and spelling. More than 100 texts written by advanced Persian language learners in the Persian Language Center of Imam Khomeini International University were collected. Although this rubric is not a final and clear-cut rubric, it can be used as a basis for future empirical studies and development of more detailed and comprehensive rubrics in this area. Since, in rubrics, the weight of errors, the attitudes of raters, and the raters’ methods of dealing with written productions are shown, they could be used to acquaint language learners with the criteria applied for assessing written productions, and consequently to improve their test taking strategies.