Examining Variability in EFL Writing Rating: The Role of Personality Types, Background, and Scoring Methods

In today's world, effective written communication can be considered a necessary skill for English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners. Furthermore, writing assessment has always been a challenging problem for teachers and raters. In the light of the foregoing, this research endeavors to examine the role of personality traits, rubrics, and scoring methods in the rating of Iranian EFL students’ writings. To this end, data were collected from an initial sample consisting of 120 raters including both male and female IELTS instructors and EFL teachers teaching in English language institutes. Then 85 participants were selected based on the variability of their background to act as raters. A quasi-experimental and survey design was chosen to examine the variability and probable relations between and within the levels. This was done through a hierarchical model to investigate the relations beyond one level, thus including both a holistic rating scale and an analytic rating scale. The results revealed that multi-regression modelling was found the best model to overcome the deficiencies of the previous approaches. Besides, the findings showed that the multiple-trait scoring method specified more finely among the learners' writing capabilities, though both of these methods measured the same ability.