Alternative Assessment Procedures in Iranian EFL Writing Classes: The Washback Effect and Learners’ Attitudes

This study aimed to investigate the washback effect of three alternative assessment procedures, namely oral-conferences, portfolios, and corpora-based feedback on the writing achievement and attitudes of Iranian EFL university learners. The participants taking part in the study were 156 native Iranian students in a mixed Reading-Writing course. Through the two three-month semesters, the learners were studied in terms of three experimental and one control groups. It should be mentioned that revision was a major component of the pedagogy and learners were asked to incorporate feedback into their revision processes. The findings revealed that the aforementioned assessment procedures led to a significantly better performance of the participants and created a considerable change in their attitudes.