Achieving objectivity in assessing students’ essays: towards an automatic writing assessment (The case of the third year English LMD students at the University of Sidi-bel-Abbes)

Abstract

Designing the most successful method to assess the EFL learners’ writing abilities has become a controversial issue. An enormous amount of researches have attempted an effective and reliable writing assessment approach to interfere so as to boost the learners’ writing proficiency. Yet, both the EFL teacher and the EFL learner are still confused about the subject matter. The former becomes troubled at watching identical inappropriate features happening yet again. While, the latter frequently notices that his progress is slow with similar errors recurring. Consequently, the present contribution is a humble attempt to improve the reliability and objectivity of the teacher’s assessment to the written language through generating an analytic assessing formula. Such a procedure may scrutinize every aspect of the learner’s writing aptitudes. Thus, the teacher may have an opportunity to identify his learners’ hindrances and to design the appropriate feedback. Besides, the study draws attention to the option of involving the computer technology in enhancing the analytic assessment reliability .The investigation has shown that most EFL teachers are assessing their learners’ writing holistically, for that reason no effective feedback could be designed and certainly no improvement could take place. On the other hand, the integration of an analytic assessing procedure converted into computer programme may increase assessment reliability, enhance the feedback effectiveness and without doubt boost the learners’ writing performance.