Scoring Second Language Spoken and Written Performance: Issues, Options and Directions

Scoring Second Language Spoken and Written Performance provides a useful introduction for graduate students, researchers, test developers, other practitioners and teachers to a topic which has dominated the field of language assessment over many decades.

Speaking and writing effectively are widely recognised as important skills in many contexts and for many purposes - personal, educational and professional. Because these skills are considered important in second and foreign language learning contexts, they are often included in performance assessments. The scoring of such performances is, however, a complex undertaking and has attracted much attention, in both first and second language learning contexts. The increasing use of automated scoring systems has added to this complexity in recent years. It is therefore all the more surprising that there is no single available book that provides an overview of this area. This volume draws together the latest literature on the topic of scoring second language performances. It focuses on issues relating to rater-mediated assessments and sets out consideration in relation to automated scoring and other technology-based systems which are increasingly used in this field.