Abstract
Research on writing assessment has proved that there is a strong association between the teachers’ beliefs and practices. This study set out to investigate how Tunisian EFL writing instructors’ beliefs influence their grading practices. Ten experienced writing instructors from five departments of English in state universities in Tunis took part in the study. The data consisted of classroom observations, a semi-structured interview, and a sample of graded essays written by undergraduate students of English. The findings provide evidence for the influence of beliefs on the participants’ grading practices and point to an inconsistency between the professed and attributed beliefs. Analysis of data provided from the different sources indicated a wide gap between the participants’ teaching practices and their perceptions of writing ability. Lack of training and limited assessment literacy are the main causes behind the development of the incongruous beliefs. The chapter concludes by stressing the importance of training and the need for more research on writing assessment and teachers’ beliefs in the Tunisian EFL context.
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Appendices
Appendix 1: Essay 1
Topic: Self-immolation has become a very frequent form of protest in post-revolutionary Tunisia. Explain your position on the issue.
Essay:
As a result of dictatorship, many people rebelled and break out with silence. Self-immolation wasn’t as efficient as many people thought it to be for many reasons. it represents a way to violence, it doesn’t calm down problems and religiously prohibited.
Self-immolation is a kind of violence since it requires the use of fire. Immolating oneself represent a sort of showing people how to use violence against the government. In fact, it is a pressure made on the government to show political leaders the power of violence that a citizen can produce. Apart from this, Self-immolation contributes in teaching children how to use violence against their parents. So, Self-immolation is not only a sort of physical violence but also a psychological one on children.
Socially estimated, Self-immolation is not considered as a solution to stop problems. In contrast, this violent act will increase tension within the society. People will feel pity for the dead person. Others will disagree with the issue. Thus, Self-immolation was far from being a solution, it may cause strikes and other protests. It may cause anger within people who will not take an easy or peaceful way to solve the problem. The government as well, will not make logical decisions since it is under horrible pressure.
Religiously speaking, Self-immolation was considered illegal by many religious people. In the islamic religion, Self-immolation is killing oneself which ultimetly considered as committing suicide. As it is well known, the islamic religion views suicide as something forbidden. In fact, our souls are gifts given to us to protect them and give them the best thing they deserve and not to extinct them. For many religious, killing oneself is among the horrible sins that a human being can commit. Therefore, Self-immolation was religiously unacceptable in many societies.
To sum up, Self-immolation is far from being a peaceful way to express oneself or protest. Instead, self-expression may be another solution for peaceful state and avoiding dictatorship.
Appendix 2: Prompts for the Teacher Interview
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1.
How long have you been teaching writing?
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2.
Did you get any training in teaching, testing and grading writing?
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3.
Which approach to writing do you adopt in your classes? Why?
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4.
Do you use a specific textbook or a compiled file?
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5.
How much time do your students spend writing during the writing classes?
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6.
Have your teaching practices changed over the years? How?
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7.
Which assessment tools do you use (essays, portfolios, objective tests, indirect test/timed tasks, free writing)?
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8.
Do you think that these tools help you provide accurate/objective evaluation?
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9.
Have your assessment practices changed over the years?
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10.
How do you score the students’ writing?
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11.
How many times do you read the essay? Why?
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12.
Do you correct/highlight errors? What type of errors? What are the most serious errors?
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13.
Do you provide your students with feedback? Why? What do you often comment upon?
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14.
Which of the following items do you focus most on: content, organization, language, cohesion, punctuation, and spelling? Why?
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Ben Hedia, N. (2020). How Writing Teachers’ Beliefs Influence Grading Practices. In: McCallum, L., Coombe, C. (eds) The Assessment of L2 Written English across the MENA Region. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53254-3_7
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