Until a recent date, writing diagnostic test which measures learners' current ability has been carried out in product oriented assessment. Product oriented assessment evaluates only students' writing samples and there is a time limit during the test....
Until a recent date, writing diagnostic test which measures learners' current ability has been carried out in product oriented assessment. Product oriented assessment evaluates only students' writing samples and there is a time limit during the test. However, the process oriented approach which emphasizes the process of test appeared as the perspective of knowledge changed from contentcentered learning to methodcentered learning. With this change, teachers have realized that the timed essay test fails to bring out a complete picture of someone's writing ability. Therefore, process oriented assessment is rapidly replacing the timed essay test in many classrooms. However, there are not enough reliable source that assures the effectiveness of process oriented writing test. Thus, this study investigated the difference of results between timed test and process oriented test to examine the practical effect of process oriented test.
The study had two research goals: 1) to investigate a gap of results between timed test and process oriented test. If there are some difference, what features-structure, content, words-will be different, 2) how learners perceive and appreciate two tests.
For this study, 47 university students who major in English education in Seoul participated in March, 2010. On the first day, students took timed test for 40minutes. On the second day, they took process oriented test for 105minutes. When learners underwent a process oriented test, they wrote their first draft for 40minutes at first. Then, they paired up, and they had a discussion on the topic freely with partners. After the discussion, they gave and took feedback about their first draft with peers. Lastly, they revised their writing based on the activities-discussion and peer feedback. Following the two tests, students were asked to complete a questionnaire about their cognition and attitude of timed test and process oriented test. Students' writing tasks were rated with a 9scale instrument in terms of four features: Organization, Content, Vocabulary Use and Holistic feature. Two graders including this investigator scored writing tasks, and found the average of each result using the scoring guide. Next, the results of timed test and process oriented test were compared.
In order to analyze the results of two tests, descriptive statistics and ttest were used. Also, frequency statistics was used to analyze the questionnaire.
The summary of results drawn from this study are as follows.
First, in terms of structure, content, vocabulary use and total score, process oriented test was higher than timed test.
Second, although the ratings of the process oriented test increased in all of the sections: structure, content, vocabulary use and total score, only the section of vocabulary use demonstrated statistical significance. Namely, process oriented test had an effect on all of the sections, but it affected only the section of vocabulary use.
Third, results of the questionnaire showed that learners have character of recursion and simultaneity when they write generally. In addition, learners had more positive thought about process oriented test than timed test.
It is concluded that there is statistical significance in only the section of vocabulary use. Therefore, it is hard to say that there is the practical effect of process oriented test. However, it could be inferred that features of test type have an influence on the test results because the ratings of the process oriented test increased in all of the sections. Besides, the results of this study showed the possibility of application of process oriented test in diagnostic test, based on students' positive cognition of process oriented test and statistical significance in the section of vocabulary use.