Abstract:

Assessing learners’ production is demanding as ensuring objectivity requires rigorous work on designing a task that sufficiently elicits learners’ responses, which allows assessors to make appropriate inferences about learners’ abilities using relevant marking scales. Based on the CEFR concepts, scoring rubrics should reflect the illustrations of the particular level, which enables assessors to be as objective as possible and consistent in scoring learners’ performances against the particular descriptors.

The study explores training English student teachers to construct marking scales for levels B1 and B2 to clearly distinguish between two proficiency levels while evaluating learners’ performances in writing. Different expectations cannot be based on the same marking criteria, as they must contain features specific to each reference level.

Student teachers were asked to contribute to marking criteria construction with the intent to make them more familiar with each level and to distinguish nuances relevant to B2 texts that are expected to be written as clear, detailed with the use of a sufficient range of language, linked together with a number of cohesive devices, showing a relatively high degree of grammatical control and those appropriate for B1 such as straightforward connected texts linked into a linear text, having enough language to get by and using a repertoire of frequent grammatical patterns (CEFR/CV, 2020).

Working in two groups, student teachers were asked to design marking criteria. Being given a number of CEFR scales, one group of student teachers focused on descriptors relevant for B1 and another group worked on criteria suitable for B2 learners to have their written performances assessed accordingly. An active approach typical for task-based teaching made student teachers fully engaged in the process of developing descriptors matching two different levels of language proficiency. The achievements of their work and problems they had to cope with will be presented and analysed in the article.

Keywords:

Scoring rubrics, CEFR levels, task-based teaching, developing descriptors.