Search

Despite the urgency of assessment instruments in teaching foreign language writing, evidence regarding how teachers develop assessment instruments and maintain their quality, particularly for comparison and contrast essay writing based on a genre-based approach to teachers’ classroom practices, is scantily reported. To address this empirical need, this article showcases how a set of teacher-made assessment instruments for a comparison and contrast essay based on a genre-based approach in a writing essay course at a public university in East Java was carefully and deliberately developed. To attain the research objective, this research enacted design-based research (DBR) inspired by Cavallaro and Sembiante (2021). In addition to content validity, face validity and inter-rater reliability were ensured by involving ten students, three fellow writing teachers, and two trained raters. This assessment instrument development project produces a set of valid formative assessment instruments, comprising a writing prompt and scoring rubric. The inter-rater reliability shows a high degree of positive correlation with a reliability coefficient of 0.862 from a correlational analysis based on Pearson correlation coefficient. This in-practice assessment instrument development can be used as a reference, contributing to the teachers’ assessment literacy development. It also serves as a valuable model for future researchers to develop and expand nested classroom assessment scholarship. A well-structured validity and reliability process of assessment instrument development will practically enhance the teaching practices in the essay writing course in particular and EFL teaching in general.

The massive shift to online learning due to the COVID-19 outbreak has opened wider possibilities of telecollaboration among English learners through global online communities. Responding to the limited empirical evidence on what drives these learners to learn beyond their geographical boundaries, this phenomenological case study intends to delve into the English learners' motivational self-system in a global-speaking online community (GSOC). Recruiting six learners from different countries, the empirical data were gathered from participant observation, questionnaires, and interviews. Concepts of the L2 motivational self-system and international posture were employed to inspire the thematic analysis. The findings elucidate that the participants tended to disclose their stronger L2 ideal selves compared to their L2 ought-to selves. Further, they experienced multifaceted discrepancies in their English learning trajectories and saw GSOC as one of their motivating endeavors to decrease these discrepancies. They reflected that the outbreak had provided them with a broader opportunity to virtually learn from others mediated by technology. The international posture and instrumental motivation appeared to be a motivational construct in their L2 ideal projected selves. In contrast, the integrative construct was likely unable to exert its explanatory power in this context. To this end, some implications are also discussed accordingly.

Promoting Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) through telecollaborative exchange (TE) in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) milieu has attracted many scholars. Despite a voluminous literature study on TE in EFL settings, studies on how teachers implement TE and perceive these intercultural exchange meetings are scant. Thus, this case study aimed to fill the empirical void by delving into the implementation of TE in non-Anglophone settings mediated by "Zoom" and the teachers' perceptions of these intercultural exchanges enactment. To meet these research objectives, four English teachers from Croatia, Indonesia, Belarus, and India were recruited. Empirical data were amassed through observational field notes and interviews. The study showcased how the teachers organized TE and revealed their performed roles to scaffold the students in TE. The findings also portrayed their perception of TE grounded within their motives and pedagogical beliefs. Drawing upon these results, the study offers some implications for teacher professional development.