نسیم قنبری

This reflective essay examines writing assessment as perceived within the three paradigms of Standard English (Davies, 2002), World Englishes (WEs, henceforth) (Lowenberg, 2002) and English as an International Language (EIL, henceforth(Canagarajah, 2006). In each of the perspectives, the way construct of writing is theorized and then informs the assessment practice are critically investigated. Upon reviewing the three stances on writing assessment, the author argues that in the today’s post-colonial and post-modern world with drastically new communicative demands, the Standard English perspective which considers the educated native speaker as the only accepted norm does not fit the realities of the writing assessment. Also, WEs perspective assessment proposal which advocate the inclusion of a variety of local norms in the theory and practice of writing assessment seems impossible in practice. Finally, drawing on EIL view it is discussed that to meet the new demands of written communication in the present globalized world with no border between the native and non-native speakers, rating scales in writing assessment should be revised in a way to include new communicative needs such as negotiation strategies, sociolinguistic sentivity, accommodation skills, language awareness, etc. The article concludes by raising some research problems for the future investigations.