نسیم قنبری

Rating scale development/validation has been the concern of EFL writing assessment within the last decades. In fact, besides the inner circle voices who encourage the legitimacy and dominance of Native Speaker (NS) norms in all ESL/ EFL contexts, a growing body of current research ask for developing local Non-native Speaker (NNS) rating scales which emphasize incorporating the construct of writing as perceived in the local context. The main argument here turns around validation which by incorporating the realities of the NNS context seek to provide a sound picture of the writing ability of the EFL student writers. However, this practice has faced several problems on different grounds. The very definition of writing construct, the particular scale development procedure, actual application of the scale in the scoring task and reporting the results are some controversial issues that the NNS scale development practice should account for. As a future course of action, present study discusses that as validation is the guiding principle in any scalar definition of writing; therefore, the ultimate goal of getting access to a sound profile of writing ability of the test-takers should not be underestimated by the weaknesses of the NNS scale development practice. Also, aggregation of EFL scale development studies to provide one unified picture of EFL writing assessment is encouraged to guide the right progress of the EFL rating scale development practice in the future.