Marking for process, self-reflection and autonomy: designing item specifications for business writing

This paper describes curricular, pedagogical and assessment-related factors that affect the design and implementation of a grid of ten item specifications for an advanced writing course. The study is located within a second year Business Writing programme of a Bachelor of Arts in English as an Additional Language (EAL). The marking criteria described were created to fulfil a number of purposes simultaneously. These item specifications serve as item descriptors, a focussed curriculum aid or pro forma and an evaluative assessment and feedback tool. As such, they may promote tutor ease without reducing feedback quantity. The item specifications incorporate such skills as self-editing and reflection, collaborative editing, and ability to work independently on improvement of recurrent language errors or features of discourse belonging to a particular genre. The design and implementation stages of this study hypothesise that learners of Business Writing within an EAL Programme benefit from acquiring a range of self-analytic, self-reflective and self-corrective skills to enable them autonomously to draft and reformulate well structured, accurate and professional-looking business texts. Drawing on a range of literature, this paper describes the process of designing and implementing item specifications that prescribe and assess these skills. Next, it introduces main findings from the evaluative implementation stage, and offers rationale for ten criteria chosen for the item specifications.