Webster University in Toshkent Incorporating formative assessment in Iranian efl writing

Methodology.
1. Participant. The data for this study was collected from 34 first-year undergraduate English translation students at a major university in Iran. The participants enrolled in the required 'Grammar and Writing II' course, which focused on helping students write 4–5 paragraph essays in English, taught by the researcher two hours per week over a 16-week semester. All participants were native speakers of Persian, with a mean age of 21.7 years. The participants all passed the prerequisite grammar and writing I course during the first semester of their studies, where they were taught how to write topic sentences and develop them within different organizational patterns such as classification, compare/contrast, and cause/effect.
2. Instructional context. The process genre approach, which combines process and genre approaches to teaching writing, was thought of as the harbor for implementing various formative assessment strategies in this study because traditional approaches to EFL teaching and assessment of writing in Iran do not support the use of formative assessment strategies (Naghdi pour, [25]). The process genre approach to teaching focuses on developing students' linguistic expertise, their understanding of writing techniques like planning, drafting, and revising, and their contextual understanding of language in writing (Badger & White, [ 2]);
(Wang, [42]). A three-session modular instruction was recommended to make it easier to apply formative assessment strategies in the process genre approach's instructional context (Naghdi pour & Ko, [24]). Model essays and follow-up instruction tasks were given and examined during the first session of each module to stimulate discussion about the various components that make up an example of good writing (Parr & Limerick, [28]) and to aid students in recognizing the pertinent generic patterns, rhetorical devices, and lexical resources in each different type of essay (see Schmitt, [34]). After that, they were instructed to brainstorm and combine their ideas as part of the pre-writing step so that they could get a basic idea of the subject before reading, researching, and writing about it at home. Students had to compose at least one essay throughout the term using the most popular rhetorical styles (descriptive, narrative, expository, and argumentative). For each style of essay, students wrote three versions, the second one reflecting peer feedback and the third one reflecting instructor feedback. These versions were evaluated using the IELTS Task 2 Writing analytical assessment scale, which places emphasis on four key areas of task achievement: cohesion and coherence, lexical resources, grammar variety, and correctness (see https://takeielts-britishcouncil-org.library3.webster.edu). Students were given access to this rubric, and they were taught through role-playing to understand and apply these standards when evaluating their own essays and those of their peers. Students brought their written writings to the second session for peer evaluation or peer assessment, as well as to share their writing issues with their peers. Students later revised and submitted their essays for instructor comments during office hours.