English language practitioners have long relied on intuition-based scales for rating EFL/ESL writing. As these scales lack an empirical basis, the scores they generate tend to be unreliable, which results in invalid interpretations. Given the significance of the genre of description and the fact that the relevant literature does not introduce any data-based analytic scales for rating EFL descri...

Writing assessments often make use of analytic rating scales to describe the criteria for different performance levels. However, the use of such rating scales requires a level of interpretation by raters and if several raters are involved, the reliability of examinee scores can be significantly affected (Engelhard, 1992; McNamara 1996). Variability between raters is partly managed by rater trai...

conclusions following cabg, the most severity of pain was reported at surgical incision on time t2. pain began to decrease from the third day following the operation. age, sex and bmi along with operation-related factors such as duration of cbp or chest tube drainage may affect the pain pattern following cabg surgery. patients and methods the present study was conducted on 138 patients who unde...

background and aims. different factors affect children’s behavior during dental treatment, including psychological and behavioral characteristics. the aim of this study was to evaluate the correlation of self-concept on child’s anxiety and behavior during dental treatment in 4 to 6-year-old children. materials and methods. a total of 235 preschoolers aged 4 to 6 years were included in this desc...

PURPOSE To evaluate the effect of preference assessment method on treatment recommended by an individualized decision-analytic model for early prostate cancer. METHODS Health state preferences were elicited by time tradeoff, rating scale, and a power transformation of the rating scale from 63 men ages 55 to 75. The authors used these values in a Markov model to determine whether radical prost...

the favorable gains gleaned from the provision of pre-task planning time (ptp) have struck a chord with sla researchers as they try to manipulate task features to promote language production and development. in a similar vein, the present study is a two-fold attempt to first compare the effect of the length of pre-task planning time on discourse-analytic measures in narrative written production...

conclusions the layout of whiteboard in classrooms can be effective in causing student’s neck pain. in this study, the suitable height of installation of whiteboard was determined and it is recommended to be used in classrooms. background the mismatch between equipments and anthropometric dimensions of users is one of the issues that can be effective on development of musculoskeletal disorders ...

In EFL programs, rating scales used in writing assessment are often constructed by intuition. Intuition-based scales tend to provide inaccurate and divisive ratings of learners’ writing performance. Hence, following an empirical approach, this study attempted to develop a rating scale for elementary-level writing at an EFL program in Saudi Arabia. Towards this goal, 98 students’ essays were sco...