Öğrenme yönelimli değerlendirmenin öğrencilerin akademik yazma becerisi üzerindeki etkileri

The purpose of the present research was to investigate the effects of learning-oriented assessment (LOA) on the academic writing ability of 40 EFL students at the School of Foreign Languages at Erzurum Technical University. In addition to utilizing an experimental pre-post design, qualitative sources of data were also collected for developing a questionnaire to investigate the participants' attitude change towards LOA. The independent variable (IV) was the type of academic writing instruction and the dependent variable (DV) was the academic writing ability of EFL students. The treatment, or implementation of the LOA procedure, lasted for 12 weeks. The instructional materials were the same for both groups. Both experimental and comparison groups received achievement tests as a pre-test, a post-test, comparison-contrast essays, cause-effect essays, argumentative essays, and timed writing quizzes under routine procedures. In addition, the experimental group' received several additional LOA measures on including self-regulated tasks; (reflective diary and reflective journal, same day feedback, weekly personal response, portfolio, participation in weekly tutorials, patchwork texts) and peer and group tasks (team projects, (group critique and group assessment), mini projects (peer critique and peer assessment), in-class feedback, and computer-mediated collaborative writing. Also, two writing tests on 'Argumentative Essay' were administered as the pre-test and post-test. Quantitative data was collected from students' overall grades and their ratings on the questionnaire, qualitative data was gathered from individual interviews and focus group meetings. The findings of the research were significant in major respects. The experimental group that received LOA treatment was more successful in academic writing than the comparison group. Before the treatment students got low scores in writing but after the treatment the scores significantly improved for both of the groups. Both groups in the study received significantly higher scores in with and without LOA treatment. However, a significant difference (t (39) = 6,149, Sig= .000, p<.05) was found between experimental and comparison groups on the post-test scores. That is, the LOA treatment had significantly raised the writing scores of the experimental group compared to the comparison group. Also, according to the findings of the repeated measures ANOVA, some of the LOA tasks were found to be more effective compared to other LOA tasks. Lastly, the result of the paired samples t-test revealed that there was a significant difference (t = -17.64, Sig= .000, p<.05), between the attitudes of students to LOA before and after the treatment. This indicates that students' perception of LOA tasks and the items regarding LOA has changed in a positive way. KEY WORDS: Learning Oriented Assessment, Academic Writing Ability, Argumentative Essay