Iranian EFL Raters’ Cognitive Processes in Rating IELTS
Speaking Tasks: The Effect of Expertise
Definition of rater effect:
As Myford and Wolfe (2003) stated, raters as human beings are susceptible to biased,
inaccurate, and inconsistent patterns of judgment, which in educational
assessment are known as rater effects
Rater cognition and rating process,
however, were explored in only a limited number of qualitative studies in L2
speaking assessment (Eckes, 2012
Rater cognition studies can be classified into three categories: (Han, 2016).
(1) L2 raters’ focus and feature attention,
(2) L2 raters’ approaches to rating: strategy, style,
(3) L2 raters’ representation of the scoring criteria for aspects of performance
However, (4) the conceptualization of L2 proficiency is not mentioned: e.g., IC studies.
Rater Cognition
Since the early 1990s, research on rater variability has been witnessing a cognitive
shift.
Cumming, et, al. (2002) classified decision making strategies: focus and strategy
Rater cognition (1) and (2)
When discussing the rating strategies, Han’s model is very influential: p47