Evaluating (CAF): Complexity, Accuracy, Fluency Development of Writing Skill Among Iranian Language Learners as a Foreign Language (2013 - 2014)

Dr Mahdi Dahmardeh                            Ms Niloufar Shahmirzadi

One of the concerns in language testing is the extent to which measuring the same constructs, over certain time across different groups of test takers in an EFL situation. According to Manchón & de Haan (2008), both EFL and longitudinal studies are relatively rare, especially the writing skill, so as to explore valid and reliable developmental features.
In line with that many scholars believe that the constructs of second or foreign language performance and proficiency are multi-componential in nature, to analyse performance on a task at one time with stability of performance over time. These principal and fundamental dimensions can be adequately, and comprehensively, captured by the controversial notions of complexity, accuracy and fluency. (Skehan 1998; Ellis 2003, 2008; Ellis and Barkhuizen 2005; Ortega and Byrnes 2008). Skehan (1996) proposed that because learners have limited processing capacity, they will need to prioritise and that this leads them to focus on one aspect of performance at the expense of others. This can explain why some studies suggest further research.
Therefore, considering the scarcity of scientific and convincing evidence to analyse CAF-Complexity, Accuracy, Fluency-in writing skill, the present study will scrutinise a large number of writing of EFL learners to pave the way both for analytic scoring of language practitioners, and highlighting the trend of foreign language learners’ writing development.
Moreover, it will be plausible to observe if there is a nonlinear relationship among these three dimensions, and a learner’s improvement in repeating a task from a target-language perspective.