Developing an exemplar anthology and online exemplar platform for IELTS writing

In English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) writing, students express difficulties in producing high quality essays. Having a mindset of ‘play the game by its rule’, students perceive a clear understanding of the assessment standards as an important step towards producing good written work; this is especially true when students are preparing themselves for high-stakes language tests namely IELTS. ESL writing research has found that the assessment standards of writing, which is a kind of ‘tacit knowledge’, is ‘difficult to transfer verbally or in writing’ (Carless & Chan, 2017), but is best illustrated through the use of exemplars. ‘Exemplars’, defined by Royce Sadler, a prominent advocate of the use of exemplars, as ‘key examples chosen so as to be typical of designated levels of quality or competence’ (1987, p. 200), is one of the promising ways to develop students’ understanding of the ambiguous criteria of ‘good work’ because exemplars are ‘concrete embodiment of standards’ (To & Carless, 2015, p. 2). This TDG project aims at developing an exemplar anthology and an online exemplar platform for IELTS Writing (Tasks 1 and 2), which will be used by the PSS to conduct a series of IELTS writing workshops in ASLLC for all EdUHK students.