Leila Ghaderpanahi - English Department, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
Sayyed Mohammad Alavi - , Professor, English Department, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
Hossein Karami - English Department, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

Formative writing assessment can help writing instructors to explore weaknesses and strengths of language learners’ writing performances. The current research aimed to explore firstly writing attributes and secondly examine their reciprocal contribution to one another. To achieve such an objective, the participants (N=۲۰۰) were asked to write about two different topics. One writing sample before treatment was considered as the pre-test and the other after the treatment was considered as the post-test writing sample. Having scrutinized the pre-writing samples, five raters extracted the writing attributes which appeared in pre-test and post-test writing samples. Results indicate that there is a statistically significant difference among the participants’ performances in terms of using writing attributes. The results can be advantageous for both instructors and syllabus designers to provide pedagogical materials which identify particular frailties and notify them about the more troublesome points to concentrate on in the classroom so as to arrange effective education.

Predictive validity, Reciprocal contribution, writing ability, writing assessment, Writing attributes