EFL writing assessment in Vietnam: From national policy to institutional practice

Test impact has been a prominent research line in the field of language assessment in recent decades; however, there have been few studies that investigate the impact of an assessment policy, especially one at the national level on institutional practice. To bridge this gap, the current paper will explore how three Vietnamese tertiary institutions translated the assessment guidelines of Project 2020, arguably the most expensive and ambitious language policy in Vietnam’s modern history. Unlike previous studies that examine the impact of Project 2020 on English teaching and learning, this presentation will focus specifically on the assessment of writing, one crucial, yet often neglected macro skill in the country. Moreover, by adopting narrative inquiry, a method widely used in humanities but rarely adopted in language assessment, the study has uncovered insightful findings that cannot be obtained from traditional large-scale surveys. To be specific, the stories of two participating teachers have revealed questionable assessment practices of their institutions, including the borrowing of test items, rating scales, the lack of rater training, and the use of indirect items to boost students’ pass rates. Drawing on these findings, the paper problematizes the existing policy that strongly advocates summative standardized assessment based on a borrowed language proficiency framework and instead calls for a more expansive policy that also incorporates assessment for learning and as learning.