With the growing access to new types of reference tools, today’s L2 writers have a plethora of choices when completing an academic writing assignment. Such resources are absent in most high-stakes academic writing EXAMs, making the two situations dissimilar. Aimed to compare the performances of ESL writers in EXAM and Non-EXAM (real-life) academic writing situations, the present study recruited seven ESL university students who had previously taken an IELTS test. The students completed two analogous writing tasks: an EXAM-setting and a Non-EXAM writing test which aimed to simulate the real-life setting. Coh-Metrix analysis of the linguistic features of syntactic complexity, lexical sophistication, and text cohesion of the writings suggested that the students improved the textual quality of their writings in real-life academic writing situation. In addition, FACETS analysis of the quality of the writings, as assessed by the human raters, showed that the students did not benefit equally from the merits of the real-life settings compared to the EXAM settings. The findings suggest that the students spent different amounts of time and used different types of queries to consult with external resources. Students’ background training and writing strategies can highly affect their performance in real-life academic writing compared to the writing EXAMs, warning against the validity of such tests.

With the growing access to new types of reference tools, today’, s L2 writers have a plethora of choices when completing an academic writing assignment. Such resources are absent in most high-stakes academic writing EXAMs, making the two situations dissimilar. Aimed to compare the performances of ESL writers in EXAM and Non-EXAM (real-life) academic writing situations, the present study recruited seven ESL university students who had previously taken an IELTS test. The students completed two analogous writing tasks: an EXAM-setting and a Non-EXAM writing test which aimed to simulate the real-life setting. Coh-Metrix analysis of the linguistic features of syntactic complexity, lexical sophistication, and text cohesion of the writings suggested that the students improved the textual quality of their writings in real-life academic writing situation. In addition, FACETS analysis of the quality of the writings, as assessed by the human raters, showed that the students did not benefit equally from the merits of the real-life settings compared to the EXAM settings. The findings suggest that the students spent different amounts of time and used different types of queries to consult with external resources. Students’,background training and writing strategies can highly affect their performance in real-life academic writing compared to the writing EXAMs, warning against the validity of such tests.

Letter To Editor

Evaluation is an important part of learning and curriculum design. Various methods have been developed for assessment of clinical skills. Among them the objectively structured clinical EXAMination (OSCE) has been identified as one of the most valid methods for the assessment of clinical skills. OSCE is a kind of clinical skill evaluation that includes a series of timed stations. Students are required to do specific clinical assignments and use communication skills and record and interpret their responses in stations. The processes of planning and implementation in OSCE consists of the following stages:a) Initial preparation:determine the school's specific needs for the objective assessment of clinical skills.Gain institutional commitment Form a committee of interested and committed faculty membersBegin with pilot studyb) Case writing:Ask faculty members to attend workshops on case writingDetermine a mechanism for case selectionc) Selection of standardized patients:Develop a program for making patients standardizedDevelop specific training guidelinesDetermine if SPs will be used for the evaluation the students' performanced) Procedures for conducting EXAMinations:Locate an appropriate place for the EXAMinationDetermine the number of stations based on educational needsNotify students of the time of the EXAMinatione) Faculty members' participation:Determine the number of faculty members that are needed for the EXAMinationFaculty members selectionDevelop training programs for faculty membersf) Measurement and evaluation:Determine who will be evaluated: students, faculty members, SPDevelop evaluation formsEvaluation Feedbackg) Support:Receive financial support from administrative authoritiesTo ensure the commitment of the personnel and the faculty members for a certain periodAllocate a specific place to the EXAM and to the standardized patientsPurchase educational supplies and equipmentWhile planning and implementation of OSCE is a complex and expensive ~ork and needs a lot of staff and time but results of OSCE are useful for students and have positive effects for the curriculum. OSCE can ensure the high quality of the clinical care. It can also be used to evaluate the curriculum and encourage the designers to revise it continuously.

Introduction: Human resources are the most important source. It has a basic role in our country especially as a developing country. Postgraduate entrance EXAMs are difficult EXAMs due to fewer universities capacity, its costs and length, it can train our future builders as well. This study will describe & explain the statistical and evaluation criteria of Ph.D. entrance nursing EXAM in 1379.Methods: This is a descriptive/analytical study of both questions and answers of 1379 nursing doctoral EXAM.Result: Mean Difficulty indexes varied from 50.56, the most difficult to 60.31, the least difficult and all had correct difficulty indexes. Discriminations indexes varied from 19% (the weakest discrimination index) to 37% and they all didn't have any appropriate filtration rate. At the second part of EXAM, which was an oral one, the mean and standard deviation were 141.35 and 32.01. All of the difficulty/discriminate and reliability/validity indexes were measured.Conclusion: Meta evaluation is the most important issue in both evaluation and education. Evaluation and interpretation of nursing doctoral EXAM can be a useful feedback, which can lead us to a better future.