Criteria for class participation scoring in Iranian private language schools

While the Class Participation Scoring (CPS) is a topic of considerable importance, little has been done regarding the subjectivity and objectivity of the class participation scoring in ESL/EFL contexts. The numbers of school managers, experienced teachers and intermediate EFL learners who were interviewed to extrapolate their belief and enforced practices concerning CPS in the given sites were orderly 9, 10 and 30.The topic coverage and content of pre-service and in-service TTC programs in the respective institutes as well as final scoring worksheets were surveyed to see the amount of attention and weight attributed to CPS. Overall, this study did not find a significant variation among Class Participation (CP) scores in these institutes. Moreover, it was also found that the weight of CP score ranged between 40–60%. Considering the importance of formative assessment, it is hoped that this study could raise more awareness on the need to devise detailed, objectively verifiable checklists for optimizing CPS system.