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In the past three to four decades, three approaches to English-as-a-second-language (ESL) writing instruction have influenced the classroom practices of teachers, namely a product approach, a process approach, and more recently, a genre approach.

The product approach, which emphasizes the instruction of language system knowledge (Tribble, 1996), was popular in the early 1980s in ESL writing instruction. Under such approach, writing is taught in a way that emphasizes the ‘quality’ of the final product. The ‘quality’ of a piece of writing is often defined narrowly to entail accuracy in grammar, mechanics (e.g. spelling, punctuation), and style (Young, 1978). Teachers who adopt a product approach to writing instruction often divide their lessons into four linear stages: familiarization, controlled writing, guided writing, and free writing (Badger & White, 2000). In the stage of ‘familiarization’, students review sample texts of the same text-type and teachers pinpoint the surface features of the text. Then, students engage in ‘controlled writing’ and ‘guided writing’ practices to apply the skills needed for the final writing task in the form of filling in blanks and writing short sentences. After rounds of practice, students write on a given topic (‘free writing’) and teachers give summative feedback on their performance with a particular focus on language errors (Lee, 2007).

Unlike the product approach, a process approach puts the teaching of writing steps at the foreground (Pennington, Brock, and Yue, 1996). In particular, it highlights the cyclical nature of writing from planning, writing, to editing with a heightened emphasis on developing students’ awareness through timely intervention in the form of feedback in a bid to ‘maximize each student’s intellectual participation in the writing process’ (Susser, 1994, p. 4). Typically, the planning stage of the process approach involves students brainstorming ideas on a given topic and developing their content knowledge on the topic. At the writing stage, students complete an outline or ‘writing frame’ (Wray and Lewis, 1997) before producing the first draft of writing. Afterwards, they may exchange their work with their peers and receive feedback from them. As for the role of teachers, the teacher provides less direct input but more facilitation in the form of formative feedback than in the product approach (Wingate, 2010; Lee, 2017).

More recently, there has been the advent of a genre approach which originates from functional linguistics and communicative sociocultural approaches to language teaching (Halliday, 1994; Hyland, 2004). ‘Genre’ is defined as ‘a class of communicative events, the members of which share some set of communicative purposes (Swales, 1990, p. 58). To proponents of the genre approach, writing should be taught with strong reference to the social contexts and purposes. For example, it is very different to write a report and a sales letter because of their divergent purposes (Flowerdew, 1993). Hyland (2007) argued that this knowledge of genre plays an important role in developing students’ ability to connect language, content, and contexts. In a similar vein, Berkenkotter and Huckin (1995) referred to this genre knowledge as ‘an individual's repertoire of situationally appropriate responses to recurrent situations’ (p. ix). While the genre approach assimilates the product approach with its emphasis on language system knowledge, its focus is on the variety of texts produced in different social situations, discarding the notion of ‘paradigm’, that is, a set of context-free assumptions against which students’ work is gauged (Matsuda, 2003).

Table 1 summarizes the three traditional approaches to ESL writing instruction with reference to their respective goals, learners’ role, teachers’ role, and a typical teaching sequence.

Table 1: The three traditional approaches to ESL writing instruction

From the perspective of curriculum materials development, a similarity that is shared among the three instructional approaches is the use of sample texts, or writing exemplars. Referring to Table 1, exemplars (either student-generated or teacher-provided) are used in the typical teaching sequence of the three writing instructional approaches. In a product approach, exemplars are provided by the teacher or textbook which serve as sample texts on which students model their writing. In a process approach, writing exemplars produced by students are used to facilitate peer review among students. In a genre approach, exemplars are carefully chosen by teachers to illustrate the communicative functions of linguistic features in relation to the purpose, context, and target audience of a particular text-type.

‘Exemplars’ are defined as samples produced by students (and sometimes teachers) and used to ‘illustrate dimensions of quality’ (Carless, Chan, To, Lo, & Barrett, 2018, p. 1); the use of exemplars is regarded as one of the promising ways to develop students’ understanding of the ambiguous criteria of ‘good work’. ‘Exemplar-based instruction’, or sometimes being referred to as ‘the use of exemplars’ in literature, is defined as the use of exemplars by teachers to illustrate ‘a “quality continuum” of authentic student work [or sometimes student work modified by the teacher] to help them make judgements about what constitutes quality’ (Scoles, Huxham, & McArthur, 2013, p. 632; words in brackets mine).

While the use of exemplars in ESL writing instruction has been in place for a long time, how writing exemplars can be utilized to develop students’ evaluative judgement of the quality of a text and understanding of assessment standards of high-stakes language tests (e.g. IELTS) has not been adequately researched and practiced. Recent assessment research in higher education has found that understanding of assessment standards, which is a type of ‘tacit knowledge’, is ‘difficult to transfer verbally or in writing’ (Carless & Chan, 2017), but is best illustrated through the use of exemplars. Research has found that exemplar-based instruction in the higher education context helps clarify teacher expectations to students, simplify the process of assignment preparation (Carless, 2015), illustrate different approaches to tackle an assignment (Orsmond, Merry, & Reiling, 2002), minimize students’ assessment-related stress (Yucel, Bird, Young, & Blanksby, 2014), and make students more confident in completing an assignment (Hendry & Anderson, 2013). From the perspective of teachers, the use of exemplars is a student-centered pedagogical approach which requires little preparation (Smith, Worsfold, Fisher, & McPhail, 2013). In the context of ESL writing classrooms, exemplars can be used to exemplify a spectrum of quality (high, mediocre, low) described in the assessment standards or rubrics. In addition, the use of exemplars facilitates students’ understanding of the assessment standards which are often expressed in a generic and opaque manner by focusing on a specific writing genre or task. Through the analysis of and discussion about the exemplars, students are expected to ‘engage in feedforward to better understand the disciplinary discourse and its expectations’ (Scoles et al., 2013, p. 632). The use of exemplars in the writing classroom not only benefits instruction, but contributes to standardizing teachers’ understanding of the assessment standards, which is likely to lead to fairer and more objective grading.

Recent literature on the use of exemplars in the context of higher education has shown that exemplar-based instruction is implemented in various disciplines, including life sciences (Scoles et al., 2013), teacher education (Carless et al., 2018), design education (Hendry & Tomitsch, 2014), animal science (Hendry, White, & Herbert, 2016); nevertheless, how exemplar-based instruction can be implemented in ESL writing classrooms in higher education institutions remains under-explored. In this connection, this article reports on a textbook development project which adopts an exemplar-based instruction approach to be used by university English instructors to prepare students for IELTS writing. The goal of the textbook is to cultivate students’ understanding of the assessment standards of the two IELTS writing tasks (academic module) through the design of exemplar-based dialogic and reflective activities. In this article, I will first present the theoretical underpinnings of exemplar-based instruction, namely tacit knowledge, assessment as learning, and dialogic feedback. Then, I will give an overview of an ongoing grant project which aims to develop an IELTS writing textbook which adopts an exemplar-based instructional approach (the textbook proposal is currently under review by Routledge). The last section of this article concerns practical strategies for ESL writing teachers who are interested in using exemplars to develop students’ understanding of assessment standards.

Recent studies in higher education research document an array of exemplar-based instructional practices. Below are some examples:

Inductive use of exemplars

Scaffolded use of exemplars

Dialogic use of exemplars

O’Donovan, Price, & Rust (2008) proposed a framework comprising four approaches to developing students’ understanding of assessment standards: (1) a ‘laissez faire’ approach, (2) an ‘explicit’ approach, (3) a ‘social constructivist’ approach, and (4) a ‘community of practice approach’.

In the ‘laissez faire’ approach, assessment standards are only communicated to students ‘informally and serendipitously’ (O’Donovan et al., 2008, p. 206). Such informal and serendipitous channels include teachers’ feedback and informal discussions with teachers.

An ‘explicit’ approach to sharing assessment standards to students refers to the use of ‘learning outcomes, disciplinary benchmark statements’ by teachers to explicitly articulate their expectations in order for students to improve their performance along this trajectory (O’Donovan et al., 2008, p. 207).

A ‘social constructivist’ approach to sharing assessment standards is a student-centered approach which aims to ‘actively engage learners (and/or other stakeholders) in using and applying the standards enabling them to make meaning within their own personal and cognitive constructs’ (O’Donovan et al., 2008, p. 207).

The fourth approach, the ‘community of practice’ approach, accentuates the importance of collaboration among students when understanding and utilizing the assessment standards. In this approach, learning (in this case, the understanding of assessment standards) is regarded as a collaborative and interactive process rather than an individual process. To facilitate such collaborative learning environment, students must be mutually engaged through informal activities, develop a sense of joint ownership of the activities, and a shared repertoire of interactive practices (O’Donovan et al., 2008, p. 209).

Relating O’Donovan et al.’s (2008) framework to the textbook project that I am currently involved in, Table 2 describes the framework in relation to how exemplars can be used to promote students’ understanding of IELTS writing assessment standards.

Table 2: A framework of approaches to sharing meaningful knowledge of assessment standards with students in higher education (adapted from O’Donovan et al., 2008)

One of the theoretical underpinnings of exemplar-based instruction is the notion of tacit knowledge. Tacit knowledge refers to aspects of knowledge that are difficult to transmit through speaking and writing (Carless et al., 2018; Sadler, 2010). In other words, it is not effective for teachers to explain tacit knowledge, such as the assessment standards of IELTS writing, in the forms of lectures and handouts, because the wordings and expressions used in the assessment standards remain abstract to students. Instead, it is argued that students acquire tacit knowledge through their active involvement in dialogic and reflective activities (e.g. discussion of writing exemplars with peers and teacher with reference to the assessment standards) (Bloxham & Campbell, 2010). Through such engagement, students begin to notice the essential features of what constitute a good text by ‘making visible some of the expert thinking and judgements of the teacher’ (Carless et al., 2018, p. 1).

Assessment as learning (AaL) is ‘a subset of assessment for learning that emphasizes using assessment as a process of developing and supporting metacognition for students’ (Earl, 2013, p.3). Adhering to the spirit of student-centeredness of assessment for learning (AfL), AaL aims to promote ‘the active engagement of students in setting goals for their learning and growth, monitoring their progress toward these goals, and determining how to address any gaps’ (Andrade, Huff, & Brooke, 2012, p. 8). Instead of the teacher, students take up the role of ‘the critical connector between assessment and their own learning’ (Earl, 2013, p.3).

As mentioned by Earl (2013), to empower students to be ‘critical connectors’ between assessment and learning, their metacognition needs to be developed. ‘Metacognition’, which is often referred to as ‘thinking about thinking’, was first conceptualized by Flavell (1979) as a self-monitoring system of cognition which consists of four domains: metacognitive knowledge, metacognitive experiences, goals/tasks, and actions/strategies (for a detailed discussion of the construct of metacognition, please see Chong, 2017). Amongst the four domains, much educational research in the context of higher education has examined the knowledge domain of metacognition. Initially defined by Flavell (1979, p. 907) as ‘knowledge or beliefs about what factors or variables act and interact in ways to affect the course and outcome of cognitive enterprises’, the construct of metacognitive knowledge is expanded by later educational researchers to include three interrelated variables: person knowledge (learners’ understanding of their learning styles, beliefs about learning, strengths, and weaknesses), task knowledge (learners’ understanding of the requirements and skills needed to complete a learning task), and strategic knowledge (declarative and procedural knowledge about the self-regulated strategies necessary to complete a learning task) (Schraw, 2009; Wenden, 1998).

The use of writing exemplars helps develop students’ person, task, and strategic knowledge. Students’ person knowledge is enriched through engaging in activities associated with scaffolded use of exemplars in which students first complete a writing task before being given an exemplar to analyze and compare with their own with reference to a set of assessment standards. In so doing, students become more aware of their strengths and weaknesses in the writing task. Regarding students’ task knowledge, the use of exemplars offers tremendous help because students develop a more solid understanding of the task requirements (expressed in the form of assessment standards) through analyzing exemplars which illustrate different dimensions of quality. Lastly, students’ strategic knowledge is burgeoned because they become more assessment literate and develop a more accurate evaluative judgement vis-à-vis the quality of a written work. With a more acute evaluative judgment, students are able to self-regulate and monitor their writing process in a more effective manner through employing a range of metacognitive strategies.

In the context of higher education, there has been an exponential growth in the number of assessment and feedback studies which conceptualize feedback from a constructivist and sociocultural point of view (Chong, 2018; Carless, 2016). Such conceptualization of feedback is often referred to as ‘dialogic feedback’. Studies which examine dialogic feedback look into the various relational factors at work that influence how students interpret and utilize feedback. Such social factors examined in recent feedback studies in higher education include trust (Carless, 2013) and emotions (Molloy, Borrell-Carrió, & Epstein, 2013) which positively or negatively affect students’ motivation and confidence in interpreting and utilizing the feedback provided. Another research direction of dialogic feedback is closely associated with the use of exemplars. Adopting a discourse analysis approach, researchers attempt to analyze the teacher-students and student-student discussions of writing exemplars in order to identify the effective communicative moves which facilitate the development of students’ understanding of assessment standards and evaluative judgement. For example, Carless and Chan (2017) reported how a teacher engaged in feedback dialogue with students and identified 16 dialogic moves which facilitate students’ understanding of assessment standards.

The notion of dialogic feedback is built upon the tenet of sociocultural theory (SCT). SCT suggests that human cognitive development takes place during social interaction. Originally developed by Vygotsky (1987), SCT and its related constructs have been increasingly applied in educational research to account for the various factors at work that influence effectiveness of pedagogical approaches (Swain, Kinnear, & Steinman, 2015). According to Storch (2018), there are two connected constructs in SCT: (1) zone of proximal development (ZPD) and (2) the notion of mediation. I shall first give an overview of the two constructs and illustrate how these constructs inform the dialogic use of exemplars.

Vygotsky viewed the construction and development of learners’ knowledge as being facilitated by the assistance of an ‘expert’. ZPD is defined as ‘the difference between what an individual achieves by herself and what she might achieve when assisted’ (Swain et al., 2015, p. 17). ZPD is sometimes conceptualized as similar to Krashen’s i + 1 (Krashen, 1985). Krashen’s (1985) i + 1 suggests that language development occurs when the level of difficulty of language input is pitched slightly higher ( + 1) than the current language proficiency level of an individual (i). Nevertheless, ZPD and Krashen’s i + 1 differ because ZPD considers ‘all dimensions of the activity’ while i + 1 focuses on language acquisition (Swain et al., 2015, p. 21). The comparison with Krashen’s i + 1 helps explain the nature of assistance that the ‘expert’ (the teacher) is expected to provide to the ‘novice’ (the learner) – the assistance provided needs to be learner-centered that responds to the dynamic needs of the learners. Storch (2018) commented that such assistance provided to learners should be ‘graduated and contingent’ (p. 264). Applying to feedback practice, dialogic feedback provided to learners should be dynamic rather than static to scaffold the changing needs of the learners.

According to Vygotsky, ‘mediation’ entails that human activities and relationships are mediated by material and symbolic tools. The notion of mediation is further developed by Feuerstein and his associates in their theory of MLE. Originally developed to account for differences in cognitive development of children, MLE suggests that human cognition is not static but can be developed through meaningful interaction and instruction (Presseisen, 1992). Recently, MLE has been utilized as ‘an intervention approach intended to improve learning’ in educational and L2 studies (Lee, 2014, p. 203).

Feuerstein, Rand, & Rynders (1988) suggest four criteria for interactions to be qualified as mediated learning interaction: (1) intentionality, (2) reciprocity, (3) transcendence, and (4) meaning. Lee (2014; 2017) explains these criteria in relation to teacher’s feedback:

Informed by SCT, dialogic use of exemplars is regarded as a kind of MLE where students analyze the given exemplars with reference to the given assessment standards (intentionality), discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the exemplars with their peers and teacher (reciprocity), reflect on ways that the strengths and weaknesses of the exemplars could inform their own writing (transcendence and meaning). Through the provision of dialogic feedback on the given exemplars, teachers develop a better understanding of students’ current state of knowledge of the assessment standards which helps teachers provide more effective scaffolding to expand students’ understanding of assessment standards (zone of proximal development).

Figure 1 summarizes the pedagogical framework of exemplar-based instruction reported in higher education research and its theoretical underpinnings discussed in this section. In the next section, an ongoing grant project which aims to develop a textbook for teaching IELTS writing using an exemplar-based writing instructional approach will be introduced to illustrate how reflective, dialogic and evaluative tasks can be designed based on authentic student exemplars. Despite not reporting any data at this stage, the introduction of this project sheds important light on how exemplars can be used in ESL writing classrooms, which remains an under-explored area in exemplar literature in higher education. In addition, different from current exemplar studies which focus on analyzing the spoken discourse of student-teacher dialogues, the emphasis of this project report is on how pedagogic tasks can be designed based on writing exemplars to promote students’ evaluative judgement and understanding of IELTS assessment standards.

Figure 1: Pedagogical framework and theoretical underpinnings of exemplar-based instruction