Working Towards a Proficiency Scale of Business English Writing: A Mixed-Methods Approach

​Li Wang is an Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics at the School of Economics and Finance, Xi’an International Studies University, China. She obtained her Ph. D. degree from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China in 2016, and her master’s degree from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore in 2010. Her research interests include English for Specific Purposes and Language Testing and Assessment. She has published her research in both international and local journals, including Assessing Writing, The Asian EFL Journal, The Journal of Asia TEFL, and Foreign Language World. Jason Fan is Deputy Director and Senior Research Fellow at the Language Testing Research Centre (LTRC), University of Melbourne, Australia. His research interests include validation of language assessments and research methods. He is the author of Development and Validation of Standards in Language Testing (Fudan University Press, 2018) andthe co-author (with Tim McNamara and Ute Knoch) of Fairness, Justice and Language Assessment (Oxford University Press, 2019). He is on the editorial board of Language Testing and the co-editor of Papers in Language Testing and Assessment.

1 Core Issues in Business English Education.- 2 Assessment of Business English: The Role of Language Proficiency Scales.- 3 Conceptualizing Business English Writing Proficiency.- 4 Working Towards a Scale of Business English Writing.- 5 The Initial Establishment of a Descriptive Framework.- 6 Creating a Descriptor Pool.- 7 Constructing the Scale.- 8 Validation of the Business English Writing Scale.- 9 Conclusion.