Teaching and Assessing Three Types of Direct Writing in Malaysian ESL Classrooms -A Survey of ESL Teachers’ Opinions

A survey, in the form of an open-ended questionnaire, was conducted to find out how Malaysian ESL teachers teach and assess direct writing in their classrooms. Sixty ESL teachers from secondary schools, chosen through the representative sampling method, were the respondents. The result of the questionnaire showed that these teachers did not refer to any specific scoring method to assess direct writing at the classroom-based assessment level. They referred to the scoring method adapted or adopted from the Malaysian Examination Syndicate, which is meant for the assessment of the SPM papers. Their teaching also focused on preparing their students to sit for the SPM examination. This result shows that these ESL teachers were overly exam-oriented in regard to direct writing.