Investigating the Emotional Experiences of Essay Raters in Large-Scale Foreign Language Tests from the Perspective of Positive Psychology

Rating in large-scale language tests is a critical yet emotionally demanding task, as raters’ affective experiences may affect rating quality, rater wellbeing, and fairness of test outcomes. Although previous research has recognized the role of raters’ cognitive processes in the rating practice, their emotional experiences remain underexplored, particularly in large-scale foreign language writing contexts. To address this gap, this study drew on positive psychology and adopted a multi-method qualitative design, integrating narrative frames with retrospective interviews. Participants were 100 College English Test (CET) essay raters, among whom eight were purposively selected for follow-up interviews. The study aimed to systematically investigate raters’ emotional experiences during the rating process and to compare emotion regulation strategies used by novice and experienced raters. Findings revealed that raters experienced a complex range of emotions, including both positive and negative valences and varying levels of arousal. They regulated these emotions through a combination of emotion-oriented, competence-oriented, situation-oriented, and appraisal-oriented strategies. Notably, novice and experienced raters exhibited distinct patterns in strategy use. These findings deepen theoretical understanding of rater emotions in high-stakes L2 assessment and offer practical implications for rater training and quality assurance in large-scale testing programs.