• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.123-142
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• 2009

The present study used multi-faceted Rasch measurement to explore the characteristics and bias patterns of non-native raters when they scored L2 writing tasks. Three raters scored 254 writing tasks written by Korean university students on two topics adapted from the TOEFL Test of Written English (TWE). The written products were assessed using a five-category rating scale (Content, Organization, Language in Use, Grammar, and Mechanics). The raters only showed a difference in severity with regard to rating categories but not in task types. Overall, the raters scored Grammar most harshly and Organization most leniently. The results also indicated several bias patterns of ratings with regard to the rating categories and task types. In rater-task bias interactions, each rater showed recurring bias patterns in their rating between two writing tasks. Analysis of rater-category bias interaction showed that the three raters revealed biased patterns across all the rating categories though they were relatively consistent in their rating. The study has implications for the importance of rater training and task selection in L2 writing assessment.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.267-290
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• 2010

The purpose of this study is to analyze the writing tasks included in the newly developed high school English textbooks in the aspects of genre, rhetorical structure, task type, and authenticity in order to find out whether these tasks could contribute to improving Korean EFL students' writing skills. A total of nine textbooks were selected for the study and every writing task in each textbook was analyzed. The results show that various types of genres were incorporated in the tasks, but very few opportunities were provided for students to acquire characteristics of specific genres. In terms of rhetorical structure of text, narration, illustration, and transaction were required most, whereas not a single writing task asked students to use classification or cause and effect. Many of the writing tasks analyzed offered linguistic and/or content support through the use of models, which displays traces of the product-based approach to teaching writing. Lastly, most of the tasks lacked authenticity represented by explicit discussion of purpose and audience. Implications for L2 writing task development and writing instruction in the Korean EFL context are discussed.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.91-108
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• 2007

This study investigates learners' perception on their engagement in rating activities in the EFL essay-writing context. The current study aims to address the answers to the following research questions: 1) What attitude do students show about their participation in the rating tasks? and 2) which of three aspects (e.g. the degree of rating experience, the exposure to English composition instruction and learning, and proficiency level) significantly influences learners' rating activities? 104 EFL learners participated in the rater training session. After participants finished rater training session, they rated three sample essays and peer essays using the given scoring guide. Based on the analysis of survey responses that students made, students showed positive attitude toward their engagement in rating tasks. For research question 2, only L2 writing proficiency seriously affected students' perception on the rating tasks. Advanced level of subjects did not feel stressed by a grade of peers as low level of subjects did. They were also critical about the benefits of self- and peer-assessment, suggesting that a peer's feedback on their own essay was not so useful and that a self-rating does not fully help learners identify their writing proficiency.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.127-152
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• 2006

For the past 20 years the process approach to writing has been popular in second language writing classrooms. However, there have been very few studies conducted in Korea with regard to the composing processes and the effects of proficiency on writers' usage. The present study attempts to begin to fill this gap. Three groups of college students with different writing proficiency participated in the study: the advanced group, the intermediate group, and the beginning group. The verbal protocol of their writing processes revealed that they approached writing tasks differently. While the advanced writers focused on generating texts and ideas and examined their writing at both global and local levels, the other two groups of students tended to focus on evaluating text at the local level and generated fewer ideas and less text. The findings from this study are then compared to those of some major studies of the composing process as conclusions are subsequently drawn about the specific needs of Korean college writers.

• The Journal of the Convergence on Culture Technology
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.199-204
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• 2022

This study was carried out in an L2 writing class using machine translation. The aim of this study was to explore what types of errors are identified the most frequently in the Korean-to-English machine translation output and what causes those errors. The participants were seven EFL university students who completed three writing tasks throughout the semester. The findings of data analysis indicated that the most common errors were seen in sentence structure and mechanics, and those errors in the translated texts were caused by the errors in the Korean source texts.