Crosscultural comparison of writing standards: American ESL and Japanese EFL

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This study compares the evaluative criteria which American ESL instructors and Japanese EFL instructors applied in rating ten compositions written by adult L1 Japanese EFL students. The instructors quantitatively rated the compositions and then stated their qualitative reasons for their ratings of each composition. The evaluative criteria of the two groups are assumed to indirectly reflect their respective instructional goals and emphases, and thereby reflect their respective societies’ theories of the uses and values of written English. In addition, the comparison may help Japanese and American English instructors to negotiate differences between the two educational contexts. In brief, the Japanese EFL teachers focused on matters of accuracy (content, word choice, and grammar), while the American ESL teachers focused on both intersentential features of the discourse and specific intrasentential grammatical features.The results also underscore an important methodological point: quantitative similarities in ratings may mask significant qualitative differences in the reasons for those ratings. That is, the American ESL and Japanese EFL instructors in this study, although agreeing substantially in their end‐result ratings, followed different processes in arriving at those similar ratings and in fact disagree about what constitutes strong or weak writing.