Inner Evaluation of Writing in a Foreign Language Based on Expert Judgment for Correction

Abstract

Although writing is a tool for communication, the way one writer communicates a fact is not always the same as how another one does it. The written word is unique to the writer and reflects his or her preferred writing style. When something is written by a non-native speaker of language, native speakers and experts often feel slightly unusual, even if they can find no obvious errors. Moreover, they might revise the text based on their experience. On the other hand, the writer often feels slightly dissatisfied with the correction if it does not fit for his or her writing preference. It is difficult for the corrector to understand the writers’ writing preference from the text, and it is also difficult for the writer to explain it explicitly since both writing and correcting a piece of text are based on one’s subjectivity. The correction is unique to the text, so the inner evaluation of the text is important. This study proposes a method of deriving each writer’s writing preference numerically from the expert’s initial evaluation. In the process, the texts other than the target text are taken into consideration from the viewpoint that writing is a communication tool. The corrector may use the feedback from the proposed method to confirm his or her intuitive judgments and to add some new viewpoints.