Toward Establishing Criteria for Evaluating Paragraph Writing of Pre-Intermediate Learners of English

Japanese students’ lack of English writing skills has been a long-standing problem. It not only originates from grammatical knowledge and vocabulary, but also the availability fewer opportunities to write essays in English. Further, current standards for evaluating written by beginner-level learners are established sufficiently, resulting heavy grading burden on teachers. This study establishes an evaluation standard assess learners. An “analytic scoring” is conducted each essay, involving criteria ranging level 1 4, while another group evaluators perform “holistic scoring”, judging quality based their overall impression, scale 4. The reliability validity through correlation analysis both evaluations. Text mining used analyze explanation reasons provided holistic scoring highest-rated identify factors determining writing.