The Impact of Pragmatic Aspect in the Writing Assessment across Raters with Different L1 Backgrounds

Abstract

Drawing on the finding that the EFL teachers and learners tend to be less sensitive to pragmatic errors than their ESL counterpart (Bardovi-Harlig & Dörnyei, 1998; Schauer, 2006), and that rhetoric patterns in writing differ across cultures (Kachru, 1997; Kaplan, 1966; Mauranen, 1993), this study investigates the underdeveloped area of the effect of pragmatic aspect of L2 learners writings on the raters with different L1 backgrounds, namely, Korean and English. Student participants in the experiment were provided with a prompt which required them to write a complaining and requesting e-mail to a person with a higher social power (Brown & Levinson, 1987). Compared to the non-native speaker rater group, the native speaker rater group were observed to be more attentive to pragmatic features of the writing samples. The results suggest that improvement in pragmatic skills is crucial for success in both academic achievement and adjustment to the target language community.