The study reported in this article investigated the reactions of 178 professors to two 400-word compositions, one written by a Chinese student and the other by a Korean student. The professors, 96 of whom were in the humanities/social sciences and 82 of whom were in the physical sciences, were each asked to rate one of the two compositions on six 10-point scales, three of which focused on content (holistic impression, development, and sophistication) and three of which focused on language (comprehensibility, acceptability, and irritation). The results were as follows: (a) Content received lower ratings than language; (b) professors found the errors highly comprehensible, generally unirritating, but academically unacceptable, with lexical errors rated as the most serious;(c) professors in the humanities/social sciences were more lenient in their judgments than professors in the physical sciences; (d) older professors were less irritated by errors than younger professors, and nonnative-speaking professors were more severe in their judgments than native speakers. The results suggest the need for greater emphasis on vocabulary improvement and lexical selection.
Terry Santos (Tue,) studied this question.