How does an EFL teacher evaluate writing?

What are your criteria?

Content? Language? Organisation? Length? Intelligibility?

Professor Ling Shi (2001) gives some insights in her article “Native-and

nonnative-speaking EFL teachers’ evaluation of Chinese students’ English writing”

Personal reaction to this publication:

1. Why use the NES vs. NNES dichotomy, especially when you find it problematic?

2. I was always concerned about how each teacher evaluates writing differently, depending on so many factors: 1) social categories such as race, gender, age, socioeconomic status; 2) academic background; 3) current community of practice; 4) paradigm/ philosophical and epistemological orientation. So, the very notions of reliability and validity to me are mythical and elusive creatures.

Isn’t it very hard to “capture” (ensure) them?!

3. I am especially interested in the contexts where teachers may have lower English proficiency. I want to see more studies about teachers that are struggling with the language they teach not just the ones that are traditionally seen as “good teachers” with “perfect“ English.