Critical Evaluation Components in English Essay Writing for Korean College Students

This study investigated the relationships of quantitative and qualitative evaluation components with human scores of writing to find out which components need intensive pedagogical intervention in EFL classrooms and which components can be regarded as good predictors for learners’ writing proficiency. Forty seven EFL essays written by Korean university beginner students were collected. The results showed that participants achieved their lowest scores in using background knowledge, reference or non-text materials, personal viewpoints, and other sources appropriately to support their ideas and refine the arguments. Through analyses of quantitative evaluation components, the study also found that the number of words in an essay was a statistically significant predictor of human scores (R²=0.52). The results suggest that priority of pedagogical intervention be given to managing Personalized Resources in EFL writing, particularly at the beginning and that number of words or text length can be referred to as the most reliable quantitative predictor for quick estimation of its proficiency.