The Differences between Native English Speakers and Korean English Teachers in Assessing Writing Skills

The present study attempts to investigate the differences between native English speakers (NES) and Korean English teachers (KET) in assessing EFL learners compositions. Specifically, the study addresses: (a) how the score agreement among NES differs from that among KET, (b) how the intra-rater reliability of NES compares to that of KET, and (c) whether training improves reliability. These questions were examined in a study in which 3 KET (Group A) and 3 NES (Group B) were trained and the other 3 KET (Group C) and 3 NES (Group D) were not trained. All of them rated 10 compositions written by 10 college students and reevaluated the same written samples after fifteen days. The major findings of this study indicate that (a) KET (Group A & C) showed much higher score agreement and self-consistency than NES (Group B & D), and (b) trained teachers (Group A & B) achieved higher rel iability than untrained counterparts (Group C & D).