Paper short abstract:

This research examined how Japanese language proficiency affects the assessment of narrative writings by university students in Hungary. The result revealed that there was no significant effect and implied that learners with low Japanese proficiency may get their writing evaluated highly.

Paper long abstract:

Research that examines how Japanese language proficiency affects assessment of Japanese writing has not been targeted at European learners, although there is some research regarding Asian learners such as Tsubone and Kageyama (2020). This research examined the effect on assessment by analyzing narrative writings written by university students in Hungary (finished beginner level or higher).

The research procedure is as follows. First, we asked 95 university students in Hungary to write an essay (600-800 words) on the topic of "Unforgettable Experiences" and chose the top fifteen and bottom fifteen essays based on the scores of the Simple Performance-Oriented Test (hereafter, SPOT). Three researchers then evaluated these essays using flowcharts for narrative writing assessment consisting of three traits: content, organization, and Japanese language. Next, we calculated the median scores and conducted t-tests on the SPOT scores of the top and bottom groups and the mean scores of each trait to examine how Japanese language proficiency affects essay assessment. As a result, although a significant difference was found in the SPOT scores, no significant difference was found in the essay assessments for the three traits.

Based on speculation that there could be essays with low scores in the top group and essays with high scores in the bottom group, we selected an essay with a low score (Essay A) from the top five and an essay with a high score (Essay B) from the bottom five and analyzed their features in detail. We found that Essay A had problems in the introduction and conclusion, and that the main point was unclear. On the other hand, Essay B had careful descriptions to help the readers’ understanding, even though it was written in simple Japanese and had some errors.

These features suggest that even learners with low Japanese proficiency may get their writing evaluated highly when they are aware of what they should be careful about for each trait.

(Reference)

Tsubone, Y., & Kageyama, Y. (2020). Exploratory Study on the Evaluation of Narrative Writing: Focusing on Thai Learners of Japanese. Journal of Research Papers： Network for Thai-Japan Studies in Thailand Vol.1, 46-55.