A study compared the influences of rhetorical and sentence-level features on holistic essay scores assigned by raters who are experienced writing instructors but not trained in English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) instruction. In scoring six university-level essays, these raters placed emphasis on ESL sentence-level errors far more than on essays'…

A comparison of three popular computer programs for text analysis examined their effectiveness in analyzing texts written by students of English as a Second Language (ESL). Results indicate occasional incorrect advice and emphasis on relatively trivial issues, raising doubts about their effectiveness as a stand-alone revision aid for ESL writers.…