Abstract
When Japanese people evaluate the linguistic performance of foreigners, there are likely to be individual differences in their evaluation processes and their evaluations. Qualitative research is required not only to elucidate differences in evaluation, but also to investigate the evaluation process. Accordingly, the authors conducted a study in which three Japanese native speakers (evaluator A, B, and C) read and ranked 10 Japanese letters written by nonnative speakers. A PAC analysis of the reports provided by the evaluators during the ranking process revealed that; Evaluator A analytically and systematically employed the two criteria of "writer attitude" and "linguistic form"; Evaluator B made judgments about "attitude" based on "linguistic form"; and Evaluator C sought to judge each writer's "personality" underlying the observable "attitude", and rarely used the criterion of "linguistic form". This study suggests that further research into clarifying individualistic perspectives towards evaluation is needed in order to revise evaluators' evaluative outlooks.
