The influence of rating expertise and language background on judgments of syntactic complexity in L2 writing in Italian

The purpose of the study is to examine, by means of a quantitative and a qualitative analysis, the influence of rating expertise and language background on judgments of syntactic complexity in L2 writing in Italian. An additional aim is to explore the extent to which raters’ reflections are related to current views in SLA (Second Language Acquisition) on the development of syntactic complexity in L2. By means of a quantitative and a qualitative analysis, the paper compares the complexity ratings and score motivations of three groups of raters: 16 language teachers with Italian as their first language (L1); 18 (high)intermediate L2 university students of Italian, with Finnish and Hungarian as their L1); 20 Italian university students, native speakers of Italian. All raters were asked to evaluate the syntactic complexity of six argumentative texts written by (low) intermediate learners of Italian. No impact of rating expertise or L1 vs. L2 background could be established, as high correlations were found between the three groups. The qualitative analysis of the score motivations revealed, however, some interesting differences between expert en non-expert raters. In a number of cases, raters’ scoring motivations and feedback were found to be influenced by syntactic characteristics of their L1. Raters’reflections on syntactic complexity appeared to be only partly aligned with existing theoretical views on syntactic complexity.