It's hard to not be biased, especially because there is a standard to uphold in our education. But I believe that Cox and Matsuda highlighted the issues we have as readers of ESL papers. We are unaware of the standards of other countries and we judge these ESL students as remedial. I found it interesting that some ESL writers may never get to their thesis until the end of the paper... but because we do not understand the standards of other cultures we find these students to be "deficient." These students have to switch and re-learn for a whole new language and standard, and they are seen as inadequate for it. For the reader it is necessary to "realize that differences are not necessarily signs of deficiency. In fact, some of the differences may reflect the writer's advanced knowledge of conventions in other languages...(40)."
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