Understanding the Growth of ESL Paragraph Writing Skills and Its Relationships with Linguistic Features

Autor/in	Aryadoust, Vahid
Titel	Understanding the Growth of ESL Paragraph Writing Skills and Its Relationships with Linguistic Features
Quelle	In: Educational Psychology, 36 (2016) 10, S.1742-1770 (29 Seiten)Infoseite zur Zeitschrift PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0144-3410
DOI	10.1080/01443410.2014.950946
Schlagwörter	English (Second Language); Second Language Learning; Writing Skills; College Students; Correlation; Computational Linguistics; Scores; Statistical Analysis; Path Analysis; Psychometrics; Validity; Evaluators; Reliability; Writing Evaluation; Academic Discourse; Second Language Instruction; Error of Measurement; Writing Improvement; Foreign Countries; Readability; Readability Formulas; Australia; Flesch Kincaid Grade Level Formula + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? English as second language; English; Second Language; Englisch als Zweitsprache; Zweitsprachenerwerb; Writing skill; Schreibfertigkeit; Collegestudent; Korrelation; Linguistics; Computerlinguistik; Statistische Analyse; Pfadanalyse; Psychometry; Psychometrie; Gültigkeit; Reliabilität; Discourse; Diskurs; Fremdsprachenunterricht; Messfehler; Ausland; Lesbarkeit; Australien
Abstract	This study sought to examine the development of paragraph writing skills of 116 English as a second language university students over the course of 12 weeks and the relationship between the linguistic features of students' written texts as measured by Coh-Metrix--a computational system for estimating textual features such as cohesion and coherence--and the scores assigned by human raters. The raters' reliability was investigated using many-facet Rasch measurement (MFRM); the growth of students' paragraph writing skills was explored using a factor-of-curves latent growth model (LGM); and the relationships between changes in linguistic features and writing scores across time were examined by path modelling. MFRM analysis indicates that despite several misfits, students' and raters' performances and scale's functionality conformed to the expectations of MFRM, thus providing evidence of psychometric validity for the assessments. LGM shows that students' paragraph writing skills develop steadily during the course. The Coh-Metrix indices have more predictive power before and after the course than during it, suggesting that Coh-Metrix may struggle to discriminate between some ability levels. Whether a Coh-Metrix index gains or loses predictive power over time is argued to be partly a function of whether raters maintain or lose sensitivity to the linguistic feature measured by that index in their own assessment as the course progresses. (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2020/1/01