The Development of Writing Proficiency as a Function of Grade Level: A Linguistic Analysis

Autor/inn/en	Crossley, Scott A.; Weston, Jennifer L.; McLain Sullivan, Susan T.; McNamara, Danielle S.
Titel	The Development of Writing Proficiency as a Function of Grade Level: A Linguistic Analysis
Quelle	In: Written Communication, 28 (2011) 3, S.282-311 (30 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Zusatzinformation	Weitere Informationen
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0741-0883
DOI	10.1177/0741088311410188
Schlagwörter	Writing (Composition); Sentence Structure; Nouns; Linguistics; Writing Processes; Young Adults; Essays; Grade 9; Grade 11; Word Frequency; Adolescents; Comparative Analysis; Learning Strategies; Colleges; Evaluation + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Schreibübung; Satzbau; Satzstruktur; Linguistik; Young adult; Junger Erwachsener; Essay; Aufsatzunterricht; School year 09; 9. Schuljahr; Schuljahr 09; School year 11; 11. Schuljahr; Schuljahr 11; Word analysis; Frequency; Wortanalyse; Häufigkeit; Adolescent; Adolescence; Adoleszenz; Jugend; Jugendalter; Jugendlicher; Learning methode; Learning techniques; Lernmethode; Lernstrategie; College; Hochschule; Fachhochschule; Evaluierung
Abstract	In this study, a corpus of essays stratified by level (9th grade, 11th grade, and college freshman) are analyzed computationally to discriminate differences between the linguistic features produced in essays by adolescents and young adults. The automated tool Coh-Metrix is used to examine to what degree essays written at various grade levels can be distinguished from one another using a number of linguistic features related to lexical sophistication (i.e., word frequency, word concreteness), syntactic complexity (i.e., the number of modifiers per noun phrase), and cohesion (i.e., word overlap, incidence of connectives). The analysis demonstrates that high school and college writers develop linguistic strategies as a function of grade level. Primarily, these writers produce more sophisticated words and more complex sentence structure as grade level increases. In contrast, these writers produce fewer cohesive features in text as a function of grade level. This analysis supports the notion that linguistic development occurs in the later stages of writing development and that this development is primarily related to producing texts that are less cohesive and more elaborate. (Contains 5 tables.) (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10