Assessing Writing最新文献

With the growing body of research on writing feedback and the recognition of the critical role of writing motivation, controversy has emerged over the motivational function of feedback in second language (L2) writing contexts. To provide further evidence for the impact of different feedback practices on L2 learners’ writing motivation, the present meta-analysis synthesizes the results of 13 quantitative studies on the relationship between feedback and L2 writing motivation. It examines the effect of different feedback practices on L2 learners’ writing motivation and the variables moderating the effectiveness of those feedback practices. The results show that feedback generated from multiple sources has the greatest motivational function in L2 writing, followed by single-source feedback, including peer feedback, teacher feedback, and automated feedback. Moderator analysis indicates that feedback type is a statistically significant variable moderating the effectiveness of feedback. In light of the findings, implications for L2 writing instruction and future L2 writing research are discussed.

Whether second or foreign (L2) writing self-efficacy predicts feedback-seeking behavior (FSB) positively or negatively remains unresolved. Moreover, empirical research regarding the influence of shyness on FSB is lacking. The investigation of self-efficacy, shyness, and FSB addresses how efficacious and shy individuals seek feedback and provides implications for overcoming shyness and recognizing the need to seek feedback for academic growth. Thus, the aim of the present study is to explore the impact of L2 writing self-efficacy and shyness on FSB. A battery of questionnaires was administered to 606 Chinese participants and six L2 learners’ writing experiences were elicited in relation to the three concepts. The quantitative results revealed that linguistic self-efficacy negatively impacted feedback inquiry, whereas performance self-efficacy positively impacted it. Further, self-regulatory self-efficacy had a positive impact on both feedback monitoring and inquiry. Shyness had a positive impact on feedback monitoring. Interviews revealed that L2 learners were confident about grammar and vocabulary in writing, but they struggled with organization, self-monitored feedback to avoid burdening teachers, relied on self-monitoring if feedback was delayed, and inquired about feedback when preparing for tests. Herein, implications for L2 writing pedagogy are provided.

This article examines a student-centered placement process where matriculating students could write a short, reflective paper to advocate for a new placement. While research describing student writing used in placement processes is often concerned with 1) a student’s ability to accurately articulate their abilities and 2) the perceived validity of a reader evaluating the work, this research applies a raciolinguistic lens (Flores & Rosa, 2015) to understand how students’ perceptions of language appropriateness mediate their self-assessments. Using the raciolinguistic framework to understand types of evidence, this article details how students create and write to a faculty reader during writing produced for placement, paying special attention to the ways in which white supremacist language ideologies are enacted for the benefit of the imagined listening subject/reader.

Studies have documented how L2 writers utilize digital tools to mediate the process of writing, yet little is known about test-takers’ perceptions of the utility of digital tools in writing assessment tasks. In a previous investigation (Pusey & Butler, in press), we found that international graduate students’ writing performance was different on assessment tasks that varied in terms of access to external writing resources (e.g., spell-check, dictionaries, internet content searches). To better understand the mechanisms underlying these different outcomes, participants’ (n = 20) perceptions of the two task conditions (with or without access to external resources) were examined based on a questionnaire. Results indicated that participants tended to perceive writing tasks that permit access to external resources as more similar to university writing and as better vehicles for demonstrating their academic writing ability. However, they also perceived this task condition as more difficult than the one which disallowed use of external resources. Regarding enjoyment, test-takers’ perceptions were almost evenly divided. Moreover, additional construct-irrelevant factors (e.g., topic, time, task characteristics and processes) appeared to influence perceptions of the tasks. The findings demonstrate the value of listening to test-taker voices to identify construct-irrelevant factors in writing assessments within the context of an increasingly digitalized world.

A growth mindset (GM), defined as an individual’s perception that their intellectual ability is malleable, has been the subject of extensive research attention, as it can facilitate learning in many contexts. GM has been found to have more pronounced positive effects on students with lower-level writing proficiency. Emotions have also been found to play a significant role in second language (L2) writing. We conducted an innovative investigation of the relationships between GM, emotions related to writing (enjoyment and anxiety), and writing performance. The results of our study involving 589 Chinese 12th-graders and L2 writing tasks showed that GM was positively associated with enjoyment and negatively associated with anxiety. When assessing students grouped according to their writing performance (high, middle, and low), we found an indirect positive path from GM to writing performance via anxiety in the middle-level group and via enjoyment in the low-level group. The findings suggest that GM can promote enjoyment and mitigate anxiety, therefore facilitating L2 writing performance. The pedagogical implications are that teachers should encourage students to develop a GM and foster their social–emotional learning.

Informed by task-based approaches to language teaching, recent L2 writing research has sought to determine the effect of task complexity features on the complexity, accuracy, and fluency of written L2 production (Johnson, 2017). However, two areas of task-informed research have received scant attention: a) the effect of task complexity features on L2 writers’ use of cohesive devices and b) the effect of task repetition as a form of implicit planning. Furthermore, interaction effects of task complexity and task repetition on different types of cohesive devices in L2 writing have not been explored. To bridge these gaps, this study examines the effects of resource-directing task complexity features (Robinson, 2005), task repetition (Lambert et al., 2017), and their interaction on L2 writers’ use of cohesive devices. Ninety-six participants composed two argumentative essays in counterbalanced order: a) a simple task and b) a complex task and then completed a task difficulty questionnaire. After an interval of one week, the participants repeated each task. Essays were then analyzed using the Tool for Automatic Analysis of Cohesion—or TAACO (Crossley et al., 2018)—for indices found to be predictors of human ratings of essay organization (Abdi Tabari & Johnson, 2023). A factorial repeated-measures MANOVA revealed limited effects of task repetition on the participants’ use of cohesive devices. Rather, task complexity features had a more robust effect on their use of textual and local cohesive devices.

The present study investigated the effects of task complexity and language aptitude on upper-intermediate EFL learners’ argumentative writing performance in terms of syntactic complexity, lexical complexity, accuracy and fluency. The findings of this study demonstrated that increasing task complexity manipulated by the number of elements and the degree of reasoning along the resource-directing dimension leads to enhancement of syntactic complexity and lexical diversity, and there are low correlations between language aptitude (mainly number learning and spelling clues) and writing performance. What’s more, task complexity and language aptitude (and its components) are predictors for writing performance in terms of intraclausal level of syntactic complexity, lexical diversity and fluency. These findings lend partial support to the Cognition hypothesis and Aptitude Complexes Hypothesis in L2 writing. Theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical implications of the study for task design and implementation as well as for task-based assessment in language education programs are discussed.

Reading and writing are core activities in higher education, by means of which students learn to participate in specialized discourses. Although there is consensus on the conceptualization of reading comprehension, its measurement, and development, the same is not true for written expression. Writing complexity has been found to improve with schooling, but there are ample differences between literacy practices at school and at the university that require extra attention in diagnosing students’ compositions. The present study set out to test a natural language processing tool to build domain profiles of writing complexity in first-year university students at a private university. The processing of texts resulted in 49 indices which, after exploratory factor analysis and theoretical discussion, gave rise to 4 dimensions of complexity explaining 52.3% of variance: lexical richness, syntactic complexity, informative text structure and specialized language use. Significant differences were found between more and less skilled writers in the aggregated scores, lexical richness, and syntactic complexity. Interestingly, novice and expert writers did not differ significantly in more over-arching aspects of writing. We discuss how this technology can help identify students’ needs in more superficial aspects of writing complexity that have been shown to improve by means of different strategies.

With the objective of improving writing assessment of language instruction, we examine the lexical and syntactic features in two corpora of high and low scoring French texts of the Test du Certificat de Compétence en Langue Seconde (Second Language Certification Test; TCCLS) at the University of Ottawa (uOttawa). We first situate the test in its local context, demonstrating how our research objectives are born from specific needs to improve student outcomes. We then describe our creation of two corpora of high and low performing test takers, followed by lexical bundle (LB) analyses (Phase 1) and further linguistic complexity analyses with a French-language tool (Phase 2). Results indicate that high level writers used more LBs and borrowed more text from the prompt than low level writers. In addition, specific elements of linguistic complexity were identified, suggesting high level writers produced texts that were lexically richer and more syntactically advanced. We discuss the importance of these findings in improving our writing instruction, as well as the challenges of adapting tools and approaches traditionally associated with English to French.