2022 Fiscal Year Final Research Report
Investigating the Complexity, Accuracy, and Fluency (CAF) Writing Development of First Year Students Over a School Year
| Project/Area Number |
19K00824
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Multi-year Fund |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Review Section |
Basic Section 02100:Foreign language education-related
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| Research Institution | Kyushu Institute of Technology |
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Principal Investigator |
Long Robert 九州工業大学, 教養教育院, 教授 (00284589)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2019-04-01 – 2023-03-31
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| Keywords | Complexity / Accuracy / Fluency / Writing / Syntax / Editing / Proofing / Online grammar checkers |
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| Outline of Final Research Achievements |
Students are under more pressure to produce academic papers that reflect a high level of grammatical accuracy. So, concerning the first achievement, I examined the effectiveness of one online grammar checker (grammarly.com), and compared it to the effectiveness of self-editing. Four universities in Kyushu, Japan were involved, with 199 papers. Ninety-nine essays were proofed by an online grammar checker. The study showed marginal differences between the two methods of proofing, but results indicate that online tools can be useful to identify certain grammatical errors. My second achievement was presented in Zurich, Switzerland, and is now under review with the journal "Assessing Writing." Results showed there was a significant difference between the groups; likewise, fluency did not significantly increase over time, whereas some syntactical complexity variables did show significant increases. The final three research questions, results showed significant differences.
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| Free Research Field |
Linguistics
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| Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements |
The study showed that grammatical online checkers were more effective and that writing classes did not improve (overall) the complexity, accuracy, and fluency of most EFL students. It was apparent that students needed far more guidance in these three areas.
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