Assessing the development of foreign language writing skills: Multidimensional analysis of lexicogrammatical features

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 26370698
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Foreign language education
• Research Institution: Kobe University (2016); Kyushu University (2014-2015)
• Principal Investigator: Yasuda Sachiko 神戸大学, 大学教育推進機構, 准教授 (60386703)
• Project Period (FY): 2014-04-01 – 2017-03-31
• Keywords: 外国語教育 / 第二言語ライティング / ジャンル / アカデミックリテラシー / タスク

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This study has attempted to investigate how Japanese EFL learners develop their linguistic knowledge as well as their writing abilities as they engage in one-year genre-based courses. The course focused on two types of genres: emails and summaries. The results showed that students were more likely to use diverse lexical resources in two pieces of writing at the end of the course, which had a positive impact on the reader. On the other hand, the quality of students' writing and their language choices was affected by genre differences. While syntactically more complex texts (i.e., lexically less dense texts) were highly evaluated by the reader in emails, lexically more dense texts texts (i.e., syntactically less complex texts) were highly evaluated by the reader in summaries. The results imply that, as Norris and Ortega (2009) noted, it would be advisable to employ measurement practices that engage with the construct reality of multidimensionality.

Free Research Field

Second Language Writing