2020 Fiscal Year Research-status Report
Assessing English Writing of Japanese Learners: The Development of Scoring Algorithms of Emails, Descriptions, and Persuasive Essays
| Project/Area Number |
20K13119
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| Research Institution | Nagoya University of Commerce & Business |
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Principal Investigator |
Kim MinKyung 名古屋商科大学, 経営学部, 講師 (70866508)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2020-04-01 – 2023-03-31
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| Keywords | Second language writing |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
The project aims at examining Japanese university students' English writing samples in three different genres (i.e., email, graphic description, and argumentative essay). To do so, in the academic year of 2020, experimental tasks for data collection were prepared. Specifically, a total of fifteen writing prompts (i.e., five email prompts, five graphic description prompts, and five argumentative prompts) were prepared. To create tasks, various task types and standardized English tests were examined. After careful examinations, email tasks ask students to produce two speech acts (one request and one complaint), graphic description tasks ask students to describe a line graph based on authentic data, and argumentative tasks ask students to provide their opinion on a controversy topic. These writing prompts will be used for data collection in the academic year of 2021.
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
4: Progress in research has been delayed.
Reason
Because of the pandemic of Covid-19, the project has been delayed. Specifically, the project plans to collect data by meeting students in person on campus and asking students to produce writing samples in a laboratory setting. In the academic year of 2020, however, due to Covid-19, students took online classes and did not come to campus on a regular basis, so it was almost impossible to collect data on campus. This has made the project delayed.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
In 2021, student writing samples along with expert ones will be collected. To collect student writing, groups of students will complete writing tasks using computers in a computer lab. Next, the collected writing samples will be scored by expert raters by April of 2022. Algorithms that rate student writings for each of the three genres (email, description, argumentative writing) will be developed by December of 2022. In the last phase, the webpage that provides the access to the scoring algorithms will be developed by March of 2023.
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| Causes of Carryover |
Due to the pandemic of Covid-19, students did not come to campus on a regular basis and took online courses in 2020. Thus, it was difficult to collect data in person in 2020. Because of the difficulty in collecting data, the substantial amount of grant funds that are set for personnel expenditure and remuneration has not been used. However, the data collection is going to start from the Spring semester of 2021, and the remaining funds will be used in 2021 and 2022.
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