No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Modeling the Development of L1 and EFL Writing Proficiency of Secondary School Students
Abstract
This longitudinal study investigates the development of writing proficiency in English as a foreign language (EFL), in contrast to the development of first language (L1) writing proficiency in Dutch L1, in a sample of almost 400 secondary school students in the Netherlands. Students performed several writing tasks in both languages in three consecutive years. Furthermore, data were collected about students’ metacognitive and linguistic knowledge (grammar, vocabulary, and spelling) and their fluency in lexical retrieval and sentence building (reaction times). Analyses, using structural equation modeling, show that EFL writing was more strongly correlated to linguistic knowledge and linguistic fluency than L1 writing was and that, over the course of the two years investigated, students’ EFL writing proficiency improved to a greater extent than did their L1 writing proficiency. Furthermore, through the modeling of L1 and EFL writing proficiency, a strong relation between the two constructs could be established, with metacognitive knowledge and general fluency mediating this relation. This finding is paralleled by the study of Van Gelderen, Schoonen, Stoel, De Glopper, and Hulstijn (2007) showing a strong relationship between L1 and EFL reading proficiency. Taken together, the findings of these studies call for the inclusion of the constructs of L1 proficiency, linguistic fluency (speed of processing of lexical and grammatical information), and language-general metacognition in theories of the acquisition of L2 proficiency.
... Wr i t i n g r e p r e s e n t s a f u n d a m e n t a l cognitive process involving capturing and disseminating ideas through applying cognitive strategies to organize thoughts coherently (Kim & Schatschneider, 2017). It requires "knowledge of the language sufficient to formulate the propositional content of the intended message in appropriate linguistic forms" (Schoonen et al., 2011, p. 32) to reflect learners' writing proficiency (Schoonen et al., 2011). However, EFL learners face numerous challenges due to their limited cognitive awareness of English writing (Teng & Yang, 2022). ...
... It enables learners to transition from the knowledgetelling stage to the knowledge-transforming stage, where planning transcends the mere organization of existing ideas to convey individual thoughts, thereby developing their cognitive abilities (Hayes, 2000). Cultivating cognitive capabilities in online writing settings focuses on individual cognitive development, such as applying metacognitive strategies (Schoonen et al., 2011) and critical thinking skills (Dong & Chang, 2023) in writing tasks. Consequently, both EFL learners and educators increasingly recognize the importance of these strategies in enhancing writing proficiency and promoting learner autonomy in online learning environments. ...
... Writing proficiency can be examined through a writing test (Schoonen et al., 2011). The writing test employed in this study was adapted from the argumentative writing component of the IELTS writing section. ...
The development of cognitive abilities among EFL learners remains underexplored within English as a foreign language, especially in online writing activities during the COVID-19 era. Enhancing writing proficiency in EFL learners necessitates a heightened cognitive awareness, encompassing the utilization of critical thinking skills and metacognitive strategies. However, existing studies primarily focused on the direct relationship between metacognitive strategies and writing proficiency or critical thinking skills and writing proficiency, overlooking the mediating role of critical thinking skills in online environments. This study sought to bridge this research gap by investigating the interplay among metacognitive strategies, critical thinking skills, and writing proficiency. Specifically, it explores how critical thinking skills mediate the relationship between metacognitive strategies and writing proficiency online. The study involved 459 EFL participants who completed the California Critical Thinking Skills Test, a metacognitive strategies questionnaire, and an IELTS writing test. Data analysis included descriptive, Pearson correlation, and bootstrap analysis for comprehensive examination. The findings unveiled significant correlations among metacognitive strategies, critical thinking skills, and EFL learners’ writing proficiency. Of particular note was the mediation of critical thinking skills between metacognitive strategies and writing proficiency, highlighting the pivotal role of critical thinking skills in online writing contexts. These outcomes emphasized the significance of metacognitive strategies in online writing environments. Future research endeavors could illuminate these dynamics through longitudinal studies across different learning stages.
... The main process in writing is translation by means of which thoughts or non-verbal information are translated into linguistic and verbal information (Schoonen et al., 2011). This process heavily relies on linguistic proficiency of writers, including idea development, morphosyntactic structures, phonology, 40 lexical retrieval, spelling and punctuation, textual connection, and rhetorical structures. ...
... A writer has to possess and synchronize these higher-and lower-level 45 subskills to generate a well-structured text (Wilson et al., 2016). Several studies have shown that linguistic knowledge is the main predictor of L2 writing ability which contributes significantly to writing performance (Effatpanah et al., 2024;Schoonen et al., 2003Schoonen et al., , 2011. However, due to the limitation in linguistic knowledge of L2, writers usually face difficulties in different processes of text construction (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1987;Flower & Hayes, 1981;Hayes, 1996), and thus fail to improve their 50 writing ability in an acceptable manner. ...
... These studies have shown that L2 writers, either "skilled" or "unskilled," interactively switch back and forth between their L1 and L2, as a compensatory strategy, for a variety of purposes including generating ideas, planning and organizing texts, transferring L1 knowledge to L2 writing contexts, solving linguistic problems, translation, 60 rehearsing, process-controlling, backtracking, and evaluating the text (see Murphy & Roca de Larios, 2010, for a review of compensatory strategies). Moreover, there are researchers (e.g., Bachman, 1990;Bachman & Palmer, 1996;Bachmann & Palmer, 2010;Effatpanah et al., 2024;Schoonen et al., 2009Schoonen et al., , 2011 who explicitly argued that L2 writing subskills interact in a compensatory manner. For instance, Schoonen et al. (2009) argued that L2 writers with good 65 knowledge of vocabulary are more likely to compensate for their lack of competence in generating and expressing their ideas and content elements. ...
The purpose of this study was to explore the nature of interactions 10 among second/foreign language (L2) writing subskills. Two types of relationships were investigated: subskill-item and subskill-subskill relationships. To achieve the first purpose, using writing data obtained from the writing essays of 500 English as a foreign language (EFL) students, the fit of the G-DINA model as general cognitive diagnostic model (CDM) was compared against 15 a Wald-selected model (e.g. a model in which different CDMs such as DINA, DINO, A-CDM, LLM, and RRUM were selected for each item). To study cross-subskill impacts, two-way interactions between the subskills were estimated, and lens and scatter plots were checked. Subskill-item relationships showed that the subskills of L2 writing contribute additively and independently to 20 the probability of successful performance. Furthermore, the loglinear analysis revealed that some of the subskills draw information from the other subskills. The plots showed that neglecting inter-subskill relationships would lead to misclassification of examinees.
... They argue that L1 and L2 writers make plans, generate ideas, organize them, and set goals to create an internal representation of the knowledge that they intend to present in their writing; translate their ideas into texts through retrieving linguistic resources and relevant knowledge from their memory; and finally, systematically review and revise their texts to rectify errors. These processes tap into various skills, knowledge types, such as knowledge of linguistic resources and sociolinguistic knowledge, metacognitive, and neurodevelopmental processes (Schoonen et al., 2011). ...
... The process calls for sufficient knowledge of linguistic features, including content, grammar and sentence construction, word choice, organization or textual connection, and mechanics (e.g., spelling and punctuation). Generally, content and organization are considered as higher-level, and mechanics, grammar, and vocabulary as lower-level writing skills (Schoonen et al., 2011). The synchronization of lower-and higher-level writing skills constrains working memory capacity and impacts the quality of written texts (Vasylets & Marín, 2021). ...
... The synchronization of lower-and higher-level writing skills constrains working memory capacity and impacts the quality of written texts (Vasylets & Marín, 2021). Previous studies have indicated that fluent or automatic use of lower-level skills in a text reduces the cognitive processing load and allows a writer to give more attentional capacity to higher-level skills (Effatpanah & Baghaei, 2021;Schoonen et al., 2011). Since linguistic knowledge is the foremost predictor of writing performance, a large number of studies have been conducted to examine the role of linguistic features in L2 writing performance (e.g., Abdi Tabari & Wang, 2022;Lan et al., 2022;Lee et al., 2021). ...
The present study used the Mixed Rasch Model (MRM) to identify multiple profiles in L2 students' writing with regard to several linguistic features, including content, organization, grammar, vocabulary, and mechanics. To this end, a pool of 500 essays written by English as a foreign language (EFL) students were rated by four experienced EFL teachers using the Empirically-derived Descriptor-based Diagnostic (EDD) checklist. The ratings were subjected to MRM analysis. Two distinct profiles of L2 writers emerged from the sample analyzed including: (a) Sentence-Oriented and (b) Paragraph-Oriented L2 Writers. Sentence-Oriented L2 Writers tend to focus more on linguistic features, such as grammar, vocabulary, and mechanics, at the sentence level and try to utilize these subskills to generate a written text. However, Paragraph-Oriented Writers are inclined to move beyond the boundaries of a sentence and attend to the structure of a whole paragraph using higher-order features such as content and organization subskills. The two profiles were further examined to capture their unique features. Finally, the theoretical and pedagogical implications of the identification of L2 writing profiles and suggestions for further research are discussed.
... Higher-order activities, such as the clarification of the writing objective, the planning of the writing process or the activation of textual and content patterns, must be coordinated with lower-order components of the production process such as spelling, lexical retrieval and syntax. The specific challenges of written text production in the early stages of foreign language learning include limited mastery of vocabulary as well as a lack of routine in lowerorder processes, and thus increased demands on the coordination of the complex procedures of the text production process (Schoonen et al. 2011). From a plurilingual perspective, the question arises as to how the writing skills in the different languages in the repertoire are interrelated and which com-ponents and control mechanisms can be used transversally by the individual. ...
... Studies comparing texts produced in different languages but by the same writers, as a necessary pre-requisite for being able to address the issue of transversality, are currently still rare (Marx 2020). Research conducted so far attests that writing abilities are linked across languages, but also that the patterns of transversal relationships are quite complex and vary according to numerous factors, including language proficiency, writing routine in the weaker language (Cumming 1994), the proximity of language systems (Schoonen et al. 2011), textual genre, metalinguistic awareness and, in the case of a heritage language, sustained instruction and extended reading and writing in that language (Riehl 2020). Several enquiries on narrative production in bilinguals revealed cross-linguistic similarities in the functional use of connectives (conjunctions, adverbial expressions) for text-structuring (see e. g. ...
... The growing correlation between text length in the foreign languages in Year 7 reveals that French caught up with English. It can be hypothesised that, as competence in the tertiary language French increases, cross-linguistic text production resources are increasingly used and that these resources are not exploited, even when the opportunity to look up words during preparation or editing is available, as long as the production process is hampered by the lack of routine (Cumming 1994, Schoonen et al. 2011. The results in Year 6 predicted those in Year 7 for both variables, as indicated by the correlations/associations within languages in the longitudinal section. ...
This partially longitudinal study focussed on the ability of pupils to write descriptive texts in English and French as foreign languages and German as language of schooling. The teaching of two foreign languages from primary school onwards is compulsory in Switzerland, where this study is situated. The study responds to the urgent need for empirical research on cross-linguistic and cross-level development as a foundation for the improvement of language teaching. Current curricula do provide for the coherent fostering of the plurilingual repertoires of learners, across languages and school levels. But this still stands in sharp contrast to the multiple compartmentalisations and discontinuities induced by the educational system. Letters with spatial descriptions were collected in a quasi-experimental design in the canton of St. Gallen at the end of primary school (Year 6, N=185) and in the first year of secondary school (Year 7, N=218). The texts were analysed in terms of spatial organisation and text length. Moderate but statistically significant correlations between languages were found for both variables. The analysis revealed continuity of the development in the foreign languages, but stagnation in the language of schooling. The benefits of fostering transversally accessible textual patterns through a genre-based approach, in particular for the second foreign language (L3), are discussed.
... Despite the extensively developed theory on the interrelation of multilingual writing skills, the related empirical research usually focuses only on a certain part of a person's multilingual repertoire. Studies investigating multilingual writing rep-ertoires as (a) writing proficiency in the majority and foreign language(s), (b) the majority and heritage language(s), and (c) the majority, heritage, and foreign languages have shown that writing proficiency is interrelated among different languages within a multilingual repertoire (Lanauze & Snow, 1989;Riehl, 2020Riehl, , 2021Schoonen et al., 2011;Soltero-González et al., 2012;Sparrow et al., 2014;Usanova & Schnoor, 2021a). The relationships between writing proficiencies in different languages may be based on the common linguistic and metacognitive knowledge they share. ...
... The relationships between writing proficiencies in different languages may be based on the common linguistic and metacognitive knowledge they share. Thus, writers may use their metacognitive knowledge about writing tasks and strategies in one language to compose a text in another language (Schoonen et al., 2011;Soltero-González et al., 2012;Victori, 1999). The FoM approach has been applied by Usanova and Schnoor (2021a), who have demonstrated the positive interrelation of multilingual writing skills within students' writing repertoires in three languages: the majority language, the heritage language, and the foreign language learned at school. ...
... However, these findings stemmed from cross-sectional data, but panel data are needed to test the resources hypothesis. Other studies using longitudinal writing data to investigate multilingual writing development have not considered heritage languages, thus missing an important part of migrant students' writing repertoires (e.g., Schoonen et al., 2011;van Gelderen et al., 2003). ...
Writing, as a highly complex strategic literacy skill alongside reading, is an essential prerequisite for learning and determines a student's educational success. In diverse contexts, a student's linguistic repertoire may involve multiple languages, which may serve as mutual resources in his or her multilingual writing skill development. Drawing on the data from a German panel study, "Multilingual Development: A Longitudinal Perspective", the current research used the longitudinal writing competence data of 965 German-Russian and German-Turkish secondary students regarding their majority language (German), heritage language (Russian or Turkish), and foreign language (English). We applied longitudinal structural equation modeling to investigate within-and between-language effects in multilingual writing development over three waves of data collection. Accordingly, our study extends previous research on the interrelation of languages in multilingual writing development in two ways. First, we provide a more comprehensive analysis of migrant students' multilingual writing repertoires by simultaneously evaluating three languages in an integrative model of multilingual writing development. Second, we use longitudinal competence data to decompose covariance between languages to isolate the parts of the variances that truly predict changes within and between languages. This approach empirically tests the resources hypothesis more rigorously than extant evaluations. In summary, our findings indicate that language-specific writing skills may serve as mutual resources for developing multilingual writing proficiency.
... A proper understanding of SA factors in L2 motivation and their relationship with language proficiency could be extremely useful in designing L2 course plans and pedagogical methods. Although studies have been done on writing proficiency in English (e.g., Rijlaarsdam et al., 2013;Schoonen, 2019;Schoonen et al., 2010), correlational studies highlighting the nature of the relationship between motivation and English writing proficiency remain relatively scarce. English writing proficiency has been taken as the measurement of English language proficiency in this study since the general trend in English language education in India has been keener on developing this expressive skill than the others. ...
... Confirming previous studies in L2 motivation research (e.g., Rijlaarsdam et al., 2013;Schoonen, 2019;Schoonen et al., 2010), the biological differences among the participants in the study led to two related conclusions. Both might be of interest to L2 pedagogical practices. ...
understood as a product of the stimulus appraisal system, and writing proficiency in English among undergraduate Indian ESL learners. The principal objective of the study was to analyze the correlation between the undergraduate Indian ESL learner’s motivational sub-checks/constructs, constituted using the stimulus appraisal (SA) theory of affect, and their writing proficiency in English. Additionally, it also attempted to understand the influence of sex and academic disciplines on the correlations. An ESL motivation survey was conducted using a modified version of the Attitude and Motivation Test Battery (Gardner, 1985) on students (N>350) studying in undergraduate programs in the academic disciplines of engineering, humanities, and medical sciences selected using criterion-based sampling, followed by a writing proficiency test in English. It was observed that need/compatibility factors did not significantly correlate with ESL writing proficiency in any of the three subsamples. ESL classroom-related factors within the pleasantness/novelty construct, on the other hand, significantly correlated with ESL writing proficiency. It is hoped that the insights obtained in the study should potentially help design more empirically informed pedagogical methods of ESL teaching.
... Recent systematic analyses of empirical L2 writing studies reveal that English as a foreign language (EFL) writing research has predominantly focused on adult learners and higher education settings (Geng, Yu, Liu, & Liu, 2022;Riazia, Shib, & Haggerty, 2018). Among those that focused on young writers, few studies have explored writing performances of students in secondary schools (e.g., Maamuujav, Olson, & Chung, 2021;Wolf, Oh, Wang, & Tsutagawa, 2018), despite the fact that secondary education is typically the time when the demand of EFL writing increases (Schoonen, Van Gelderen, Stoel, Hulstijn, & De Glopper, 2011). Geng et al. (2022) also point out that many published studies were conducted in Asian countries or regions; more research focusing on other contexts is needed. ...
... The fact that more skilled readers did not exploit the linguistic resources they had in their written production signals that an increase in L2 reading proficiency does not necessarily entail an enriched L2 writing performances with respect to vocabulary and grammar. One possibility is that retrieving and deploying receptive linguistic knowledge in YLLs' long-term memory into written production is a skill that will take time and practices to develop and improve (Schoonen et al., 2011). This possibility highlights the importance of integrating reading and writing instruction early and providing ample opportunities for YLLs to read various text types and practice writing in the classroom. ...
This study examined the role of writing task types and L2 reading proficiency on young English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' writing performances. The participants were 185 students (Grades 7 and 8) from Denmark, Finland, and the Netherlands. The students responded to a descriptive and an email writing tasks that assessed their writing ability. The written responses were scored holistically and analyzed for aspects of lexical sophistication, syntactic complexity, writing fluency, and idea development. The students were grouped into strong or emergent readers based on their performances on an English reading comprehension test. Results showed that the students' writing performances differed across task types and were associated with their reading proficiency. The students produced more unique and concrete words and more complex syntactic structures and wrote longer essays in the descriptive writing task. Strong readers outperformed the emergent readers in both tasks and in writing fluency and idea development. Findings corroborate previous research on the connection between reading and writing skills and highlight the importance of strengthening young EFL learners' reading skills to support their writing development.
... secondary EFL students seem to struggle with writing comprehensible texts (Harsch et al., 2008) • little is known about secondary EFL learners' text quality development (see Polio, 2017); existing studies show only modest improvements in text quality (e.g., Schoonen et al., 2011) ...
... • secondary EFL students seem to struggle with writing comprehensible texts (Harsch et al., 2008) • little is known about secondary EFL learners' text quality development (see Polio, 2017); existing studies show only modest improvements in text quality (e.g., Schoonen et al., 2011) • feedback can help improving students' text quality (Parr & Timperley, . show learners where they are according to learning goals (feed up) . ...
... In writing research, it is agreed that different task types prompt different linguistic resources (Cumming et al., 2005;Plakans & Gebril, 2013), and therefore, it is suggested that it is difficult to assess writing proficiency using only one task (which is the case in the material analysed in this study) (Schoonen et al., 2011). Kyle and Crossley (2016) considered task type in relation to lexical sophistication by analysing the effect of independent tasks (where writers are asked to draw from their own experiences when completing the task) and source-based tasks (which ask the writer to integrate different sources into their text). ...
The present study concerns the effect of lexical complexity on grading of Swedish EFL learners’ texts during high-stakes exams. A learner corpus consisting of 142 texts graded by expert raters and 175 texts graded by teachers was analysed to establish if the latter graded in agreement with the former as intended by the Swedish National Agency for Education (SNAE). Four indices of lexical complexity available in TAALED and TAALES were chosen to explore if this is the case. The method includes conducting ordinal regression with interactions to determine the effect of the independent variables on grade and if these variables have the same effect in texts graded by teachers and expert raters. The findings reveal a discrepancy between expert raters and teachers as they appear to consider lexical complexity to a different extent. It was also found that expert raters and teachers graded more in agreement during source-based writing tasks compared to independent writing tasks.
... First, foreign language or second language learners (referred aggregately to as L2 learners in this study) do not reach a satisfactory level in their writing skills because they encounter some problems while attempting to develop the skills and this might be partially related to their not having a clear understanding of English information structure. This assumption is based on the fact that the quality of L2 writing may be affected by L2 learner's L2 linguistic knowledge (Sasaki & Hirose, 1996;Schoonen et al., 2003;Schoonen et al., 2011;Oh, Lee, & Moon, 2015) and that L2 learner's inadequate L2 linguistic knowledge may hinder their expressing thoughts and ideas in L2 (Hinkel, 2004;Oh, Lee, & Moon, 2015), or in more general terms, there is a close link between L2 learners' meta-linguistic knowledge and their English proficiency (Berry, 1997;Borg, 1999;Hu, 2010). This connection is traced down to the potential of meta-language instruction to enhance meta-language awareness and whereby language development (Carter, 2003;Berry, 2005;Swain, 2005;Hu, 2010). ...
This paper reports the results of a study which investigates the problems Vietnamese university non-major English students of two levels of English proficiency encountered in their English writing in terms of the factors relating to their meta-knowledge of English information structure and the extent to which a cognitive meta-linguistic approach to teaching second language (L2) writing can help the learners overcome their writing problems and develop their written communicative ability by first enhancing their meta-knowledge of English information structure. Their problems are conceptualized as being associated with their employing or not employing some writing strategies that can either support or hinder their writing skills development. The analyses of the problems were based on the learners’ responses to the questionnaire and interviews, their writing in the writing tasks and classroom-based worksheets and answer sheets. The findings suggested that the learners in the study encountered the writing problems anticipated before, during and after the intervention. The percentages of the learners encountering the problems decreased over time and the extent to which each problem was solved towards the end of the post-teaching phase varied according to each specific problem. Transfer of first language (L1) strategies was reported in all of the writing problems. The influence of L1 transfer was variable with extremely low evidence of topic-prominent structure. In general, there were no big differences between the two groups in their encountering and overcoming the problems investigated.
... The difficulty lies in generating and organizing ideas as well as in transforming these ideas in writing in English language into coherent, accurate, informative and readable text. In writing, any idea must be supported with specific reasons or details (Schoonen, 2011). ...
... Most studies examining the relationship between metacognition and language learning have reported similar results (Pishghadam & Khajavy, 2013;Schoonen et al., 2011). According to Chamot and O'Malley (1994), metacognition "may be the major factor in determining the effectiveness of individual's attempts to learn another language" (pp. ...
The present study aimed to examine the relationship between children’s metacognition and their later second language acquisition in implicit and explicit learning conditions, as well as the effects of time and condition on children’s metacognition and second language acquisition. Seventy Chinese children ( M = 8.13 ; sd = 3.34) were followed from Year 2 to Year 3 at primary school. Children in Group 1 were in the Explicit Learning Condition, while children in Group 2 were in the Implicit and Explicit Learning Condition. A range of tasks were used to assess children’s metacognition and second language acquisition. Children’s implicit metacognitive skills and explicit metacognitive knowledge had significant predictive roles in their later second language acquisition. Children in Group 2 had higher levels of improvement in later implicit and explicit metacognition as well as in implicit and explicit second language acquisition than their counterparts in Group 1.
... Huang (2010) classifies these obstacles into two levels: surface level such as vocabulary, tense use, and sentence construction, and global level such as organization, idea development, and knowing the audience. Drawing on the close relationship between L1 and L2 writing as well as the transfer of writing strategies between L1 and L2 (Keck, 2006;Schoonen et al., 2011), previous empirical research has confirmed the major impact of L1 habits on the schemata of L2 writing (Sheldon, 2011;Wei et al., 2020;Zhang, 2013) and enrich our understanding of the L1 effect in L2 writers' production hampered by the decision-making processes while writing (Odlin, 2003). Accordingly, education and success in L1 are powerful predictors of success in L2 education (Leki et al., 2008). ...
This study explored tertiary-level L2 learners’ familiarization with genre-specific conventions in English writing skills. Employing a qualitative research paradigm, data were gathered via semi-structured interviews with 26 L2 learners. An inductive content analysis was conducted to elicit recurring codes and themes. The learners expressed strengths encompassing the recognition of genre-specific features, awareness of linguistic and organizational conventions in genre writing, and formality level. They highlighted the challenges in their orientation to genre identification, text organization, and genre-specific language choices. The learners established connections between these challenges and limited prior writing experience in L1 and L2 and their subsequent reliance on L2 formal knowledge. Further sources of challenges were linked to affective factors, language proficiency, genre convention mastery, and topic familiarity. They reported feeling anxious due to unfamiliarity with genre features, lack of interest in a given topic, inadequate pre-writing, and planning stage, the demanding nature of the process-genre writing instruction, and instructors’ expectations. They proposed suggestions regarding the mastery of lexical and grammatical knowledge, the provision of effective feedback from instructors to improve textual organization, and genre-specific language conventions. Accordingly, instructional implications for the cultivation of genre knowledge and awareness of tertiary-level writing skills are presented.
... Writing in a foreign language requires the use of multiple sources of knowledge and skills due to the complexity of text composition such as grammar, text type, rhetorical requirements based on text type, metacognitive knowledge related to the writing process, etc. (Schoonen et al., 2011). At this point, variability in writing proficiency depends on several factors including the capacity and efficiency of cognitive resources (Olive, 2012), and text production throughout the writing process involves managing these variables. ...
Gerek anadilde gerekse yabancı dilde metin üretimi için gereken bilgi ve beceri kaynaklarının yönetimi için herbiri bilişsel karşılığı ola dilsel-dilbilgisel yapıların algılanması, işlemleme ve kullanım için kontrollü işlemlemeden otomatik işlemlemeye, bildirimsel bilgiden prosedural bilgiye geçişi sağlayacak nitelikte öğretim tasarımı yapılmalıdır. Bu noktada bilişsel sistemi (yapıyı) oluşturan birimlerin hedef dile ilişkin dilsel-dilbilgisel veriyi nasıl işlediğinin belirlenmesi, öğretim tasarımlarının niteliği ve beceri gelişimi açısından önemlidir. Bilişsel görevlerin gerçekleştirilebilmesi için bu görevleri yerine getirmek için gereken zihinsel temsillerin oluşturulması ve görev sürecinde aktif kalması gerekir. Zihinsel temsillerin oluşumu için ihtiyaç duyulan bilgi kaynaklarının yönetimi ve düzenlenmesi işler bellek tarafından gerçekleştirilir. Bu zeminden hareketle çalışmada bilişsel yapının önemli unsurlarından işler belleğin yabancı dilde yazma sürecinde üstlendiği görevlerin neler olduğu, birinci-ikinci dilde yazma sürecinde işler belleğin çalışma sistematiği açısından farklılaşma olup olmadığı bu konuda yapılmış çalışmalardan elde edilen bulgulardan hareketle betimlenmiştir. Bu amaçla derleme yöntemi kullanılarak öncelikle yazma süreci ve yabancı dilde yazma ile işler bellek sisteminin yapısı üzerinde durulmuş, sonraki aşamada ise işler bellek sisteminin yabancı dilde yazma sürecinde üstlenmiş olduğu görevler ele alınmıştır.
... But L2 acquisition will be seriously hindered by this [6]. Compared with the speed of acquiring linguistic knowledge, it was also found that metacognitive and linguistic knowledge is more crucial during L1 writing [7]. An empirical study was carried out to investigate the main types and reasons of errors in English writing by Chinese college students majored in German. ...
The phenomenon of negative transfer between languages has been a hot topic in second language acquisition. It can have an important impact on students' second language acquisition. Understanding the phenomenon of negative transfer through errors that occur during language learning can better regulate language acquisition in the process of second language learning and improve students' cognition of second language acquisition. The writing part of the IELTS test is a major difficulty for Chinese non-English majors to overcome. Then understanding the negative transfer phenomenon that occurs in their writing process is particularly important for them to improve their scores. This research is dedicated to the research and analysis of the types of errors and the reasons why Chinese non-English major students make mistakes in IELTS writing task 2. The study found that Chinese non-English major students experienced negative transfer between languages in IELTS writing task 2, which resulted in four main types of errors, namely errors in subject-verb agreement, double-predicate errors, and errors in tense of verbs and incomplete sentence structure. By summarizing and analyzing the types of errors caused by these negative transfers, this research hopes to provide corresponding guidance and inspiration for IELTS writing teaching and English writing for non-English major students.
... and vocabulary are typically regarded as lower-level, whereas higher-level subskills encompass organization and content (Schoonen et al., 2011). To produce a well-constructed text, writers should coordinate these higher-and lower-level writing subskills which impose constraints on working memory capacity and influence the overall quality of written texts (Güvendir & Uzun, 2023). ...
It has been acknowledged that second/foreign language (L2) writing is a complex and multi-dimensional cognitive process, and linguistic knowledge is the foremost predictor of L2 writing. Previous research on developing models and orientations for characterizing L2 writing and its linguistic features are based on methods rooted in classical test theory (CTT) which mostly tend to overlook qualitative differences among writers. The use of item response theory (IRT) and Rasch models has been disregarded in L2 writing research. This study aimed to psychometrically investigate the dimensionality of linguistic features in L2 writing using the Rasch model. To achieve this, 500 Iranian English as a foreign language (EFL) students wrote an essay marked by four experienced raters using an empirically-derived descriptor-based diagnostic checklist. The scores derived from the marking of the essays were subjected to Rasch model analysis. Individual item/descriptor fit, separation and reliability, unidimensionality, and local item dependency (LID) were examined. The results provided evidence for the multidimensionality of linguistic features in L2 writing. The analysis of the positive and negative item loadings on Factor 1, extracted from the Rasch model residuals, revealed the presence of two sets of descriptors that contribute to the definition of two groups of L2 writers. The first set comprises descriptors with positive loadings mostly related to higher-level linguistic features of L2 writing, including content fulfillment (CON) and organizational effectiveness (ORG). However, the second set includes descriptors with negative loadings chiefly related to lower-level linguistic features, such as vocabulary use (VOC), grammatical knowledge (GRM), and mechanics (MCH). Implications and suggestions for further research are discussed.
... Firstly, vocabulary is a critical factor in language learning and proficiency development (Clenton & Booth, 2020) which correlates positively with scores in general proficiency tests (Alderson, 2006;Dodigovic & Agustín-Llach, 2020). Secondly, vocabulary size, measured as the number of words a person knows, is a strong predictor of writing quality and reading comprehension (Laufer, 1996;Morris & Cobb, 2004;Qian, 2002;Schoonen et al., 2011). In addition, specialized vocabulary is closely linked to the content knowledge in a specific field (Hyland & Tse, 2007;Woodward-Kron, 2008) and "constitutes a very important and required knowledge for those who work directly or indirectly in a subject area" (Liu & Lei, 2020, p. 111). ...
Given the importance of specialized vocabulary in scientific communication and academic discourse, there is a growing need to create wordlists to address the vocabulary-learning needs of university students and researchers in different subject areas. The current study analyzed a corpus of chemistry research articles (with 278 million running words) to establish a mid-frequency vocabulary list for this field. Using frequency, range, and dispersion criteria, the study identified 560 lemmas in the fourth to the ninth British National Corpus/Corpus of Contemporary American English (BNC/COCA) lists that provided 6.4% coverage of all words in the corpus. The list was validated using specialized and general corpora, and the results confirmed the value and relevance of the items for chemistry. Moreover, for using the list for pedagogical goals, the vocabulary items were divided into five bands based on their coverage and importance. The 100 words in the first band were the most important mid-frequent vocabulary in chemistry, as they provided 3.05% coverage. The study highlights the significant contribution of mid-frequency words in research articles and the findings have implications for using large corpora as a big data source in identifying specialized and field-specific vocabulary.
... Such predicted and attested interaction of WM and other variables can be anticipated to be especially relevant in the case of L2 production on account of the cognitively demanding nature of composing, especially in connection with the orchestration of knowledge resources and skills that are implicated in text production. Thus, performing writing (in both time-constrained and time-expanded, individual and collaborative conditions) entails the availability of and (ideally automatic) access to required L2 knowledge, knowledge of genre conventions and rhetorical requirements (Schoonen et al., 2011), and domain knowledge relevant to the task at hand. Writing also presupposes multiple cognitive skills in order to successfully orchestrate (and shift between) the higher order processes involved in writing (essentially planning, linguistic encoding, revision, and monitoring), which entails inter alia decision making on the part of the writer as to the allocation of attentional resources throughout the entire process of composing. ...
This study examined the independent effects of working memory (WM) and the interactive effects of WM/L2 proficiency and WM/task complexity on L2 written performance. The study followed a within–between-participant factorial design, with two levels of task complexity as the within-participant variable and L2 proficiency and WM as between-participants variables. The outcome measure was L2 writing performance as measured by CAF indices. Two groups of undergraduate students from a degree in English studies were invited to complete the simple and complex version of the “Fire-Chief” task. Task complexity was operationalized in terms of reasoning demands, and tasks were counterbalanced to avoid unwanted order effects. Participants also completed the Oxford Placement Test and a working memory test ( n -back). Regarding independent effects, results show that WM did not have an effect on L2 writing performance. In contrast, L2 proficiency was the variable most connected to various dimensions of the text produced. As for interactive effects, no significant interaction between WM, proficiency, or task complexity was found. In contrast, L2 proficiency emerged as the sole significant predictor of L2 writing performance at both levels of task complexity.
... In most cases, raters assign holistic scores (i.e., scores awarded for overall writing quality but not for individual traits) to the target essay based on these rubrics. Language use plays a crucial role in the assessment of L2 writing quality because it determines to what extent L2 learners put ideas into verbal forms (Schoonen et al., 2011). This claim has gained support from recent empirical findings that writing quality is closely associated with language use. ...
This study modeled the effects of essay length and language features on the rated quality of second language (L2) expository and argumentative essays composed by Chinese university students. Latent variables were writing quality captured by essay scores, and lexical sophistication, syntactic complexity and cohesion, each of which was measured by different linguistic features in the essays. Results showed that, (i) essay length, sophisticated words (i.e., words eliciting longer lexical decision times, and used in academic texts), complex nominals and coordinate phrases could account for approximately 45% of the variance in the scores of argumentative essays, and (ii) essay length, sophisticated words (i.e., academic words, words used in restricted context, and words that have fewer orthographic neighbors), complex nominals, coordinate phrases and word type-token ratio could explain approximately 49% of the variance in the scores of expository essays. Such findings indicate that, although differing in genre, raters tended to give higher scores to the essays of two genres that contained more sophisticated words, complex phrases, and distinct types of words.
... Interest in investigating and assessing language development in a second language has been growing recently (Barkaoui & Hadidi, 2021, p. 1). However, compared with other language domains, robust empirical evidence of proficiency development process in foreign languages is needed (Pae & O'Brien, 2018;Schoonen et al., 2011;van Gelderen et al., 2007). Findings from longitudinal analyses based on substantial samples, in particular, are rare (Barkaoui, 2014;Schrauf, 2009). ...
Research on assessing English as a foreign language (EFL) development has been growing recently. However, empirical evidence from longitudinal analyses based on substantial samples is still needed. In such settings, tests for measuring language development must meet high standards of test quality such as validity, reliability, and objectivity, as well as allow for valid interpretations of change scores, requiring longitudinal measurement invariance. The current study has a methodological focus and aims to examine the measurement invariance of a C-test used to assess EFL development in monolingual and bilingual secondary school students (n = 1956) in Germany. We apply longitudinal confirmatory factor analysis to test invariance hypotheses and obtain proficiency estimates comparable over time. As a result, we achieve residual longitudinal measurement invariance. Furthermore, our analyses support the appropriateness of altering texts in a longitudinal C-test design, which allows for the anchoring of texts between waves to establish comparability of the measurements over time using the information of the repeated texts to estimate the change in the test scores. If used in such a design, a C-test provides reliable, valid, and efficient measures for EFL development in secondary education in bilingual and monolingual students in Germany.
... Vocabulary supports virtually all aspects of language performance. Researchers' awareness of its importance has been expressed in multiple theories and instructional recommendations in different skills: speaking (e.g., Kormos, 2006;Levelt, 1989), listening (e.g., Field, 2008;Rost, 2011), reading (e.g., Perfetti, 2007;Perfetti & Stafura, 2014), and writing (e.g., Schoonen et al., 2011). In the domain of second language (L2) proficiency, Hulstijn (2015) proposed a core-periphery model, in which various components underlying L2 proficiency are divided into two groups (core and periphery). ...
In this commentary, the following four papers have been reviewed and discussed: Vocabulary Learning Outside of the Classroom: Institutional Use of a Spaced Repetition Vocabulary Learning App (Mueller & Hays, 2022), Developing a Discipline-Specific Corpus and High-Frequency Word List for Science and Engineering Students in the Graduate School (Uehara et al., 2022), Rasch-based Instrument Validations for an Augmented Reality Vocabulary Acquisition Experiment (Dabrowski, 2022), and Orthographic Processing of Proper Names: A Proposal to Investigate the Orthographic Cue for Second Language Readers (Klassen, 2022).
... • We expected better English writing skills only for bilinguals with betterdeveloped heritage language skills (H1): bilinguals with above-average writing skills in their heritage language perform better in English writing than those with below-average writing skills. This finding supports the positive interrelation of multilingual writing skills revealed by previous research (Butvilofsky and Sparrow 2012;Schoonen et al. 2011;Soltero-González et al. 2012;Sparrow et al. 2014;. However, we find better English writing skills of bilinguals compared to monolinguals only for Russian/high bilin-guals; Turkish/high bilinguals do not differ from German monolinguals in their English writing skills. ...
This volume presents interdisciplinary findings on the relevance of multilingualism for the educational biographies of students in Germany. The focus is on linguistic, personal, and contextual factors that can influence learners' language development. Both quantitative and qualitative methods are used.
... • We expected better English writing skills only for bilinguals with betterdeveloped heritage language skills (H1): bilinguals with above-average writing skills in their heritage language perform better in English writing than those with below-average writing skills. This finding supports the positive interrelation of multilingual writing skills revealed by previous research (Butvilofsky and Sparrow 2012;Schoonen et al. 2011;Soltero-González et al. 2012;Sparrow et al. 2014;. However, we find better English writing skills of bilinguals compared to monolinguals only for Russian/high bilin-guals; Turkish/high bilinguals do not differ from German monolinguals in their English writing skills. ...
European companies are losing significant amounts of business due to a lack of foreign language skills (CILT 2006). The command of languages other than German is nowadays required of almost 70 percent of all employees in Germany (Hall 2020). Although especially the use of the lingua franca English is widespread, Russian and Turkish are among the most useful languages in German foreign trade. In order to meet the labour market demand for multilingual skills on the one hand, and to improve personal career opportunities on the other hand, it appears important to motivate students to invest in their multilingual skills. According to rational choice theoretical approaches (e.g. Becker 1964; Boudon 1974), the perceived labour market value of multilingual skills can be assumed to be a potential determinant of students’ investments in their language skills and, as such, of their actual language skills. Using questionnaire data and language test results from the third wave of the study “Multilingual development: A longitudinal perspective” (MEZ), we investigate (1) how mono- and multilingual secondary school students perceive the labour market value of multilingual skills with respect to the realization of their individual occupational aspirations and (2) how the anticipated labour market benefits of multilingual skills are related to the students’ actual language skills. We focus on the school-taught foreign language English and the participants’ heritage languages Russian and Turkish. We estimate ordered logistics regression models to identify background-adjusted differences in the importance multilingual and monolingual students attribute to multilingual skills. Further, we estimate linear regression models in which students’ language skills are modelled as a function of the importance they attribute to the respective language skills. We find that both mono- and multilingual students are aware of the importance of multilingual skills in realizing their personal occupational aspirations. The analyses further reveal that multilingual students’ perceptions about the value of their multilingual skills are a significant predictor for their actual language skills as measured by our test instruments, whereas no systematic association was detected in the group of monolinguals.
... • We expected better English writing skills only for bilinguals with betterdeveloped heritage language skills (H1): bilinguals with above-average writing skills in their heritage language perform better in English writing than those with below-average writing skills. This finding supports the positive interrelation of multilingual writing skills revealed by previous research (Butvilofsky and Sparrow 2012;Schoonen et al. 2011;Soltero-González et al. 2012;Sparrow et al. 2014;Usanova and Schnoor 2021). However, we find better English writing skills of bilinguals compared to monolinguals only for Russian/high bilin-guals; Turkish/high bilinguals do not differ from German monolinguals in their English writing skills. ...
Evidence of a “bilingual advantage” in adolescents’ learning of foreign languages is far from conclusive. The results of various studies range from none to partial or conditional confirmation of the assumption of bilingual advantages in this respect. Overall, these findings come from research that focused primarily on reading or indicators of general language proficiency. Studies on potential bilingual advantages for writing in foreign language learning are still scarce. Corresponding longitudinal research on multilingual writing skills in adolescence is completely lacking. To address this research gap, our study examines whether bilingual adolescents may have advantages over their monolingual counterparts in developing writing skills in English as a foreign language. Based on data from four waves of the German study “Multilingual Development: A Longitudinal Perspective (MEZ)”, we analyze the writing of German-Russian and German-Turkish bilingual adolescents in English as a foreign language compared to a monolingual reference group. Our analyses include controls of background variables as well as writing skills in the heritage and majority languages. Our results point to the occurrence of, at most, minor group-specific and nonpermanent effects of bilingualism on foreign language learning at school in Germany.
... • Ability to connect the spoken word to a written form, to reassemble phonological information as orthographic symbols (Russak & Zaretsky, 2022) • Spelling is a complex written language skill which relies on multiple sources of information (Berninger et al., 2006Bosman & van Orden, 1997;Ehri, 2000;Russak, 2022;Treiman, 2017;Treiman & Kessler, 2014) • Good speller must have access to multiple linguistic, metalinguistic and processing skills Caravolas et al., 2006;Moats, 2009) • Componential model of writing (Harrison et al., 2016;Oh et al., 2015;Schoonen et al., 2002Schoonen et al., , 2003Schoonen et al., , 2011 • Consequences of dual language involvement (Koda, 2007): crosslanguage influence a. Contrastive-typological framework (Lado, 1957(Lado, , 1964) → Script-dependent hypothesis (Geva & Siegel, 2000) b. Common underlying cognitive processes framework (e.g., Genesee et al., 2006;Geva & Ryan, 1993;Geva et al., 1997;Jared et al. 2013) Theoretical Tenets ...
Writing skills have gained in significance for young learners over the past decades with the real-life use of digital technologies and a more text-based society (Lindgren & Muñoz, 2013; Brandt, 2015). Written communication, often considered a secondary skill, relies on correct spelling to encode inner speech and to convey intended meaning to the reader (Helms-Park et al., 2015). As a central, lower-level component of the writing process, spelling requires precise recall and production of orthographic representation (Berninger & Amtmann, 2003; Treiman, 2017). Conversely, continued cognitive overload while spelling can have detrimental effects on the subsequent development of writing skills (Graham et al., 1997; Hayes & Berninger, 2014; Kellogg, 2008). This poses increasing challenges for young L2 learners in instructed settings where L2 spelling acquisition remains a neglected skill (Beinke, 2020). In general, predictors for L2 literacy acquisition are executive functions, lexical access and phonological awareness; however, their role in spelling has been under-researched (Harrison et al., 2016). Empirical findings on the effects of language-related and cognitive predictors of L2 spelling are scarce and findings for young learners’ L2 spelling ability are mixed (Czapka et al., 2019).
The present study investigates the effects of cognitive and linguistic factors on young learners’ L2 spelling acquisition. More specifically, our aim was to examine correlations between L2 spelling acquisition and learners’ working memory, phonological short-term memory, phonological awareness, non-verbal intelligence, L2 lexical/grammar knowledge and L2 reading comprehension. Furthermore, we explored the question which cognitive and linguistic variables best predict young learners’ L2 spelling skills. Participants (N=75) were grade 3 and grade 4 pupils at two primary schools in Lower Saxony, Germany. Learners completed six measures of cognitive and linguistic skills, one L2 reading comprehension test, and a real word and pseudoword spelling test to explore L2 spelling proficiency.
Correlations and multiple regression analyses were conducted in order to identify major component skills and knowledge bases needed for L2 spelling acquisition. In our talk, we will discuss why certain variables might affect learners’ L2 spelling skills and to what extent they might explain spelling variance. Based on our findings, we will also discuss recommendations regarding teaching practices that can assist in developing learners’ L2 spelling ability.
... between scores on a spelling sentence dictation task and a writing task scored for thematic maturity for high school ELLs in Israel. On the other end, Schoonen et al. (2011) reported a large correlation (r = .78) for high school ELLs in the Netherlands, where spelling was assessed by identifying the correctly spelled words. ...
This study examines the role of transcription and ideation, the dimensions in the Simple View of Writing, as predictors of narrative and expository writing of English language learners (ELLs). Data were collected from sixth-grade primary school ELL students (N = 56) in Taiwan. Two writing samples, a narrative and an expository, were collected and scored using Curriculum-Based Measures of Writing (CBM-W). In addition, spelling, as a measure of transcription, and oral language, as a measure of ideation, scores were collected. The findings show that both spelling and oral language were found to be independent predictors of L2 writing. Spelling independently accounted for 36% of the variation in both narrative and expository writing, and oral language independently accounted for 24% and 35% of the variation in narrative and expository writing, respectively. When examined together in a regression model, spelling was found to be statistically significant for both narrative and expository writing whereas oral language was not. In light of the findings, the Simple View of Writing may be adequate as a theory for developing L2 writers, but further research is needed on the ideation dimension, both in its conceptualization for L2 writers and its role in the writing process.
... The main purpose of this stage is to increase the time students use for reasoning. Providing students with texts appropriate for their level is very helpful in supporting their reasoning and expressing the knowledge they have acquired (Schoonen et al., 2010;White & Gustone, 1989). In the writing stage, it is important for students to perform co-writing activities in terms of their comprehension and their skills of being organized and expressing what they have learned. ...
Kimya, içerdiği soyut kavramlar sebebiyle anlaşılması zor bir disiplindir. Bu yüzden soyut yapıların anlaşılması kimyanın öğrenilmesinde oldukça önemlidir. Bu sebeple bu araştırma, işbirlikli öğrenmenin animasyonlar, modeller (oyun hamuru ve çubuk-top) ve yedi ilke (lisans eğitiminde niteliği arttırmak amacıyla ileri sürülen iyi bir eğitim için yedi ilke) ile uygulanmasının kimyanın kavramsal anlaşılmasına etkisini incelemektedir. Araştırma eşitlenmemiş karşılaştırma gruplu yarı-deneysel desene göre yürütülmüştür. Araştırmanın örneklemini 91 fen bilgisi öğretmenliği birinci sınıf öğrencisi oluşturmaktadır. Öğrenciler dört farklı deney grubuna ayrılmıştır. Birinci grupta işbirlikli öğrenme, ikinci grupta işbirlikli öğrenme ve yedi ilke, üçüncü grupta işbirlikli öğrenme ve animasyon, dördüncü grupta ise işbirlikli öğrenme ve modellerle uygulamalar gerçekleştirilmiştir. Veriler dört Modül Test ile toplanmıştır. Modül Testler, araştırmada uygulanan yöntem ve tekniklerin kavramsal anlamaya etkisini belirlemek amacıyla ön test ve son test olarak uygulanmıştır. Araştırmadan elde edilen bulgulara göre işbirlikli öğrenmenin yedi ilke ve işbirlikli öğrenmenin modeller ile birlikte uygulanmasının kimyanın kavramsal anlaşılmasında daha etkili olduğu sonucuna erişilmiştir.
... The main purpose of this stage is to increase the time students use for reasoning. Providing students with texts appropriate for their level is very helpful in supporting their reasoning and expressing the knowledge they have acquired (Schoonen et al., 2010;White & Gustone, 1989). In the writing stage, it is important for students to perform co-writing activities in terms of their comprehension and their skills of being organized and expressing what they have learned. ...
Chemistry is a discipline that is conceptually difficult to understand due to the number of
abstract concepts it contains. Therefore, understanding abstract concepts is one of the
most crucial steps in the process of learning chemistry. The present study aimed to
explore the effect of application of cooperative learning through animations, models (play
dough and stick-ball), and seven principles (seven principles for good practice to improve
the quality of undergraduate education) on the conceptual understanding of chemistry.
The sample of the study consisted of 91 first-year pre-service science teachers enrolled in
a teacher education program in Turkey. A quasi-experimental design with non-equivalent
pretest-posttest comparison groups was used in the study. The students were assigned
into four groups. The applications included cooperative learning in the first group,
cooperative learning and seven principles in the second group, cooperative learning and
animation in the third group, and cooperative learning and models in the fourth group.
Four Module Tests were used for data collection. In order to explore the effects of applied
methods and techniques on conceptual understanding, Module Tests were applied as
both pretest and posttest. The results of the study showed that applying cooperative
learning with the seven principles and cooperative learning with models has a greater
impact on the conceptual understanding of chemistry compared to other applications.
... The reason for choosing two argumentative writing tasks was because the results of a one-off study may not represent EFL learners' writing proficiency. Using more than one writing task could generalise learners' writing performance (Schoonen et al., 2011). ...
Learners’ metacognitive competencies play a vital role in affecting their learning outcomes, especially for language learners who need to write in English as a foreign language (EFL). Much research has widely explored writers’ metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive strategies in EFL learning contexts, yet the role of metacognitive experiences in writing is underexplored. To fill this gap, we conducted this study to investigate the effects of EFL student-writers’ metacognitive experiences on their writing performance with reference to complexity, accuracy, and fluency. A total of 435 EFL student-writers at a university were invited to complete two writing tasks and the EFL Learners’ Writing Metacognitive Experiences Questionnaire (EFLLWMEQ). Findings of structural equation modelling showed that metacognitive estimates of EFL writing had a significant positive effect on lexical complexity and fluency but a negative effect on writing accuracy. Metacognitive feelings of EFL writing were positively related to syntactic complexity, and online metacognitive strategies of EFL writing also positively contributed to writing accuracy. The findings shed light on the theoretical and pedagogical implications for the role of metacognition in learning to write in EFL.
... The data was analyzed using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM). Compared to more traditional techniques such as ANOVA and multiple regression, SEM is a more rigorous and powerful analysis tool (see Hancock & Schoonen, 2015;Zhang, 2012) and has been used in a range of SLA research (e.g., Isemonger, 2007;MacIntyre & Charos, 1996;Shiotsu & Weir, 2007;Schoonen et al., 2011;Zhang, 2012;Van Gelderen et al., 2003;Van Gelderen et al., 2004;Van Gelderen et al., 2007;Yamashita & Shiotsu, 2017;Yashima, 2002). SEM depicts Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. ...
Although there have been extensive theoretical discussions on the various component skills needed in comprehending texts in L2 English and L1 Chinese, empirical investigations on the component skills of L2 Chinese are scarce. This study attempts to fill in this gap by investigating the direct and indirect contributions of two lower-level latent component skills, radical knowledge and character recognition, to L2 Chinese passage-level reading comprehension. Radical knowledge was measured by a Receptive Semantic Radical Knowledge Test and a Semantic Radical Meaning Matching Test. Character recognition was assessed by a Lexical Decision Test and a Character Knowledge Test. Two tests, a Multiple-choice Test and a Cloze Test, were adopted to measure textual reading comprehension. The data were collected from 209 learners of Chinese as a second language (CSL). Radical knowledge was found to have a significant direct effect on character recognition and significant indirect effect on L2 Chinese reading through the mediation of character recognition. Character recognition was found to have a significant direct effect on reading comprehension. Taken together, this study suggests the importance of lower-level character and sub-character component skills to L2 Chinese reading.
Metacognitive regulation refers to learners’ ability to use a repertoire of metacognitive strategies to guide, observe, and manage thoughts, actions, and emotions in learning activities. It has been widely acknowledged as a significant predictor of language learning success, including writing. However, this line of research has been conducted in a single language context, and the interactions across L1 and L2 contexts have received insufficient scholarly attention. Situated in mainland China, we raise an innovative attempt to investigate metacognitive strategies in writing with a cross‐linguistic approach, thus illuminating the conceptualization of metacognitive regulation by testing its trait/state distinction. A group of 502 university students from different disciplinary majors were recruited to report their metacognitive strategy use in L1 and L2 task‐situated writing by filling in the assigned post‐task questionnaires. Multigroup confirmatory factor analysis (MGCFA) on the two questionnaire datasets provided empirical evidence for the cross‐language generalizability of metacognitive regulation in writing with the identified measurement invariance of the factor structure between L1 and L2 contexts, indicating its trait facet. However, the latent mean comparison results revealed that the actual usage frequency of metacognitive strategies scored significantly higher in L1 writing than in L2 writing, suggesting the state facet. These results are discussed extensively in this study to inform relevant theories and pedagogical activities.
The research fields of second language acquisition in general and L2 writing in particular have been dominated by studies in which English is the language under scrutiny. However, many different researchers have claimed that it is high time to consider languages other than English (LOTEs), since multilingualism is the norm rather than the exception all over the world. In particular, minority languages have been largely overlooked in the literature on L2 writing, a research gap that this study intends to fill in. With this objective in mind, this research examines the impact of the participants’ L1 (Basque or Spanish) on their written production. The sample was made up of 9767 participants from the Basque Autonomous community in Spain, who completed a writing test aimed at assessing the C1 level (Common European Framework of
Reference for Languages) in Basque in five different points in time. The results revealed differences in writing competence in favour of L1=Basque participants when compared with their L1=Spanish counterparts, especially as far as the criterion of accuracy was concerned. The study concludes by providing insights that will be useful in other international educational contexts in which a minority and a majority language share co-official status.
In a bilingual or multilingual context, heritage languages—typically minority or minoritized languages—often become the first or one of the first languages. Despite their limited exposure, heritage languages have a significant impact on the linguistic landscape. Compared to standard grammar, they frequently exhibit structural differences and changes at all levels of linguistic analysis, reflecting the interplay between the nature of the language, the input received, and the age of bilingual speakers.
Much research has investigated students' metacognitive growth focusing on their metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive strategies as individual differences in learning to write in a second/foreign language (L2). Yet to date, changes in metacognitive experiences when learning to write, a subcategory of metacognition, have been insufficiently scrutinized. To bridge this gap, we employed a mixed-methods approach to examine learners' development in English as a foreign language (EFL), capturing their metacognitive experiences longitudinally. Specifically, we investigated the changes in 390 EFL learners' metacognitive experiences in writing and their writing development over one semester. A questionnaire was used to measure these learners' metacognitive experiences over two writing tasks, capturing metacognitive judgments, metacognitive feelings, online task-specific metacognitive knowledge, and online task-specific metacognitive strategies. We selected 12 participants for follow-up semi-structured interviews. We processed the quantitative data using Latent Profile Analysis (LPA) to identify these EFL learners' metacognitive experience profiles. Findings of LPA using Mplus 8.3 revealed two metacognitive experiences profiles, characterized by intensive and less intensive metacognitive experiences. Further quantitative analysis using paired samples t-tests in SPSS 24.0 indicated that EFL learners' metacognitive experiences changed in alignment with their writing development in terms of lexical complexity, syntactic complexity, fluency, and overall writing scores. Qualitative findings from thematic analysis using NVivo 12 identified two factors affecting the changes in EFL learners' metacognitive experiences, including their involvement in writing and development in linguistic competence. As is evident, the quantitative and qualitative findings point to a more nuanced and precise understanding of the changes in these EFL learners' metacognitive experiences in learning to write. Educational relevance statement The findings from this research are expected to help EFL educators and practitioners enrich their understanding of the metacognitive growth framework by incorporating students' metacognitive experiences in their work for the purpose of improving student learning. Additionally, these findings have pedagogical implications for EFL writing instruction in the way that writing teachers can take stock of what students know about EFL writing and utilize their metacognitive experiences for enhancing their students' writing skills.
Specifically in the field of language teaching, it has been recognized that metacognitive strategies maximize language acquisition and improve performance. But despite this, it appears that few teachers currently consider metacognition in their teaching practices. The current study adopted a qualitative design to focus on the reasons that inhibit teachers in French‐speaking Belgium from prompting their students to engage in metacognition in first‐language (L1) lessons. Semistructured interviews were conducted with seven teachers. The teachers in our sample believed that use of metacognitive strategies can provide benefits for students. But despite this, they explicitly said that they do not prompt their students to engage in metacognition in L1 language lessons. And this for seven specific reasons, as outlined in the article. Knowing these reasons allows us to target the points of attention to be had in training teachers in metacognition in L1.
Despite the widely recognized importance of metacognition in language learning, relatively few empirical studies have investigated the role of metacognitive strategies with a cross-linguistic perspective. Drawing on the mixed-method design combining questionnaire and interview data, this study systematically investigated the effects, the transfer potential, and the cross-language facilitation of metacognitive strategies between L1 and L2 contexts. Structural equation modelling (SEM) and multigroup analysis results revealed that metacognitive strategies afforded a more prominent predictive role in English (L2) writing than in Chinese (L1) writing; such strategy use transferred between the two writing contexts, which kept invariant between lower- and higher- L2 proficiency groups and between English and non-English major groups; and there was a cross-language facilitation effect of L1 writing metacognitive strategies on L2 writing performance via the mediation of L2 writing metacognitive strategies. Complementary to the quantitative results, the qualitative interview data was analyzed to provide deep insights into the participating students’ metacognitive strategy use in the two task-situated writing. Findings are extensively discussed to offer theoretical and pedagogical implications in this domain.
This longitudinal study employed latent growth curve modeling to investigate the development of EFL reading rate in a sample of L1-Japanese adolescents from Grade 9 to 11. It also examined the contributions of four components (word recognition, phonological processing, orthographic processing and vocabulary breadth) to the reading rate with word recognition as a mediator. The growth trajectory was non-linear with steeper gains between Grades 9 and 10 than Grades 10 and 11. The components contributed to the reading rate in complex ways, either directly or through the mediation of word recognition. Although some catching up by slower readers was observed, the advantage the faster readers had at the outset remained after two years, indicating the importance of the achievement levels at early stages for later development.
Foreign language teaching, like almost all other aspects of human existence, has been substantially influenced by recent advances in modern information and communication technologies like augmented reality, virtual reality and AI (Artificial Intelligence). Although AI has been in use for almost 30 years, educators remain sceptical towards the use of AI-technology in the education field more broadly and how its use might meaningfully affect English language skills. Through a systematic review, this work seeks to provide a summary of the available literature with regards to the applications of AI in EFL (English as a Foreign Language) education. This review considers a wide range of AI technologies and methodologies, with a specific focus on the integration of AI into the realm of EFL education. The review then delineates the possible effects of AI in terms of developing students' language skills, students' and teachers' perceptions of using AI applications, and the difficulties and challenges inherent to implementing AI applications. The discussion culminates by identifying research gaps.
Introduction
Feedback can support students’ writing and has the potential to enhance writing motivation and reduce writing anxiety. However, for feedback to fulfill its potential, it has to be accepted by students and perceived as motivating.
Methods
In this study, we investigate changes in less proficient English as a foreign language (EFL) students’ (N = 53) writing motivation and affect, as well as their perceptions of teacher feedback and how these relate to students’ argumentative text quality. Measurements were taken before EFL teachers attended a professional learning intervention on feedback (T1) and 8 months later (T2).
Results
From T1 to T2, students felt that general feedback quality improved, their writing self-efficacy increased, and their writing anxiety decreased. However, no significant changes in text quality could be observed between T1 and T2, and students continued to struggle with creating structure and coherence in their texts. Regression analyses revealed that feedback perceptions and affective-motivational variables did not predict students’ text quality at T1. Yet at T2, students’ perception of general feedback quality and the effect of feedback on writing motivation were significant predictors of text quality; self-efficacy and writing anxiety were not.
Discussion
Our results suggest that more attention needs to be paid to feedback’s motivational impact, especially among less proficient EFL writers.
A sociocultural approach to understanding how social environment and social interaction are connected to writing regulation has been more important in writing research over the past several decades. Self-regulation in three successful Bachelor essay writers in literature is examined via a participatory appropriation theory lens, and how contact with supervisors helped them acquire writing regulation in ways appropriate to their academic backgrounds. With the help of Pintrich's self-regulation framework, we conducted three in-depth qualitative interviews with participants at three different stages throughout the research. Using data from this study on students' self-regulation of writing and social interactions, such as their conversations with their supervisors, researchers were able to see whether there was any overlap between the two. In light of our results, we may infer that supervisors acted as socializers, helping students adopt disciplinary-relevant ways of thinking and behaving while also encouraging students' motivation and re-conceptualizing the writing process. This study, seen as a whole, answers to requests for research into the social framework in which self-regulation is rooted.
In linguistically diverse contexts, language repertoires include various literacy skills in multiple languages across different modes of representation (multiliteracies), where multilingual writing can be conceptualized as a synthesized competence that includes all languages in a person’s repertoire and is continuously evolving. We respond to the call to operationalize existing theory on multilingual writing for empirical testing by conducting first- and second-order confirmatory factor analyses that explore whether and how students’ writing proficiency in different languages can be modelled as an integrated construct, to analyze multilingual writing’s dimensionality. We draw on a corpus of multilingual writing in secondary students (n = 965) in three different languages: the majority language (German), the heritage languages of migrants in Germany (Russian or Turkish), and the first foreign language (English). Based on competence data of a substantial sample of multilingual adolescents, the results provide an empirical approach to modelling multilingual writing competence in complex multilingual repertoires.
Much of the research that has examined the writing knowledge of school-age students has relied on interviews to ascertain this information, which is problematic because interviews may underestimate breadth and depth of writing knowledge, require lengthy interactions with participants, and do not permit a direct evaluation of a prescribed array of constituent knowledge elements. For these reasons, our goal in this study is to report the development, piloting, and field testing, using a sample of 335 students from grades 4 and 5, of four alternate versions of a writing knowledge assessment-the Student Knowledge of Writing Test (SKOWT)-that uses forced-choice responses to evaluate students' knowledge of writing processes, genre elements, and linguistic features of written language. All versions of the SKOWT demonstrated adequate internal consistency reliability and construct validity based on exploratory factor analyses following deletion of some items. In addition, there was acceptable predictive criterion validity based on associations of SKOWT scores with subtests from the Test of Written Language-4 and measures of narrative, opinion, and informative essay quality. We discuss how the SKOWT might be used in future research and educational practice.
The article analyses the problems, which Russian-speaking schoolchildren in Latvia meet while creating written argumentative texts. The topicality of the article lies in the peculiarities of forming the schoolchildren’s linguistic personality in the diaspore during bilingual education. The author focuses on the main problems in the schoolchildren’s written speech and their reasons. The criteria of text content-analysis were as follows: 1) the level of argumentation autonomy; 2) the quality of the arguments; 3) the level of argument unfoldedness and using different types of arguments; 4) speech expressiveness and observing language norms. The ninth-graders’ text analysis led the author to the following conclusions: the compositions of most schoolchildren partly correspond with argumentative texts (in the aspect of their contents, structure, quantity and quality of arguments, means of thought development); they lack intertextual embeddings (the texts are “poor” in the sense aspect); in the speech behaviour there dominates an explicit I-communication (reflexive observations, egocentric direction of their behaviour), pragmatic, naked outline of facts even if the topic of the text motivates to verbalize emotions; there are a lot of language errors. The results of the research are based on analysis of 3296 ninth-graders, which the schoolchildren wrote at Russian language exam on finishing secondary school in 2016-2018. The results of this and further researches will allow the author to deeply investigate the process of forming primary and secondary linguistic personality of a Russian-speaking schoolchild in Latvia.
This edited volume is a collection of theoretical and empirical overviews of second language (L2) proficiency based on four skills: reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Each skill is reviewed in terms of how it has been conceptualized, measured, and studied over the years in relation to relevant (sub-) constructs of the language skill under discussion. This is followed by meta-analyses of correlation coefficients that examine the relationship between the L2 skill in question and its component variables. Unlike most meta-analyses that have a limited range of variables under investigation, our meta-analyses are much larger in scope to better clarify such relationships. By combining theoretical and empirical approaches, the book is helpful in deepening the understanding of how subcomponents or various variables are related to a particular L2 skill.
Our goal in this study is to expand the limited research on writer profiles using the advantageous model-based approach of latent profile analysis and independent tasks to evaluate aspects of individual knowledge, motivation, and cognitive processes that align with Hayes’ (1996) writing framework, which has received empirical support. We address three research questions. First, what latent profiles are observed for late elementary writers using measures aligned with an empirically validated model of writing? Second, do student sociodemographic characteristics—namely grade, gender, race, English learner status, and special education status—influence latent profile membership? Third, how does student performance on narrative, opinion, and informative writing tasks, determined by quality of writing, vary by latent profiles? A five-profile model had the best fit statistics and classified student writers as Globally Weak, At Risk, Average Motivated, Average Unmotivated, and Globally Proficient. Overall, fifth graders, female students, White students, native English speakers, and students without disabilities had greater odds of being in the Globally Proficient group of writers. For all three genres, other latent profiles were significantly inversely related to the average quality of papers written by students who were classified as Globally Proficient; however, the Globally Weak and At Risk writers were not significantly different in their writing quality, and the Average Motivated and Average Unmotivated writers did not significantly differ from each other with respect to quality. These findings indicate upper elementary students exhibit distinct patterns of writing-related strengths and weaknesses that necessitate comprehensive yet differentiated instruction to address skills, knowledge, and motivation to yield desirable outcomes.
This edited volume is a collection of theoretical and empirical overviews of second language (L2) proficiency based on four skills: reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Each skill is reviewed in terms of how it has been conceptualized, measured, and studied over the years in relation to relevant (sub-) constructs of the language skill under discussion. This is followed by meta-analyses of correlation coefficients that examine the relationship between the L2 skill in question and its component variables. Unlike most meta-analyses that have a limited range of variables under investigation, our meta-analyses are much larger in scope to better clarify such relationships. By combining theoretical and empirical approaches, the book is helpful in deepening the understanding of how subcomponents or various variables are related to a particular L2 skill.
Extensive research has been done to explore how lexical use could predict the rated quality of L2 writing. However, the degree to which the rated quality is influenced by lexical use in different genres of L2 essays is relatively unexplored. This study tested the effect of lexical use on the rated quality of L2 argumentative and expository essays. Three natural language processing tools (i.e., the Lexical Complexity Analyzer, D_Tools, and TAALES) were employed to obtain the index of lexical density, diversity, and sophistication. Results suggested that the rated quality of both genres of L2 essays was not significantly predicted by lexical density and lexical diversity but was predicted by different indices of lexical sophistication. The striking difference in the prediction of lexical sophistication on the writing quality for both genres bears on academic word use. The observed pattern on lexical use in L2 writing across the two genres attested to the assumption that genre embodies socially constructed linguistic practices whereby L2 learners use various linguistic forms to achieve communicative goals. 目前大量研究考察词汇使用对二语写作质量的预测效应，但就词汇使用对 不同体裁二语写作质量预测效应的对比研究鲜有报道。本研究考察了词汇使用对 二语议论文和说明文写作质量的预测效应。采用自然语言处理工具提取目标文本 的词法密度、多样性和复杂性三类指标。回归分析显示，三类指标中仅有词汇复 杂度指标可显著两类二语文本的写作质量。词汇复杂度对两类文体写作质量的预 测差异与学术词汇的使用紧密相关。研究结果表明，不同体裁的二语文本是不同 的社会建构性语篇活动，学习者使用不同语言形式实现不同体裁的交际目的。
Alamargot, D. & Chanquoy, L., (2001). Through the models of writing. Dordrecht-Boston-London : Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Denis Alamargot and Lucile Chanquoy’s book offers a vivid and original presenta- tion of main trends in the research field devoted to writing. First, it provides both young and senior scientists with a comparative view of current theoretical models of composition, with different levels of reading made available: each element of these models is clearly situated in its historical context, and scrutinized in its further evo- lution. Second, this well documented theoretical analysis of writing mechanisms is checked against empirical data extracted from a lot of updated experimental studies; and lack of necessary data is thought to be underlined and defined when noted.
Following the usual description of writing phases initially proposed by Hayes and Flowers, the first part of this book presents planning, translating and revision processes and compares them to other researchers’ conceptions (from Bereiter and Scardamalia, to Kellogg or Galbraith). Such presentations of isolated models do ex- ist in literature; but the present work really gives a good comparative analysis of components inside each of models, in a clear and cumulative way; a fine-grained ob- servation of differences between similarly-looking models is also performed.
This reprinted chapter originally appeared in The Science of Writing: Theories, Methods, Individual Differences, and Applications , 1-27, 1996, C. M. Levy and S. Randall (Eds.). The following abstract of the original chapter appeared in record 1996-98203-001: (from the chapter) nearly 15 years have passed since the Hayes-Flower model of the writing process first appeared in 1980 / present a new framework for the study of writing--a framework that can provide a better description of current empirical findings than the 1980 model, and one that can, . . . be useful for interpreting a wider range of writing activities than was encompassed in the 1980 model the major changes in focus in the new framework are: greater attention to the role of working memory in writing, inclusion of the visual-spatial dimension, the integration of motivation and affect with the cognitive processes, and a reorganization of the cognitive processes which places greater emphasis on the function of text interpretation processes in writing / the new framework includes new specific models of planning, text production, and revision and proposes a number of testable hypotheses about writing processes...
Over the last quarter of a century, writing re-searchers in Europe and America have been making fairly steady progress in improving our understanding of the cognitive and social processes involved in writing. New theoreti-cal proposals have stimulated empirical stud-ies, and new empirical findings have led to the reformulation and improvement of theo-ries. In this chapter, I have chosen to examine three quite different but interesting research initiatives that are shaping the evolution of writing theory today. I could have chosen many, but these are the three I found most in-triguing: • Research on the role of working memory in writing • Studies of the efficacy of freewriting • Proposals to use activity theory as a frame-work for understanding the context of writing There is no underlying theme that unifies these three lines of research except for their potential for expanding our understanding of writing. Working memory is essential for the functioning of the cognitive processes in-volved in writing. Studies of freewriting may tell us how to use writing to improve think-ing. Activity theory may help to make sense of the complex social and environmental fac-tors that influence writing. These topics are being pursued by different research com-munities in different parts of the world. Research on working memory in writing is being carried out by psychologists in the United States, the United Kingdom, and France. Studies of freewriting, which started in English departments in the United States, are currently being carried out psychologists in the United Kingdom. Proposals for apply-ing activity theory to writing are being most actively discussed in English departments in North America. What I present is a snapshot of these three lines of research, with some suggestions about where they may be head-ing.
In this study the relative importance of linguistic knowledge, metacognitive knowledge, and fluency or accessibility of this linguistic knowledge in both first language (L1; Dutch) and second language (L2; English) writing was explored. Data were collected from 281 grade 8 students. Using structural equation modeling, the relative importance of the three components was studied and compared across L1 and L2 writing. The results showed that the fluency measures were correlated with overall writing performance in both L1 and L2. However, when compared to linguistic knowledge resources, these fluency measures turned out to have no additional value in predicting L1 or L2 writing performance. L2 writing proficiency turned out to be highly correlated with L1 writing proficiency, more than with either L2 linguistic knowledge or the accessibility of this knowledge.
This article shows that if there is some control over genre then there will be a close correspondence between the vocabulary
size of intermediate learners as reflected in their writing and a more direct measure of vocabulary size The study proposes
a new measure of lexical richness, the Lexical Frequency Profile, which looks at the proportion of high frequency general
service and academic words in learners' writing The study shows that it is possible to obtain a reliable measure of lexical
richness which is stable across two pieces of writing by the same learners It also discriminates between learners of different
proficiency levels For learners of English as a second language, the Lexical Frequency Profile is seen as being a measure
of how vocabulary size is reflected in use In this study, it was found that the Lexical Frequency Profile correlates well
with an independent measure of vocabulary size This reliable and valid measure of lexical richness in writing will be useful
for determining the factors that affect judgements of quality in writing and will be useful for examining how vocabulary growth
is related to vocabulary use
This study investigated the relationship between foreign language (FL) anxiety and achievement in that language. The role of the FL teacher as perceived by the learners was also tested. Participants were 67 seventh-grade students. They were administered an anxiety questionnaire, a Hebrew reading comprehension test, an English reading comprehension test, an English creative writing task, and an English spelling test. The results indicated that anxiety was negatively and significantly correlated to FL achievement on all FL tests. Gender and teachers' attitudes were the only significant predictors of FL anxiety among these seventh-grade students. The results are discussed in light of findings in the literature. Some recommendations are suggested to ease anxiety in FL students.
Statistical procedures for missing data have vastly improved, yet misconception and unsound practice still abound. The authors frame the missing-data problem, review methods, offer advice, and raise issues that remain unresolved. They clear up common misunderstandings regarding the missing at random (MAR) concept. They summarize the evidence against older procedures and, with few exceptions, discourage their use. They present, in both technical and practical language, 2 general approaches that come highly recommended: maximum likelihood (ML) and Bayesian multiple imputation (MI). Newer developments are discussed, including some for dealing with missing data that are not MAR. Although not yet in the mainstream, these procedures may eventually extend the ML and MI methods that currently represent the state of the art. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
A renewed interest in grammar, from pedagogical and research perspectives, has created the need for new approaches to assessing the grammatical ability of language learners. This book presents a comprehensive framework of second language grammatical knowledge and uses this as a base to help readers create their own assessment tools to test students' grammar.
Writing is one of the central skills a student must master. Why should they be tested? How should they be tested? What tasks should be used? The answers to these questions are provided by this book, which examines the theory behind the practice of assessing a student's writing abilities.
Best predictors of overall proficiency in a foreign language were examined in 2 experiments. Experiment 1 involved 60 10th- and 11th-grade girls attending a private, single-sex high school; Experiment 2 involved a coeducational population of 36 10th-grade students in a public school. Best predictors in both experiments were end of 1st-year grade in the foreign language and a measure of phonology-orthography, foreign language word decoding. In 1 experiment, native language vocabulary skill was also a predictor of overall proficiency. Heretofore, foreign language grade and word decoding had not been considered as predictors of foreign language proficiency. The finding that foreign language word decoding was a good predictor of both oral and written proficiency suggests its importance as both a predictor variable and an important component of foreign language proficiency.
Acknowledgements 1. Introductions 2. Second language performance assessment 3. Modelling performance: opening Pandora's Box 4. Designing a performance test: the Occupational English Test 5. Raters and ratings: introduction to multi-faceted measurement 6. Concepts and procedures in Rasch measurement 7. Mapping and reporting abilities and skill levels 8. Using Rasch analysis in research on second language performance assessment 9. Data, models and dimensions References Index
This study aimed to answer the question of how many words of the Dutch language, and which words, an adult non-native speaker needs to know receptively in order to be able to understand first-year university reading materials In the first part of this study, an assessment was made of the representativeness of a list of 23,550 words (lemmas), taken from a school dictionary, for a 42 million-word token corpus of contemporary written Dutch It was found that, using frequency as a criterion, text coverage substantially increased with up to 11,123 words (i e words occurring more than 100 times in the corpus), but not beyond In the second part of the study, an assessment was made of the representativeness of the same list of 23,550 words for a relatively small corpus of first-year university reading materials The percentage of tokens covered in this small academic corpus did not differ substantially from the percentage of tokens covered in the big corpus analysed in the first part The third part of the study consisted of the development and administration of a 140-item multiple-choice vocabulary test aimed at measuring test takers' receptive knowledge of 18,615 content words of the 23,550 word list This test was administered to (i) native speakers entering university as freshmen, (u) non-native graduate students, and (m) non-native prospective students taking a Dutch language entry examination test battery Extrapolations of the test scores showed that the average vocabulary size of these three groups of test takers was 18,800, 15,800, and 11,200 respectively It is concluded that the minimal vocabulary size needed for university studies is 10,000 base words Earlier Dutch studies, suggesting that knowledge of 3,000 or 5,000 base words would suffice, appear to have underestimated such a minimal vocabulary 1
This study examined the relationship between anxiety and native language skill and foreign language aptitude measures among 154 high school foreign language learners. Three levels of anxiety were identified using the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale or FLCAS (Horwitz, Horwitz, & Cope, 1986). Low Anxiety (LO‐ANX) students were expected to have significantly stronger native language skills and foreign language aptitude than High Anxiety (HI‐ANX) students and significantly higher foreign language grades. Average Anxiety (AVE‐ANX) students were expected to score somewhere in‐between. Findings showed overall significant differences among the groups on nine variables, including measures of native language phonology/orthography, semantics, and verbal memory; foreign language aptitude; eighth‐grade English grade; and end‐of‐year foreign language grade. On measures of phonology/orthography, eighth‐grade English, and foreign language grade, LO‐ANX and AVE‐ANX students outperformed HI‐ANX students. On a foreign language aptitude measure and foreign language grade, LO‐ANX students outperformed both AVE‐ and HI‐ANX students. On measures of verbal memory and reading comprehension, LO‐ANX students outperformed HI‐ANX students. Discriminant analysis results showed that all test measures but one were significant in distinguishing the three groups. Among others, implications include the suggestion that skill in one's native language and aptitude for learning a foreign language may affect anxiety level and that the FLCAS may provide an early indicator of basic language problems.
Dealing effectively with L2 writers requires a clear understanding of the nature of L2 writing. In an attempt to develop such an understanding, 72 reports of empirical research comparing L1 and L2 writing were examined. The findings of this research indicate a number of salient differences between L1 and L2 writing with regard to both composing processes (and subprocesses: planning, transcribing, and reviewing) and features of written texts (fluency, accuracy, quality, and structure, i.e., discoursal, morphosyntactic, and lexicosemantic). Implications of the findings for L2 and L1 writing theory; future comparative writing research; and the practical concerns of assessment, placement, staffing, and instruction are discussed.
Generally, researchers agree that that verbal working memory plays an important role in cognitive processes involved in writing. However, there is disagreement about which cognitive processes make use of working memory. Kellogg has proposed that verbal working memory is involved in translating but not in editing or producing (i.e., typing) text. In this study, the authors used articulatory suppression, a technique that reduces working memory to explore this question. Twenty participants transcribed six texts from one computer window to another, three of the texts with articulatory suppression and three without. When participants were in the articulatory suppression condition, they transcribed significantly more slowly and made significantly more errors than they did in the control condition. Implications for Kellogg’s proposal are discussed.
This chapter investigated Japanese learners’ processes of English expository writing using multiple data sources including
their written texts, videotaped writing behaviors, and stimulated recall protocols. Two groups of Japanese EFL writers (12
experts and 22 novices) were compared both crosssectionally and longitudinally. The study tested the following eight hypotheses
formulated as a result of a pilot study (Sasaki, 2000): (1) EFL writing experts write longer texts at greater speed than EFL
writing novices; (2) after two semesters of process writing instruction, neither the quantity nor the speed of the novices’
writing improves; (3) the experts spend a longer time before starting to write than the novices; (4) after the instruction,
the novices spend a longer time before starting to write; (5) while writing, the experts stop to reread or refine their expressions
more often than the novices, whereas the novices stop to make local plans or translate their ideas into L2 more often than
the experts; (6) after the instruction, the novices stop to reread more often while making fewer local plans; however, they
still have to stop to translate as often as before; (7) the experts tend to plan a detailed overall organization, whereas
the novices tend to make a less detailed plan; (8) after the instruction, the novices learn to do global planning, but it
is qualitatively different from the experts’ global planning. The obtained results are presented as flowchart diagrams that
represent the writing processes of the different groups of EFL learners.
This chapter highlights some foundational and statistical issues involved in validity theory and validation practice. It discusses several foundational issues focusing on several observations about the current state of affairs in validity theory and practice, introducing a new framework for considering the bounds and limitations of the measurement inferences. It also discusses the distinction between measures and indices. The chapter deals with two statistical methods—variable ordering and latent variable regression—and introduces a methodology for variable-ordering in latent variable regression models in validity research. Measurement or test score validation is an ongoing process wherein an evidence to support the appropriateness, meaningfulness, and usefulness of the specific inferences made from scores about individuals from a given sample and in a given context is provided. The concept, method, and processes of validation are central to constructing and evaluating measures used in the social, behavioral, health, and human sciences because without validation any inferences made from a measure are potentially meaningless, inappropriate, and of limited usefulness.
This article provides an introduction to structural equation modelling (SEM) for language assessment research in five sections. In Section I, the general objectives of SEM applications relevant to language assessment are presented. In Section II, a brief overview of SEM that considers the methodology and the statistical assumptions about data that have to be met. In Section III, the commonly used steps and concepts in SEM are presented. In Section IV, SEM application matters with example models are discussed. In Section V, recent critical discussions and some directions for future SEM applications in language assessment research are addressed.
In this article we present an analysis of the relationship between L3 reading comprehension and its constituent skills for bilingual Dutch students for whom English is a third language(L3) compared to monolingual Dutch students for whom English is a second language(L2). An analogous analysis is made for their Dutch reading comprehension, Dutch being their L2 and L1 respectively. Participants are 13/14 year-old secondary school students. The point of departure in the analyses is a regression model in which reading proficiency is decomposed into three types of constituent components: linguistic knowledge(vocabulary and grammar), speed of processing linguistic knowledge(lexical access and sentence comprehension), and metacognitive knowledge(of text characteristics and strategies for reading and writing). Using structural equation modeling, we determined the contribution of constituent skills to Dutch L2 and L1, and English L3 and L2 reading comprehension. The results showed that, despite differences between the two groups in Dutch and English reading comprehension, no differences between the groups were found in the pattern of regression weights on the three types of constituent skills. Possible implications of these findings are discussed.
This paper reinterprets the question of whether second language reading is a language problem (linguistic threshold) or a reading problem (linguistic interdependence) A variety of previously published data sources relevant to these questions are examined and new data are presented from 186 adult native English speakers reading in English and Spanish Results indicated that neither hypothesis is wholly reflective of the second language reading process There is considerable consistency (in all studies reviewed) in the amount of variance accounted for by first language literacy (upwards of 20 per cent) However, linguistic knowledge is consistently a more powerful predictor (upwards of 30 per cent) The paper concludes with a restatement of the second language reading problematic How L1 literate does a second language reader have to be to make the second language knowledge work ? How much second language knowledge does a second language reader have to have in order to make the L1 literacy knowledge work ?.
An achievement goal framework was used to examine changes in students' motivation for reading and writing in the late elementary years and to evaluate a classroom intervention project. The longitudinal study involved 431 students in Grades 3 to 5. Results showed significant declines in task-mastery and performance goals within the school year and across grade levels. There were few sex differences in students' goals for reading and writing. The intervention project included 8 teachers and 187 students in Grade 3. This study showed how various instructional modifications can influence students' achievement goals, perceived competence, and strategy use in reading and writing. As teachers provided more opportunities for students to complete challenging, collaborative, and multiday assignments, students became less focused on performance goals, and low-achieving students reported less work avoidance. The educational implications of this research are discussed.
This article surveys writing research and attempts to sketch a principled account of how multiple sources of knowledge, stored in long-term memory, are coordinated during writing within the constraints of working memory. The concept of long-term working memory is applied to the development of writing expertise. Based on research reviewed, it is speculated that lack of fluent language generation processes constrains novice writers within short-term working memory capacity, whereas fluent encoding and extensive knowledge allow skilled writers to take advantage of long-term memory resources via long-term working memory.
The assessment of writing ability is notoriously difficult. Different facets of the assessment seem to influence its outcome. Besides the writer's writing proficiency, the topic of the assignment, the features or traits scored (e.g., content or language use) and even the way in which these traits are scored (e.g., holistically or analytically) may contribute to the writer's score. In this article, the effect of these facets is estimated in a generalizability study using variance analytic techniques. A structural equation modeling (SEM) approach is used to estimate the variance components in the writing scores. Eighty-nine grade 6 students (aged 11-12 years) wrote four essays, each of which was scored by five raters using two scoring methods (i.e., holistically and analytically) for two traits (i.e., Content and Organization, and Language Use). Analyses of these ratings showed that the generalizability of writing scores and the effects of raters and topics are very much dependent on the way the essays are scored and the trait that is scored. The overall picture is that writing tasks contribute more to the score variance than raters do.
This article attempts to describe the condition of direct writing assessment literature. Instead of focusing on a particular assessment concept, issue or methodology, this review reflects the concerns evident within the bulk of work done on writing assessment since its adoption during the last fifteen years. The purpose of this work is to provide an overall sense of how assessment research defines the important issues and creates the trends that seek to inform efficient and accurate writing assessment procedures. Focusing on topic selection and task development, the relationship between textual features and quality ratings, and the influences upon raters’ judgments of writing quality, this essay presents direct writing assessment’s own preoccupations and concerns. The center of attention is not only on how direct evaluation has progressed but where it is heading. This large picture of direct writing assessment, available through an examination of its literature, is important to an understanding of direct writing assessment as the primary instrument in making decisions about the quality of student writing.
In this study I evaluate the cumulative evidence on the use of syntactic complexity measures as indices of college-level L2 writers' overall proficiency in the target language. Based on a synthesis of twenty-five studies, I arrive at several substantive findings. First, I conclude that the relationship between L2 proficiency and L2 writing syntactic complexity varied systematically across studies depending on whether a second or a foreign language learning context was investigated and whether proficiency was defined by programme level or by holistic rating. Second, aggregating available cross-sectional findings, I propose critical magnitudes for between-proficiency differences in syntactic complexity for four measures. Finally, I interpret the limited longitudinal evidence to suggest that an observation period of roughly a year of college- level instruction is probably needed for substantial changes in the syntactic complexity of L2 writing to be observed. I conclude the paper by discussing implications of these findings for future primary research.
This paper first reviews recent attempts to describe formal models of second-language writing; we then identify three major issues in need of clarification to advance model-building in this domain. We discuss these issues in respect to findings from a preliminary attempt to develop a process-product model of ESL writing instruction based on analyses of antecedent, process and outcome variables for 108 ESL learners from diverse cultural backgrounds in 6-week intensive courses at a Canadian university. Findings from multivariate, regression, correlation and exploratory factor analyses indicated that the tentative model had little explanatory power overall but pointed toward interesting interactions in achievement for (a) different aspects of L2 writing among (b) learners at different levels of L2 proficiency and with (c) differing orientations to learning L2 writing.
Like so many other aspects of language analysis, assessing the writing abilities of non-native English speakers (NNES) becomes an increasingly complex issue as one explores both its root meaning and its current uses; this complexity can be traced, in part, to the recognition that writing abilities develop in interaction with other language skills. In this volume, various chapters have narrowed, if artificially, the area of investigation by providing for a separate consideration of assessment as applied to each of the four language skills; clearly assessment of language proficiency as a total package also is of great concern in academic contexts, especially where NNES students are concerned (see also Resources in Language Testing website).