The importance of cohesive conditions to perceptions of writing quality at the early stages of foreign language learning  

Oleh:

Chiang, Steve Y.

Jenis: Article from Journal - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: SYSTEM: An International Journal of Educational Technology and Applied Linguistics (Full Text) vol. 31 no. 4 (Dec. 2003), page 471-484.
Topik: Discourse competence; Coherence; Cohesion; Rating scale; Writing assessment
Fulltext: Chiang_S.pdf (221.07KB)

Isi artikel

This article reports an investigation into the effect of grammatical and discourse features on rater perceptions of writing quality in evaluating foreign language writing samples. Also investigated were differences in rating profiles between native and non-native speaking raters. Fifteen native-speaking professors of English (NS) and 15 Chinese professors of English (NNS) evaluated 60 essays written by students at a university in Taiwan on 10 discourse and 10 grammatical features, in addition to a separate rating on overall quality. The data were analyzed using the Minitab statistical program and multi-faceted Rasch measurement techniques (FACETS). The results indicated that (1) all except three of the 30 raters based their perceptions of ‘‘overall quality’’ primarily on either of the two discourse features: coherence and cohesion; (2) regression analyses showed that, for both the NS and the NNS rater groups, cohesion was the best predictor of writing quality of all the four areas of evaluation, namely coherence, cohesion, syntax, and morphology; (3) again for both rater groups, an item under cohesion, ‘‘transition between sentences in the absence of junction words’’ was found to be the best predictor of writing quality of all the 20 analytical features; (4) the discourse items on the rating scale proved to be more reliable across the two rater groups as compared to the grammatical items.

Opini Anda

Klik untuk menuliskan opini Anda tentang koleksi ini!

Kembali