中国大学生英语写作语言特征与写作质量关系研究

A study on the relationship between linguistic features and quality of Chinese tertiary EFL learners’writing

本文旨在探讨二语学习者的写作文本语言特征与写作质量之间的关系,重点研究哪些文本指标能够显著区分中国大学生写作文本质量以及这些指标对测试成绩的预测力。本研究对326名高校英语专业学生的作文文本的分析表明,七个句法复杂度指标、四个准确度指标和三个流利度指标能够较显著地区分写作文本的质量。访谈结果显示,评分员依赖写作文本的语言特征来锚定大致等级,评分较高的写作文本包含复杂句法结构、语言表达更准确、文本长度比较充实。对评分员的访谈分析发现,评分员在评分过程中首先根据文本长度和写作错误判断写作文本质量大致档次,再仔细依照文本可理解程度、文本结构、句法和词汇复杂程度等语言特征给出具体分值。本研究还对作文评分标准的修正提出了一些建议。

This study intends to explore the relationship between linguistic features of L2 writers and the quality of the writing,with a focus on what features can significantly differentiate L2 essays produced by Chinese tertiary EFL learners and how these linguistic features can predict the quality of their essays.Data were collected from 326 English majors.Results showed that seven syntactic complexity measures,four accuracy measures,and three fluency measures could significantly differentiate the qualities of the essays.The qualitative study revealed that the raters relied on the linguistic features of the essays when deciding on which band the essay fell into and higher-rated essays tended to contain more complex structures,more accurate language,and longer production units.Moreover,during the rating process,the raters first put an essay into a rough category and then gave a specific writing score by carefully judging such linguistic features as comprehensibility,organization,syntactic complexity and lexical complexity.The study also gives suggestions concerning the revision of the rating rubrics.