Utilizing an automated tool analysis to evaluate EFL students’ writing performances

Abstract

Recently, the integration of linguistics and technology has been promoted and widely used in the field of linguistics and English writing research for several purposes. One of those purposes is to evaluate English as a Foreign Language (EFL) writing ability by using electronic assessment tools. In the current study, an automated writing evaluation tool (Coh-Metrix) was used to indicate English-major students’ writing performances based on the discourse components of the texts. The English texts generated for each writing task on two different topics were collected. The corpus analyses gathered from Coh-Metrix identified linguistic and discourse features that were interpreted to determine the 40 EFL undergraduate students’ English writing abilities. The students wrote and revised their essays in hand-written essays in class and resubmitted their essays in digital forms with corrections made. The results showed that these students demonstrated linguistic flexibility across writing assignments that they produced. The analyses also indicated that the length of the texts and the uses of the word concreteness, and the referential and deep cohesion had impacts on the students’ writing performances across the writing tasks. Besides, the findings suggest practical value in using an automated text analysis to support teachers’ instructional decisions that could help to identify improvement of students’ writing skill.

Word Trends in Digital Communication of High School Students in the New Capital of Indonesia (IKN)

“…The term "lexical bundle" refers to a sequence of words that frequently co-occurs in a specific language or linguistic context (Al Fajri, Kirana & Karisma Putri, 2020;Petchprasert, 2021). These bundles are recurring combinations of words t to appear together with high frequency in spoken or written language.…”

“…Lexical bundles can be found in spoken and written language, ranging from two to several long words (Baker, Hardie & McEnery, 2006: 34;Baker, 2010: 19). They are often considered multi-word units or formulaic sequences, as they are used and recognized as a single chunk rather than individual words (Petchprasert, 2021). These bundles are so common that native speakers often process them as cohesive units without analyzing each word.…”

Support for decision-making in checking the level of quality of student research works based on automated text analysis ( Asistencia para la toma de decisiones en la evaluación de la calidad de las investigaciones de los estudiantes basada en el análisis automático de textos )

“…Al mismo tiempo, no se tiene en consideración la calidad de los documentos, teniendo en cuenta la correspondencia semántica de la estructura interna del documento analizado. Con el uso de tecnologías digitales es posible mejorar la calidad del análisis de los trabajos de investigación, reducir significativamente la inversión de tiempo improductiva en su moderación formal y minimizar el número de errores cometidos en el proceso de evaluación (Kunz, 2019; Petchprasert, 2021). Estos artículos no presentan métodos de análisis semántico y evaluación de la calidad de los trabajos de investigación.…”

“…At the same time, the quality of documents is not considered, taking into account the semantic correspondence of the internal structure of the analysed document. Using computer technologies, it is possible to improve the quality of the analysis of research works, reduce significantly unproductive time expenditure on their formal moderation, as well as minimize the number of mistakes made in the process of their assessment (Kunz, 2019; Petchprasert, 2021). These works do not offer methods of semantic analysis and assessment of the quality of student research works.…”

Ditransitive and Dative Constructions in English and Thai Languages

“…Aside from the theories of crosslinguistic variation stated earlier, several educators have discussed about how to enhance language teachers with the content knowledge of linguistics and integrated areas of English writing (Nguyen, 2019;Richard, 1990;Xie & Yuan, 2020). Along this line, many studies have been conducted related to L1 and L2 transfer in EFL students' English writing (Chanwaiwit, 2018;Nguyen, 2019;Petchprasert, 2013;Petchprasert, 2021) and the crosslinguistic manifestations of the event schema argument in double object construction (Haspelmath, 2015;Jiang & Huang 2015;Levin, 2008;Pongyoo, 2018). For example, Nguyen's ( 2019) study shows the relatively high percent of neutral and negative attitudes towards English writing pedagogy, determining the challenges the participants faced.…”