Previous research has shown the effectiveness of peer reviewing on the improvement of writing quality. However, the fact that students themselves, arguably novices, judged the improvement leads to concerns about the validity of peer reviewing. We measured writing quality before and after peer reviewing using Coh-Metrix, which computationally…

The importance of functional adequacy as an essential component of L2 proficiency has been observed by several authors (Pallotti, 2009; De Jong, Steinel, Florijn, Schoonen, & Hulstijn, 2012a, b). The rationale underlying the present study is that the assessment of writing proficiency in L2 is not fully possible without taking into account the…

Quantifier scope disambiguation (QSD) is one of the most challenging problems in deep natural language understanding (NLU) systems. The most popular approach for dealing with QSD is to simply leave the semantic representation (scope-) underspecified and to incrementally add constraints to filter out unwanted readings. Scope underspecification has…

Formality has long been of interest in the study of discourse, with periodic discussions of the best measure of formality and the relationship between formality and text categories. In this research, we explored what features predict formality as humans perceive the construct. We categorized a corpus consisting of 1,158 discourse samples published…

Coh-Metrix analyzes texts on multiple measures of language and discourse that are aligned with multilevel theoretical frameworks of comprehension. Dozens of measures funnel into five major factors that systematically vary as a function of types of texts (e.g., narrative vs. informational) and grade level: narrativity, syntactic simplicity, word…

Coh-Metrix analyzes texts on multiple measures of language and discourse that are aligned with multilevel theoretical frameworks of comprehension. Dozens of measures funnel into five major factors that systematically vary as a function of types of texts (e.g., narrative vs. informational) and grade level: narrativity, syntactic simplicity, word…

Research has identified a number of linguistic features that influence the reading comprehension of young readers; yet, less is known about whether and how these findings extend to adult readers. This study examines text comprehension, processing, and familiarity judgment provided by adult readers using a number of different approaches (i.e.,…

Recent studies have used Coh-Metrix, an automated text analyzer, to assess differences in language characteristics across different genres and academic disciplines (Graesser, McNamara, & Kulikowich, 2011; McNamara, Graesser, McCarthy, & Cai, 2014). Coh-Metrix analyzes text on many constructs at different levels, including Word Concreteness…

This study investigated the similarities and differences in the use of discourse connectors (DCs) in argumentative essays of American undergraduate students (AMs), Thai with high-English exposure (THHs) and Thai with low-English exposure (THLs). The data of these three groups were collected from 60 essays; 20 essays were from the corpus of…

This study reports on the insights from an EFL learner corpora (a total of 151 essays and 49,690 words) generated from essays collected over the years in a Turkish state university from freshmen students enrolling in the Advanced Writing course. The comparison of cohesive devices in the non-native corpus (NNC) with those in a native corpus (NC)…

Cohesion, or the connectedness of discourse, has been recognized as playing a crucial role in both language production and comprehension processes. Researchers have debated about the "right" number and classification of cohesive devices, as well as about their interaction with coherence and/or genre. The present study proposes an integrative model…

This paper considers whether the sources of linguistic complexity presented within texts targeted at 1st-grade readers have increased, decreased, or held steady over the 52-year period from 1962 to 2013. A collection of more than 450 texts is examined. All texts were selected from Grade 1 textbooks published by Scott Foresman during the targeted…

This study examines the use of cohesive devices (pragmatic markers and conjunctions) in a 24,000-word corpus of transcribed oral data from 47 learners and native speakers of English. Both of these cohesive devices increase with proficiency level, but not in the same way. Conjunction use seems to increase steadily, and only the differences between…

Many studies have found EFL/ESL learners over/under/misuse linking adverbials. Because their use is specific to genre and register (Biber et al., 1999), and news writing is a compulsory course for EFL journalism majors at many Chinese universities, this study investigates their usage patterns in news and suggests teaching material design for the…

This study used a new computational linguistics tool, the Coh-Metrix, to investigate and measure the differences in cohesion and lexical network density between native speaker and non-native speaker writing, as well as to investigate L2 proficiency level differences in cohesion and lexical network density. This study analyzed data from three…