This presentation will discuss the findings of a three-year study concerning the development of complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF) in Japanese L2 university students’ compositions over an academic year. One aim was to determine if progress was made over an academic year in writing skills; a secondary aim was to examine the issue of editing. Students wrote three essays over the year, with each one lasting for 30 minutes, with 10 additional minutes given for editing. Half of the students were instructed to self-edit their original drafts while the other group used an online grammar checker. A total of 100 students from seven institutions participated. Research questions focused on if CAF changed over the year, on possible differences between the methods of editing, as well as to describe the interactions among the CAF dimensions. Results showed accuracy and fluency changed the most significantly over time. Complexity remained almost unchanged though there were several peaks in the CAF indicators: the most significant variability related to complexity (CP/T indicator), and accuracy (EFCR indicator). As for editing, results showed no difference between the two methods. Accuracy and fluency are more correlated than accuracy and complexity, and complexity is correlated with fluency the most. In short, these data indicated that teachers should help students to increase their syntactical complexity, increase fluency (words per minute), effectively use online grammar checkers, and to bring about more awareness about their overall progress in writing.

Authors:
Robert Long, Kyushu Institute of Technology, Japan

About the Presenter(s)
Professor Robert Long is a University Professor/Principal Lecturer at Kyushu Institute of Technology in Japan

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