BibTeX

@inProceedings{olsson-etal-2024-exploring-341980,
	title        = {Exploring English Writing Proficiency among Grade 9 Students in Sweden through Automated Text Analysis of National Test Essays from 2000 to 2022},
	abstract     = {In this presentation we outline a planned research project with the purpose of gaining in-depth
knowledge of Swedish students' writing proficiency in English, as this information is essential for
future English education and for supporting teachers' assessment of writing proficiency.
The project has three aims:
1) Create a corpus of 4000 student texts, collected between 2000 and 2022 from the Writing section
of the National Test of English for school year 9, including the teacher-assigned ratings.
2) Identify potential changes in linguistic and textual characteristics of students’ writing
competence over twenty years.
3) Determine which linguistic features most strongly predict teachers’ holistic ratings of student
texts.
NLP tools (e.g., TAALES and TAACO) will be used to investigate central aspects of writing quality
including lexical sophistication and diversity, syntactic complexity and cohesion. We intend to
employ statistical analyses on the data, such as factor analysis, regression analysis, and structural
equation modeling.
In addition to providing essential information for English education at the policy level regarding
changes in writing proficiency over time, the results will indicate how automated text analysis
tools may support and complement teachers’ holistic assessment of writing proficiency. },
	booktitle    = {Language Testing Research Colloquium, Innsbruck 3 juli 2024},
	author       = {Olsson, Eva and Borger, Linda and Johansson, Sofie},
	year         = {2024},
}