Sözdizimsel karmaşıklık ve sözcük çeşitliliğinin yabancı dilde yazma kalitesi göstergeleri olarak çapraz-kesişimsel incelenmesi: İngilizce öğretmen adayları ile yapılan bir çalışma

The main premise of the current dissertation study is to investigate to what extent syntactic complexity (SC) and lexical diversity (LD) can predict foreign language (FL) writing quality. Thus, the study scrutinizes the relationship between SC-LD scores calculated by an automated tool called Coh-Matrix and overall writing scores assigned by human judges for the English essays of 204 pre-service teachers of English of two different curricular levels (first and fourth year students). For the qualitative data, 8 instructors who had been rating student papers for 16 years on average at the time of study were interviewed. To that end, the study adopts a sequential-explanatory mixed method research design. For the quantitative part of this paradigm, English essays were first written by two different groups of ELT majors to be processed in Coh-Matrix. These essays were also scored by two independent raters following a standardized criteria and inter-rater reliability and intra-rater reliability check was also assured. The output data provided by Coh-Matrix and the overall writing scores, then, was further analyzed through descriptive statistical tests as well as t-tests, correlational and regression analyses within and across groups. As the statistical analyses reveal, the fourth year students outperformed the first year students in word counts, writing scores and in total of 5 Coh-Matrix indices of SC and LD. Though only text length as a confounding variable significantly correlated with writing quality scores on a moderate level, the correlation analysis exposed a consistent relationship among 5 SC and LD indices. Subsequent regression analyses explained the variance in overall writing scores. The qualitative results provided insights into the overall scoring procedure of the instructors and how much capable they were in grasping and considering SC and LD in their scoring. Based on the findings of the study, certain pedagogical implications and suggestions for further research were shared. Keywords: Syntactic Complexity, Lexical Diversity, Foreign Language Writing Assessment.