Words are categorized by Pigai for different levels of (e.g., frequently used word, academic word, and informal word). Lexical sophistication refers to the number of words used are from the academic word list.
Published in Chapter:
Assessing Foreign Language Narrative Writing Through Automated Writing Evaluation: A Case for the Web-Based Pigai System
Chia-An Lin (National Taipei University of Technology, Taiwan), Yen-Liang Lin (National Taipei University of Technology, Taiwan), and Pei-Shan Tsai (National Taipei University of Technology, Taiwan)
Copyright: © 2020
|Pages: 20
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-3062-7.ch006
Abstract
Automated writing evaluation (AWE) has become increasingly popular in the assessment of writing. The study in this chapter examines the extent to which EFL learners' overall narrative writing performance improves through the AWE feedback system (i.e., Pigai). Eighteen university participants were required to write one paragraph narratives on the web-based Pigai system every week over the course of a month. Findings show a significant improvement in overall scores between the first and last writing task. The analysis of lexical profile further shows a significant improvement in lexical richness, clause density, and paragraph length between the first and last narrative task. The study also reported that the primary error types that occurred in learner narrative writing were lexical, mechanical, and syntactic errors. Results of post-writing interviews also showed a positive attitude towards Pigai. Finally, a positive correlation was observed between automated Pigai scores and human rating scores, supporting the reliability of the AWE system.