Abstract Summary
This study presents how a multi-dimensional EFL writing score report is generated for college EFL learners by using cognitive diagnostic approach. The effectiveness of the report is also verified by conducting a three-month quasi-experiment. The results are accurate, reliable and effective and significant in personalized assessment and tailored learning.
Abstract :
There is an important distinction between a complicated collection of parts that does not work and a complex system that does. The former might have just as many parts and just as deep a hierarchy as the latter, but the latter is made up of parts that attract, enhance, combine with, and interact with one another in ways that allow the system to function as an effective whole (cf. Page, 2011). Complexity in language produces many important effects that complicatedness alone does not. It provides depth and clarity of meaning and induces in the listener or reader positive affective responses related to well formedness, situational appropriateness, coherence, cohesion, diversity, intellectual stimulation, and eloquence, to name but a few.
Although linguistics and related fields that investigate linguistic complexity have become adept at measuring the number of parts and even the depth of the hierarchy that can be found in samples of language use, it is now time to begin moving beyond these measures and examine complexity more comprehensively. This will allow the field to gain a better understanding of the contribution that complexity makes to language proficiency and will enhance our ability to identify discrete stages of language acquisition and to track its progression. Most of this paper is devoted to describing and illustrating what a fuller measure of linguistic complexity needs to be able to capture. Importantly, such a measure should not only quantify the linguistic units found in samples of language use, but should also evaluate the quality of their relationships with one another. Although some might claim that this approach risks confounding complexity with accuracy, I will attempt to show that there are some aspects of language use where complexity is inseparable from accuracy.
Page, S.E. (2011). Diversity and complexity. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
