Does discourse quality weigh more than linguistic quality in the evaluation of advanced L2 Chinese writing?

The current assessment of L2 writing has a strong focus on linguistic dimensions, such as accuracy. The evaluation of discourse performance, however, often does not go beyond a subjective analysis of cohesion and coherence. A deeper understanding of how L2 writers monitor discourse features to form a rhetorical product and how it may affect writing quality deserves further study. The current study investigates the organizational performance in advanced L2 Chinese argumentative essays using a variety of discourse measures. Three questions guided the study. First, what types of organizational performance and lexical and syntactic accuracy exist in advanced L2 Chinese argumentative essays? Second, what are the relationships between organizational performance and linguistic accuracy in advanced L2 Chinese argumentative essays? Third, which organizational and linguistic accuracy features best predict human judgments of writing quality?

The dataset comprised 35 argumentative essays on four topics, produced by ten L1-English advanced Chinse learners. Organizational quality was analyzed in terms of the number of interactive meta-discourse markers at local, global, and text levels as well as interactional (interpersonal) meta-discourse markers. Both the rates of lexical and syntactic accuracy were also analyzed. The holistic writing quality of the essays were scored with a holistic rating scale.

The results showed that certain types of meta-discourse markers were used much more frequently than the others. The number of 3^rd-person pronouns and frame markers negatively correlated with lexical accuracy or holistic ratings. Lexical accuracy predicted the ratings more effectively than any of the discourse features. The findings suggest that discourse knowledge and skills need to be nurtured along with linguistic training.