Assessing writing development during study abroad

Abstract

Abstract In research about second language (L2) development during study abroad (SA), writing is underrepresented. This is partly due to the difficulty of designing adequate tasks and measures to gauge writing development during a short immersion period. Our study explores the applicability of a narrative task assessed in terms of both linguistic complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF) and functional adequacy (FA), a novelty in SA writing research. Texts written by 30 advanced students of L2 German before and after SA were analysed. The results show moderate correlations between the measures for fluency and lexical variation and two FA dimensions. This suggests that, in the SA context, CAF and FA develop together to a certain extent, although the constructs are conceptually different.