In English as a foreign language (EFL) writing assessment, evaluating organization and coherence is not as straightforward as evaluating grammar and vocabulary, and the same is true for providing feedback to learners. One of the reasons for this is the difficulty of pinpointing errors in organization and coherence. In this study, English paragraphs written by learners were visualized as a tree diagram with a web-based annotation tool, allowing us to review the balance of the paragraph's structure and identify breaks or anomalies in coherence. The identified breaks in coherence were analyzed independently by two raters, and grouped according to ideational, logical, grammatical and lexical, and elemental perspectives. Furthermore, these types were linked to the taxonomies of two previous studies: the English as a second language (ESL) composition profile descriptors of Jacobs et al. (1981); and the categories of Cumming et al. (2001, 2002). The results suggested that there are three main causes hindering coherence, and that these can be further broken down into 11 subcategories. This study identifies the causes that hinder coherence in the organization of EFL learners' paragraph writing, which helps to give a clearer perspective on writing assessment and allows for more specific feedback to learners. This is expected to benefit both the learning and teaching of EFL writing.
Kana Matsumura (Fri,) studied this question.