Using Coh-Metrix to analyse writing skills of students: A case study in a technological common core curriculum course

Chi Un Lei, Ka Lok Man, T. O. Ting

Research output: Contribution to journalConference articlepeer-review

3 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Pedagogy with learning analytics is shown to facilitate the teaching-learning process through analysing student's behaviours. In this paper, we explore the possibility of using a computational linguistic tool Coh-Metrix for analyzing and improving writing skills of students in a technological common core curriculum course. In this study, we mainly focused on the investigation of syntactic simplicity, word concreteness, referential cohesion, and deep cohesion of student's essays. We studied 25 essays from the three-year curriculum students and 26 essays from the four-year curriculum students. Results illustrate the necessity of improving student's writing skills in their university learning, so that they can effectively circulate their ideas to the public in the future.

Original languageEnglish
JournalLecture Notes in Engineering and Computer Science
Volume2210
Issue numberJanuary
Publication statusPublished - 2014
EventInternational MultiConference of Engineers and Computer Scientists, IMECS 2014 - Kowloon, Hong Kong
Duration: 12 Mar 201414 Mar 2014

Keywords

  • Computational linguistics
  • Educational data mining
  • General education
  • Information technology in education
  • Learning analytics
  • Text analysis
  • Writing

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