ABSTRACT

Keystroke logs provide a comprehensive record of observable writing processes. Previous studies examining the keystroke logs of young L1 English writers performing experimental writing tasks have identified writing processes features predictive of the quality of responses. Contrarily, large-scale studies on the dynamic and temporal nature of L2 writing process are scarce, especially in an assessment setting. This study utilized the keystroke logs of adult English as a foreign language (EFL) learners responding to assessment tasks to examine the usefulness of the process features in this new context. We evaluated the features in terms of stability, explored factor structures for their correlations, and constructed models to predict response quality. The results showed that most of the process features were stable and that their correlations could be efficiently represented with a five-factor structure. Moreover, we observed improved response quality prediction over a baseline by up to 48%. These findings have implications for the evaluation and understanding of writing process features and for the substantive understanding of writing processes under assessment conditions.

摘要

按键日志提供了可观察的书写过程的全面记录。先前研究年轻L1英语作家完成实验性写作任务的击键记录的研究已经确定了书写过程可以预测响应的质量。相反，关于L2写作过程的动态和时间性质的大规模研究很少，尤其是在评估环境中。这项研究利用成人英语作为外语（EFL）学习者的击键记录来响应评估任务，以检查在这种新情况下过程功能的有用性。我们根据稳定性评估了这些功能，探索了其相关性的因子结构，并构建了预测响应质量的模型。结果表明，大多数工艺特征是稳定的，并且它们的相关性可以用五因素结构有效地表示。此外，我们观察到在基线之上的响应质量预测改善了多达48％。这些发现对评估和理解写作过程的功能以及评估条件下对写作过程的实质性理解具有启示意义。