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Article published In:
The Assessment of Functional Adequacy in Language Performance: Special issue of the Journal on Task-Based Language Teaching and Learning 2:1 (2022)
Edited by Folkert Kuiken and Ineke Vedder
[TASK 2:1] 2022
► pp. 85–114

Holistic and analytic assessment of functional adequacy

ORCID logo | University of Modena and Reggio Emilia
This study looks at the correlation between functional adequacy (FA), holistically assessed, and analytic linguistic measures, in a corpus of texts written by Italian monolingual and multilingual primary school pupils. Texts were first evaluated using the FA rating scales by Kuiken and Vedder (2017, 2018), plus one for Coherence & Cohesion from the CEFR (Council of Europe, 2001′). They were then coded for a number of features directly bearing on FA and its subdimensions. Results show correlations between holistic scores and analytic measures, such as those between Content and the number of words or secondary idea units (r = .59 / .65). Others were less strong, yet going in the expected direction, e.g. more ambiguous referential expressions were negatively correlated to Comprehensibility. Correlations were generally stronger for monolingual than for multilingual children.
Keywords: functional adequacy, writing, text quality measures, primary school pupils, assessment
Article outline
  • Previous research
  • Methodology
  • Data analysis
    • Content
    • Coherence & Cohesion
    • Comprehensibility
  • Results: Correlation analysis
  • Results: Regression models
  • Functional adequacy
    • Content
    • Comprehensibility
    • Coherence & Cohesion – Kuiken and Vedder
    • Coherence & Cohesion – CEFR
  • Summary of findings
  • Implications for TBLT and directions for future research
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 20 June 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/task.21014.pal
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