Most texts on writing style encourage authors to avoid overly-complex words. However, a majority of undergraduates admit to deliberately increasing the complexity of their vocabulary so as to give the impression of intelligence. This paper explores the extent to which this strategy is effective. Experiments 1–3 manipulate complexity of texts and find a negative relationship between complexity a...

Sentence fluency is an important component of overall text readability but few studies in natural language processing have sought to understand the factors that define it. We report the results of an initial study into the predictive power of surface syntactic statistics for the task; we use fluency assessments done for the purpose of evaluating machine translation. We find that these features ...

Recent research has underlined the benefits of peer assessment (PA) as it helps learners write high-quality essays and increases their confidence writers. In terms this intervention study, 200 Greek Cypriot EFL learners’ (pre- post-tests) were evaluated taking into consideration four aspects writing quality after using either PA teacher (TA) (experimental groups, n = 100 students) or only TA (c...

This study investigates the combined effects of task-based careful online planning condition and the storyline structure of a task on L2 oral performance (complexity, accuracy, and fluency). 60 intermediate EFL learners were randomly assigned to four groups (n = 15). Participants were asked to perform two tasks with different degrees of storyline structure (structured and unstructured) under tw...

This paper aims to test the predictive role of nonword reading abilities (accuracy and fluency) rapid naming (RAN) over word fluency. Letter knowledge (LK) phonological awareness (PA) for literacy were accounted as control factors due their ceiling effects. We direct impact main predictors indirect outcomes by controlling accuracy. To this end, 206 children participated completed measures abili...

PURPOSE This research investigated the expository language skills of young school-age children with the ultimate aim of obtaining normative data for clinical practice. Specifically, this study examined (a) the level of expository language performance of 6- and 7-year-old children with typical development and (b) age-related differences between young and older school-age children. METHOD Expos...

With immediate repetition priming of forced choice perceptual identification, short prime durations produce positive priming (i.e., priming the target leads to higher accuracy, while priming the foil leads to lower accuracy). Many theories explain positive priming following short duration primes as reflecting increased perceptual fluency for the primed target (i.e., decreased identification lat...

This study investigates the combined effects of task-based careful online planning condition and the storyline structure of a task on L2 oral performance (complexity, accuracy, and fluency). 60 intermediate EFL learners were randomly assigned to four groups (n = 15). Participants were asked to perform two tasks with different degrees of storyline structure (structured and unstructured) under tw...