The lexical richness of undergraduate student essays: the influence of writing experience and essay writing strategies

Authors

• Katalin Doró University of Szeged, Department of English Language Teacher Education and Applied Linguistics

Keywords:

lexical richness, essay writing, strategies, EFL undergraduates

Abstract

L2 writing is a complex cognitive task, which requires and is facilitated by practice, familiarity with the task and appropriate writing strategies. This study investigates three lexical richness measures of argumentative essays written by Hungarian undergraduate students of English (n=89) and the correlation they have with students’ self-reported writing behaviors and strategies. Surprisingly, no statistically significant differences were found between the reported writing behaviors of students and the lexical richness measures of their essays. This can be attributed partly to the limited strategy data that are gained through a questionnaire, but can also be due to the complex nature of writing as a process and to the variety of factors that contribute to writing as a product. The pedagogical implications of writing strategy instruction are also discussed.