A Longitudinal Study on Japanese Learners’ Written Complexity, Accuracy, and Fluency

Most traditional EFL writing classes in Japan, have over-emphasized data collection of exam scores, completion of homework or e-learning modules (Harwood, 2019; Iwasaki et al., 2019). Little research has been conducted about improvement in students’ writing over a period of time (Hokamura’s (2018); thus, this paper reports on the results of changes in Japanese EFL students’ writing complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF) in a span of one academic school year. Research questions focused on differences in grammatical errors and syntactic complexity between a control group, wherein students wrote three essays, and a treatment group, wherein students wrote eight papers over an academic semester. Specifically, the study aimed to find out if there were significant improvements in grammar accuracy and syntactic complexity between the first and second written drafts as well as, if there was any significant difference with the use of self-editing and grammar online checkers between the two groups. A significant difference was found between the groups in regard to syntactic complexity, and fluency, which oscillated with clauses per T-unit, increased 3.2% on average. Furthermore, grammatical errors decreased over the year for the treatment group, and improvements in syntactic complexity were found to be significant for both groups. The use of online grammar checkers was confirmed to result in fewer errors. Overall, the study indicates that EFL writing (CAF) is impacted by instruction and that more attention is warranted regarding EFL writing classes.