Relations of linguistic features, rhetorical moves, and writing quality in academic writing of secondary students

Understanding what features characterize proficient writing and how linguistic and rhetorical features contribute to writing quality is crucial in understanding the complexity of writing and written text. To this end, this study examines the extent to which lexical sophistication, syntactic complexity, and rhetorical features predict human-judged writing quality using a learner corpus of text-based argumentative essays (N = 410) written by linguistically diverse students in middle and high school. Lexical sophistication, syntactic complexity, and rhetorical features were examined in connection to holistic writing quality. Analytic strategies include Pearson correlations, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and structural regression. Results show that observed variables of lexical sophistication, syntactic complexity, and rhetorical features are weakly to strongly correlated to holistic writing quality score (r = 0.26 to r = 0.66). A three-factor model in which the lexical sophistication, syntactic complexity, and rhetorical features are latent constructs that covary with one another had a close fit and was the best-fitting model. The latent construct of rhetorical features significantly predicts writing quality score while latent constructs of lexical sophistication and syntactic complexity are strongly correlated with rhetorical features. Implications for writing research and pedagogy are discussed.