A Rasch measurement analysis of the use of cohesive devices in writing English as a foreign language by secondary students in Hong Kong.

This paper investigated the use of three types of cohesive devices, that is, reference, conjunction and lexis, used in writing the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) essays for students in secondary year 2, 4 and 6 in Hong Kong. Fifty students from each of the three forms (N = 150) provided narrative and descriptive essays for analysis which were marked by two competent English teachers by counting the frequency of writing devices used per 100 words. Initially, 14 cohesive devices (items) were counted as items for analysis, but two devices (items) were deleted as not fitting a Rasch measurement model. The RUMM2020 computer program with the partial credit model was used to create a linear scale of Writing Devices Used with twelve items: two for references, four for conjunctions, two for lexis, three for cohesive ties, and one for quality. There was good overall fit to the measurement model (item-trait chi-square = 56.81, df = 48, p = 0.18) but the Person Separation Index was very low at 0.08 mainly due to the small range of quality of essays in comparison to the difficulties of the writing devices (items). Students found that the three easiest writing devices used were remote cohesive ties, immediate cohesive ties and mediate cohesive ties. The three hardest writing devices used were temporal conjunctions, causal conjunctions and adversative conjunctions.