Peng Yuxin, a 2021graduate student of Foreign Languages and Applied Linguistics, published her academic paper Predicting Chinese EFL Learners’ Human-rated Writing Quality in Argumentative Writing Through Multidimensional Computational Indices of Lexical Complexity in the SSCI Zone 1 journal Assessing Writing, with 4.7 impact of Cite Score and 3.164 Impact Factor.

The study finds that lexical sophistication, as reflected by the psycholinguistic complexity and frequency of words, is a prominent predictor of lexical competence and writing quality, and that lexical diversity is also a strong predictor of second language learners’ writing performance. This study provides an empirical basis for revealing the process of scorers’ assessment of essay quality and provides insights into the optimization of existing automated essay scoring models.

This is another important achievement of SFL postgraduate students in publishing international high-level journals, which fully reflects the high quality and standard of postgraduate training in the School. In addition to her own unremitting efforts, Peng Yuxin said that the publication of her thesis could not have been achieved without the careful guidance of her supervisor, Professor Zhang Haomin. She said, “Mr Zhang is a scholar. He and I are also friends, witnessing each other’s growth.”