Latent semantıc analysıs: an analytıcal tool for second language wrıtıng assessment

Abstract

This small-scale study tries to introduce and validate a linguistic theory and method, Latent Semantic Analysis. This method has been used in natural language processing for some time now; however, its potential in examining second language lexicon is a relatively recent discussion (Crossley, Salsbury, McCart and McNamara, 2008). In this study, the potential of this method to distinguish between native English text sets and texts written by Turkish university students learning English as a foreign language were analyzed. To test this potential, an original specialized corpus was formed from essays written by these Turkish university students, and it was compared to another corpus involving native English text sets. In this comparison, three levels of semantic indexing were used: sentence, paragraph and all combinations in texts. The results confirmed the findings in the literature claiming LSA’s ability to distinguish between native and learner text sets. Prospective potentials of this method in terms of language teaching-learning context are discussed.