A Comparative Analysis of Linguistic Features Across Genre Types of Korean EFL College Students’ Essays

This study aims to explore the influence of genre types on the compositions of Korean EFL college learners by examining multiple levels of linguistic features. A computational assessment tool called Coh-Metrix was utilized to analyze a set of 72 compositions, including cause/effect, comparison/contrast expository, and argumentative essays. The findings reveal that low frequency words and syntactically complex sentences were more frequent in expository texts (specifically, cause/effect texts) than in argumentative texts. In addition, compare/contrast essays had the highest density of noun phrases, one measure of syntactic complexity, and argumentative essays had the lowest scores for the number of words before main verbs, indicating lower syntactic complexity. This study offers valuable pedagogical implications for the instruction of diverse genres in EAP writing.