UNDERSTANDING DEVELOPMENT AND PROFICIENCY IN WRITING – BOOK REVIEW

Abstract

The original and thought-provoking book “Understanding Development and Proficiency in Writing” was written by Philip Durrant, Mark Brenchley, and Lee McCallum and published in 2021 by Cambridge University Press. It comprises seven major chapters, four of which focus on key areas of language proficiency: syntax, vocabulary, formulaic language, and cohesion. The book focuses on the continual debate of evaluating and interpreting development in L1 and L2 writing and offers evidence-based and objective perspectives to explore development. It reviews almost 250 quantitative corpus linguistics (QCL) based studies spanning over 70 years, thanks to its empirical approach. The historical and theoretical overview of QCL research on written language suggests a powerful guide map to understand what is already known (and not known) about written language development. It inspires us about what to do next to evaluate and assess first and second-language writing from a more robust perspective. Article visualizations: