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The linguistic characteristics of text productions depend on various factors, including individual language proficiency as well as the tasks used to elicit the production. To date, little attention has been paid to whether some writing tasks are more suitable than others to represent and differentiate students' proficiency levels. This issue is especially relevant in the context of high‐stakes language examinations. In this study, we investigated task effects in English as a foreign language (EFL) Abitur examinations, the high‐stakes test qualifying for higher education admission in Germany. Based on texts produced by 362 students, we examined (a) if and how student writings differ in their linguistic complexity and (b) if the EFL Abitur tasks are equally suited to differentiate the students' proficiency levels. We used a broad operationalization of linguistic complexity, including measures from various linguistic domains in the computational analysis of the texts. The results of our mixed‐effects models show that student texts differ in their linguistic complexity primarily by the functional needs of the task types employed (summary, analysis, and argumentation). Furthermore, writing tasks that demand high independence in language performance are best suited to differentiate between proficiency levels, which becomes especially evident in vocabulary choice and usage., Peer Reviewed

We investigate the linguistic complexity of oral classroom interactions in late primary and early secondary school across German school types. The goal is to explore whether teachers and students align in terms of their use of the academic language register. We empirically base this investigation on transcriptions of teacher and student contributions during content matter lessons on the vaporisation and condensation of water. Across school types and grade levels, we compare the extent to which teachers offer language that is adaptively rich in linguistic constructs commonly associated with academic language, such as deagentivation, nominal style, and cohesive devices. Putting this in relation to the developing academic language competence of the students, we then compare the language offered by the teachers to the use of these academic language constructs in the students’ spoken language contributions. We discuss the methodological challenges arising from analyzing oral classroom interactions and from applying automatic linguistic complexity analyses to such data.

We investigate the linguistic complexity of oral classroom interactions in late primary and early secondary school across German school types. The goal is to explore whether teachers and students align in terms of their use of the academic language register. We empirically base this investigation on transcriptions of teacher and student contributions during content matter lessons on the vaporisation and condensation of water. Across school types and grade levels, we compare the extent to which teachers offer language that is adaptively rich in linguistic constructs commonly associated with academic language, such as deagentivation, nominal style, and cohesive devices. Putting this in relation to the developing academic language competence of the students, we then compare the language offered by the teachers to the use of these academic language constructs in the students’ spoken language contributions. We discuss the methodological challenges arising from analyzing oral classroom interactions and from applying automatic linguistic complexity analyses to such data.

Following the outbreak of a global pandemic, online content is filled with hate speech. Donald Trump's ''Chinese Virus'' tweet shifted the blame for the spread of the Covid-19 virus to China and the Chinese people, which triggered a new round of anti-China hate both online and offline. This research intends to examine China-related hate speech on Twitter during the two years following the burst of the pandemic (2020 and 2021). Through Twitter's API, in total 2,172,333 tweets hashtagged #china posted during the time were collected. By employing multiple state-of-the-art pretrained language models for hate speech detection, we identify a wide range of hate of various types, resulting in an automatically labeled anti-China hate speech dataset. We identify a hateful rate in #china tweets of 2.5% in 2020 and 1.9% in 2021. This is well above the average rate of online hate speech on Twitter at 0.6% identified in Gao et al., 2017. We further analyzed the longitudinal development of #china tweets and those identified as hateful in 2020 and 2021 through visualizing the daily number and hate rate over the two years. Our keyword analysis of hate speech in #china tweets reveals the most frequently mentioned terms in the hateful #china tweets, which can be used for further social science studies.

The purpose of history education in Austria has changed over at least the last decade. While the focus used to be to give students a master narrative of the national past based on positivist knowledge, the current objective of history education is to foster historical thinking processes that enable students to form transferable skills in the self-reflected handling and creation of history. A key factor in fostering historical thinking is the appropriation of learning tasks. This case study measures the complexity of learning tasks in Austrian history textbooks as one important aspect of their quality. It makes use of three different approaches to complexity to triangulate the notion: general task complexity (GTC), general linguistic complexity (GLC), and domain-specific task complexity (DTC). The question is which findings can be offered by the specific strengths and limitations of the different methodological approaches to give new insights into the study of task complexity in the domain of history education research. By pursuing multidisciplinary approaches in a triangulating way, the case study opens up new prospects for this field. Besides offering new insights on measuring the complexity of learning tasks, the study illustrates the need for further research in this field – not only related to the development of analytical frameworks, but also regarding the notion of complexity in the context of historical learning itself.

Ziel der Untersuchung war es zu analysieren, inwiefern die sprachliche Komplexität von Texten aus in der Schule und Freizeit gelesenen Büchern mit der Lesekompetenz und dem Wortschatz von Schülerinnen und Schülern zusammenhängt. Zur Bearbeitung der Fragestellung wurden Daten von N = 405 Neuntklässlerinnen und Neuntklässlern der Bamberger Längsschnittstudie BiKS (Bildungsprozesse, Kompetenzentwicklung und Selektionsentscheidungen im Vorschul- und Schulalter) ausgewertet. Auf Basis der Angaben zu den in der Schule und Freizeit im letzten halben Jahr gelesenen Büchern konnte kein eindeutiges Befundmuster im Hinblick auf Zusammenhänge zwischen der sprachlichen Komplexität der angegebenen Bücher und dem Wortschatz beziehungsweise der Fähigkeit zum verstehenden Lesen von Texten etabliert werden. Im Beitrag diskutiert werden Herausforderungen bezüglich der Interpretation eines solchen Befundmusters sowie das Forschungsdesiderat weiterer transdisziplinärer, die Bildungsforschung und Computerlinguistik einbindenden, Forschung.