Self-Built Writing Corpus: 66 Student Compositions from Chinese Universities

66 English compositions from students at Chinese application-oriented universities form a corpus for analyzing linguistic complexity. Jinhua Zhang collected and analyzed these texts hierarchically at lexical, syntactic, and textual levels. The dataset was last updated on 2026-05-21 and is shared under a CC-BY-4.0 license.

Use Cases

• Analyze lexical complexity indicators based on their sensitivity to writing proficiency mentioned in the description
• Model the non-linear development of syntactic competence based on features described in the study
• Assess text coherence based on its correlation with writing quality as reported in the results
• Tailor EFL instruction strategies based on insights into varying language proficiency levels

Strengths

• Dataset contains 66 individual student compositions.
• Analysis is structured hierarchically across lexis, syntax, and text.
• Shared under a permissive CC-BY-4.0 license.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• The 5.5 KB file size indicates a very small, limited-scope dataset.

Provenance

Source

Jinhua Zhang via figshare.

Collection Method

Likely collected from students at application-oriented universities in China.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-21 07:34:41; freshness should be verified.

Geography

China (application-oriented universities).