ABSTRACT
The final chapter in Part 4 of the book develops the theoretical motivation for the RF framework as applied to the field of second language writing. The paper is addressed in large part to researchers of writing assessment, who often use omnibus complexity measures to predict levels of proficiency from written texts, rather than undertaking a linguistic description of language use at those various developmental levels. As such, the paper provides a useful bookend to the part of the book focused on applied studies, synthesizing how the empirical research presented in Chapters 14–19 has contributed to our understanding of the complexity characteristics of student writing.
