Design and Validation of a System of Categories to Assess the Written Discourse of L2 English Learners

This study is part of a broader research focused on written discourse analysis and its application in English language teaching. This paper aims to design and evaluate the validity of the content of an instrument (a system of categories) built to analyse the written discourse in L2 (English) of 112 Spanish students in Upper Secondary Education. This study was carried out from a qualitative approach using the technique of content analysis and the Delphi technique with five experts in the field. The results show that the category system has content validity as it meets the criteria to ensure the scientific rigour of qualitative methodology: credibility, transferability, dependence and confirmability. Moreover, there is a high score in terms of interrater reliability on the criteria contrasted with Kendall's W test (>.07), as well as on its application in the coding process which was confirmed with Cohen's Kappa test (.658). It can be concluded that this instrument is a valid tool to help ELF teachers and secondary school students in the teaching and learning process of the written discourse in English as a foreign language.