This study used academic essays from the Academic Writing and Discussion in English (AWADE) program to create a graded corpus that can now be used for research purposes and program development. This corpus consists of over 200 essays, and each essay was graded by 3 trained raters with academic English teaching experience.

All essays from students who had previously submitted a research ethics approval form were digitally downloaded. Next, each digital file was reviewed to ensure no identifying materials (e.g., student names, ID numbers) were included. After removing any writing that could identify particular students, each essay was re-examined to eliminate erroneous characters (e.g., @, *, ~) that are sometimes included because of the downloading method used to gather essays. Finally, overly long/short essays were eliminated to ensure a relatively narrow range of essay lengths. This was important since similar average essay lengths can lead to improved analysis in later stages and more insightful comparisons between writer groups. After preparing the essays for analysis, each essay was evaluated by a minimum of three trained raters. Ratings took place over an approximately 1-month period.