272 / 2021-07-14 23:25:01

A Study of Syntactic Complexity in Continuative Writing by Chinese Adolescent EFL Learners

syntactic complexity; continuative writing; adolescent EFL learners; writing proficiency

Considered as a multi-dimensional construct, syntactic complexity has been found to be positively correlated with second language(L2) learners’ writing performance. Despite the current situation that a growing body of research has been conducted to explore syntactic complexity, bountiful issues about it remain to be further examined, one of which is to do with essays by adolescent learners. To fill this gap, the present paper analyzes syntactic complexity in continuative writings by adolescent EFL learners and what indices can best distinguish and predict the quality of L2 writing. For this purpose, the corpus consists of 503 essays from a senior high school in Central China. The tool of L2 Syntactic Complexity Analyzer (an automated computational system) is employed, followed by the use of one-way ANOVA, correlation and regression analysis. Results reveal that length of production unit (mean length of clause and T-unit included) and particular structures (complex nominals per clause and complex nominals per T-unit) can significantly distinguish between-proficiency levels of writing and predict writing quality. Findings also suggest that the appropriate use of complex nominals is not confined to writing essays by advanced or academic English learners. Some pedagogical suggestions on how to perfect writing performance of adolescent L2 learners and will be also discussed.