Developmental Features In L2 Writing Proficiency Of Chinese English Majors

Following the international boom in L2 writing research, researchers in the Chinese context have been producing a growing number of studies addressing the writings of Chinese learners of English. While many studies conclude that Chinese learners of English are particularly weak at writing, these are, among other things, by no means empirical studies supported by data and statistical tests. The present study aims to fill this gap by providing an objective picture of the writing proficiency of Chinese learners of English from a developmental perspective and to identify factors that contribute to successful writers.To examine the developmental features of the writings, 100 subjects from four institutions (Fudan University, Shanghai International Studies University, Shanghai Normal University, and Shanghai University of Science and Technology) are chosen whose TEM4 2003 and TEM8 2005 compositions are coded for linguistic features like fluency, syntactic complexity, lexical complexity, formality, and accuracy and also rated holistically. It is hypothesized that the TEM8 compositions will witness an improvement over the TEM4 compositions in all those measures.The empirical tests show that the subjects do make statistically significant improvement in TEM8 compositions in the aspects of fluency, lexical complexity and formality. The minor improvement in syntactic complexity and overall rating of their writings fail to receive statistical support. On the other hand, statistically significant decline is reported for the measure of accuracy. To explain the decline in accuracy and poor performance in composition ratings, institutional performances are also examined, which produces some interesting findings. Subjects from Fudan U, in contrast to those from the other three institutions, make some minor improvement accuracy, and more importantly significant improvement in holistic rating of their TEM8 compositions. Learners from Shanghai University of Science and Technology also demonstrate some minor improvement in the overall quality of their writings. Many variables contribute to the institutional differences in performance, and the...