| Syntactic complexity is a writer’s syntactic maturity, which refers to theimprovement of a writer’s ability in expressing more thoughts or conveying moreinformation with fewer words(Gaies,1980). Syntactic features are indispensible partsin assessing writing production. It has attracted many researchers at home and abroadto conduct researches on analyzing the relationship between syntactic complexity andwriting proficiency. From the perspective of time span, researches on syntacticcomplexity can be categorized into cross-sectional study and longitudinal study.Cross-sectional studies investigate the relationship between syntactic complexity andwriting quality, and the results vary as the researchers aim at different aspects or underdifferent conditions, such as task types, writing genres, time conditions and so on.Longitudinal studies emphasize on the description of syntactic development in a longperiod of time. More researchers would like to conduct their studies fromcross-sectional perspective. In recent years, some studies try to corporatecross-sectional and longitudinal perspective into one research. Hunt(1970), Thomas&Cooper(1976), Faigley(1979), Crowhurst(1980), Simms&Crump(1983), Beers&Naggy(2007) and Biber&Gray(2010) made great efforts on researches of syntacticcomplexity. They identified many indices to measure syntactic complexity, includingW/T, W/C, error-free T-unit length, C/T, DC/C, sentence patterns, dependent clauses,reduced structures and so on. Most complexity measurements are about theembedment of some structures in production. Meanwhile, researchers did not reachconsensus about the indices applied in measuring syntactic complexity. Some of themhold the view that the indices applied in measuring complexity in writings are more ofconversational features. That means more researches are needed in this field toeliminate such divergence. In China, researchers started the studies on syntacticcomplexity at the begining of21th century, such as Qin Xiaoqing&WenQiufang(2007), Bao Gui(2009,2010) and Wang Zhengping(2010). The researcheswere conducted from certain genres and certain time conditions by using different indices of syntactic complexity. Most of them were based on argumentary writings.Few were from narrative and expository writings. It still needs further investigation toreveal the features of syntactic complexity and how students develop their L2syntactic complexity in concrete genres.This thesis attempts to investigate syntactic complexity from cross-sectionalperspective. It is a quantitative one which aims to investigate the features of syntacticcomplexity in expository writings by Chinese students of English. All data are chosenfrom a sub-corpus of Spoken and Written English Corpus of Chinese Learners(Edition2.0, by Wen Qiufang,2008).90expository writings with the same topic byEnglish majors will be chosedn from5different-level high education institutions. Allstudents are required to finish this task in thirty minutes. The score of eachcomposition was given by three experienced teachers from three perspectives,respectively the use of language, content of the composition and context structures.Marking scheme of this sub-corpus is delicate, therefore the experimental groups canbe divided based on relatively high reliability. The research questions are:1. What arethe syntactic complexity features demonstrated in the expository writings bydifferent-level students? What tendency do these features indicate?2. What is therelationship between syntactic complexity and the scores of expository writings?Fifteen indices will be adopted in this thesis, which can be divided into six types(QinXiaoqing and Wen Qiufang,2007). They are unit length, unit density, four basicsentence patterns, dependent clauses, reduced structures and passive forms. Unitlength inludes length of the composition (LC), mean length of T-unit (MLT), meanlength of clause (MLC) and unit density will be measured by the ratio of T-unitcomplexity (C/T), ratio of dependent clause (DC/C). The analysis of data will beconducted through SPSS17.0.This thesis has the following finding:First of all, text length is correlative to the writing quality. Students in a higherproficiency group have the ability to write compositions with more words. Text lengthincreases in a linear way as the writing ability increased while not all length indicesdevelop in a linear way. The other two length indices are T-unit length and clause length. In expository writing, T-unit length and clause length have no tendency ofincreasing or decreasing as the writing ability increases. Unlike the text length, theyhave no correlation with students’ writing ability.Secondly, unit density could not distinguish students from high proficiencygroup to low proficiency group. It has the same result as T-unit length. Any of the twoindices is correlative to writing quality. And groups in different levels show nodifference on C/T and DC/C.Thirdly, simple sentence and complex sentence have positive correlation with thewriting quality. High proficiency group will use more simple sentences as well ascomplex sentences than low proficiency group. The differences between groups arestatistically significant in distinguishing students with different writing abilities.Finally, in expository writings, object clause shows significant correlation withwriting proficiency. Higher proficiency students prefer using more object clauses inwriting expository compositions.Finding of this thesis may devote to some implications. Form the results of thisthesis, students are weak conscious to use reduced structures and passive forms eventhough they are important indices in marking high syntactic complexity. Teachers canput emphasis on instructing how to use reduced structures and passive forms whenteaching writing expository compositions. Besides, syntactic complexity is not theonly standard for score evaluation, instructors should emphasize practicing syntacticcomplexity as well as correctness, context structures and cohesion so that the studentscan have a comprehensive improvement in their writing skills. Moreover, teaching ofvarious clauses is still necessary in instructing expository writing. More efforts shouldbe devoted to the practice of writing dependent clauses. The instructors can train thestudents to enhance the awareness to use fewer simple sentences when they cancombine them into complex sentences. |
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