Changes Of Syntactic Complexity In Chinese EFL Learners' Argumentative Writings

Syntactic complexity,also called syntactic maturity,referring to varied and sophisticated linguistic structures adopted in language production(Otega 2003:492),is an important indicator frequently used to evaluate L2 learners' writing performance.Previous studies have examined syntactic complexity in conjunction with measures of unit length and clause density(Scotts 1995;Otega 2003),in which subordinate clause is the focus in improving unit length and clause density.However,as Biber et al.(2011)mentioned,although functioning importantly in improving unit length and clause density,subordinate clause at the primary level of syntactic complexity is more commonly used in conversation.Therefore,based on developmental stages of complexity raised by Biber et al.(2011),this study,quantitative in nature,tries to explore the changes of syntactic complexity in argumentative writings of Chinese English majors across four grades.The research questions are:1)What are the changes as to Chinese English majors' using conversational,fictional and academic clause constituents and noun phrase(NP)constituents?2)To what extent,compared with English native speakers,do English majors of different grades demonstrate similarities and differences relating the use of conversational,fictional and academic clause constituents and NP constituents?All the 200 timed argumentative writings with the same topic written by English majors are randomly selected from the sub-corpus Written English Corpus of Chinese Learners(WECCL)with each grade including 50 writings.Besides,40 argumentative writings of college students in English-speaking countries are chosen from Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays(LOCNESS).20 syntactic complexity indices of clause constituents and NP constituents in conversational,fictional and academic discourses based on developmental stages of complexity raised by Biber et al.(2011)are employed.The following is the major findings:1)Conversational syntactic complexity indices:a)As for clause constituents,the frequencies of object clause and adverbial clause show a linear decrease across 4 grades,while no significant difference is shown in the production of common verb +nonfinite complement clause and adverb as adverbial.Fewer object clauses are applied by native speakers than those by students in Grade 1 and fewer adverbial clauses and common verb+nonfinite complement clauses than those by English majors with significant difference.As for adverb as adverbial,no difference at the significant level is found.b)As for NP constituents,the frequency of adj.as premodifier increases across the grades.No significant difference is shown between samples written by native speakers and those by students in Grade 4.To sum up,students in Grade 1 and Grade 2 apply more conversational syntactic complexity indices,especially clause constituents.2)Fictional syntactic complexity indices:a)As for clause constituents,no significance is demonstrated in the difference among samples of four grades in two indices,namely adj.+ complement clause and verb + nonfinite complement clause.In the use of prepositional phrase as adverbial,significant difference is only between samples of Grade 1 and those of Grade 4.However,compared with native speakers,Chinese students seem to apply more prepositional phrases as adverbials with difference at 0.05 level.b)As for NP constituents,no significant difference is in the use of NP + that/which relative clause in the samples of English majors while native speakers apply more relative clauses than Chinese English majors,which is significant.For(possessive)noun as premodifier,more(possessive)nouns as premodifiers are used by students in Grade 3 and Grade 4 even than those used by native speakers as well as students in Grade 1 and Grade 2.In terms of NP + of/PP(locative/concrete meaning),although an increase is among four grades,yet compared with native speakers,the frequency is still lower.3)Academic syntactic complexity indices:a)As for clause constituents,in terms of adj.+ nonfinite complement clause employed by English majors and native speakers,no significance is shown in the difference.For extraposed complement clause,Chinese students among four grades have the similar performance and have higher production than native speakers.In the employment of adverbial phrases,students in Grade 3 and Grade 4 have similar performance to native speakers and use more adverbial phrases than students in Grade 1 and Grade 2.In the use of nominal verb phrases,no significant difference can be found.b)As for NP constituents,in terms of nonfinite relative clause,the significant difference only appears between samples of freshmen and those of students in Grade 3 and Grade 4 as well as native speakers.In the use of(adj+n)/(adv+adj)+NP,students in Grade 3 and Grade 4 with similar performance to native speakers apply more than the other grades.As for NP+PP(abstract meaning)and NP + PP + nonfinite complement clause,the difference among English majors across four grades and native speakers is of no significance.But for the frequency of appositive noun phrase/clause used by native speakers is higher than that of appositive noun phrase/clause used by students in Grade 1 and Grade 2 and no significant difference is found between samples of native speakers and those of students in Grade 3 and Grade 4.In conclusion,students at Grade 3 and Grade 4 level tend to use more academic syntactic features both of clause constituents and NP constituents.The above findings are pedagogically meaningful to college English teaching and learning:first,the period of Grade 1 and Grade 2 is important in college English learning when teachers should take advantage of this period to focus more attention on varied fictional and academic grammatical features and encourage students to use more formal and varied structures in writing essays;second,the result that Chinese students use fewer relative clauses suggests Chinese students' lacking the awareness to use complex noun phrases.Thus,in English teaching and learning,besides the training of relative clauses,more emphasis should be put on deepening students' awareness of applying complex noun phrases.