A Study On AWE-Based Corrective Feedback On EFL Learners' Syntactic Complexity

Writing has always been a weak link in English teaching practice.To solve this problem,many researchers explore the relationship between English teaching and English as a foreign language(EFL)learners' writing from the angle of Input and Output Hypotheses.As writing texts are mainly composed of sentences,many researchers investigate variety,accuracy and complexity of sentences in EFL learners' writing texts in the hope of refining reliable measures to gauge EFL learners' syntactic complexity.Syntactic complexity has been testified to be one of the important indices to measure EFL learners' language proficiency.Thus different researchers both in China and abroad adopt numerous syntactic complexity measures to gauge EFL learners' English language proficiency from diverse dimensions.However,the amount of studies about automated writing evaluation(AWE)based corrective feedback on EFL learners' syntactic complexity is relatively small.There are even fewer related studies in China.This paper is conducted in the hope of making a little contribution to the whole project of filling in this gap.Based on the Output Hypothesis,this paper adopts second language syntactic complexity analyzer(L2SCA)developed by Lu[1]as research tool.156 writing texts from one of the AWE tools,the Pigai system are collected as corpora.With the help of SPSS,this study is conducted to find out the effects of AWE-based corrective feedback on EFL learners' syntactic complexity.The following two questions are to be addressed in performing this study.First,does the AWE-based corrective feedback have any positive effects on EFL learners' syntactic complexity?Second,are there any differences in the indices of syntactic complexity in writing texts among learners of different language proficiency levels?If so,what are the differences then?The results indicate that the AWE-based corrective feedback does have positive effects on EFL learners' syntactic complexity,and there are differences in the indices of syntactic complexity in writing among learners of different language proficiency levels.The significant differences are displayed in the following measures,mean length of sentence(MLS),clause per sentence(C/S),coordinate phrases per clause(CP/C),coordinate phrases per T-units(CP/T),and complex norminals per clause(CN/C).Besides,this study also provides some prompts for EFL teachers that they should make the best of the technology and try to embed AWE system into their teaching practice in the process of teaching writing.In addition,it is important for teachers to design their teaching plan cleverly in the hope of combining the four basic skills of listening,speaking,reading and writing.What's more,teachers should also try to create opportunities to encourage students to make more production.Through practicing writing,EFL learners can improve their confidence in writing and their English proficiency level will also be improved gradually.There are altogether five parts in this paper.Chapter one is the introduction part,which offers a brief introduction to background,significance and organization of the study.Chapter two is a literature review,which provides an overview of the theoretical background for the whole paper.In this chapter,the following four aspects are explained in detail,namely,syntactic complexity measures,the Output Hypothesis,the AWE tools,and the corpus-based study.Chapter three introduces research method,in which research subjects,research corpora,research tools and procedures for data collection and processing are included.Chapter four is about data analysis and discussion.Chapter five is the concluding part,in which the major findings of the study and implications are summarized first,and then limitations of the study and suggestions for further research are introduced.