Development Of Learner Language In The Dimensions Of Complexity And Accuracy: Case Studies Of Chinese College Students

Following Freeman's dynamic systems theory,a few researchers have conducted longitudinal case studies to investigate individuals' second language development in terms of complexity and accuracy.Although similar studies have been carried out in China,these studies have not adopted the dynamic systems perspective,still focusing on the group average performance without paying enough attention to individual variations.In order to fill this research gap,this longitudinal case study based on the dynamic systems theory not only investigated the group average performance but also examined individual development.The participants of this study,who are six undergraduate students from one university in Beijing,completed one writing task each month from June,2012 to December,2012,among which the tasks in June,September and December repeated the same writing topic.The researcher measured the complexity and accuracy index of the participants' writing and carried out statistical tests,which was supplemented by qualitative analysis of vocabulary,syntactic structures and errors in their writing and interviews with them to find out their situation in learning English.The quantitative results display that the group as a whole only achieved significant progress in syntactic complexity while individuals exhibited non-linearity and variability in their linguistic development.The qualitative results confirm the finding of individual variability since each case demonstrated unique developmental features.Meanwhile,with separate analysis on the participants' performance in the three repeated tasks,the researcher found they made some significant progress in the repeated tasks.This suggests that the writing topic might be a factor that influences the participants' performance.Findings of this study support the assumption that learner language is a dynamic complex system and also proves that longitudinal case study is an effective approach in investigating the development of learner language.Based on the findings of this study,similar studies in the future should try to reduce the influence of task related factors and extend research duration.Moreover,in addition to non-linearity and individual variability,future research can examine whether learner language manifests other features of dynamic complex systems such as self-adaptation and iteration for evaluating the assumption of learner language as a dynamic complex system.