A Case Study Of English Postgraduates' Lexical Richness Development In English Writing

Lexical richness is the criteria of vocabulary level and indicator of English writing performance level.Recently,it has attracted widespread attention of scholars at home and abroad.The previous research mainly focuses on the general lexical richness development and the factors contributing to it.Relatively limited research has been done on individual development characteristics of lexical richness,and little attention has been paid to the research on interplay relationship between measurements of lexical richness.Therefore,the present study seeks to probe into the English postgraduates' lexical richness development in English writing in terms of lexical variation,lexical density and lexical sophistication.Based on Dynamic Systems Theory(DST),the Input and Output Hypotheses,the present study addresses three questions:1)What are the general characteristics of the four English postgraduates' lexical richness development?2)What are the individual characteristics of the four English postgraduates' lexical richness development?3)How do lexical variation,lexical density and lexical sophistication of four English postgraduates interact with each other?Four English postgraduates from a university in Hunan were recruited as subjects in this study.The total of their untimed compositions,collected throughout a 7-month period,is 52,and they were processed by means of Vocabprofile.The data were then analyzed by SPSS and Excel.The major findings of this study are as the following:1)The general development of lexical variation,density and sophistication showed an upward trend.There were peaks and valleys in the general trajectories of lexical richness,suggesting that the general lexical richness development of the four English postgraduates shows a dynamic and upward trend.2)The individual trajectories of lexical richness differed from the general and varied from each other.The trajectories of different measurements were not synchronous,and the individual trajectories were nonlinear.The findings show that the individual development of lexical richness is dynamic and that there are inter-individual variance and intra-individual variance.3)The general lexical variation,lexical density and lexical sophistication had significant positive relationship with each other.However,the individual measurements sometimes supported each other and sometimes were in competition.These indicate that the general interplay among the three measurements of lexical richness are supportive and the general measurements are connected growers,but that the individual interplay is dynamic and shows shifts between supportive and competitive relationship.This study further enriches Dynamic Systems Theory's view that the language development is dynamic and non-linear,and thus sheds light on lexical richness development of postgraduates in English writing.It also contributes to English writing teaching.However,due to the objective limitations like research time,the lexical richness development characteristics and its interplay of the four English postgraduates were partially presented in this study.