A Comparative Analysis Of Linguistic Complexity Of High School ELT Textbooks

Linguistic complexity has been the focus of scholars and researchers in Applied Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition since its birth.Many domestic and foreign scholars have committed to the development of linguistic complexity widely and deeply with so many remarkable achievements made.At present,the research mainly pays attention to the output of second language learners,that is,the linguistic complexity of second language writings.The earlier research has been focused on the comparative analysis of the linguistic complexity between second language learners' writings and native speakers' writings.But few studies rarely involve teaching materials and textbooks,which provides the main language input for learners.An appropriate level of linguistic complexity in learning materials is considered to be of significant impact on learning(Berendes,K.,et al.2017).Textbook is the medium between teaching and learning.Each reading article in each unit of each book in the textbook series,is well-targeted.Thus,to explore and select appropriate textbooks proves significant.Therefore,this study compared and analyzed the linguistic complexity of two sets of high school textbooks,published by the People Education Press and the Oxford University Press separately.Since optional courses were excluded for relatively strong flexibility,the first five textbooks of PEP and OUP are chosen as two corpora.25 units 47 articles for PEP corpus and 15 units 39 articles for OUP corpus.On-line automatic computational tools,developed by professor Xiaofei Lu(2010),L2 Lexical Complexity Analyzer(L2LCA)and L2 Syntactic Complexity Analyzer(L2SCA)were employed here to analyze the corpora.L2 SCA covers 14 syntactic complexity measures from 5 dimensions,Length of Production Units,Amounts of Coordination,Amounts of Subordination,Degree of Phrasal Sophistication and Overall Sentence Complexity.L2 LCA covers 14 lexical complexity measures from 3 dimensions,Lexical Diversity,Lexical Variation and Lexical Sophistication.The data of 86 articles from 28 measures(syntactic and lexical complexity)were statistically calculated,compared and analyzed by using Microsoft Office Excel 2010 and Statistical Product Analysis Service(SPSS)(Version 24.0).The study try to figure out are there any significant differences in the linguistic complexity in two different versions of textbook series? Is the development of linguistic complexity of a positive correlationwith the increasing grades?The main findings of the present study are as follows:1)The PEP group has lower mean values than the OUP group for 11 out of the 14 syntactic complexity measures,except the measures of mean length of clause,number of coordinate phrases per clause and number of coordinate phrases per T-unit.Moreover,there are differences between the PEP and the OUP textbooks on syntactic complexity measures.PEP group and OUP group differ significantly in one Length of Production Unit measure(MLC)and in two Amount of Coordination measures(CP/C,CP/T).2)The comparison of the lexical complexity between the PEP and the OUP textbooks shows that the mean values of all 14 lexical complexity measures in PEP group are higher than those of the OUP group.Moreover,there are differences between the PEP and the OUP textbooks on lexical complexity measures.PEP group and OUP group differ significantly in one Lexical Sophistication measure(VS2)and three Lexical Variation measures(VV2,ADJV and MODV).3)The two series textbooks are not totally constructed systematically with the grade levels in terms of a comprehensive set of measures of syntactic complexity and lexical complexity.Both PEP and OUP English textbooks do not present a positive increase as learners' proficiency progresses in different grades.This study has provided practical reference for English teaching material assessment and selection.Moreover,the results draw a lot of inspiration for English learners,teachers,publishers and textbook writers and textbook editors.The author of the textbooks can clarify whether the linguistic complexity of the textbook meets the requirements of a systematic positive rise.Teachers and language learners can learn more about the selection criteria and the language material that best suits students' learning needs can be attainable when they meet the similar language materials.