A Study On Written Language Complexity Of Intermediate Chinese Learners

The language expression ability of second language learners is mainly measured from the three aspects of fluency,accuracy and complexity.The research on the complexity of Chinese is mainly focused on the spoken language,and there are few studies on the written language.This study takes the written language(limited to writing)of 12 intermediate level Chinese learners in a university in northern China as research samples,and constructs a written language corpus of 30,000 words of intermediate level learners.This paper analyzes written language complexity from lexical complexity and syntactic complexity by combining quantitative analysis with qualitative analysis.Lexical complexity is mainly measured from three aspects: lexical diversity,lexical variation and lexical difficulty.Syntactic complexity is mainly measured from three aspects: coarse-grained index,fine-grained index,and rhetorical device.Coarse-grained index includes T unit,topic chain,and zero formation score,while fine-grained index includes special structure density,complex sentence density,and complex noun phrase.The results show that in terms of lexical complexity,learners have lower lexical diversity and variation,less use of non-repetitive words,and lower lexical richness.Intermediate learners still mainly use primary vocabulary,and intermediate vocabulary and advanced vocabulary are more limited in frequency.In terms of syntactic complexity,the length of T unit output by learners is not long,and each learner’s mastery of "topic" is quite different.The proportion of learner’s special structure output is very small;Every learner uses association or bias relation in composition,but the number of association relation is far less than bias relation.Learners output less complex noun phrases in the writing process and still prefer to use simple noun phrases;There are great differences in the use of rhetoric by learners.Some learners are good at using rhetoric,but some learners have low awareness of using rhetoric,among which metaphor is the most frequently used rhetorical device by learners.Finally,on the basis of the analysis results,the author puts forward corresponding teaching suggestions on how to improve the lexical and syntactic complexity of students’ written language,hoping to help teachers identify the status quo of learners’ written language complexity,and adjust and improve the teaching objectives and teaching difficulties of Chinese writing class according to these status quo.So as to improve the writing level of Chinese learners and the complexity of language expression.Finally,on the basis of the analysis results,the author puts forward teaching suggestions on vocabulary and syntax respectively,hoping to help teachers clarify the status quo of learners’ written language complexity,and design the teaching objectives and key and difficult points of Chinese writing lessons according to these status quo,so as to improve the writing level and language expression complexity of Chinese learners.