본문 바로가기
KERD
논문KCI 등재

Syntactic Complexity Measures and Academic Writing Proficiency: A Corpus-based Study of Professional and Students’ Prose

Rajab Esfandiari|Mohammad Ahmadi
아시아테플 (AsiaTEFL (The Asian Association of Teachers of English As a Foreign Language))|2021.10|Journal of Asia TEFL|제18권 제3호|pp. 745-763

2

조회

0

다운로드

1

인용

0

참고문헌

키워드

academic writingacademic proficiencysyntactic complexity measures

초록

This study examines large-grained, medium-grained, and fine-grained measures, as different dimensions of syntactic complexity, and their relationship with academic writing proficiency in the abstract sections of academic prose. We sampled 237 texts written by expert academic writers of research articles, PhD level L1 Persian writers, and MA level L1 Persian writers. Using one-way multiple analysis of variance (MANOVA) and ordinal logistic regression, we compared the abstracts in terms of their syntactic complexity and checked the predictability of large-grained, medium-grained, and fine-grained measures in academic writing proficiency. The findings revealed that the differences among the groups were not large enough for clausal and sentential measures of dependent clauses per T-unit, and clauses per sentence to show statistical significance. However, the differences among the groups on length-based measures of mean length of T-unit, and mean length of clause along with noun phrase measures of clauses per nominals, noun premodifiers, and prepositional phrases reached significance. Analysis of fine-grained measures of noun phrase complexity shows that four indices that measured the number and variation of dependents in the texts made unique statistically significant contribution to the prediction of academic writing proficiency. These findings suggest the importance of incorporating complementary measures of syntactic complexity (i.e., large-grained measures) as integral parts of L2 writing instruction practices. The implications of the findings in relation to L2 academic writing pedagogy are discussed.

Abstract

This study examines large-grained, medium-grained, and fine-grained measures, as different dimensions of syntactic complexity, and their relationship with academic writing proficiency in the abstract sections of academic prose. We sampled 237 texts written by expert academic writers of research articles, PhD level L1 Persian writers, and MA level L1 Persian writers. Using one-way multiple analysis of variance (MANOVA) and ordinal logistic regression, we compared the abstracts in terms of their syntactic complexity and checked the predictability of large-grained, medium-grained, and fine-grained measures in academic writing proficiency. The findings revealed that the differences among the groups were not large enough for clausal and sentential measures of dependent clauses per T-unit, and clauses per sentence to show statistical significance. However, the differences among the groups on length-based measures of mean length of T-unit, and mean length of clause along with noun phrase measures of clauses per nominals, noun premodifiers, and prepositional phrases reached significance. Analysis of fine-grained measures of noun phrase complexity shows that four indices that measured the number and variation of dependents in the texts made unique statistically significant contribution to the prediction of academic writing proficiency. These findings suggest the importance of incorporating complementary measures of syntactic complexity (i.e., large-grained measures) as integral parts of L2 writing instruction practices. The implications of the findings in relation to L2 academic writing pedagogy are discussed.

참고문헌 (56)

  1. Abrahamson, E., "22 things I hate : Mini rants on management research", Journal of Management Inquiry, 17(4), pp.422~425 (2008)
  2. Agresti, A., "An introduction to categorical data analysis" (2018), John Wiley & Sons
  3. Ansarifar, A., "Phrasal complexity in academic writing : A comparison of abstracts written by graduate students and expert writers in applied linguistics", Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 31(1), pp.58~71 (2018)
  4. 배지영, "Genre-based Analysis of Syntactic Complexity in L2 College Students’ Writing: Pedagogic Scope and Directions", Journal of Asia TEFL, 17(3), pp.937~953 (2020), 아시아테플
  5. Daniel R. Bailey, "The Effects of Online Collaborative Writing and TOEIC Writing Test-Preparation on L2 Writing Performance", Journal of Asia TEFL, 15(2), pp.383~397 (2018), 아시아테플
  6. Bardovi-Harlig, K., "The relationship of form and meaning : A cross-sectional study of tense and aspect in the interlanguage of learners of English as a second language", Applied Psycholinguistics, 13(3), pp.253~278 (1992)
  7. Bi, P., "Syntactic complexity in assessing young adolescent EFL learners’ writings : Syntactic elaboration and diversity", System, 91, pp.1~10 (2020)
  8. Biber, D., "Challenging stereotypes about academic writing : Complexity, elaboration, explicitness", Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 9(1), pp.2~20 (2010)
  9. Biber, D., "Grammatical complexity in academic English: Linguistic change in writing" (2016), Cambridge University Press
  10. Biber, D., "Should we use characteristics of conversation to measure grammatical complexity in L2 writing development?", TESOL Quarterly, 45(1), pp.5~35 (2011)
  11. Biber, D., "Investigating grammatical complexity in L2 English writing research : Linguistic description versus predictive measurement", Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 46, pp.1~15 (2020)[DOI]
  12. Bulté, B., "Dimensions of L2 performance and proficiency: Complexity, accuracy and fluency in SLA", pp.21~46 (2012), John Benjamins Publishing Company
  13. Bulté, B., "Conceptualizing and measuring short-term changes in L2 writing complexity", Journal of Second Language Writing, 26(1), pp.42~65 (2014)
  14. Bulté, B., "Syntactic complexity in L2 writing : Individual pathways and emerging group trends", International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 28(1), pp.147~164 (2018)
  15. Byrnes, H., "Realizing advanced foreign language writing development in collegiate education: Curricular design, pedagogy, assessment", Modern Language Journal, 94(supplement 1), pp.1~235 (2010)
  16. Casal, J. E., "Syntactic complexity and writing quality in assessed first-year L2 writing", Journal of Second Language Writing, 44, pp.51~62 (2019)
  17. Chen, D., "A fast and accurate dependency parser using neural networks", The 2014 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP) (2014)
  18. Connor-Linton, J., "Measured language: Quantitative studies of acquisition, assessment, and variation" (2014), Georgetown University Press
  19. Crossley, S. A., "Does writing development equal writing quality? A computational investigation of syntactic complexity in L2 learners", Journal of Second Language Writing, 26(1), pp.66~79 (2014)
  20. Fagerland, M. W., "Tests for goodness of fit in ordinal logistic regression models", Journal of Statistical Computation and Simulation, 86(17), pp.3398~3418 (2016)
  21. García‐Pérez, M. A., "Accuracy and completeness of publication and citation records in the Web of Science, PsycINFO, and Google Scholar : A case study for the computation of h indices in Psychology", Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 61(10), pp.2070~2085 (2010)
  22. Halliday, M. A., "Systemic background", Systemic Perspectives on Discourse, 1, pp.1~15 (1985)
  23. Harzing, A. W. K., "Google Scholar as a new source for citation analysis", Ethics in Science and Environmental Politics, 8(1), pp.61~73 (2008)
  24. Hirsch, J. E., "An index to quantify an individual’s scientific research output", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 102(46), pp.16569~16572 (2005)
  25. Housen, A., "Complexity, accuracy, and fluency in second language acquisition", Applied Linguistics, 30(4), pp.461~473 (2009)
  26. Housen, A., "Multiple approaches to complexity in second language research", Second Language Research, 35(10), pp.3~21 (2019)
  27. Housen, A., "Dimensions of L2 performance and proficiency: Complexity, accuracy and fluency in SLA (Vol. 32)" (2012), John Benjamins Publishing
  28. Hyland, K., "Hedges, boosters and lexical invisibility : Noticing modifiers in academic texts", Language Awareness, 9(4), pp.179~197 (2000)
  29. Iwashita, N., "Syntactic complexity measures and their relation to oral proficiency in Japanese as a foreign language", Language Assessment Quarterly : An International Journal, 3(2), pp.151~169 (2006)
  30. Jiang, F. K., "Metadiscursive nouns : Interaction and cohesion in abstract moves", English for Specific Purposes, 46, pp.1~14 (2017)
  31. Jiang, J., "Syntactic complexity development in the writings of EFL learners : Insights from a dependency syntactically-annotated corpus", Journal of Second Language Writing, 46, pp.1~13 (2019)
  32. Kreyer, R., "The development of phrasal complexity in German intermediate learners of English", International Journal of Learner Corpus Research, 4(1), pp.82~111 (2018)
  33. Kyle, K, "Measuring syntactic development in L2 writing: Fine grained indices of syntactic complexity and usage-based indices of syntactic complexity sophistication", doctoral, pp.2016
  34. Kyle, K., "Measuring syntactic complexity in L2 writing using fine‐grained clausal and phrasal indices", The Modern Language Journal, 102(2), pp.333~349 (2018)
  35. Lan, G., "A corpus-based investigation of noun phrase complexity in the L2 writings of a first-year composition course", Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 38, pp.14~24 (2019)
  36. 이지영, "Syntactic Complexity, Clausal Complexity, and Phrasal Complexity in L2 Writing: The Effects of Task Complexity and Task Closure", Journal of Asia TEFL, 18(1), pp.108~124 (2021), 아시아테플
  37. Lei, L., "The academic English collocation list : A corpus-driven study", International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 23(2), pp.216~243 (2018)
  38. Liming Liu, "Noun Phrase Complexity in EFL Academic Writing: A Corpus-Based Study of Postgraduate Academic Writing", Journal of Asia TEFL, 13(1), pp.48~65 (2016), 아시아테플[DOI]
  39. Liu, X., "Ordinal regression analysis : Using generalized ordinal logistic regression models to estimate educational data", Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods, 11(1), pp.242~254 (2012)
  40. Long, J. S., "Regression models for categorical dependent variables using Stata" (2006), Stata Press
  41. Lu, X., "Automatic analysis of syntactic complexity in second language writing", International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 15(4), pp.474~496 (2010)
  42. Lu, X., "A corpus‐based evaluation of syntactic complexity measures as indices of college‐level ESL writers’ language development", TESOL Quarterly, 45(1), pp.36~62 (2011)
  43. Lu, X., "Syntactic complexity in college-level English writing : Differences among writers with diverse L1 backgrounds", Journal of Second Language Writing, 29(1), pp.16~27 (2015)
  44. Norris, J. M., "Towards an organic approach to investigating CAF in instructed SLA : The case of complexity", Applied Linguistics, 30(4), pp.555~578 (2009)
  45. Ortega, L., "Syntactic complexity measures and their relationship to L2 proficiency : A research synthesis of college‐level L2 writing", Applied Linguistics, 24(4), pp.492~518 (2003)
  46. Ortega, L., "Linguistic complexity: Second language acquisition, indigenization, contact", pp.127~155 (2012), de Gruyter
  47. Parkinson, J., "Development of noun phrase complexity in the writing of English for academic purposes students", Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 14(1), pp.48~59 (2014)
  48. Ravid, D., "Developing noun phrase complexity at school age : A text-embedded cross-linguistic analysis", First Language, 30(1), pp.3~26 (2010)
  49. Richards, J. C., "Longman dictionary of language teaching and applied linguistics" (2013), Routledge
  50. Skehan, P., "A framework for the implementation of task-based instruction", Applied Linguistics, 17(1), pp.38~62 (1996)
  51. Staples, S., "Academic writing development at the university level : Phrasal and clausal complexity across level of study, discipline, and genre", Written Communication, 33(2), pp.149~183 (2016)
  52. Swan, M., "Practical English usage" (2008), Oxford University Press
  53. Teixeira, M. C., "Incorrect citations give unfair credit to review authors in ecology journals", PLoS One, 8(2), pp.1~4 (2013)
  54. Vyatkina, N., "The development of second language writing complexity in groups and individuals : A longitudinal learner corpus study", The Modern Language Journal, 96(4), pp.576~598 (2012)
  55. Wolfe-Quintero, K., "Second language development in writing: Measures of fluency, accuracy and complexity" (1998), University of Hawaii at Manoa
  56. Youn, S. J., "Measuring syntactic complexity in L2 pragmatic production : Investigating relationships among pragmatics, grammar, and proficiency", System, 42, pp.270~287 (2014)

관련 논문AI추천

Predicting L2 Writing Proficiency Using Linguistic Complexity Measures: A Corpus-Based Study김지영한국영어교육학회 · 영어교육2014 · 제69권 제4호Examining Syntactic Complexity Across Proficiency Levels in Argumentative Essays by Korean EFL Learners여정은현대영어교육학회 · 현대영어교육2025 · 제26권 Genre-based Analysis of Syntactic Complexity in L2 College Students’ Writing: Pedagogic Scope and Directions배지영, Su-JungMin아시아테플 · Journal of Asia TEFL2020 · 제17권 제3호Syntactic Complexity of Korean EFL Learners’ Argumentative Writing황은경현대영어교육학회 · 현대영어교육2013 · 제14권 제2호Syntactic Complexity of Recurrent Multiword Sequences in the Writings of Published Authors and L1 and L2 English Apprentice Writers고서정, 김동환, 신유경, 유현중, 유혜민, 윤준수, 최희성, Yoo Isaiah Wonho아시아테플 · Journal of Asia TEFL2019 · 제16권 제2호Noun Phrase Complexity in EFL Academic Writing: A Corpus-Based Study of Postgraduate Academic WritingLan Li, Liming Liu아시아테플 · Journal of Asia TEFL2016 · 제13권 제1호

이 간행물의 다른 논문 (27건)

“As a Teacher, COVID-19 Means…”: Stories of How English Teachers in Asia Developed Resilience During the PandemicJudy Yin, 이효신pp. 764-779Online Learning of English Language Courses via Blackboard at Saudi Universities During Covid-19: Challenges and DifficultiesHind Aljuaidpp. 780-799Understanding Help-Seeking Avoidance among EFL Students and the Social Climate of EFL Classrooms in ThailandDacedille Tanco Tuan, Budi Waluyopp. 800-815Paraphrasing Translation as a Strategy to Help L2 Learners Develop Their L2 Productive Competence: Pedagogical PerspectivesTakako Ramsdenpp. 816-836Assessment Policy in Korean EFL Classrooms: An Ethnographic Exploration of Assessment Planning Practices남윤정pp. 837-857
원문 보기