The Developmental Features Of Syntactic Complexity In English Majors’ Writings

Syntactic complexity (also called syntactic maturity) refers to the range of forms that surface in language production and the degree of sophistication of such forms. Length of production unit, amount of embedding, range of structural types, and sophistication of the particular structures deployed in production have all been the target of quantifications when characterizing syntactic complexity, resulting in a variety of global measures (Ortega,2003:492). This study, quantitative in nature, tries to establish the developmental patterns of syntactic complexity in the essays by Chinese English majors across4school years. The research questions are:1) What are the features of syntactic complexity shown by Chinese English majors across4school years? What are the developmental patterns of each index relating syntactic length, clause density and sentence types?2) To what extent is syntactic complexity demonstrated by English majors different from that shown by native speakers?All the120argumentative writing materials under a same topic produced by English majors were collected from one sub-corpus, Written English Corpus of Chinese Learners (WECCL), of the Spoken and Written English Corpus of Chinese Learners (SWECCL), and30samples of each grade randomly selecting. Another sample of30academic papers written by English natives speakers were downloaded from the internet. There are altogether9syntactic complexity indices employed in the present study, covering3aspects of unit length, clause density as well as sentence pattern. The results of statistical analysis of each index have the following findings:First, in general, it is obvious that college students tend to produce more and more complex and varied syntactic structures as their language competence develop. However, the results gained from data analyzing shows that there is no linear increase for almost all the syntactic complexity measures. For each measure, the developing pace varied through the learning process. Furthermore, from a comprehensive point of view, all measures demonstrate unbalanced growth. Besides, there exist large gaps between Chinese English majors and native speakers on syntactic complexity demonstrated in their essays.Second, Unit length is measured by T-unit length and clause length. The analysis of the distribution of each index in samples per each grade shows that both of the two indexes exhibit increasing tendency, indicating a tendency of embedding of more dependent clauses and non-clause structures. More specifically, the period of Grade1and Grade2witnesses the largest improvement concerning unit length, while there are no significant differences among Grade2, Grade3and Grade4. The results of independent sample T-test shows that there are large gaps between Chinese English major and native speakers on the mean length of T-units and clauses.Third, clause density is measured by T-unit complexity ratio (T/C) and dependent clause ratio (DC/C). The study reveals that C/T exhibited an "increase---ecrease" tendency and it reach the peak value in Grade3. The results of independent sample T-test shows that only the juniors has reached a similar level as natives demonstrate. In comparison, DC/C increases in a linear relation to grade level with a small change in most of the adjacent grades. The results of independent sample T-test shows that none of these4tertiary groups has reached a similar level as natives demonstrate. To sum up, the above findings shows a low embedding degree in Chinese English majors’writings across4school years.Forth, the distribution patterns of independent sentences, dependent clauses, reduced structures, propositional phrases and passive forms are the major measures of sentence patterns. The results of statistical analysis show that the major differences are the results of language transfers, for the different characteristics of Chinese and English sentence organization obstacle Chinese students to write in the way of native speakers.The above findings can be pedagogically contributes to college language teaching: First, students’language competence develops quickly from Year1to Year2. The college teachers should take advantage of this time, providing adequate lectures on complex grammatical structures and encouraging them to use more formal and varied structures in writing essays. Second, English teachers in China should deepen students’awareness of syntactic complexity by making contrastive analysis. At last, when students entering higher grades, teachers should keep on enhancing grammatical practice to improve their language skills, for fear that students’language competence may experience a "plateau period".