A Longitudinal Study Of Development Of Written English Complexity Of English Majors

In second language acquisition, the measures of the development of writingability are mainly accuracy, fluency and complexity. The study focuses on complexityin written production. Writing complexity means the development of languageproficiency, which reflects the developmental levels of language learners. It is wellknown to us that in writing teaching both teachers and students pay more attention towriting accuracy and fluency. The possible reason is that writing scores are close toaccuracy and fluency. However, we also know that sentence complexity andvocabulary variety can be another important indexes of a good writing. According tosome references abroad and at home, it is discovered that the research of writingcomplexity has been placed emphasis in recent years. Some researchers examined thedevelopment of writing complexity of the different grades or different levels. Someother researchers explored the development of writing complexity from across-sectional perspective. However, the study examines the longitudinaldevelopment of writing complexity of English majors.The study collects the data from sophomores within one year and analyzes theirdevelopment of writing complexity.11students of English majors in a university fromJiangxi Province wrote12compositions each, with a total of132compositions.4indexes were used to measure syntactic complexity: T-unit length (W/T) and clauselength (W/C), T-unit complexity ratio (C/T) and dependent clause ratio (DC/C), and2indexes were used to measure lexical complexity: lexical variation (or type token ratio,TTR) and lexical frequency profile.(or LFP)The study has three findings:First, for syntactic complexity, our finding is that the two indexes of unit length(W/T, W/C) have been improved within one year, while the other two indexes ofcomplexity ratio (C/T, DC/C) have no significant improvement during the wholeprocess. That’s to say, compared with the indexes of unit length, the development ofclause density (C/T, DC/C) obviously lags behind.Second, for lexical complexity, we find that type token ratio (TTR) and thepercentage of advanced words in lexical frequency profile (LFP) have significant improvement within one year. That’s to say, students have some changes in utilizingwords and phrases and they also try to produce more advanced words or phraseswithin one year.Third, we discover that for high proficiency group (HG) and low proficiencygroup (LG), TTR presents concentrative development trends. HG learners and LGlearners have their different developmental trajectories in other five indexes.It’s worth mentioning that the development of syntactic and lexical complexity isnot linearly increasing but zigzag (like inverted U-shape or V-shape) and full of rapidvariability, and sometimes there exist decrement and attrition. We can know that thedevelopment of language complexity is a restructuring process and full of qualitativechange during the developmental trends. Meanwhile, the whole restructuring processis intermittent and skipping.The implications can be summarized as follows: teachers of writing teaching andstudents should change their mind of judging a good writing; writing teaching shouldencourage students to produce more complex sentences and varied words in theirwriting practice; writing teaching should avoid overemphasizing some stereotypes ofwriting and encourage students to form their own writing style.