Phase Changes In Development Of English Writing Proficiency From A Complex Systems Perspective:A Case Study

This thesis explored patterns in EFL writing development from a complex dynamic systems perspective.Previous studies on L2 writing prone to lack a developmental perspective, for instance, many of them have compared novice and expert writers' composing processes and highlighted the notable differences between them,but little is known about when and how novice writers develop into expert writers. In other words, few attempts have been made to describe and explain the personal processes of a writer's development. Therefore, based on complex dynamic systems theory, this thesis attempts to identify discontinuous changes(phase change) in learners' EFL writing proficiency development. Specifically, this study aims to investigate whether two nonEnglish majors would experience phase change in their writing proficiency through repetition of a timed writing task. For this purpose, a 16-week longitudinal case study was conducted and two research questions were put forward:(1) Are there any phase changes in development of two learners' EFL writing proficiency? If there are,when and how?(2) If there are no phase change in development of two learners' EFL writing proficiency, what are the reasons?This study collected data from a class of 31 students in Lanzhou Jiaotong university. The task was timed writing once a week, in which students wrote a composition in English for 20 minutes. Students were asked to fill out a reflection sheet in Chinese immediately after they had finished writing their compositions. The scores of students' compositions were used as quantitative data, while the compositions and written reflective comments were used as qualitative data in this study. 16 weeks later, two students whose writing proficiency seemed to have changed greater than that of other students were selected as participants. For this, we used the correlation tests between the week number and score of each week. They are student Y(r(16)= 0.77, p<0.05) and student L(r(16)= 0.64, p<0.05).In this study we adopted three criteria to identify and afford evidence for phase changes:(1) sudden jumps,(2) divergence, and(3) qualitative change in the attractor. Phase change would be convincingly proved if these three aspects were all identified. For student Y, a change-point analysis detected two change points(Week 6 and Week 13). A one-way analysis of variance(ANOVA) suggested that the levels of score in the three periods adjoining the three change points(between Week 1 and 5, 6 and 12, and 13 and 16) were significantly different.The ANOVA yielded a significant F ratio, F(2,13) = 46.63, p<.05. Pairwise comparison suggested that all the comparisons produced significant differences. The qualitative analysis of compositions and reflective comments suggested that divergence shown at both the two change points(Week 6 and Week 13), and that qualitativechanges in the attractor occurred after the two change points. For student L, a change-point analysis also detected two change points(Week 8 and Week 13). A one-way analysis of variance(ANOVA) suggested that the levels of score in the three periods adjoining the three change points(between Week 1 and 7, 8 and 12, and 13 and 16)were significantly different. The ANOVA yielded a significant F ratio, F(2,13) = 59.82, p<.05. Pairwise comparison suggested that all the comparisons produced significant differences. The qualitative analysis of compositions and reflective comments suggested that divergence shown only at the first change point(Week 8),and that qualitative changes in the attractor only occurred after the first change point. There was no divergence at the second change point, and qualitative changes in the attractor was not occurred after this point.The results of this study have shown that student Y experienced two phase changes(Week 6 and Week 13)in her EFL writing proficiency development and the reasons for these two phase changes were different, while student L experienced only one phase change(Week 8) and there was no sufficient evidence to claim phase change occurred at the second change point. This study also found that the writing proficiency of individual students not only follow unique developmental paths, but also share some similar developmental patterns such as nonlinearity and emergence.