A Corpus-based Study Of Lexical Complexity In Chinese University EFL Learners’ Argumentative Compositions

Lexical complexity is one of the measurements that can examine the quality of L2 writing and has drawn many researchers’ attention,but few of them reach the field of argumentative writings.This thesis attempts to explore lexical complexity by presenting high-frequency vocabulary and low-frequency vocabulary in Chinese EFL(English as Foreign Language)learners’ argumentative compositions.This study presents the general distribution of high-frequency vocabulary and low-frequency vocabulary in Chinese EFL learners’ argumentative compositions according to College English Vocabulary,and shows lexical complexity(lexical density,lexical sophistication and lexical variation)in Chinese EFL learners’ argumentative compositions.What’s more,it studies the similarities or differences in distribution of high-frequency vocabulary and low-frequency vocabulary compared with native speakers’ corpus Louvain Corpus Native English Essays(LOCNESS).Corpus adopted in this study is 437 argumentative compositions chosen from Ten-thousand English Compositions of Chinese Learners(TECCL).After searching wordlist of TECCL with the help of Antconc(Version 3.2.1w),this study presents the distribution of high-frequency content words and low-frequency content words in terms of the three levels in College English Vocabulary.Then this study uses an advanced corpus linguistic tool “Lexical Complexity Analyzer”,Microsoft Office Excel 2007,and Statistical Product and Service Solutions(SPSS)(Version 21)to investigate the relationship of 25 measures of lexical complexity in 437 Chinese EFL learners’ argumentative compositions.As regards to the comparative study,89 argumentative compositions from Louvain Corpus Native English Essays(LOCNESS)are employed.Based on the results found in the present research,the following conclusions are drawn:In this thesis,high-frequency words are defined as words that can be found at three levels of English College Vocabulary: basic level,intermediate level,and advanced level while low-frequency words are words beyond the three levels.Of all the 3561 words in TECCL(437),there are 2856 high-frequency content words and 512 low-frequency content words,taking up 80 % and 14% respectively.Chinese EFL learners achieve high lexical density,which indicates that content words account for a large percentage in argumentative compositions.The lexical sophistication of the compositions is of medium level.Lexical sophistication I(LS1)and Lexical sophistication II(LS2)in lexical sophistication measures do not differ greatly while verb sophistication and its relevant measures get the greatest fluctuation.As for lexical variation,it is generally high especially Numbers of Different Words(NDW)and its variants.And only a few measures are a little lower among other lexical variation indices.The similarities lie in the low-frequency content wordlist in both TECCL and LOCNESS,which indicate that low-frequency content words play an essential role in English argumentative writing teaching and learning.The differences mainly focus on those among parts of speech in high-frequency words,which reflect the different mastery of vocabulary between Chinese EFL learners and native speakers as well as differences between thinking modes of eastern and western writers.By researching the distribution of high-frequency vocabulary and low-frequency vocabulary in TECCL(437)and LOCNESS(89),this research provides some hints on vocabulary teaching and learning.First,it redefines high-frequency words and low-frequency words,and presents the distribution of high-frequency words and low-frequency words in argumentative writings.Second,a comparative study of TECCL and LONCESS has revealed that the differences on the usage of high-frequency words between Chinese EFL learners and native speakers,which lays a foundation on further researches on vocabulary teaching and learning.Lastly,the computational system(Lexical Complexity Analyzer)and methodology presented in this research can be adopted in other language tests to investigate similar researches in a spoken or written text,in particular the lexicon.The LCA may also be used by any language teachers and researchers to assess L2 lexical proficiency or track L2 lexical development.