The Comparison Of Complexity Between Spoken Language And Written Language

I was involved in the whole program when I was an assistant of Columbia University Business Chinese Program in Shanghai.This program lasted for 9 weeks.I found that there are a large amount of differences between the complexity of spoken language and written language during these weeks.I use comparative analysis to compare the complexity between spoken language and written language.In order to compare the complexity between spoken language and written language,I selected 20 students from the program.Ten people were in the third grade and the rest ten people are in the fourth grade.According to the framework of the dynamic system theory,I selected each student's spoken and written materials for four weeks in a row.Employing SPSS and excel,the lexical and syntactic complexity indices of the sampled essays are calculated.I calculated the length of error free T-unit to measure syntactic.I measured the lexical complexity by comparing the diversity and difficulty of words.I measure the type-token ratio to compare the diversity of words.According to the National Syllabus of Graded Words and Characters for Chinese Proficiency,I divided all of the words into different grades,such as Level A,Level B,level C,Level D and words beyond the vocabulary,and compare the proportion in the whole.Finally,I found that there are a lot of differences in the complexity of spoken language and written language in the program.I hope that the implication of the findings can make people pay more attention that the difference between spoken language and written language during the process of Chinese teaching as a second language.