A Study On The Developmental Features Of Syntactic Complexity In English Writings By Junior High School Students

In the last few decades,there has been a surge of interest in the importance of syntactic complexity in second language acquisition research and pedagogy.Results from earlier studies have demonstrated syntactic complexity as an effective indicator of language development,L2 proficiency and writing quality.According to the basic ideas of “English Curriculum Standards for Compulsory Education”(2017),curriculum design should adopt a general curriculum objective and take full account of the gradualness and continuity of language learning process.In this context,it’s necessary to figure out the syntactic developmental features by junior high school students for better English teaching practice and curriculum design.However,no large-scale studies have been performed to address the syntactic developmental tendency by English beginners from a well-grounded foundation.Additionally,the deficiencies of current longitudinal and cross-sectional studies in research design still remain including the selection of sample size,syntactic complexity measures,and the duration of observation period.In the light of Language Exposure Hypothesis,this study seeks to explore the syntactic proficiency level and developmental tendency by junior high school students at different learning stages from Chinese northeast districts,and reveal the underlying causes.The present research mainly probes into the following three research questions:(1)What is the proficiency level of syntactic complexity in English writings by junior high school students?(2)What are the developmental trajectories of syntactic complexity in English writings by junior high school students across three grades?(3)What are the prerequisite factors for the syntactic proficiency and developmental trajectories by junior high school students? An annotated tool called L2 SCA was employed to assess the syntactic complexity values of each composition in terms of four measurement dimensions,namely length of production unit,amount of subordination,amount of coordination and degree of phrasal sophistication.These statistical results were put into SPSS 25.0 for One-way ANOVA and LSD back testing.An interview with junior high school teachers is a supplementary approach to the corpus-based approach for further discussion.Through detailed analysis,the major findings are presented as follows.First,it is found that the syntactic proficiency of Chinese junior high school students is still in the initial syntactic complexity developmental stage.Compared with intermediate and advanced proficiency learners,they produce shorter syntactic units,more run-on sentences and coordinate sentences,and a limited number of complex syntactic structures on clausal and phrasal level.Second,over the course of three-year learning,they tend to produce longer production units,fewer syntactic errors and coordinate sentences,and a greater variety of sophisticated syntactic structures,indicating a more advanced proficiency level of syntactic complexity.Specifically speaking,as students move to upper grades,they present a U-shaped developmental tendency in the production of three mean length of three production units and produce fewer run-on sentences;produce more dependent clauses,but there is no significant change;present an initial fast followed by a slow downward developmental tendency in the production of coordinate sentences,and presents a U-shaped developmental tendency in the production of coordinate phrases,indicating higher syntactic variation;produce more syntactic structures on phrasal level(complex nominals),indicating higher lexical density and syntactic sophistication.Third,these findings are consistent with Language Exposure Hypothesis that emphasizes the role of exposure in second language acquisition process.Sufficient quantity of exposure to second language brings about the successful second language acquisition,while the lack of exposure will lead to second language errors and slow down the acquisition speed.In the process of exposing more English knowledge,learners will reconstruct and reorganize the learned syntactic structures in order to acquire new syntactic structures.This study enriches current literature in relation to syntactic complexity from a new theoretical perspective.More importantly,the current study provides evidence-based recommendations for English curriculum design,English writing instruction and future L2 research.