A Study On The Development Features Of Syntactic Complexity In English Writings Of Senior High School Students

Syntactic complexity has become a research hotspot in the field of second language acquisition and pedagogy in the past decades.Previous research suggests that syntactic complexity is an efficient measure of language development,second-language proficiency,and writing level.The National English Curriculum Standard（2017）proposes that writing is a crucial part of language skills and an expressive skill students must master.With the reform of the new college entrance examination,the proportion and score of writing are on the rise.In this condition,the study of features of the syntactic complexity of high school students’ English writing can feedback significantly English teaching and enhance students’ English writing level.Most scholars’ research on syntactic complexity was based on existing corpus,which had a wide range and could not specifically reflect the development features of high school students’ syntactic complexity in a region.Based on the language exposure hypothesis,the study chose an ordinary high school students as research participants in a relatively backward region.Moreover,students are selected from classes with similar proficiency levels in each grade,and their writings are used as corpus,which is in order to explore the development features,levels of the students’ syntactic complexity,and reveal the reasons on the development features of syntactic complexity,and to get indicators that distinguish syntactic complexity.This thesis mainly explores the following two research questions:（1）What are the development levels and features of syntactic complexity of high school students’ English writing? What reasons lead to the development features?（2）Which indicators can distinguish the levels of syntactic complexity of high school students? This study starts from four measurement dimensions,namely length of production unit,amount of subordination,amount of coordination,and degree of phrasal sophistication.In addition,the author used the L2 Syntactic Complexity Analyzer（L2SCA）to analyze the corpus and obtain the value of each index.One-way ANOVA and LSD post-hoc test were carried out through SPSS22.0.Combined with interviews with high school English teachers and students,the author analyzes the reasons that affect the development of syntactic complexity.Through the research,the following conclusions are drawn: Firstly,the syntactic complexity of students in this high school is at a medium level.Specifically,length of production shows an upward trend with the increase of grades.The subordination shows an inverted U-shaped development trend,and the frequency of use in the third grade is higher than that in the first grade.The use of coordinate sentences does not change much,the use of coordinate phrases shows a U-shaped development trend,and the frequency of use in the first grade is higher than that in the third grade.The index of the complex nominals is on the rise,and the use of vocabulary is more abundant.The reasons for the development features of syntactic complexity are consistent with the language exposure hypothesis,and the development features are related to the amount of language exposure of students at each stage.In length of production unit,as the grade increases,students are exposed to more vocabulary and syntactic that are new,so the sentence length also gradually increases.In subordination,students are exposed to more subordinate sentences in Grade 11,so the students produce the largest number of subordinate sentences during this time.In coordination,students focus on consolidating and learning the use of coordinate phrases and sentences in Grade 10,resulting in using the most coordinate structures in this period.In complex noun phrases,teachers gradually teach it from the Grade 11,and students expose and use it constantly,so it is an upward development feature.Overall,the more and more frequently students are exposed to a language point,the more they will use it.Secondly,among the ten indicators of syntactic complexity: mean length of clause（MLC）,the mean length of sentence（MLS）,mean length of T-unit（MLT）and complex nominals per clause（CN/C）have reached the value of significant degree,which can better distinguish the development levels of high school students’ English writing syntactic complexity.From the perspective of the language exposure hypothesis,the research explores the features of high school students’ syntactic complexity of English writing and uses new research methods to explain the results.It not only enriches the research field of the L2 syntactic complexity in China,but also gives great enlightenment for the syntactic and writing teaching of high school English teachers.