The Dynamic Development Of Complexity And Accuracy Of Written Language: A Case Of American Advanced Chinese Learners

Written expression is one of the skills learners must acquire in the process of language acquisition.As important dimensions of language competence,accuracy and complexity have always been the core issues that scholars place much emphasis on when studying the development of written language.With the introduction of the Complex Dynamic Systems theory,language system is no longer regarded as a single variable,and research on the interaction between different dimensions is booming.Meanwhile,individual learner differences have also become research emphases.However,a majority of research concerns the acquisition of English as a second language,and the focus of research in Chinese second language acquisition is still on the overall development of the written language of low and middle-level Chinese learners.In this research,11 American advanced Chinese learners were selected as the object of observation to investigate the overall development pattern and individual differences.The author collected a total of 110 pieces of writing in a whole semester when they were required to independently complete a composition related to the course content every week.After the corpus was cleaned,segmented,and annotated,the complexity and accuracy of learners’ written language output were calculated by using six measurement indicators,and the overall development was investigated.Also,by utilizing the unique data analysis techniques(moving correlation and moving min-max graph)of the Complex Dynamic Systems theory,the author explored the individual development trajectory of learners and the dynamic relationship between complexity and accuracy.After analysis,the following three conclusions are drawn: 1)Overall,the written output of advanced Chinese learners is better at the lexical level than at the syntactic level.Lexical accuracy remains at a high level and develops slowly,and learners often confuse the use of words containing common morphemes.Lexical complexity(lexical variation and sophistication)is increasing significantly.The advance in syntactic accuracy is also evident,but the number of syntactic errors in composition,such as inappropriate order and defective components,is still high.The syntactic complexity has no significant changes,which may be influenced by the negative transfer of the mother tongue,showing that advanced Chinese learners had not yet acquired the expression habits of Chinese empty arguments.2)The individual development path of learners is not completely consistent with the overall development,and the development path is also different among individuals.There are several language development patterns,such as the rising curve,falling curve,U-shaped and inverted U-shaped.Moreover,there are certain fluctuations and variability in each mode,indicating that the whole process of language development is always accompanied by variability.3)In terms of the interaction between subdimensions,there exists a mainly positive,supportive relationship between vocabulary and syntactic accuracy,while the relationship between vocabulary and syntactic complexity is more complicated.From the crossdimensional perspective,syntactic complexity and accuracy are competitive at all levels;and the relationship between lexical complexity and syntactic accuracy tends to change from competition to support.Finally,in light of the results,the research proposes several suggestions for advanced Chinese writing teaching and learning,such as prioritizing syntax and then vocabulary in teaching,contextualizing vocabulary teaching and learning,summarizing syntactic biases based on Chinese-English comparisons,carrying out targeted and customized teaching,and conducting performance evaluation.