Syntactic Complexity of EFL Chinese Students’ Writing

Syntactic complexity as an indicator in the study of English learners’ language proficiency has been frequently employed in language development assessment. Using the Syntactic Complexity Analyzer, developed by Lu (2010), this article collected data representing the syntactic complexity indexes from the writing of Chinese non-English major students and from the writing of proficient users of English on a similar task. The results indicate that there is a significant difference in the use of complex nominals, the mean length of sentences, and the mean length of clauses between the writings of EFL Chinese students and more proficient users. This study provides suggestions for EFL writing teaching, particularly writing at the sentence level. Disciplines Educational Assessment, Evaluation, and Research | Language and Literacy Education Comments This article is published as Wang, Sue, and Tammy Slater. "Syntactic Complexity of EFL Chinese Students’ Writing." English Language and Literature Studies 6, no. 1 (2016): 81. doi: 10.5539/ells.v6n1p81. Posted with permission. This article is available at Iowa State University Digital Repository: http://lib.dr.iastate.edu/engl_pubs/123 English Language and Literature Studies; Vol. 6, No. 1; 2016 ISSN 1925-4768 E-ISSN 1925-4776 Published by Canadian Center of Science and Education 81 Syntactic Complexity of EFL Chinese Students’ Writing Sue Wang & Tammy Slater 1 School of Foreign Studies, Central University of Finance and Economics, Beijing, China 2 Applied Linguistics and Technology Program, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, United States Correspondence: Sue Wang, School of Foreign Studies, Central University of Finance and Economics, 39 South College Road, Haidian District, Beijing, China. E-mail: [email protected] Received: January 19, 2016 Accepted: February 3, 2016 Online Published: February 26, 2016 doi:10.5539/ells.v6n1p81 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/ells.v6n1p81