大学生英语写作句法复杂性历时研究

Longitudinal Analysis of Syntactic Complexity in College Students’Writing

本文利用二语句法复杂性分析器(L2SCA)探索了大一新生历时两个学期的英语作文中句法复杂性的变化。分析的数据来自某大学学生在2016年9月到2017年6月在批改网上提交的作文文本。采用的指标有子句平均长度、句子平均长度、T单位平均长度、每个子句中从句数量、每个句子中T单位数量、并列短语数量和复杂名词性短语数量。结果显示,子句平均长度、每个子句中从句数量、并列短语数量和复杂名词性短语数量的均值差异在学期结束后有显著变化,而句子平均长度、T单位平均长度、每个句子中T单位数量的均值差异在学期结束后无显著变化。

This paper used L2SCA to explore syntactic complexity changes in first year college students’English writing over the course of two terms.The writing texts are gathered from www.pigai.org.from September,2016 to June,2017.The indices include mean length of clause(MLC),mean length of sentence(MLS),mean length of T-unit(MLT),the number of dependent clause per clause(DC/C),the number of T-unit per sentence(T/S),the number of coordinate phrase per clause(CP/C)and the number of complex nominals per clause(CN/C).The result showed that the mean value difference of MLC,DC/C,CP/C,CN/C showed significant changes at the end of the term,while the mean value difference of MLS,MLT,T/S didn’t show significant changes at the end of the term.