Reconsidering the syntactic complexity measures on L2 spoken English: A multi-dimensional perspective

Area of Science:

• Linguistics
• Second Language Acquisition
• Educational Psychology

Background:

• Existing measures of English syntactic complexity lack comprehensiveness.
• Biber's Multi-dimensional approach provides a foundation for linguistic analysis.

Purpose of the Study:

• To re-establish a comprehensive measure system for English syntactic complexity.
• To examine the effects of grade level and genre on second language learners' syntactic complexity in oral English.

Main Methods:

• Factor analysis was used to develop a new measure system with four dimensions: Subordination, Length of Production, Coordination, and Nominals.
• Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was employed to assess the impact of grade level and genre.

Main Results:

• Syntactic complexity, measured by Length of Production, Coordination, and Nominals, increases with grade level.
• Genre significantly affects syntactic complexity, with argumentative texts demonstrating greater complexity than narrative texts.
• The Subordination dimension (C/T index) remained stable across grade levels.

Conclusions:

• The newly established four-dimensional framework offers a robust measure of syntactic complexity.
• Educational interventions should consider both learner proficiency (grade level) and task type (genre) to foster syntactic development in oral English.