Investigating the accuracy, syntactic complexity and lexical complexity in learner English in reference to school level and topic : comparing the written production of secondary school students and upper secondary school students
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The purpose of this study was to examine the accuracy, syntactic complexity and
lexical complexity in reference to the school level and the topic in a sample of texts
written by intermediate Finnish learners of English. The data used in this study
consisted of texts written by 55 secondary and upper secondary school students in
Finland. The study was quantitative in nature and two measures of accuracy, 15
measures of syntactic complexity corresponding to various areas such as unit length,
subordination, coordination and phrasal sophistication were used, as well as two
measures of lexical complexity.
The results of the present study show that the upper secondary school students wrote
longer texts which contained more subordination and verb phrases and more varied
vocabulary compared to the secondary school students. However, the secondary
school students’ texts contained more infrequent words, which was interpreted to be
an effect of the different topics. The topic of the text affected 12 measures of
syntactic complexity and one measure of lexical complexity. The results were
interpreted in the light of the different genres the topics represented and it was found
that the texts written on an argumentative topic were more complex compared to
texts written about the narrative topic.
The results of the present study suggest that complexity in learner language needs to
be examined in reference to other aspects in addition to the proficiency of the writer
and that the topic of the text also has an impact on the syntactic and lexical
complexity of the production.
Kuvaus
Siirretty Doriasta