It’s complicated: The relationship between lexis, syntax and proficiency

WILLIAMS, Christopher. It’s complicated: The relationship between lexis, syntax and proficiency. Discourse and Interaction. Brno: Masarykova Universita, 2023, vol. 16, No 2, p. 124-144. ISSN 1802-9930. Available from: https://dx.doi.org/10.5817/DI2023-2-124.

Basic information

• Original name: It’s complicated: The relationship between lexis, syntax and proficiency
• Authors: WILLIAMS, Christopher (826 United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, guarantor, belonging to the institution).
• Edition: Discourse and Interaction, Brno, Masarykova Universita, 2023, 1802-9930.

Other information

• Original language: English
• Type of outcome: Article in a journal
• Field of Study: 50301 Education, general; including training, pedagogy, didactics [and education systems]
• Country of publisher: Czech Republic
• Confidentiality degree: is not subject to a state or trade secret
• WWW: URL URL
• RIV identification code: RIV/00216224:14410/23:00133184
• Organization unit: Faculty of Education
• Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5817/DI2023-2-124
• Keywords in English: syntactic complexity; lexical complexity; writing proficiency
• Tags: International impact, Reviewed

Abstract

This paper explores the relationship between lexical and syntactic complexity measures and proficiency in L2 English argumentative essays written by L1 Czech high school students. Syntactic complexity is generally understood as referring to the “range and sophistication” (Ortega 2015) of grammatical constructions, whereas lexical complexity can refer to the range and frequency of the words used. The research used 100 essays written by final year high school students. Lexical complexity was analysed using the Lexical Complexity Analyzer (Ai & Lu 2010, Lu 2012), syntactic complexity using the L2 Syntactic Complexity Analyzer (Lu 2010, 2014) and Biber et al.’s (2011) hypothesised developmental stages for complexity framework. Despite a large number of measurements failing to produce any significant patterns, positive correlations were found between lexical diversity measures and vocabulary scores. Similarly, Mean Length of Clause (MLC) and Complex nominals per clause (CN/C) showed weak positive associations with grammar scores, as did Stage 5 of the developmental stages. The findings provide an insight into the kinds of complexity features that can be given more focus during instruction and underscore the potential of these measures as determinants of proficiency.

Links

• MUNI/A/1335/2022, interní kód MU: Name: Výzkum v didaktice cizích jazyků

Investor: Masaryk University, Research in foreign language didactics