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Grammatical complexity: ‘What Does It Mean’ and ‘So What’ for L2 writing classrooms?
Journal of Second Language Writing xxx (xxxx) xxxx
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Grammatical complexity: ‘What Does It Mean’ and ‘So What’ for L2 writing classrooms? Ge Lana,*, Qiandi Liub,*, Shelley Staplesc,* a b c
Department of English, Purdue University, United States Department of English Language and Literature, University of South Carolina, United States Department of English, University of Arizona, United States
A R T IC LE I N F O
ABS TRA CT
Keywords: Grammatical complexity Second language writing English for academic purposes
Grammatical complexity is regarded as a crucial feature of L2 writing. The construct has been widely utilized in empirical research to gauge L2 writing quality and development, particularly in English. Nevertheless, a question of paramount importance, i.e., what constitutes complexity, has not yet received adequate attention. Drawing on Bulté and Housen’s (2012) taxonomy of L2 complexity, we conducted a comprehensive and in-depth review of changes in the definition of grammatical complexity over the past two decades. Our finding suggests that grammatical complexity has been theorized from two primary perspectives: an independent perspective that grammatical complexity is static across different contexts and a dependent perspective that grammatical complexity should be investigated in response to specific registers. Also, grammatical complexity has been observed from primarily the clausal level to the clausal, phrasal and morphological levels, echoing Norris and Ortega’s (2009) claim that grammatical complexity should be studied as a multi-dimensional construct. Moreover, we have identified four main parameters used by existing literatures to define grammatical complexity: length, ratio, index and frequency. The change of each parameter is summarized with details in our review. At the end, we also discuss pedagogical implications for L2 writing instruction in the EAP context.
1. Introduction Since the 1990s, complexity, as a theoretical construct, has received extensive attention in the academic fields of the natural and social sciences. Recently, it has had mounting focus in second language acquisition (SLA) and L2 (primarily English) writing studies (Bulté & Housen, 2012). Wolfe-Quintero, Inagaki, and Kim (1998) first carried out a comprehensive synthesis on the measures of lexico-grammatical complexity along with accuracy and fluency in L2 writing development. Then, Ortega (2003) conducted a metaanalysis on grammatical complexity measures used in 25 empirical studies, pointing out several factors (e.g., learning context, program level, observation period) that moderate the relationship between these measures and L2 proficiency. With a review of the existing complexity measures, scholars have argued for the importance of measuring grammatical complexity as a multidimensional construct for different stages of writing development, namely coordination, subordination, and phrasal-level complexification (Biber, Gray, & Poonpon, 2011; Bulté & Housen, 2012; Norris & Ortega, 2009; Wolfe-Quintero et al., 1998). In a special issue in the Journal of Second Language Writing, Ortega (2015) emphasized these and other factors that influence grammatical complexity such as L1 background, writing quality, modality of language, and written genre/task/content. These publications show the change in scholars’
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Corresponding authors. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (G. Lan), [email protected] (Q. Liu), [email protected] (S. Staples).
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2019.100673 Received 12 April 2019; Received in revised form 29 September 2019; Accepted 30 September 2019 1060-3743/ © 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Please cite this article as: Ge Lan, Qiandi Liu and Shelley Staples, Journal of Second Language Writing, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2019.100673
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understanding of grammatical complexity in SLA, writing assessment, and English for Academic Purposes (EAP). Surprisingly, though, “there is no consensus in the literature on the definition of complexity, and no consistency as to how it has been operationalized across (and sometimes even within) studies” (Bulté & Housen, 2012, p. 43). To address this issue, we report a comprehensive and in-depth synthesis of changes in the definition of grammatical complexity in L2 writing research over the past two decades, particularly in English (1998–2018). We also discuss implications of these changes for L2 writing instruction in the EAP context. 2. Review on the changes in grammatical complexity Grammatical complexity is a complex, dynamic concept which has been explored from various perspectives in L2 writing studies. In the sections below, we review this concept from three dimensions, namely, theoretical (i.e., how grammatical complexity is defined in theory), observational (i.e., how grammatical complexity is manifested in writing), and operational (how grammatical complexity is quantified in writing research), following Bulté and Housen’s (2012) Taxonomy of L2 Complexity. Since much of the work has been done in L2 English contexts, we focus our review there, but we are pleased to see the emergence of discussion of L2 grammatical complexity for other languages in recent years. 2.1. Changes in theoretical definition Grammatical complexity can be seen as an abstract property of a system or a structure (Bulté & Housen, 2012). The concept has received an increasing amount of attention since the 1990s. However, irrespective of a wealth of empirical research adopting grammatical complexity as an L2 developmental index, the construct itself remains inconsistently defined and poorly investigated, especially in the domain of L2 writing studies (Bulté & Housen, 2014; Rimmer, 2006). Foster and Skehan (1996) conceived development in grammatical complexity as the use of progressively “more elaborate language” and “a greater variety of syntactic patterning” (p. 303). The second half of the definition can be interpreted as syntactic variation. “Elaborate language use,” nonetheless, remains a vague concept which needs further clarification. Wolfe-Quintero et al. (1998) define grammatical complexity in L2 writing as the use of “a wide variety of both basic and sophisticated structures” (p. 69). This definition still needs careful examination for two reasons: first, it is questionable whether basic structures (e.g., simple noun phrases such as ‘a book’) should be considered an indicator of grammatical complexity; second, what makes syntactic structures “sophisticated” needs further explanation. Rimmer (2006) argued that grammatical complexity “arises from several factors, including sentence length, embedding, ellipsis, markedness, and register” (p. 505), and the cumulative effect of these factors contributes to grammatical complexity in a written text. Despite the inclusiveness of this definition, the author did not discuss how to measure these features, making the construct somewhat elusive. Recently, Lu (2011) provided a concise and inclusive description of grammatical complexity from two aspects of writing development: syntactic variation and sophistication. According to Lu, complexity refers to “the range of syntactic structures that are produced and the degree of sophistication of such structures” (p. 36). Similar to Wolfe-Quintero et al. (1998), Lu did not offer a detailed explanation of sophistication; nonetheless, his description suggests that sophistication is related to the degree of structural complexity in sentences. (Bulté and Housen’s 2012) Taxonomy of L2 Complexity offered more concrete theoretical definitions. The taxonomy encompasses systemic complexity referring to the ‘breadth’ of grammatical features an L2 learner can produce (i.e., grammatical variation) and structural complexity, which represents the ‘depth’ of grammatical construction an L2 learner can compose (i.e.,grammatical sophistication). This framework has been accepted widely by scholars. For example, Crossley and McNamara (2014) concurred that grammatical complexity should cover “the sophistication of syntactic forms produced by a speaker or writer and the range or variety of syntactic forms produced” (p. 68). Different from Bulté and Housen’s (2012) framework, scholars in register studies have maintained that grammatical complexity is influenced by the situation of language use (i.e., register). Biber et al. (2011) proposed a grammatical form-function framework to study grammatical complexity: grammatical form refers to specific lexico-grammatical features whereas grammatical function refers to the syntactic functions that the features play in a certain register. For instance, in academic written registers (e.g., research papers), grammatical complexity is largely based on compressed noun phrases (i.e., nouns with phrasal modifiers) which densely package information (Biber et al., 2011). A fundamental difference between these two frameworks is that Bulté and Housen (2012) considered grammatical complexity as an independent construct which can be measured in a static way across contexts, whereas Biber et al. (2011) regarded grammatical complexity as a dependent construct which should be measured in response to specific registers. Over the past two decades, researchers have expanded, clarified, and complicated the theoretical definition of grammatical complexity. The variations in the theoretical definition are reflected in the ‘observational’ and particularly ‘operational’ definitions in current L2 writing research. 2.2. Changes in observational definition Bulté and Housen (2012) defined the ‘observational’ dimension as a concrete level of language performance which “can be manifested in language behavior in various ways and on several different levels” (p. 27). According to the authors, it is important to distinguish between “grammatical features that can be observed” and “grammatical features that are chosen to be observed.” Technically, the former is based on as many levels of language performance as possible, including sentences, clauses, T-units, phrases, collocations, parts of speech, and morphemes. Nevertheless, scholars in different periods of time have chosen to observe different 2
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levels of language performance to represent grammatical complexity. This leads to the change of the observational definition in L2 writing over the past two decades. Three types of linguistic units have been observed most frequently, namely, T-units1, clauses, and sentences (Hunt, 1965). Example 1 below illustrates a sentence with one T-unit: the main clause (C1) and two dependent clauses (C2 and C3). In this case, grammatical complexity is only observed from the clausal level, particularly with regard to subordinated clauses.
•
○ Example 1: [I don’t like C1 [what is left in the cup C2] [after you finish drinking C3].] (Gaies, 1980)
Based on a comprehensive review of previous literature, Wolfe-Quintero et al. (1998) found that grammatical complexity had also been observed in two main categories: (1) particular grammatical or syntactic features (e.g., adjectives, adverbial clauses) and (2) “the presence of specific grammatical structures in relation to clauses, T-units, or sentences [e.g., nominal clauses per sentence]” (p. 69). That said, not many studies included specific grammatical structures to gauge grammatical complexity, as mentioned in WolfeQuintero et al. (1998). Later, Norris and Ortega (2009) identified three observable components of grammatical complexity based on the source of complexification, that is, complexity via coordination, subordination, and phrasal structures. They also recommended that grammatical complexity should be studied as a multidimensional construct instead of focusing on a single source, mostly subordination in previous literature. In recent years, more scholars have pointed out the narrow scope of how grammatical complexity has been observed in writing, and they argue that grammatical complexity should be studied at both clausal and phrasal levels (Biber et al., 2011; Staples, Egbert, Biber, & Gray, 2016; Yang, Lu, & Weigle, 2015). To support the integration of clausal and phrasal complexity, Biber et al. (2011) suggested capturing grammatical complexity comprehensively with a form-function framework. In this framework, grammatical form includes not only clausal features (i.e., finite and nonfinite dependent clauses) but also phrasal features (i.e., dependent phrases). The phrasal features perform two grammatical functions (i.e., adverbials and noun modifiers). Noun phrases are mentioned in Biber et al. (2011) as a solid example to illustrate phrasal complexity, which includes both nouns and phrasal modifiers of those nouns (e.g., attributive adjectives, prepositional phrases), as evidenced in the phrase “the well-theorized research method in applied linguistics.” Furthermore, Bulté and Housen’s (2012) taxonomy also captures a broad picture of grammatical complexity by including syntactic complexity and morphological complexity. Syntactic complexity encompasses sentential, clausal, and phrasal complexities. In this taxonomy, phrasal complexity is added to represent a category of syntactic complexity, and morphological complexity has been integrated as a subconstruct of grammatical complexity, which has been rarely observed in writing research in English, due to it being “morphologically ‘poor’” (De Clercq & Housen, 2016). Thus, from the perspective of the observational definition, grammatical complexity has been expanded to a wider scope, from exclusively clausal complexity to both clausal and phrasal complexity, and even morphological complexity. As many corpus-based studies empirically support that phrasal features (e.g., premodifying nouns, prepositional phrases) tend to be frequent in academic writing (e.g., Biber & Gray, 2011; Staples et al., 2016), the expansion of the observational definition is critical in representing writing development especially at an advanced stage. 2.3. Changes in operational definition Bulté and Housen (2012) described the operational dimension of grammatical complexity as “the analytical measures and instruments that have been designed to give a quantitative indication of the degree of complexity of a given language sample” (p. 27). In L2 writing, grammatical complexity has been operationalized based on four major parameters: length, ratio, index and frequency (Norris & Ortega, 2009; Wolfe-Quintero et al., 1998). Following the two milestone research syntheses on grammatical complexity (Ortega, 2003; Wolfe-Quintero et al., 1998), Lu (2011) found that 14 measures had been frequently used to examine grammatical complexity in L2 writing. In Table 1 we provide the number of studies associated with each of these 14 measures from 1998–2018. Notably, these frequent measures are either length-based or ratio-based, so our discussion on length and ratio is based on these commonly used 14 measures summarized in Lu (2011). We then discuss index and frequency based on related measures documented in Wolfe-Quintero et al. (1998) and in the relevant studies in L2 English writing over the past 20 years. 2.3.1. Length The most common complexity measures used in L2 writing studies are based on length (Norris & Ortega, 2009). Although first applied in first language acquisition of children and then in SLA, the length-based measures have become increasingly popular in studies of L2 writing. Three measures are the most common: mean length of sentence (MLS), mean length of clause (MLC), and mean length of T-unit (MLTU) (Ortega, 2003). Table 1 shows that the three measures have been applied in a substantial number of studies so far: MLS (12), MLC (15), and MLTU (44), much more frequently than the other measures except for Clauses per T-unit (20). While length is the most widely used, there is some debate about whether it is a useful parameter to measure complexity. While Norris and Ortega (2009) and Ortega (2003) considered length a parameter to measure grammatical complexity, Wolfe-Quintero et al. (1998) defined length as a parameter to measure grammatical fluency, categorizing sentence length, clause length, and T-unit length 1
T-units (i.e., the minimal terminal unit) refer to a structure with a main clause as well as all the subordinate clauses attached to it (Hunt, 1965). 3
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Table 1 Common complexity measures for L2 writing. Parameters
Measures
Constructs to measure
Total No. of Studies
Length
Mean length of clause Mean length of sentence Mean length of T-unit Clauses per sentence Clauses per T-unit Complex T-units per T-unit Dependent clause per clause Dependent clause per T-unit Coordinate phrases per clause Coordinate phrases per T-unit T-unit per sentence Complex nominals per clause Complex nominals per T-unit Verb phrases per T-unit
Length of production Length of production Length of production Sentence complexity Subordination Subordination Subordination Subordination Coordination Coordination Coordination Particular structures Particular structures Particular structures
12 15 44 3 20 2 4 5 3 3 7 1 3 2
Ratio
Note. The total number of studies is determined by adding the number of studies documented in Wolfe-Quintero et al. (1998) and studies we collected between 1998 and 2018, mostly from the two flagship journals related to L2 writing and ESL education: Journal of Second Language Writing and TESOL Quarterly as well as Journal of English for Academic Purposes, English for Specific Purposes, and Assessing Writing. Note that the collected studies are limited to English.
as fluency measures. Despite such inconsistency, a majority of scholars have used length to measure complexity in studies that took place in the 2000s and 2010s (e.g., Crossley & McNamara, 2014; Lu, 2011; Norris & Ortega, 2009). Second, the three most common length measures (i.e., MLS, MLC, MLTU) were initially not considered distinct by L2 writing researchers because they all measure the number of words in relation to certain linguistic units. However, Norris and Ortega (2009) pointed out that the length of a sentence or T-unit can become longer by the additional use of linguistic structures — finite clauses, nonfinite clauses, and phrases as noun modifiers/adverbials. Thus, MLS and MLTU can be regarded as global measures, which are not sensitive to the source of complexity. However, MLC — either finite or nonfinite — is different from MLS and MLTU since it can only be lengthened by adding subclausal structures. Norris and Ortega in this way clarified the distinction among the length-based measures, which merits more attention in L2 writing studies. 2.3.2. Ratio As Wolfe-Quintero et al. (1998) indicated, “[t]here are various types of grammatical complexity ratios that measure the relationship between clauses, sentences, and T-units” (p.82). The remaining 11 common measures in L2 writing are all ratio-based (see Table 1), and they measure four types of specific constructs (Lu, 2011; Wolfe-Quintero et al., 1998): [1] sentence complexity (i.e., clauses per sentence) [2] subordination (e.g., clauses per T-unit) [3] coordination (e.g., coordinated phrases per clause) [4] particular structures in relation to linguistic units (e.g., complex nominals per T-unit). Although these 11 ratio-based measures have been applied to L2 writing, only one measure is overwhelmingly frequent, that is, clause per T-unit (20); and another two measures are also relatively frequent: T-unit per sentence (7) and dependent clause per T-unit (5). The use of a limited number of measures could be caused by “labor-intensiveness of manual computation” (Bulté & Housen, 2012, p.34). In response to the situation, scholars with computational techniques have been working on automating these complexity measures, for example, the L2 Syntactic Complexity Analyzer developed by Lu (2011). Second, subordination measures (31) play a dominant role, making up around 58.49% among all ratio-based measures (53) in previous studies. The measures of sentence (3), coordination (13), and particular structures (4) altogether account for 41.50%, suggesting that grammatical complexity from the perspectives of sentence, coordination, and particular structures (e.g., modifiers per noun phrase) is much less represented than subordination in L2 writing. Echoing Norris and Ortega’s (2009) claim that grammatical complexity should be studied as a multi-dimensional construct, we suggest that future L2 writing complexity research should be conducted with measures that go beyond subordination. 2.3.3. Index Compared to length- and ratio-based measures, the index parameter is much more complex: it applies a certain formula to generate holistic scores to represent complexity (Wolfe-Quintero et al., 1998). Example 1 below presents a detailed calculating scheme for the Complexity Index Score (Flahive & Snow, 1980).
• Example 1: The Complexity Index Score • Calculation: sum of T-unit scores/number of T-units • Coding scheme for T-unit score:
○ 1 = derivational morphemes & adjectives ○ 2 = relatives, embedded clauses, possessives, comparatives ○ 3 = adverbial and noun clauses (Wolfe-Quintero et al., 1998)
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Table 2 Indices for grammatical complexity in L2 writing research. Parameter
Measures
Construct
Total studies
Index
Coordination Index Complexity Formula Complexity Index
Coordination Complexity in general Complexity in general
3 1 8
Note. Adapted from Wolfe-Quintero et al. (1998).
Wolfe-Quintero et al. (1998) mention three index-based measures related to L2 writing development (see Table 2). Due to the complex process of calculating holistic index scores, not many studies in L2 writing have applied index-based measures in the last two decades. To the best of our knowledge, L2 writing research has applied index-based measures primarily based on the computational tool Coh-Metrix. For instance, Crossley and McNamara (2014) selected certain Coh-Matrix indices (e.g., syntactic variety, syntactic transformations) to longitudinally explore the grammatical development of 57 L2 writers.
2.3.4. Frequency Scholars have used the umbrella term ‘holistic approach’ to cover most measures based on the three aforementioned parameters, length, ratio and index (Biber, Gray, & Staples, 2016). Biber et al. (2016) claimed that the holistic approach “provides a few holistic measures designed to capture the entire system of grammatical complexity,” which is parsimonious, but it “confounds the analysis of multiple grammatical features that have distinct functions and distributions” (p. 649). The core value of the holistic measures is that they can provide a single measure for grammatical complexity rather than many individual grammatical features, but the major downside is that the uniqueness of each grammatical feature is not represented. Different from the holistic measures, frequency-based measures often include a set of grammatical features. Wolfe-Quintero et al. (1998) mentioned 15 grammatical features to investigate grammatical complexity in L2 writing, including lexical features (e.g., pronouns, articles), phrasal features (e.g., prepositional phrases), clausal features (e.g., adverbial clauses, complement clauses) and other additional features (e.g., transitional connectors). Scholars in the 2000s and 2010s examined a wider range of grammatical features with the aid of computational techniques, providing more comprehensive grammatical analyses. For example, 20 features were included in Grant and Ginther’s (2000) study, 28 features were investigated by Biber et al. (2011), and 23 features were examined in Staples et al. (2016). As the frequency of each grammatical feature is calculated individually, scholars can distinguish different contributions that grammatical features make to the overall grammatical complexity. Further, the application of frequency has changed over time. Based on Wolfe-Quintero et al. (1998), raw frequencies were used in L2 writing until the 1990s. They rightly pointed out that the validity of raw frequency measures is doubtful due to “the lack of a fixed delimiter” (p.75). Raw frequency measures can be easily affected by factors such as the writing time or number of words. However, normed frequency, which refers to the frequency of a grammatical feature in a standardized text length, has been a common practice in corpus linguistics since the 1980s. Corpus linguists normalize the frequencies of grammatical features to a specific number of words (e.g., 1000) (see examples in Grant & Ginther, 2000; Biber et al., 2016; Lan & Sun, 2019). Example 2 illustrates the process of normalizing raw frequencies.
• Example 2: Normalizing raw frequencies • Calculation: (raw frequency/length of text) * normed length = normed frequency • Situation: The raw frequency of attributive adjective is 53 in a 941-word paper, and the normed length is set as 1000 words. Then the normed frequency is: (53/941) *1000 = 56.32.
In addition to the operationalization of frequency, the frequency-based measures have also experienced a change in the selection of grammatical features. Some scholars applied fine-grained frequency measures to study grammatical complexity back to the 1990s. For instance, Ferris (1994) comprehensively included 62 lexico-grammatical features (e.g., pronouns, participial, complementation) and then selected 28 of them to predict L2 writing scores. In recent research on grammatical complexity in L2 writing, scholars have tended to select a particular set of grammatical features based on register because grammatical features often have their specific functions in certain situations of language (Biber & Conrad, 2009). From a register perspective, as grammatical features tend to be functional, it is important to take register into consideration when the features are selected to study grammatical complexity. For example, as phrasal complexity is found to be a characteristic of advanced academic writing (Biber et al., 2011; Norris & Ortega, 2009), many scholars now integrate noun phrases and phrasal modifiers (e.g., premodifying nouns, prepositional phrases) in their studies of academic writing as a result of this register-based approach (e.g., Biber et al., 2016; Lan & Sun, 2019; Parkinson & Musgrave, 2014). Overall, the four parameters reviewed above have been used to operationalize grammatical complexity in the past two decades. A few changes are noteworthy. First, length was first used as a fluency measure but then operationalized as a complexity measure in more recent L2 writing research. Second, ratio, to a large extent, is represented by a small set of measures based on subordination, so more research attention should be paid to other constructions (e.g., complex nominals). Third, index remains uncommon in L2 writing research possibly because of the complex process in calculation. Lastly, frequency, the linguistically motivated parameter, has included normed frequencies as a new type of operationalization and has an increasing preference on register-based selection of 5
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grammatical features. 3. Pedagogical implications The concept of grammatical complexity was discussed from the theoretical, observational and operational perspectives. We now turn to the implications for L2 writing instruction in the EAP context. This section intends to answer a pedagogical question — “How can pedagogical intervention facilitate L2 writers’ development of grammatical complexity?” In accordance with the recent theoretical definition of grammatical complexity, teachers should draw students’ attention to grammatical variation and sophistication. We suggest that teachers should not only facilitate students acquisition of diverse grammatical features in order to enrich their grammatical knowledge, but they should also give instruction on how to embed these grammatical features in academic writing. Doing both can effectively enhance their grammatical competence in the EAP context. According to the observational definition, teachers should strive to raise students’ awareness of phrasal complexity. For example, the development of grammatical complexity undergoes a shift from clausal to phrasal complexity in advanced academic writing, and complex noun phrases with phrasal modifiers are prominent structures in academic writing. As the grammatical shift starts at the first year of undergraduate until the graduate level (Staples et al., 2016), teachers should prepare students with the phrasal features to adapt to academic writing. The framework used by Biber et al. (2011) for complexity features, which includes a list of features associated with five developmental stages of academic writing, could be used as a guide to teach phrasal features. For the operational definition, frequency might be a helpful way for teachers to understand and implement instruction on grammatical complexity. This claim is supported by teachers’ unfamiliarity with measures based on ratio and index (e.g., dependent clauses per T- unit, Complexity Index Score) and the nature of these three parameters being holistic. Thus, it may be challenging to apply these parameters in EAP classes. While length is of course highly transparent, simply asking students to write longer sentences (or T-units) may not result in the desired effect and also may be rather dissatisfying to both teachers and students. In contrast, measures based on frequency are linguistically motivated. As long as teachers have a good knowledge of grammatical features, they can use previous research on the frequency of particular linguistic features in academic registers and integrate it into the repertoire of language choices that students have at their disposal for academic writing. While this can be done in students’ individual texts, with the aid of linguistic analysis software (e.g., AntConc), teachers can also identify the high-frequency grammatical features of academic writing in readings or higher-level student texts and then provide grammatical instructions on the features which are underrepresented in students’ writing. Declaration of interests The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper. References Biber, D., & Conrad, S. (2009). Register, genre and style. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Biber, D., & Gray, B. (2011). Grammatical change in the noun phrase: The influence of written language use. English Language and Linguistics, 15(2), 223–250. Biber, D., Gray, B., & Poonpon, K. (2011). Should we use characteristics of conversation to measure grammatical complexity in L2 writing development? TESOL Quarterly, 45, 5–35. Biber, D., Gray, B., & Staples, S. (2016). Predicting patterns of grammatical complexity across language exam task types and proficiency levels. Applied Linguistics, 37, 639–668. Bulté, B., & Housen, A. (2012). Defining and operationalizing L2 complexity. In A. Housen, F. Kuiken, & I. Vedder (Eds.). Dimensions of L2 performance and proficiency—Investigating complexity, accuracy and fluency in SLA (pp. 21–46). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Bulté, B., & Housen, A. (2014). Conceptualizing and measuring short-term changes in L2 writing complexity. Journal of Second Language Writing, 26, 42–65. Crossley, S., & McNamara, D. (2014). Does writing development equal writing quality? A computational investigation of syntactic complexity in L2 learners. Journal of Second Language Writing, 26, 66–79. De Clercq, B. D., & Housen, A. (2016). The development of morphological complexity: A cross-linguistic study of L2 French and English. Second Language Research, 35(1), 71–97. Ferris, D. (1994). Lexical and syntactic features of ESL writing by students at different levels of L2 proficiency. TESOL Quarterly, 28(2), 414–420. Flahive, E., & Snow, G. (1980). Measures of syntactic complexity in evaluating ESL compositions. In J. W. Oller, & K. Perkins (Eds.). Research in language testing (pp. 171–176). Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Foster, P., & Skehan, P. (1996). The influence of planning on performance in task-based learning. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 18, 299–324. Gaies, S. J. (1980). T-Unit analysis in second language research: Applications, problems and limitations. TESOL Quarterly, 14, 53–60. Grant, L., & Ginther, A. (2000). Using computer-tagged linguistic features to describe L2 writing differences. Journal of Second Language Writing, 9, 123–145. Hunt, K. W. (1965). Grammatical structures written at three grade levels. NCTE research report no. 3Champaign, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. Lan, G., & Sun, Y. (2019). A corpus-based investigation of noun phrase complexity in the L2 writings of a first-year composition course. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 38, 14–24. Lu, X. (2011). A corpus-based evaluation of syntactic complexity measures as indices of college level ESL writers’ language development. TESOL Quarterly, 45, 36–62. Norris, J. M., & Ortega, L. (2009). Towards an organic approach to investigating CAF in instructed SLA: The case of complexity. Applied Linguistics, 30, 555–578. Ortega, L. (2003). Syntactic complexity measures and their relationship with L2 proficiency: A research synthesis of college-level L2 writing. Applied Linguistics, 24(4), 492–518. Ortega, L. (2015). Syntactic complexity in L2 writing: Progress and expansion. Journal of Second Language Writing, 29, 82–94. Parkinson, J., & Musgrave, J. (2014). Development of noun phrase complexity in the writing of English for Academic Purposes students. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 14, 48–59. Rimmer, W. (2006). Measuring grammatical complexity: The Gordian knot. Language Testing, 23, 497–519. Staples, S., Egbert, J., Biber, D., & Gray, B. (2016). Academic writing development at the university level: Phrasal and clausal complexity across level of study, discipline, and genre. Written Communication, 33, 149–183.
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Wolfe-Quintero, K., Inagaki, S., & Kim, H. (1998). Second language development in writing: Measures of fluency, accuracy, & complexity. Second Language Teaching & Curriculum Center, University of Hawaii at Manoa. Yang, W., Lu, X., & Weigle, S. C. (2015). Different topics, different discourse: Relationships among writing topic, measures of syntactic complexity, and judgments of writing quality. Journal of Second Language Writing, 28, 53–67. Ge Lan is a doctoral candidate in Second Language Studies in the Department of English at Purdue University. His research interests include corpus linguistics, natural language processing, syntax, and EAP/L2 writing. Qiandi Liu is currently an assistant professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of South Carolina. Her research interests include second language writing, grammar pedagogy, and learner individual differences in L2 development. Shelley Staples is Associate Professor of English/Second Language Acquisition and Teaching at University of Arizona. Her research focuses on corpus-based analyses of academic writing, with a particular emphasis on second language writing. Her work can be found in journals such as Applied Linguistics and Modern Language Journal. She is also the PI of the Corpus and Repository of Writing: http://crow.corporaproject.org.
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Journal of Second Language Writing journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jslw
Grammatical complexity: ‘What Does It Mean’ and ‘So What’ for L2 writing classrooms? Ge Lana,*, Qiandi Liub,*, Shelley Staplesc,* a b c
Department of English, Purdue University, United States Department of English Language and Literature, University of South Carolina, United States Department of English, University of Arizona, United States
A R T IC LE I N F O
ABS TRA CT
Keywords: Grammatical complexity Second language writing English for academic purposes
Grammatical complexity is regarded as a crucial feature of L2 writing. The construct has been widely utilized in empirical research to gauge L2 writing quality and development, particularly in English. Nevertheless, a question of paramount importance, i.e., what constitutes complexity, has not yet received adequate attention. Drawing on Bulté and Housen’s (2012) taxonomy of L2 complexity, we conducted a comprehensive and in-depth review of changes in the definition of grammatical complexity over the past two decades. Our finding suggests that grammatical complexity has been theorized from two primary perspectives: an independent perspective that grammatical complexity is static across different contexts and a dependent perspective that grammatical complexity should be investigated in response to specific registers. Also, grammatical complexity has been observed from primarily the clausal level to the clausal, phrasal and morphological levels, echoing Norris and Ortega’s (2009) claim that grammatical complexity should be studied as a multi-dimensional construct. Moreover, we have identified four main parameters used by existing literatures to define grammatical complexity: length, ratio, index and frequency. The change of each parameter is summarized with details in our review. At the end, we also discuss pedagogical implications for L2 writing instruction in the EAP context.
1. Introduction Since the 1990s, complexity, as a theoretical construct, has received extensive attention in the academic fields of the natural and social sciences. Recently, it has had mounting focus in second language acquisition (SLA) and L2 (primarily English) writing studies (Bulté & Housen, 2012). Wolfe-Quintero, Inagaki, and Kim (1998) first carried out a comprehensive synthesis on the measures of lexico-grammatical complexity along with accuracy and fluency in L2 writing development. Then, Ortega (2003) conducted a metaanalysis on grammatical complexity measures used in 25 empirical studies, pointing out several factors (e.g., learning context, program level, observation period) that moderate the relationship between these measures and L2 proficiency. With a review of the existing complexity measures, scholars have argued for the importance of measuring grammatical complexity as a multidimensional construct for different stages of writing development, namely coordination, subordination, and phrasal-level complexification (Biber, Gray, & Poonpon, 2011; Bulté & Housen, 2012; Norris & Ortega, 2009; Wolfe-Quintero et al., 1998). In a special issue in the Journal of Second Language Writing, Ortega (2015) emphasized these and other factors that influence grammatical complexity such as L1 background, writing quality, modality of language, and written genre/task/content. These publications show the change in scholars’
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Corresponding authors. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (G. Lan), [email protected] (Q. Liu), [email protected] (S. Staples).
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2019.100673 Received 12 April 2019; Received in revised form 29 September 2019; Accepted 30 September 2019 1060-3743/ © 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Please cite this article as: Ge Lan, Qiandi Liu and Shelley Staples, Journal of Second Language Writing, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2019.100673
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understanding of grammatical complexity in SLA, writing assessment, and English for Academic Purposes (EAP). Surprisingly, though, “there is no consensus in the literature on the definition of complexity, and no consistency as to how it has been operationalized across (and sometimes even within) studies” (Bulté & Housen, 2012, p. 43). To address this issue, we report a comprehensive and in-depth synthesis of changes in the definition of grammatical complexity in L2 writing research over the past two decades, particularly in English (1998–2018). We also discuss implications of these changes for L2 writing instruction in the EAP context. 2. Review on the changes in grammatical complexity Grammatical complexity is a complex, dynamic concept which has been explored from various perspectives in L2 writing studies. In the sections below, we review this concept from three dimensions, namely, theoretical (i.e., how grammatical complexity is defined in theory), observational (i.e., how grammatical complexity is manifested in writing), and operational (how grammatical complexity is quantified in writing research), following Bulté and Housen’s (2012) Taxonomy of L2 Complexity. Since much of the work has been done in L2 English contexts, we focus our review there, but we are pleased to see the emergence of discussion of L2 grammatical complexity for other languages in recent years. 2.1. Changes in theoretical definition Grammatical complexity can be seen as an abstract property of a system or a structure (Bulté & Housen, 2012). The concept has received an increasing amount of attention since the 1990s. However, irrespective of a wealth of empirical research adopting grammatical complexity as an L2 developmental index, the construct itself remains inconsistently defined and poorly investigated, especially in the domain of L2 writing studies (Bulté & Housen, 2014; Rimmer, 2006). Foster and Skehan (1996) conceived development in grammatical complexity as the use of progressively “more elaborate language” and “a greater variety of syntactic patterning” (p. 303). The second half of the definition can be interpreted as syntactic variation. “Elaborate language use,” nonetheless, remains a vague concept which needs further clarification. Wolfe-Quintero et al. (1998) define grammatical complexity in L2 writing as the use of “a wide variety of both basic and sophisticated structures” (p. 69). This definition still needs careful examination for two reasons: first, it is questionable whether basic structures (e.g., simple noun phrases such as ‘a book’) should be considered an indicator of grammatical complexity; second, what makes syntactic structures “sophisticated” needs further explanation. Rimmer (2006) argued that grammatical complexity “arises from several factors, including sentence length, embedding, ellipsis, markedness, and register” (p. 505), and the cumulative effect of these factors contributes to grammatical complexity in a written text. Despite the inclusiveness of this definition, the author did not discuss how to measure these features, making the construct somewhat elusive. Recently, Lu (2011) provided a concise and inclusive description of grammatical complexity from two aspects of writing development: syntactic variation and sophistication. According to Lu, complexity refers to “the range of syntactic structures that are produced and the degree of sophistication of such structures” (p. 36). Similar to Wolfe-Quintero et al. (1998), Lu did not offer a detailed explanation of sophistication; nonetheless, his description suggests that sophistication is related to the degree of structural complexity in sentences. (Bulté and Housen’s 2012) Taxonomy of L2 Complexity offered more concrete theoretical definitions. The taxonomy encompasses systemic complexity referring to the ‘breadth’ of grammatical features an L2 learner can produce (i.e., grammatical variation) and structural complexity, which represents the ‘depth’ of grammatical construction an L2 learner can compose (i.e.,grammatical sophistication). This framework has been accepted widely by scholars. For example, Crossley and McNamara (2014) concurred that grammatical complexity should cover “the sophistication of syntactic forms produced by a speaker or writer and the range or variety of syntactic forms produced” (p. 68). Different from Bulté and Housen’s (2012) framework, scholars in register studies have maintained that grammatical complexity is influenced by the situation of language use (i.e., register). Biber et al. (2011) proposed a grammatical form-function framework to study grammatical complexity: grammatical form refers to specific lexico-grammatical features whereas grammatical function refers to the syntactic functions that the features play in a certain register. For instance, in academic written registers (e.g., research papers), grammatical complexity is largely based on compressed noun phrases (i.e., nouns with phrasal modifiers) which densely package information (Biber et al., 2011). A fundamental difference between these two frameworks is that Bulté and Housen (2012) considered grammatical complexity as an independent construct which can be measured in a static way across contexts, whereas Biber et al. (2011) regarded grammatical complexity as a dependent construct which should be measured in response to specific registers. Over the past two decades, researchers have expanded, clarified, and complicated the theoretical definition of grammatical complexity. The variations in the theoretical definition are reflected in the ‘observational’ and particularly ‘operational’ definitions in current L2 writing research. 2.2. Changes in observational definition Bulté and Housen (2012) defined the ‘observational’ dimension as a concrete level of language performance which “can be manifested in language behavior in various ways and on several different levels” (p. 27). According to the authors, it is important to distinguish between “grammatical features that can be observed” and “grammatical features that are chosen to be observed.” Technically, the former is based on as many levels of language performance as possible, including sentences, clauses, T-units, phrases, collocations, parts of speech, and morphemes. Nevertheless, scholars in different periods of time have chosen to observe different 2
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levels of language performance to represent grammatical complexity. This leads to the change of the observational definition in L2 writing over the past two decades. Three types of linguistic units have been observed most frequently, namely, T-units1, clauses, and sentences (Hunt, 1965). Example 1 below illustrates a sentence with one T-unit: the main clause (C1) and two dependent clauses (C2 and C3). In this case, grammatical complexity is only observed from the clausal level, particularly with regard to subordinated clauses.
•
○ Example 1: [I don’t like C1 [what is left in the cup C2] [after you finish drinking C3].] (Gaies, 1980)
Based on a comprehensive review of previous literature, Wolfe-Quintero et al. (1998) found that grammatical complexity had also been observed in two main categories: (1) particular grammatical or syntactic features (e.g., adjectives, adverbial clauses) and (2) “the presence of specific grammatical structures in relation to clauses, T-units, or sentences [e.g., nominal clauses per sentence]” (p. 69). That said, not many studies included specific grammatical structures to gauge grammatical complexity, as mentioned in WolfeQuintero et al. (1998). Later, Norris and Ortega (2009) identified three observable components of grammatical complexity based on the source of complexification, that is, complexity via coordination, subordination, and phrasal structures. They also recommended that grammatical complexity should be studied as a multidimensional construct instead of focusing on a single source, mostly subordination in previous literature. In recent years, more scholars have pointed out the narrow scope of how grammatical complexity has been observed in writing, and they argue that grammatical complexity should be studied at both clausal and phrasal levels (Biber et al., 2011; Staples, Egbert, Biber, & Gray, 2016; Yang, Lu, & Weigle, 2015). To support the integration of clausal and phrasal complexity, Biber et al. (2011) suggested capturing grammatical complexity comprehensively with a form-function framework. In this framework, grammatical form includes not only clausal features (i.e., finite and nonfinite dependent clauses) but also phrasal features (i.e., dependent phrases). The phrasal features perform two grammatical functions (i.e., adverbials and noun modifiers). Noun phrases are mentioned in Biber et al. (2011) as a solid example to illustrate phrasal complexity, which includes both nouns and phrasal modifiers of those nouns (e.g., attributive adjectives, prepositional phrases), as evidenced in the phrase “the well-theorized research method in applied linguistics.” Furthermore, Bulté and Housen’s (2012) taxonomy also captures a broad picture of grammatical complexity by including syntactic complexity and morphological complexity. Syntactic complexity encompasses sentential, clausal, and phrasal complexities. In this taxonomy, phrasal complexity is added to represent a category of syntactic complexity, and morphological complexity has been integrated as a subconstruct of grammatical complexity, which has been rarely observed in writing research in English, due to it being “morphologically ‘poor’” (De Clercq & Housen, 2016). Thus, from the perspective of the observational definition, grammatical complexity has been expanded to a wider scope, from exclusively clausal complexity to both clausal and phrasal complexity, and even morphological complexity. As many corpus-based studies empirically support that phrasal features (e.g., premodifying nouns, prepositional phrases) tend to be frequent in academic writing (e.g., Biber & Gray, 2011; Staples et al., 2016), the expansion of the observational definition is critical in representing writing development especially at an advanced stage. 2.3. Changes in operational definition Bulté and Housen (2012) described the operational dimension of grammatical complexity as “the analytical measures and instruments that have been designed to give a quantitative indication of the degree of complexity of a given language sample” (p. 27). In L2 writing, grammatical complexity has been operationalized based on four major parameters: length, ratio, index and frequency (Norris & Ortega, 2009; Wolfe-Quintero et al., 1998). Following the two milestone research syntheses on grammatical complexity (Ortega, 2003; Wolfe-Quintero et al., 1998), Lu (2011) found that 14 measures had been frequently used to examine grammatical complexity in L2 writing. In Table 1 we provide the number of studies associated with each of these 14 measures from 1998–2018. Notably, these frequent measures are either length-based or ratio-based, so our discussion on length and ratio is based on these commonly used 14 measures summarized in Lu (2011). We then discuss index and frequency based on related measures documented in Wolfe-Quintero et al. (1998) and in the relevant studies in L2 English writing over the past 20 years. 2.3.1. Length The most common complexity measures used in L2 writing studies are based on length (Norris & Ortega, 2009). Although first applied in first language acquisition of children and then in SLA, the length-based measures have become increasingly popular in studies of L2 writing. Three measures are the most common: mean length of sentence (MLS), mean length of clause (MLC), and mean length of T-unit (MLTU) (Ortega, 2003). Table 1 shows that the three measures have been applied in a substantial number of studies so far: MLS (12), MLC (15), and MLTU (44), much more frequently than the other measures except for Clauses per T-unit (20). While length is the most widely used, there is some debate about whether it is a useful parameter to measure complexity. While Norris and Ortega (2009) and Ortega (2003) considered length a parameter to measure grammatical complexity, Wolfe-Quintero et al. (1998) defined length as a parameter to measure grammatical fluency, categorizing sentence length, clause length, and T-unit length 1
T-units (i.e., the minimal terminal unit) refer to a structure with a main clause as well as all the subordinate clauses attached to it (Hunt, 1965). 3
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Table 1 Common complexity measures for L2 writing. Parameters
Measures
Constructs to measure
Total No. of Studies
Length
Mean length of clause Mean length of sentence Mean length of T-unit Clauses per sentence Clauses per T-unit Complex T-units per T-unit Dependent clause per clause Dependent clause per T-unit Coordinate phrases per clause Coordinate phrases per T-unit T-unit per sentence Complex nominals per clause Complex nominals per T-unit Verb phrases per T-unit
Length of production Length of production Length of production Sentence complexity Subordination Subordination Subordination Subordination Coordination Coordination Coordination Particular structures Particular structures Particular structures
12 15 44 3 20 2 4 5 3 3 7 1 3 2
Ratio
Note. The total number of studies is determined by adding the number of studies documented in Wolfe-Quintero et al. (1998) and studies we collected between 1998 and 2018, mostly from the two flagship journals related to L2 writing and ESL education: Journal of Second Language Writing and TESOL Quarterly as well as Journal of English for Academic Purposes, English for Specific Purposes, and Assessing Writing. Note that the collected studies are limited to English.
as fluency measures. Despite such inconsistency, a majority of scholars have used length to measure complexity in studies that took place in the 2000s and 2010s (e.g., Crossley & McNamara, 2014; Lu, 2011; Norris & Ortega, 2009). Second, the three most common length measures (i.e., MLS, MLC, MLTU) were initially not considered distinct by L2 writing researchers because they all measure the number of words in relation to certain linguistic units. However, Norris and Ortega (2009) pointed out that the length of a sentence or T-unit can become longer by the additional use of linguistic structures — finite clauses, nonfinite clauses, and phrases as noun modifiers/adverbials. Thus, MLS and MLTU can be regarded as global measures, which are not sensitive to the source of complexity. However, MLC — either finite or nonfinite — is different from MLS and MLTU since it can only be lengthened by adding subclausal structures. Norris and Ortega in this way clarified the distinction among the length-based measures, which merits more attention in L2 writing studies. 2.3.2. Ratio As Wolfe-Quintero et al. (1998) indicated, “[t]here are various types of grammatical complexity ratios that measure the relationship between clauses, sentences, and T-units” (p.82). The remaining 11 common measures in L2 writing are all ratio-based (see Table 1), and they measure four types of specific constructs (Lu, 2011; Wolfe-Quintero et al., 1998): [1] sentence complexity (i.e., clauses per sentence) [2] subordination (e.g., clauses per T-unit) [3] coordination (e.g., coordinated phrases per clause) [4] particular structures in relation to linguistic units (e.g., complex nominals per T-unit). Although these 11 ratio-based measures have been applied to L2 writing, only one measure is overwhelmingly frequent, that is, clause per T-unit (20); and another two measures are also relatively frequent: T-unit per sentence (7) and dependent clause per T-unit (5). The use of a limited number of measures could be caused by “labor-intensiveness of manual computation” (Bulté & Housen, 2012, p.34). In response to the situation, scholars with computational techniques have been working on automating these complexity measures, for example, the L2 Syntactic Complexity Analyzer developed by Lu (2011). Second, subordination measures (31) play a dominant role, making up around 58.49% among all ratio-based measures (53) in previous studies. The measures of sentence (3), coordination (13), and particular structures (4) altogether account for 41.50%, suggesting that grammatical complexity from the perspectives of sentence, coordination, and particular structures (e.g., modifiers per noun phrase) is much less represented than subordination in L2 writing. Echoing Norris and Ortega’s (2009) claim that grammatical complexity should be studied as a multi-dimensional construct, we suggest that future L2 writing complexity research should be conducted with measures that go beyond subordination. 2.3.3. Index Compared to length- and ratio-based measures, the index parameter is much more complex: it applies a certain formula to generate holistic scores to represent complexity (Wolfe-Quintero et al., 1998). Example 1 below presents a detailed calculating scheme for the Complexity Index Score (Flahive & Snow, 1980).
• Example 1: The Complexity Index Score • Calculation: sum of T-unit scores/number of T-units • Coding scheme for T-unit score:
○ 1 = derivational morphemes & adjectives ○ 2 = relatives, embedded clauses, possessives, comparatives ○ 3 = adverbial and noun clauses (Wolfe-Quintero et al., 1998)
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Table 2 Indices for grammatical complexity in L2 writing research. Parameter
Measures
Construct
Total studies
Index
Coordination Index Complexity Formula Complexity Index
Coordination Complexity in general Complexity in general
3 1 8
Note. Adapted from Wolfe-Quintero et al. (1998).
Wolfe-Quintero et al. (1998) mention three index-based measures related to L2 writing development (see Table 2). Due to the complex process of calculating holistic index scores, not many studies in L2 writing have applied index-based measures in the last two decades. To the best of our knowledge, L2 writing research has applied index-based measures primarily based on the computational tool Coh-Metrix. For instance, Crossley and McNamara (2014) selected certain Coh-Matrix indices (e.g., syntactic variety, syntactic transformations) to longitudinally explore the grammatical development of 57 L2 writers.
2.3.4. Frequency Scholars have used the umbrella term ‘holistic approach’ to cover most measures based on the three aforementioned parameters, length, ratio and index (Biber, Gray, & Staples, 2016). Biber et al. (2016) claimed that the holistic approach “provides a few holistic measures designed to capture the entire system of grammatical complexity,” which is parsimonious, but it “confounds the analysis of multiple grammatical features that have distinct functions and distributions” (p. 649). The core value of the holistic measures is that they can provide a single measure for grammatical complexity rather than many individual grammatical features, but the major downside is that the uniqueness of each grammatical feature is not represented. Different from the holistic measures, frequency-based measures often include a set of grammatical features. Wolfe-Quintero et al. (1998) mentioned 15 grammatical features to investigate grammatical complexity in L2 writing, including lexical features (e.g., pronouns, articles), phrasal features (e.g., prepositional phrases), clausal features (e.g., adverbial clauses, complement clauses) and other additional features (e.g., transitional connectors). Scholars in the 2000s and 2010s examined a wider range of grammatical features with the aid of computational techniques, providing more comprehensive grammatical analyses. For example, 20 features were included in Grant and Ginther’s (2000) study, 28 features were investigated by Biber et al. (2011), and 23 features were examined in Staples et al. (2016). As the frequency of each grammatical feature is calculated individually, scholars can distinguish different contributions that grammatical features make to the overall grammatical complexity. Further, the application of frequency has changed over time. Based on Wolfe-Quintero et al. (1998), raw frequencies were used in L2 writing until the 1990s. They rightly pointed out that the validity of raw frequency measures is doubtful due to “the lack of a fixed delimiter” (p.75). Raw frequency measures can be easily affected by factors such as the writing time or number of words. However, normed frequency, which refers to the frequency of a grammatical feature in a standardized text length, has been a common practice in corpus linguistics since the 1980s. Corpus linguists normalize the frequencies of grammatical features to a specific number of words (e.g., 1000) (see examples in Grant & Ginther, 2000; Biber et al., 2016; Lan & Sun, 2019). Example 2 illustrates the process of normalizing raw frequencies.
• Example 2: Normalizing raw frequencies • Calculation: (raw frequency/length of text) * normed length = normed frequency • Situation: The raw frequency of attributive adjective is 53 in a 941-word paper, and the normed length is set as 1000 words. Then the normed frequency is: (53/941) *1000 = 56.32.
In addition to the operationalization of frequency, the frequency-based measures have also experienced a change in the selection of grammatical features. Some scholars applied fine-grained frequency measures to study grammatical complexity back to the 1990s. For instance, Ferris (1994) comprehensively included 62 lexico-grammatical features (e.g., pronouns, participial, complementation) and then selected 28 of them to predict L2 writing scores. In recent research on grammatical complexity in L2 writing, scholars have tended to select a particular set of grammatical features based on register because grammatical features often have their specific functions in certain situations of language (Biber & Conrad, 2009). From a register perspective, as grammatical features tend to be functional, it is important to take register into consideration when the features are selected to study grammatical complexity. For example, as phrasal complexity is found to be a characteristic of advanced academic writing (Biber et al., 2011; Norris & Ortega, 2009), many scholars now integrate noun phrases and phrasal modifiers (e.g., premodifying nouns, prepositional phrases) in their studies of academic writing as a result of this register-based approach (e.g., Biber et al., 2016; Lan & Sun, 2019; Parkinson & Musgrave, 2014). Overall, the four parameters reviewed above have been used to operationalize grammatical complexity in the past two decades. A few changes are noteworthy. First, length was first used as a fluency measure but then operationalized as a complexity measure in more recent L2 writing research. Second, ratio, to a large extent, is represented by a small set of measures based on subordination, so more research attention should be paid to other constructions (e.g., complex nominals). Third, index remains uncommon in L2 writing research possibly because of the complex process in calculation. Lastly, frequency, the linguistically motivated parameter, has included normed frequencies as a new type of operationalization and has an increasing preference on register-based selection of 5
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grammatical features. 3. Pedagogical implications The concept of grammatical complexity was discussed from the theoretical, observational and operational perspectives. We now turn to the implications for L2 writing instruction in the EAP context. This section intends to answer a pedagogical question — “How can pedagogical intervention facilitate L2 writers’ development of grammatical complexity?” In accordance with the recent theoretical definition of grammatical complexity, teachers should draw students’ attention to grammatical variation and sophistication. We suggest that teachers should not only facilitate students acquisition of diverse grammatical features in order to enrich their grammatical knowledge, but they should also give instruction on how to embed these grammatical features in academic writing. Doing both can effectively enhance their grammatical competence in the EAP context. According to the observational definition, teachers should strive to raise students’ awareness of phrasal complexity. For example, the development of grammatical complexity undergoes a shift from clausal to phrasal complexity in advanced academic writing, and complex noun phrases with phrasal modifiers are prominent structures in academic writing. As the grammatical shift starts at the first year of undergraduate until the graduate level (Staples et al., 2016), teachers should prepare students with the phrasal features to adapt to academic writing. The framework used by Biber et al. (2011) for complexity features, which includes a list of features associated with five developmental stages of academic writing, could be used as a guide to teach phrasal features. For the operational definition, frequency might be a helpful way for teachers to understand and implement instruction on grammatical complexity. This claim is supported by teachers’ unfamiliarity with measures based on ratio and index (e.g., dependent clauses per T- unit, Complexity Index Score) and the nature of these three parameters being holistic. Thus, it may be challenging to apply these parameters in EAP classes. While length is of course highly transparent, simply asking students to write longer sentences (or T-units) may not result in the desired effect and also may be rather dissatisfying to both teachers and students. In contrast, measures based on frequency are linguistically motivated. As long as teachers have a good knowledge of grammatical features, they can use previous research on the frequency of particular linguistic features in academic registers and integrate it into the repertoire of language choices that students have at their disposal for academic writing. While this can be done in students’ individual texts, with the aid of linguistic analysis software (e.g., AntConc), teachers can also identify the high-frequency grammatical features of academic writing in readings or higher-level student texts and then provide grammatical instructions on the features which are underrepresented in students’ writing. Declaration of interests The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper. References Biber, D., & Conrad, S. (2009). Register, genre and style. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Biber, D., & Gray, B. (2011). Grammatical change in the noun phrase: The influence of written language use. English Language and Linguistics, 15(2), 223–250. Biber, D., Gray, B., & Poonpon, K. (2011). Should we use characteristics of conversation to measure grammatical complexity in L2 writing development? TESOL Quarterly, 45, 5–35. Biber, D., Gray, B., & Staples, S. (2016). Predicting patterns of grammatical complexity across language exam task types and proficiency levels. Applied Linguistics, 37, 639–668. Bulté, B., & Housen, A. (2012). Defining and operationalizing L2 complexity. In A. Housen, F. Kuiken, & I. Vedder (Eds.). Dimensions of L2 performance and proficiency—Investigating complexity, accuracy and fluency in SLA (pp. 21–46). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Bulté, B., & Housen, A. (2014). Conceptualizing and measuring short-term changes in L2 writing complexity. Journal of Second Language Writing, 26, 42–65. Crossley, S., & McNamara, D. (2014). Does writing development equal writing quality? A computational investigation of syntactic complexity in L2 learners. Journal of Second Language Writing, 26, 66–79. De Clercq, B. D., & Housen, A. (2016). The development of morphological complexity: A cross-linguistic study of L2 French and English. Second Language Research, 35(1), 71–97. Ferris, D. (1994). Lexical and syntactic features of ESL writing by students at different levels of L2 proficiency. TESOL Quarterly, 28(2), 414–420. Flahive, E., & Snow, G. (1980). Measures of syntactic complexity in evaluating ESL compositions. In J. W. Oller, & K. Perkins (Eds.). Research in language testing (pp. 171–176). Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Foster, P., & Skehan, P. (1996). The influence of planning on performance in task-based learning. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 18, 299–324. Gaies, S. J. (1980). T-Unit analysis in second language research: Applications, problems and limitations. TESOL Quarterly, 14, 53–60. Grant, L., & Ginther, A. (2000). Using computer-tagged linguistic features to describe L2 writing differences. Journal of Second Language Writing, 9, 123–145. Hunt, K. W. (1965). Grammatical structures written at three grade levels. NCTE research report no. 3Champaign, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. Lan, G., & Sun, Y. (2019). A corpus-based investigation of noun phrase complexity in the L2 writings of a first-year composition course. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 38, 14–24. Lu, X. (2011). A corpus-based evaluation of syntactic complexity measures as indices of college level ESL writers’ language development. TESOL Quarterly, 45, 36–62. Norris, J. M., & Ortega, L. (2009). Towards an organic approach to investigating CAF in instructed SLA: The case of complexity. Applied Linguistics, 30, 555–578. Ortega, L. (2003). Syntactic complexity measures and their relationship with L2 proficiency: A research synthesis of college-level L2 writing. Applied Linguistics, 24(4), 492–518. Ortega, L. (2015). Syntactic complexity in L2 writing: Progress and expansion. Journal of Second Language Writing, 29, 82–94. Parkinson, J., & Musgrave, J. (2014). Development of noun phrase complexity in the writing of English for Academic Purposes students. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 14, 48–59. Rimmer, W. (2006). Measuring grammatical complexity: The Gordian knot. Language Testing, 23, 497–519. Staples, S., Egbert, J., Biber, D., & Gray, B. (2016). Academic writing development at the university level: Phrasal and clausal complexity across level of study, discipline, and genre. Written Communication, 33, 149–183.
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Wolfe-Quintero, K., Inagaki, S., & Kim, H. (1998). Second language development in writing: Measures of fluency, accuracy, & complexity. Second Language Teaching & Curriculum Center, University of Hawaii at Manoa. Yang, W., Lu, X., & Weigle, S. C. (2015). Different topics, different discourse: Relationships among writing topic, measures of syntactic complexity, and judgments of writing quality. Journal of Second Language Writing, 28, 53–67. Ge Lan is a doctoral candidate in Second Language Studies in the Department of English at Purdue University. His research interests include corpus linguistics, natural language processing, syntax, and EAP/L2 writing. Qiandi Liu is currently an assistant professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of South Carolina. Her research interests include second language writing, grammar pedagogy, and learner individual differences in L2 development. Shelley Staples is Associate Professor of English/Second Language Acquisition and Teaching at University of Arizona. Her research focuses on corpus-based analyses of academic writing, with a particular emphasis on second language writing. Her work can be found in journals such as Applied Linguistics and Modern Language Journal. She is also the PI of the Corpus and Repository of Writing: http://crow.corporaproject.org.
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