A Comparative Analysis of Grammatical Complexity in L1 and L2 Student Writing Across Three Communicative Purposes
Presentation Type
Poster
Faculty Advisor
Larissa Goulart da Silva
Access Type
Event
Start Date
26-4-2024 9:45 AM
End Date
26-4-2024 10:44 AM
Description
Grammatical complexity, alongside variables like fluency and accuracy, has long been considered indicative of second language proficiency (Kuiken et al., 2019). Past research (Bulté & Housen, 2012) used T- or AS-units, which measure clausal elaboration, as measures of complexity. Biber et al. (2011) challenged this notion, acknowledging that clausal elaboration characterizes conversation and proposing in turn that features of written discourse (e.g. attributive adjectives, premodifying nouns, and postmodifying prepositional phrases) should be used to measure complexity of written work. In this study, we adopted Biber et al. (2011)’s approach to lexico-grammatical complexity to describe language development across two groups of undergraduate student writers: English as a First Language (L1) speakers and English as a Second Language (L2) speakers with an L1 of Brazilian Portuguese. Adapting the framework established in Staples & Reppen (2016), we selected nine features, including attributive adjectives, premodifying nouns, noun + that clauses, verb + that clauses, and adverbial clauses, for closer examination. We aimed to identify the frequencies and nuances with which our two student groups used these features across three registers of writing, categorized by the communicative purpose of each text: to argue (ARG), to compare (COMP), and to explain (EXP) (Goulart et al., 2022). Our methodology also included using the Biber tagger to count each individual instance of our selected complexity features within the L1 and L2 corpora. Surprisingly, our results indicated that L2 speakers use more features of phrasal complexity than L1 speakers across all communicative purposes.
A Comparative Analysis of Grammatical Complexity in L1 and L2 Student Writing Across Three Communicative Purposes
Grammatical complexity, alongside variables like fluency and accuracy, has long been considered indicative of second language proficiency (Kuiken et al., 2019). Past research (Bulté & Housen, 2012) used T- or AS-units, which measure clausal elaboration, as measures of complexity. Biber et al. (2011) challenged this notion, acknowledging that clausal elaboration characterizes conversation and proposing in turn that features of written discourse (e.g. attributive adjectives, premodifying nouns, and postmodifying prepositional phrases) should be used to measure complexity of written work. In this study, we adopted Biber et al. (2011)’s approach to lexico-grammatical complexity to describe language development across two groups of undergraduate student writers: English as a First Language (L1) speakers and English as a Second Language (L2) speakers with an L1 of Brazilian Portuguese. Adapting the framework established in Staples & Reppen (2016), we selected nine features, including attributive adjectives, premodifying nouns, noun + that clauses, verb + that clauses, and adverbial clauses, for closer examination. We aimed to identify the frequencies and nuances with which our two student groups used these features across three registers of writing, categorized by the communicative purpose of each text: to argue (ARG), to compare (COMP), and to explain (EXP) (Goulart et al., 2022). Our methodology also included using the Biber tagger to count each individual instance of our selected complexity features within the L1 and L2 corpora. Surprisingly, our results indicated that L2 speakers use more features of phrasal complexity than L1 speakers across all communicative purposes.