Corpus-based Evaluation Of Syntactic Complexity Across Writing Proficiency Levels

Résumé: A growing body of evidence suggests that English foreign language learners' syntactic complexity is largely determined by their writing proficiency level. With respect to EFL learners at L'arbi Ben M'hidi university, no attempts have been made to evaluate their writings syntactically or to establish possible associations between their writing proficiency level and the complexity of the structures they employ as they write in English. Given this gap, this study set out to determine if learners' syntactic complexity varies across different writing proficiency levels. A corpus-based method and a robust computational tool, L2 syntactic complexity analyzer, were used to compute seven syntactic complexity measures for 52 essays. Results showed that syntactic complexity varied significantly between master, third year and second year students; learners at higher grades exhibited more complex syntax than their counterparts at lower grades. The findings also indicated that there was a positive correlation between learners' syntactic complexity and their writing proficiency level. On account of these findings, a number of pedagogical implications were conferred, limitations were discussed and suggestions for future research were identified.

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