英语学习者议论文句法复杂性纵向研究开题报告

1. 研究目的与意义（文献综述包含参考文献）

1.introduction1.1 research backgroundwriting proficiency is of great importance in the second language learning, and attracts more and more attention from the scholars in the field. it is considered as a crucial part of most examinations. among many factors, syntactic complexity is vital. syntactic complexity refers to the change of language form and the degree of the complexity in the language output. it is also recognized as a significant section in the second language teaching.as an important factor in evaluating writing capacity, syntactic complexity gradually becomes one of the major concerns of scholars from all over the world. however, many previous researchers focus on horizontal researches. in comparison, the longitudinal study obviously are paid less attention. there are more studies that considered syntactic complexity as a unit than some studies using some measures to examined syntactic complexity (bao, 2009; li shao, sun, gui, xu, wang, xiong, jiang, pan, argumentative writing. by concentrating on the neglected syntactic complexity of english writing, this study is of some pedagogical significance to provide writing instruction for english learners.to sum up, the research have the significance below. firstly, this research mainly studies the syntactic complexity measurement of argumentative writing in college level english majors, which enriches the theoretical research on argumentative writing teaching to a certain extent. second, this research uses l2sca software and spss software to analyze, which improves the efficiency and credibility. some of the previous studies are lack of computational tools and have great challenges in manual analysis. thirdly, this study provides useful implications for english teachers and learners.2 literature review2.1 definition of syntactic complexitylinguistic complexity is an important factor which contains lexical complexity and syntactic complexity.syntactic complexity is the focus of the study. there are many definitions of syntactic complexity. foster casanave, 1994; bao, 2009; lu, 2011). the fourth type contains three coordination measures, namely, coordinate phrases per clause (cp/c) and per t-unit (cp/t) and t-units per sentence (t/s). cooper (1976) showed coordinate phrases have a linear growth in his study. monroe (1975) found that the grades of college students were significant correlated to t/s while lu (2011) didn't found significant difference in his research with respect to t/s. the study of coordination measures will be verified in this study. the last type is made up of three phrasal sophistication measures. they namely are complex nominals per clause (cp/c) and per t-unit (cp/t) and verb phrases per t-unit (vp/t). relevant factors will be measured in this study.2.3 foreign studies on syntactic complexity of english writing casanave (1994) conducted a longitudinal study to explore japanese english learner's writing performance. there was an overall increase in the number of complex t-units per t-unit, t-units per t-unit in journal entries written over a three-semester period. but she didn't measure the increase statistically. some learners hesitated in complex t-units per t-unit over time and they could write more sophisticated and accurate sentences with the improvement of their language proficiency. wolfe-quintero et al. (1998) studied developmental measures of accuracy, fluency and complexity. based on a great number of empirical researches, the study adopted 39 second language writing studies in order to identify the best measures which can get the developmental features of english learners. it seemed that clauses are important in language development. the t-unit complexity ratio usually has a linear growth to proficiency level in different studies, regardless of task, target language, significance, or the definition of proficiency. the number of dependent clauses per total clauses (dc/c) or t-units (dc/t) also increased linearly with respect to proficiency level, and the dc/c measure significantly related to program level.ortega (2003) reviewed 27 previous studies through six syntactic complexity measures, namely three length of production measures, two subordination measures and one coordination measure (mean length of sentence, clause and t-unit, clauses per t-unit, dependent clauses per t-unit and t-units per sentence). ortega (2003) reviewed 27 existing studies through six syntactic complexity measures, namely three production length measures, two subordination measures and one coordination measure (average sentence length, clause and t unit, per t unit clause, per t unit clause and per t unit clause). the purpose of this study is to conduct t-unit analysis and find that efl learners can write more complex english writing than esl learners. however, only a few studies have achieved significant differences, which indicates that the measurement based on t unit is invalid.lu (2010) used 14 different indicators to study the syntactic complexity of college-level l2 writing. this paper analyzes it from five dimensions: the length of quantifier, the complexity of sentence, subordination, coordination and special structure. the study lacked of distinguishing the syntactic complexity of each type of compound noun. this study analyzed it from five dimensions: the length of quantifier, the complexity of sentence, subordination, coordination and special structure. the study did not distinguish the syntactic complexity of each type of complex nominals.ai l2 syntactic competence comprehensively. domestic studies were focused on testify the validity and efficiency of syntactic complexity measures and explore the developmental features of syntactic complexity. there are mainly three types of empirical studies, that is cross-sectional research, longitudinal research, and synthesis research. bao (2010) conducted researches which evaluates the changing patterns of linguistic complexity in the oral and written compositions. it classified 76 studentsinto three groups by their writing scores to testify the influence of language proficiency levels. the results showed that there was no significant interaction between language proficiency and syntactic complexity. the study showed development of learners' lexical complexity did not parallel with that of syntactic complexity.zhao az-negrillo, nicolas ballier, journals. journal of second language writing, 3, 179-201.cooper, t. c. (1976). measuring written syntactic patterns of second language learners of german. the journal of educational research, 69, 176-183.foster, p., based evaluation of syntactic complexity measures as indices of college-level esl writers' language development. tesol quarterly, 445(1), 36-62.lu, x. (2017). automated measurement of syntactic complexity in corpus-based l2 writing research and implications for writing assessment. language testing, 34(4), 493-511.mazgutova, d., kormos, k. (2015). syntactic and lexical development in an intensive english for academic purposes program. journal of second language writing, 29, 3-15.monroe, j. (1975). measuring and enhancing syntactic fluency in french. french review, 48, 1023-1031.ortega, l. (2003). syntactic complexity measures and their relationships to l2 proficiency: a research synthesis of college-level l2 writing. applied linguistics, 24(4), 492-518.vyatkina, n. (2013). specific syntactic complexity: developmental profiling of individuals based on an annotated learner corpus. the modern language journal, 97, 11-30.wolfe-quintero, k., inagaki, s., kim, h. y. (1998). second language development in writing: measures of fluency, accuracy, and complexity. honolulu, hi: university of hawaii press.鲍贵（2009），英语学习者作文句法复杂性变化研究，《外语教学与研究》，41（4）。

鲍贵（2010），英语学习者语言复杂性变化对比研究，《现代外语》，2。

李梦骁、刘永兵（2016），基于语料库的中学英语学习者写作句法复杂性变化研究，《东北师大学报》，279（1）。

2. 研究的基本内容、问题解决措施及方案

1.Research designThis study is a quantitative study. By collecting the data of argumentative writing of second language learners in one semester, the purpose of this study is to explore whether the teaching process will have an impact on the syntactic complexity and the size of the impact. The process of writing teaching is an independent variable and the syntactic complexity is a dependent variable.In this paper, there are some reference indicators that may be involved, of which 4 are the key ones. The indicators are namely W/T、W/C、C/T and DC/C.2.ParticipantsThe subjects of this experiment are junior students of Nanjing University of technology. A total of 33 people, from the same professional three classes. The students were told that the same topic should be finished within the specified time in class, and the genre should be argumentative. Three topics are chosen from total eight writing exercise in class.The interval is five weeks in order to facilitate students to fully use the knowledge getting from the writing class.