发布时间：2020-11-23 14:50浏览数：682评论数：0 收藏
句法复杂度是二语写作教学与研究中的一个重要构念，旨在探究写作者语言产出中句法结构的多样性及复杂性。近年来，句法复杂度与语料库相结合的相关研究已成为二语写作领域的热点。句法复杂度与学习者的语言水平、语言发展过程及写作质量之间的关系成为众多二语写作研究的重点。而且，学习者背景、写作任务或教学环境等相关因素对二语写作句法复杂度有着不同程度的影响。此外，在技术层面，句法复杂度的测量工具也得到了开发和应用，如The Biber Tagger、Coh-metrix、L2句法复杂度分析器、TAASSC等。句法复杂度作为一个多维度构念已经得到学者们的极大关注。
——中国科学院大学 高原
Xiaofei Lu 副教授
专家简介
One selected publication:
Lu, X., & Casal, J., & Liu, Y. (2020). The rhetorical functions of syntactically complex sentences in social science research article introductions. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 44, 100832.
1) An understanding of the functional affordances of complex syntactic structures common in academic RA writing has substantial pedagogical value. The present study aims to address this gap by exploring how disciplinary writers across social science disciplines employ complex syntactic structures to achieve their rhetorical goals. Specifically, it examines how five key measures of syntactic complexity map to the rhetorical moves and steps (Swales, 1990, 2004) of introduction sections of published RAs across six major social science disciplines (p. 2).
2) In fact, over-emphasis on formal syntactic complexity alone could lead to negative pedagogical consequences, as learners may be tempted to insert functionally inappropriate complex structures to increase the syntactic complexity of their writing. Corpus-based studies that systematically examine the rhetorical or communicative functions of complex syntactic structures in specific genres do not yet exist. Such studies, however, will not only contribute to deeper understandings of the functional affordances of syntactic complexity in specific academic genres, but also generate useful pedagogical resources in the form of repertoires of instantiations of complex structures aligned with their rhetorical or communicative functions (p. 2).
3) Our results show that disciplinary writers vary their choices in the use of complex syntactic structures depending on their rhetorical goals. Results pertaining to our first research question revealed significant variation across the rhetorical steps in the degree of syntactic complexity assessed using all five indices considered, indicating that different rhetorical functions may entail greater or lesser use of different complex structures (p. 11).
4) These findings have important implications for syntactic complexity research. Our findings provide robust evidence for the existence of a form-function connection between complex syntactic structures and rhetorical functions, highlighting the value of function-oriented approaches to syntactic complexity research. Syntactic complexity development research should begin considering learners’ developing abilities to use different types of complex syntactic structures in genre-appropriate and functionally effective ways, in addition to the existing focus on the developmental patterns of the different dimensions of syntactic complexity in quantitative terms. Automatic writing assessment research should also start exploring more robust ways to consider the relationship of the genre appropriateness and functional effectiveness of form-function mappings to writing quality, rather than the frequency of complex syntactic structures alone (p. 13-14).
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Nihat Polat
专家简介
One selected publication:
Mancilla, R. L., Polat, N., & Akcay, A. O. (2017). An Investigation of native and nonnative English speakers’ levels of written syntactic complexity in asynchronous online discussions. Applied Linguistics, 38 (1), 112–134.
1) The question about whether any significant differences exist between NS and NNS graduate students in their level of written syntactic complexity is laden with many implications. These implications, which can be pedagogical or social in nature, pertain to issues of fair evaluation, professional identity, academic success, graduate employment, and the like (p. 112).
2) To test the validity of such assumptions, real differences in the written syntactic complexity of NNSs and NSs must be addressed within online learning platforms. Although some differences between these two populations have been reported in writing tasks in traditional face-to-face (F2F) offline settings (Ai and Lu 2013), the extent to which their writing quality differs in online ecologies is questionable, especially for highly proficient NNS graduate students (p. 113).
3) We believe that the collective implications of the study concern university educators of both online and traditional courses, as well as L2 writing instructors. Primarily, graduate-level instructors of NNSs must take into account the time-intensive process of syntactic development that is self-adaptive and nonlinear. Taking the NNS group collectively, participants still evidenced a gap in the use of subordinations in their writings when compared with NS peers. Therefore, instructors at the tertiary level must reevaluate their assessment practices and reconsider the appropriateness of leveraging a NS-standard as the criterion for assessing the writings of NNSs (p. 131).
4) Instructors of online and hybrid courses must consider possible effects of learning tasks on language production (p. 132).
Given the fact that syntactic complexity can be highly sensitive to contextual factors that involve the use of hybrid ecological affordances (e.g. tasks, genre) (Ellis and Yuan 2004; Norris and Ortega 2009; Tavakoli and Foster 2011), it may not be accurately captured by broadly defined standard measures of assessment. Thus, instructors of online courses should specify their expectations for online interaction concerning task-response, the register, and formality of discussion (p. 132).
Charlene Polio
专家简介
One selected publication:
Yoon, H., & Polio, C. (2017). The linguistic development of students of English as a second language in two written genres. TESOL Quarterly, 51 (2), 275–300.
1) Genre and task differences are obviously important to L2 writing research design but they also have implications for L2 writing theory and L2 writing pedagogy and assessment (p. 275-276).
2) Narratives and non-narratives serve different purposes, and these communicative functions may simply require different language. In other words, the differences may not be related to cognitive factors such as cognitive load or attention like those discussed by Skehan (1998) and Robinson (2001). A functional explanation has been suggested by Douglas Biber and his colleagues, whose comprehensive work on genre differences was originally conducted outside of the realm of L2 learning (p. 282).
3) We stated earlier that we collected data from native speakers on two genres, reasoning that if they showed the same complexity differences as L2 learners, then the explanation might not be related to cognitive factors in L2 production (i.e., related to the cognitive hypothesis or the limited attentional capacity model) but rather to the fact that writers need different structures to communicate different functions in different genres (i.e., Biber’s argument for genre differences) (p. 291).
4) The native speakers showed the same pattern of genre effects as the L2 writers with regard to increased length-of-unit complexity in argumentative writing and the lack of genre differences in the clause-level measures (p.291).
Given that the results across the two groups overlapped considerably, and that previous research shows a lack of complexity differences across tasks, we suspect that the functional difference better explains genre differences (p.292).
5) Regarding pedagogical implications, there are various ways that the results of the genre differences can be translated into practice. What is likely uncontroversial is that L2 writers, even at lower levels, should be given a range of genres to write and not be limited to narratives, which may be perceived as easier. If students are capable of producing more complex language, then they should be given assignments that will enable them to do so (p.293).
