<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>This study examined the syntactic and semantic complexity of L2 English writing in a Bosnian-Herzegovinian high school. Forty texts written by individual students, ten per grade, were quantitatively analyzed by applying methods established in previous research. The syntactic portion of the analysis, based on the t-unit analysis introduced by <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="j_exell-2019-0003_ref_008_w2aab3b7b2b1b6b1ab1ab8Aa">Hunt (1965)</xref>, was done using the Web-based L2 Syntactic Complexity Analyzer (<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="j_exell-2019-0003_ref_001_w2aab3b7b2b1b6b1ab1ab1Aa">Lu, 2010</xref>), while the semantic portion, largely based on the theory laid out in systemic functional linguistics (<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="j_exell-2019-0003_ref_007_w2aab3b7b2b1b6b1ab1ab7Aa">Halliday &amp; Matthiessen, 2014</xref>), was done using the Web-based Lexical Complexity Analyzer (<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="j_exell-2019-0003_ref_001_w2aab3b7b2b1b6b1ab1ab1Aa">Ai &amp; Lu, 2010</xref>) as well as manual identification of grammatical metaphors. The statistical analysis included tests of variance, correlation, and effect size. It was found that the syntactic and semantic complexity of writing increases in later grades; however, this increase is not consistent across all grades.</p></abstract>

This study examined the syntactic and semantic complexity of L2 English writing in a Bosnian-Herzegovinian high school. Forty texts written by individual students, ten per grade, were quantitatively analyzed by applying methods established in previous research. The syntactic portion of the analysis, based on the t-unit analysis introduced by Hunt (1965), was done using the Web-based L2 Syntactic Complexity Analyzer (Lu, 2010), while the semantic portion, largely based on the theory laid out in systemic functional linguistics (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014), was done using the Web-based Lexical Complexity Analyzer (Ai & Lu, 2010) as well as manual identification of grammatical metaphors. The statistical analysis included tests of variance, correlation, and effect size. It was found that the syntactic and semantic complexity of writing increases in later grades; however, this increase is not consistent across all grades.

Linguistic complexity in high-school students’ EFL writing

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

ExELL

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

{"article-title":"Linguistic complexity in high-school students\u2019 EFL writing"}

This study examined the syntactic and semantic complexity of L2 English writing in a Bosnian-Herzegovinian high school. Forty texts written by individual...

Linguistic complexity in high-school students’ EFL writing

Publicado en línea: 30 jul 2019

Páginas: 122 - 146

Recibido: 19 feb 2019

Aceptado: 15 mar 2019

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/exell-2019-0003

Palabras clave
writing development, syntactic complexity, semantic complexity, lexical density, grammatical metaphor

© 2017 Amer Delić et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Linguistic complexity in high-school students’ EFL writing

Publicado en línea: 30 jul 2019

Páginas: 122 - 146

Recibido: 19 feb 2019

Aceptado: 15 mar 2019

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/exell-2019-0003

Palabras clavewriting development, syntactic complexity, semantic complexity, lexical density, grammatical metaphor

© 2017 Amer Delić et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Palabras clave
writing development, syntactic complexity, semantic complexity, lexical density, grammatical metaphor