TY - JOUR
T1 - Grammatical complexity
T2 - ‘What Does It Mean’ and ‘So What’ for L2 writing classrooms?
AU - Lan, Ge
AU - Liu, Qiandi
AU - Staples, Shelley
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 Elsevier Inc.
PY - 2019/12
Y1 - 2019/12
N2 - Grammatical complexity is regarded as a crucial feature of L2 writing. The construct has been widely utilized in empirical research to gauge L2 writing quality and development, particularly in English. Nevertheless, a question of paramount importance, i.e., what constitutes complexity, has not yet received adequate attention. Drawing on Bulté and Housen's (2012) taxonomy of L2 complexity, we conducted a comprehensive and in-depth review of changes in the definition of grammatical complexity over the past two decades. Our finding suggests that grammatical complexity has been theorized from two primary perspectives: an independent perspective that grammatical complexity is static across different contexts and a dependent perspective that grammatical complexity should be investigated in response to specific registers. Also, grammatical complexity has been observed from primarily the clausal level to the clausal, phrasal and morphological levels, echoing Norris and Ortega's (2009) claim that grammatical complexity should be studied as a multi-dimensional construct. Moreover, we have identified four main parameters used by existing literatures to define grammatical complexity: length, ratio, index and frequency. The change of each parameter is summarized with details in our review. At the end, we also discuss pedagogical implications for L2 writing instruction in the EAP context.
AB - Grammatical complexity is regarded as a crucial feature of L2 writing. The construct has been widely utilized in empirical research to gauge L2 writing quality and development, particularly in English. Nevertheless, a question of paramount importance, i.e., what constitutes complexity, has not yet received adequate attention. Drawing on Bulté and Housen's (2012) taxonomy of L2 complexity, we conducted a comprehensive and in-depth review of changes in the definition of grammatical complexity over the past two decades. Our finding suggests that grammatical complexity has been theorized from two primary perspectives: an independent perspective that grammatical complexity is static across different contexts and a dependent perspective that grammatical complexity should be investigated in response to specific registers. Also, grammatical complexity has been observed from primarily the clausal level to the clausal, phrasal and morphological levels, echoing Norris and Ortega's (2009) claim that grammatical complexity should be studied as a multi-dimensional construct. Moreover, we have identified four main parameters used by existing literatures to define grammatical complexity: length, ratio, index and frequency. The change of each parameter is summarized with details in our review. At the end, we also discuss pedagogical implications for L2 writing instruction in the EAP context.
KW - English for academic purposes
KW - Grammatical complexity
KW - Second language writing
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U2 - 10.1016/j.jslw.2019.100673
DO - 10.1016/j.jslw.2019.100673
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85075619689
SN - 1060-3743
VL - 46
JO - Journal of Second Language Writing
JF - Journal of Second Language Writing
M1 - 100673
ER -