Syntactic and lexical evolution in L2 writing through the lenses of Dynamic Systems Theory
Reza Kalantari, Research Institute for Education, Iran & Javad Gholami, Urmia University, Iran
|
https://doi.org/10.58379/BGJT9542
|
Volume 14, Issue 1, 2025
|
Abstract: This longitudinal, descriptive-exploratory case-study examined Iranian EFL learners’ writing complexity through the lenses of Dynamic Systems Theory (DST). One hundred and twenty independent essays written by 12 intermediate to advanced female EFL learners in a TOEFL iBT preparation course over six months constituted the 43,478-word learner-generated corpus of this study. L2 Syntactic Complexity Analyzer was employed to analyze the length of production, sentence complexity, subordination, coordination, and particular structures. Moreover, three lexical analysis software programs including Coh-Metrix, Lexical Complexity Analyzer, and VocabProfile were employed to measure lexical density, diversity, and sophistication. The results of repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) indicated significant differences between time and mean scores in five out of 14 syntactic indices. Correlational analyses among syntactic indices revealed positive relationships among the measures of the same sub-dimension of syntactic complexity. Meanwhile, particular structures enjoyed a positive correlation with both coordination and length of production. The analysis of syntactic and lexical relationships revealed that mean length of sentence, mean length of T-unit and mean length of clause closely corresponded with only lexical diversity. However, these syntactic indices revealed no significant correlations with both lexical density and sophistication. The findings suggest that different syntactic and lexical dimensions interactively comprise L2 writing complexity.
Keywords: Dynamic Systems Theory, lexical complexity, syntactic complexity