Linguistic complexity in high-school students’ 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 students, ten per grade, were quantitatively analyzed by applying methods established in previous research. The syntactic portion of the analysis,...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Sciendo
2017-12-01
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| Series: | ExELL (Explorations in English Language and Linguistics) |
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| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.2478/exell-2019-0003 |
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| author | Delić Amer Jašić Alma Jahić |
| author_facet | Delić Amer Jašić Alma Jahić |
| author_sort | Delić Amer |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | 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. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-f8f74e7ff88f4688bebe8bcd688aef3c |
| institution | Kabale University |
| issn | 2303-4858 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2017-12-01 |
| publisher | Sciendo |
| record_format | Article |
| series | ExELL (Explorations in English Language and Linguistics) |
| spelling | doaj-art-f8f74e7ff88f4688bebe8bcd688aef3c2025-01-31T08:34:31ZengSciendoExELL (Explorations in English Language and Linguistics)2303-48582017-12-015212214610.2478/exell-2019-0003exell-2019-0003Linguistic complexity in high-school students’ EFL writingDelić Amer0Jašić Alma Jahić1Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Tuzla, Bosnia and HerzegovinaFaculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Tuzla, Bosnia and HerzegovinaThis 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.https://doi.org/10.2478/exell-2019-0003writing developmentsyntactic complexitysemantic complexitylexical densitygrammatical metaphor |
| spellingShingle | Delić Amer Jašić Alma Jahić Linguistic complexity in high-school students’ EFL writing ExELL (Explorations in English Language and Linguistics) writing development syntactic complexity semantic complexity lexical density grammatical metaphor |
| title | Linguistic complexity in high-school students’ EFL writing |
| title_full | Linguistic complexity in high-school students’ EFL writing |
| title_fullStr | Linguistic complexity in high-school students’ EFL writing |
| title_full_unstemmed | Linguistic complexity in high-school students’ EFL writing |
| title_short | Linguistic complexity in high-school students’ EFL writing |
| title_sort | linguistic complexity in high school students efl writing |
| topic | writing development syntactic complexity semantic complexity lexical density grammatical metaphor |
| url | https://doi.org/10.2478/exell-2019-0003 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT delicamer linguisticcomplexityinhighschoolstudentseflwriting AT jasicalmajahic linguisticcomplexityinhighschoolstudentseflwriting |