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published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

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Traditional studies in syntactic complexity consider increased clausal complexity to be characteristic of development, proficiency and growth in written language production. However, this stereotypical view ignores two important facts. First, complexity differs by register (i.e. daily speech versus formal writing). Second, as the proficiency of writers increases, their complexity in formal writing changes from clausal complexity to phrasal complexity (i.e. lower-proficiency writers have more subordinate clauses whereas higher-proficiency writers tend to have more noun phrases). Therefore, in this study, I argue for the need to consider not just clausal complexity but also phrasal complexity measures when assessing development and performance in second language (L2) writing production. In addition, this study addresses two important gaps that remain understudied in the literature of syntactic complexity. First, there are few studies that analyze changes in syntactic complexity of first-language (L1) Spanish English Language Learners (ELL)'s writing. A few studies have analyzed writers' L1 background as an influential factor in complexity, but an important language such as Spanish has been ignored. Additionally, most studies focus on general academic writing (i.e. argumentative essays), but there are no studies that investigate syntactic complexity in other registers and English for Specific Purposes (ESP) areas. For instance, there are no studies in syntactic complexity that focus on civil engineering, which is an area where writing plays a vital role. Hence, this study intends to fill these gaps by looking at the syntactic complexity of civil engineering student writing, including Spanish L1 writers. The present study investigated syntactic complexity in the writing of English-as- their-first-language (EL1) and English-language-learner (ELL) civil engineering student writing. Taking a contrastive corpus-based approach, I used the L2 Syntactic Complexity Analyzer (L2SCA) (Lu, 2010) to analyze measures of clausal and phrasal complexity. In particular, I used two measures of clausal complexity (clauses per sentence and dependent clauses per clause) and three measures of phrasal complexity (mean length of clause, coordinate phrases per clause, and complex nominals per clause). The analysis was focused on a total of 74 samples of student writing: 30 ELL low-level texts, 14 ELL high-level texts, and 30 EL1 texts. The quantitative analysis consisted of non-parametric statistical tests applied between groups (i.e. ELL-low vs ELL-high, ELL-low vs EL1, and ELL-high vs EL1). The statistical analysis indicated that the writing of both ELL student groups was significantly more clausally complex than the writing of EL1 students on both clausal complexity measures. No differences were found in phrasal complexity, and no developmental trends were found in relation to levels of proficiency among writers. All groups exhibited high levels of internal diversity and lack of within-group consistency. The pedagogical implications of this study include familiarizing ELL students with the characteristics of professional engineering writing as a way to break the stereotype that more clausally complex sentences entail more advanced and more proficient writing. ESP instructors should try to identify characteristics of the syntactic complexity particular to their field so that they can provide appropriate feedback to their students. Moreover, ESP programs with Spanish-speaking students should pay attention to clausal complexity as potential linguistic transfer from students' L1 into the writing production in the L2.

Reading in a second language (L2) is a complex process that poses formidable obstacles for readers, especially those in the initial stages of learning. The challenge is particularly daunting for lower-level Chinese L2 readers with an alphabetic first language (L1) background. Chinese is a logographic, deep orthography with unique linguistic features that necessitate specific reading processes and skills. The development of Chinese L2 reading competence is heavily dependent upon instruction. Effective instruction requires accurate diagnoses of the learners’ reading problems and appropriate selection of instructional materials. Compared with standardized proficiency tests that provide little diagnostic information, and formal diagnostic assessments that are inconvenient to use in daily instruction for diagnostic purposes, informal diagnostic assessment tools enable language teachers to better accommodate the instructional needs of learners to identify reading weaknesses and select suitable materials. However, thus far, instruction-informative, diagnostically rich, and flexible informal diagnostic reading assessment for Chinese L2 reading is lacking. This study aims to fill a gap in the Chinese L2 reading assessment field by exploring the applicability of three tasks as informal reading diagnostic assessment tools to measure comprehension performance, detect reading problems, and determine instructional material difficulty levels for lower-level Chinese L2 readers. These three assessment instruments are: oral word reading, word segmentation, and oral passage reading. This study is a necessary step towards constructing diagnostic Chinese reading assessment instruments that can be used by classroom teachers. It also contributes to the Chinese L2 reading field theoretically because it examines whether an L1 English reading theory can be applied to explain L2 Chinese reading. The participants in this study were 70 lower-level English-speaking learners of Chinese from several universities in the United States and China. The results showed that all three of the informal diagnostic instruments effectively predict reading comprehension, with oral passage reading emerging as the strongest indicator. One shared construct, oral reading fluency, underlies the three diagnostic instruments. Oral reading fluency strongly predicts comprehension, suggesting that there is commonality in reading across languages, and theories designed for L1 alphabetic language reading can be well applied to Chinese L2 reading. Chinese orthographic characteristics also exert influence on reading, as manifested in the stronger role of fluency in predicting comprehension and the word segmenting processes in reading. The informal diagnostic instruments can also be used to evaluate instructional material difficulty. Two of the three textbook-equivalent texts examined in this study fit the learners’ reading level, while most learners felt one of the texts was too difficult to read. L2 readers have diverse profiles and they develop their componential skills in different ways, whereas the crucial role of word-level processing in reading remains stable across reader patterns. Generally speaking, the three diagnostic instruments were moderately difficult for the participants in this study, and the two oral reading tasks were more challenging than the word segmentation. The quantity and quality of learners’ errors when completing these three diagnostic instruments reveal rich information about their reading processes and problems. The findings offered strong support for the three instruments as effective tools for diagnostic purposes in Chinese lower-level L2 reading instruction and indicated the importance of developing reading fluency and training word-level processing skills.

The Chinese perfective aspect marker le is one of the most challenging yet very important grammatical features for learners of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL). Based on the observation that there was a lack of width in the study of this feature in the earlier research, the current study presents a new perspective at the discourse level to achieve a more in-depth understanding of the acquisition of le. In response to the obvious need to obtain data on the acquisition of this linguistic feature with a global view, the current thesis study starts with the discourse functions of le, and eventually providing an encompassing guideline in learning le at the prosodic, syntactic, semantic and discourse level in linguistics. Three instruments (UI Placement Test-Grammar Section, Knowledge Test, and Production Test) were administered to 95 American college CFL learners of four different proficiency levels and to 30 native speakers of Chinese as controls. Test scores from the Knowledge Test go through statistic analysis, and the language data collected from the Production Test are analyzed qualitatively so as to generalize patterns in association with the usage of le. Analysis of data indicates that there is a linear relationship between the increase in the knowledge of le in discourse and the advancement of learners' instructional level. In the production data, learners at the beginning and intermediate levels use Sed-le with the highest frequency, in comparison with their use of Ant-le and Pk-le, whereas learners at the advanced level use Pk-le with the highest frequency. Learners at the beginning and intermediate levels also tend to use le in the first SENTENCE more often than at the advanced level. There is also a missing pattern of the so-called "double-le" in both learner and native speakers' production data. In addition, there are patterns that native speakers use, but are not observed in learners' production data. Based on these research results, it is hypothesized the process of acquiring this challenging grammatical feature le be governed by principled interactions at the prosodic, syntactic, semantic, and discourse levels.

This study investigates the effects of instruction delivered via a learner-centered, self-access website on the learning of expressions of gratitude by L2 Chinese learners across proficiency levels. Three research questions are addressed: (1) whether the web-based instruction facilitates students' learning of Chinese expressions of gratitude, (2) whether the effects of instruction vary across proficiency levels, and (3) how L2 learners regard the use of the website as a learning tool. Based on the noticing hypothesis and the pragmatic consciousness-raising approach, a pragmatics website was developed that provided explicit instruction on how to appropriately express gratitude in Chinese and offered awareness-raising exercises and activities for practice. It was structured in eight instructional units and two review sessions. To address the three research questions, this study adopted a pretest-posttest design to include two groups of learners who differed in their proficiency in the Chinese language. The two groups of learners received pragmatics instruction delivered via the self-access website over five weeks. Two weeks prior to the instruction, all learners were asked to complete (1) the language contact profile (LCP) for eliciting their demographic information and their contact with Chinese outside the classroom, (2) a local standardized Chinese proficiency test (CPT) for assessing their proficiency in Chinese, (3) discourse completion tasks/tests (DCT) for soliciting their production of Chinese expressions of gratitude, (4) metapragmatic assessment tasks (MAT) for eliciting their metapragmatic assessment of thanking responses provided, and (5) retrospective interviews for soliciting learners' explanations of their assessments in the MAT. On a weekly basis during the treatment period, learners wrote reflective e-journals in response to prompt questions provided by the researcher, which helped track learners' self-access study progress and their on-going perceptions of the website. One week after the online instruction, all learners were also asked to complete the same types of questionnaires (i.e., the DCT and the MAT) and retrospective interviews for assessing their pragmatic development. Results showed that after receiving the web-based instruction, all learners produced more appropriate expressions of gratitude and used more varied thanking strategies in their responses, regardless of their proficiency. Learners' assessments of Chinese expressions of gratitude became more target-like and their metapragmatic awareness was also promoted. However, higher-level learners seemed to have benefited more from the instruction in their production of Chinese expressions of gratitude than lower-level participants, and the higher-level group demonstrated an overall higher level of pragmatic awareness than the lower-level group after the online instruction. But no significant difference was found between the two groups in terms of learners' metapragmatic assessments. In addition, participants responded positively to the website and put forward constructive suggestions to improve it. Finally, this study interpreted the findings based on cognitive processing theories, proposed both theoretical and pedagogical implications, and discussed the limitations of this study and directions for future research.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2000. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 96-102). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.