2。1。1 Definition of Syntactic Complexity 5
2。1。2 Measures of Syntactic Complexity 6
2。1。3 Previous Studies on Syntactic Complexity 9
2。1。4 Summary 10
2。2 Lexical Complexity 11
2。2。1 Definition of Lexical Complexity 11
2。2。2 Measures of Lexical Complexity 11
2。2。3 Previous Studies on Lexical Complexity 13
2。2。4 Summary 14
3 Research Methodology 15
3。1 Research Questions 15
3。2 Participants 15
3。3 Instruments 15
3。4 Data Collection 16
3。5 Data Analysis 16
3。6 Effect Size Calculation 17
4 Results and Discussion 18
4。1 Results for Syntactic Complexity 18
4。2 Discussion for Syntactic Complexity 21
4。3 Results for Lexicial Complexity 22
4。4 Discussion for Lexicial Complexity 24
Conclusion 26
Acknowledgements 28
References 29
Appendix A Writing Prompts 32
Appendix B Guidelines for T-units and Clauses 33
List of Tables and Figures
Table 2。1 Syntactic complexity measures adopted in the study 9
Table 2。2 Lexical complexity measures adopted in the study 13
Table 4。1 Mean numbers of words, clauses, T-units, W/T, C/T, and W/C 18
Table 4。2 Results of one-way ANOVA on syntactic complexity 19
Table 4。3 Results of multiple comparisons on syntactic complexity 19
Table 4。4 Results of Mann-Whitney Tests on syntactic complexity 20
Table 4。5 Results of one-way ANOVA on lexical complexity 23
Table 4。6 Results of Mann-Whitney Tests on lexical complexity 23
Figure 4。1 Development of syntactic complexity 21
Figure 4。2 Development of lexical complexity 24
List of Abbreviations
AWL Academic word list