Development of syntactic complexity in narrative and explicative texts written by high school students
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Date
2016
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University of Chile
Abstract
The study aimed to know how some syntactic complexity resources are manifested in narrative and explicative texts written by students from three school levels and two socioeconomic groups. 240 texts were analysed using measures of productivity, syntactic density and connectivity, which were labelled with CLAN (Computerized Language Analysis, CHILDES Project). The results show that both the socioeconomic factor and age group/grade level impact significantly in productivity (number of clause-packages, CP), syntactic density (number of clauses per CP) and connectivity (types of interclausal relationships). Also, the discourse genre is revealed as a significant factor in connectivity, as explicative texts meet the highest proportion of interclausal complex relationships, particularly hypotaxis. The findings reaffirm the important role of syntax in developing writing skills, command of genres and late language development in general.
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Keywords
Development, Genres, Syntactic complexity, Writing