Abstract

The present study involves the creation and analysis of a corpus containing 7747 samples of timed, pre-matriculated L2 English writing from an IEP. The focus of the analysis is on three phrasal complexity measures with time and proficiency as fixed effects, examining their impact on each measure. Results of the analysis suggest that this is true for some phrasal measures, such as nominalizations and attributive adjectives, while others, such as noun-noun phrases, may indicate a lower level of proficiency or lesser allotted writing time. Nominalizations in particular demonstrated a strong relationship with both allotted time and proficiency, further suggesting that certain phrasal measures may be more useful than others when examining academic writing, and therefore may merit additional focus and time spent on related structures in IEPs and other pre-matriculated ESL/EFL classrooms.

Degree

College and Department

Linguistics and English Language

Rights

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