Innovation in Language Learning

Nowadays, enhancing second language (L2) learners’ English writing skills is a prevalent aim in English courses around the world. Academic writing is associated with academic success as writing is a usual way to assess student knowledge in most disciplines. The assessment of L2 academic writing has received wide research attention through measures of complexity for the last thirty years (Bulté and Housen, 2014). The present study focuses specifically on syntactic complexity, addressing both the clausal and the phrasal dimension of this construct. This study responds to a need for more research to clarify how coordination, subordination and noun phrases develop in the writing of EFL undergraduates at different proficiency levels. Objective: The present explores phrasal complexity in A2, B1, B2 and C1 college-level students´ writings.  It addresses the following research questions: 1. Is there a relationship between EFL proficiency and clausal complexity in undergraduate academic writing? 2. Is there a relationship between EFL proficiency and the use of noun phrases in undergraduate academic writing? Methodology: These questions will be approached through quantitative analysis via a statistical programme. In addition, a qualitative analysis of the corpus will be carried out to better explain and complement the results of the statistical analysis. The data for this study consist of compositions written by 347 undergraduate students from a Spanish University. Results: The trend depicted by the results obtained shows a significant increase in phrasal complexity and subordination from A2 to B1, followed by stabilisation from B1 to B2 in both phrasal complexity and subordination; from B2 to C1 there is a significant increase in phrasal complexity, and a significant decrease in subordination. Coordination remains unchanged across proficiency levels. Conclusion: The analysis of EFL undergraduates´ writing allows us to conclude that complexity is increasingly constructed by phrasal complexity at the expense of subordination. Findings suggest a tendency towards more complex phrasal constructions in the writing of more competent students.