Dynamic Development and Interactions of Complexity, Accuracy, and Fluency in ESL Academic Writing

Abstract

This thesis investigates the development of complexity, accuracy and fluency (CAF) traits and their interaction in second language (L2) academic writing. It is a multiple-case study on the academic writing of four advanced learners of English over one academic year during which they were enrolled in a postgraduate course in an Australian higher educational institution. The aim is to discern L2 development in the written modality as manifested in L2 academic writing. Adopting the Dynamic Systems Theory (DST), it regards language acquisition/development as a dynamic process and advocates that variability is an inherent property of such a process (van Dijk, Verspoor, & Lowie, 2011). Research in second language acquisition (SLA) has shown that proficiency is a multifaceted construct and its principal components encompass complexity, accuracy and fluency (CAF) traits (Housen & Kuiken, 2009; Housen, Kuiken, & Vedder, 2012; Wolfe-Quintero, Inagaki, & Kim, 1998). However, empirical studies yield diverse results when accounting for the nature of development and interactions among the three components in this triad. This non-convergence has led to not only a long unsettled debate in the L2 writing development literature but also calls for more studies and novel approaches to consolidate the field (Larsen-Freeman, 2009; Norris & Ortega, 2009). This project aligns with this recent trend and explores the dynamic development of L2 academic writing by adopting the perspectives of DST. It looks into the dynamics of the development and interaction of CAF traits in L2 academic writing in order to understand the underlying mechanism that motivates the development itself, and to build a detailed linguistic profile of L2 academic writing at the advanced level. Underpinned by DST, this thesis is a quantitative study based on longitudinal observation of four participants. Designed as a multiple-case based investigation into the development and the interactions of CAF in ESL academic writing in a naturalistic setting, this study involves successive measurements of CAF constructs within the period of one academic year. The data were academic essays written by four postgraduate students in Australia (corpus size 220,000 words, comprising 20 measurement points per participant). They were then coded for complexity, accuracy, and fluency with a set of 4 general measures and 70 specific measures. The results suggest that L2 writing development is indeed non-linear. The interactions among complexity, accuracy and fluency changed back and forth from a negative (competitive) relationship to a positive (supportive) one. The magnitude also fluctuated a lot, ranging from a weak association to a very strong one. These findings are in line with not only the propositions of DST (Lowie & Verspoor, 2014; van Dijk et al., 2011; van Geert, 2014; Verspoor & van Dijk, 2011) but also findings in the wider SLA research field on L2 writing (Polat & Kim, 2014; Spoelman & Verspoor, 2010; Thewissen, 2013; Verspoor, de Bot, & Lowie, 2004; Vyatkina, 2012, 2013). However, no significant transitional jump was evidenced in the data set. Nevertheless, the profiling methods provided a detailed description of the learners’ progress and highlighted important findings that have direct practical implications for the teaching and learning process. The findings in this thesis support the proposition that academic writing at the advanced level shows characteristics of concise/compact language, with high complexity of noun phrases, more elaboration at the phrasal level and less dependence on clausal elaboration (Norris & Ortega, 2009). All the participants in this study employed a variety of complexification strategies to make their writing more complex and more academic-like. However, their usage characteristics were different. The results of this study also support the claim that even in advanced learners’ writing, errors still occur (Verspoor, Schmid, & Xu, 2012), some of which are very basic, like punctuation, fragments, subject—verb agreements, and tenses, while others are not, for example, collocations, articles, and word choice. The manifestation of complexity, accuracy and fluency constructs in each participant’s writing in this thesis had their own distinctive patterns, although they shared some similarities, due largely to the rather exclusive characteristics of academic writing: for example, dense lexical constructions, relatively heavy complex nominalizations, etc. However, despite these shared features, each participant maintained their individual style in their writing and none of them converged perfectly with each other, i.e., no two participants showed exactly the same pattern. The differences, nevertheless, not only existed between participants but also within participants, which were captured in detail and described via a dynamic developmental profiling method in this thesis. All the participants in this thesis showed different developmental paths despite the similar learning context, and each of these developmental trajectories showed high degree of inter- and intra-individual variability, showing not only their own signature but also valuable information on their own. This research offers novel perspectives on the dynamic development of second language writing and advances our understanding of the complex issues of second language development itself. It makes theoretical and methodological contributions to the field of Applied Linguistics, especially in second language acquisition research. Its pedagogical contributions enrich the literature in the field of second language academic writing development and meet the immediate need for such knowledge.