The effects of genre on the syntactic complexity of argumentative and expository writing by Chinese EFL learners

Abstract

Genre researchers have found that writing in different genres involves different cognitive task loads and requires different linguistic demands. Generally speaking, narratives involve the description of events with a focus on people and their actions within a specific time frame, whereas non-narrative genres focus on making an argument or discussing ideas or beliefs in a logical fashion, thus resulting in distinct language features. However, the vast majority of genre-based studies have either focused on one single genre or made comparisons between narrative and non-narrative writing (mostly argumentative) in academic contexts without examining how EFL writers perform across non-narrative genres. Moreover, the measures used in quantifying the syntactic complexity of writing are varied, leading to inconsistent findings. This study investigated the effects of genre on the syntactic complexity of writing through comparing argumentative and expository compositions written by Chinese English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) learners over one academic year. Fifty-two participants were asked to write eight compositions (with two genres alternated), four argumentative and four expository, which were parsed via the Syntactic Complexity Analyzer. The results with time as the within-subjects variable showed a significant development of syntactic complexity in both argumentative and expository compositions over one academic year. Meanwhile, the paired-sample t-test with genre as the within-subjects variable exhibited a higher syntactic complexity in argumentative compositions than in expository ones on most of the 14 measures examined at four time points over the year. Additionally, a two-way repeated measures analysis of variance with genre and time as independent variables ascertained an interactional effect of time and genre on some of the 14 measures. The present study tested and verified the impact genre exerts on the syntactic complexity of writing, providing implications for teachers to be more informed in teaching and assessing EFL writing and for students to be more conscious of genre difference in EFL writing.