Exploring diverse manifestation of syntactic complexity in L2 academic writing in English

What is it about?

This chapter explores individual differences in the development of complexity in second language writing and investigates the different strategies advanced L2 learners use to make their writing more complex and academic-like.

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Why is it important?

The ongoing globalization has pushed education beyond geographical boundaries, making international training possible for many. It has resulted in a significant increase in the number of international students in many parts of the world in the past two decades or so as well as the growing dominance of English as the world’s lingua franca and the language of scientific dissemination (Ingvarsdóttir & Arnbjörnsdóttir, 2013; Manchón, 2015; O'Regan, 2014). For international students, this translates into the inevitable need for high literacy in academic English in order to successfully engage with academic prose in English in their study. Unanimously considered as the most difficult skill to acquire (even in the L1 context), writing has always been a challenge for many (Biber & Gray, 2015). It is even more difficult having to write, academically, in a second language. Academic writing in English as a second language is therefore one of the major hurdles for international students and a research area for interested researchers. This chapter aligns with this field by exploring the longitudinal development of complexity with a special focus on complex nominalization, one of the most representative traits of academic prose (Biber, Gray, & Poonpon, 2011; Ortega, 2015), in the writing of four advanced learners of English over one academic year. The aim is twofold, i.e., 1) to explore the diversity in the developmental pattern of complexity in L2 academic writing and 2) to build a detailed linguistic profile of L2 academic writing at the advanced level (with a particular focus on complex nominalization) to show the different strategies the learners used to make their writing more complex.