A Prelude to Determine 'Datum Point' for MA Writing in English - Comparing Syntactic Complexity of Inner-circles and Expanding-circles

Oct 15, 2026

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Native-like writing remains a core goal for non-native English writers, motivating research on linguistic components that support fluency. This study compares native and non-native writers by measuring syntactic complexity (SC) and establishing a reference SC point for non-native MA dissertation writers. It analyzes 200 ELT MA dissertations across inner-circle and expanding-circle groups, using 14 SC subcategories and statistical tests including ANOVA and t-tests.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages33

Reading Time1 h 23 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Three Concentric Circle Model

A Prelude to Determine‘Datum Point’ for MA Writing in English: Comparing Syntactic Complexity of Inner-circlesand Expanding-circles Arab Journal of Applied Linguistics e-ISSN 2490-4198 Vol. 06, No. 02, 2021, 31 – 70 © AJAL [http://www.arjals.com](http://www.arjals.com) Dr. Cuneyt DEMIR, ELT Department, Faculty of Education, The University of Siirt, Turkey Abstract Writing native-like has always been a primary purpose for non-native writers of English and, accordingly, many language components have been investigated to develop writers' fluency. One of these language components is syntactic complexity (SC), which is often regarded as a reliable way to grade any texts from easy to difficult. This study aims to compare native and non-native writers' fluency by measuring their SC and to create a reference SC point for non-native writers of English. To achieve this, the study comprised two groups: Group 1 was composed of native speakers from Inner-circle countries, namely USA, England, Canada, and Australia, and Group 2 was composed of non-native speakers from Expanding countries, namely Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and China. The data were composed of 200 MA dissertations in ELT equally collected from countries in Group 1 and Group 2. SC realisations were divided into 14 subcategories. The 14 sub-categories constituted a taxonomy for SC and they were analysed through ANOVA, Kruskal-Wallis, Independent sample t-test, and Mann-Whitney tests. The results showed that there is a statistically significant difference in 9 categories in favour of Group 1 and that the average SC scores of Group1 are significantly high compared to Group 2. The study suggests that writers of MA dissertations pay particular attention to SC, if native-like fluency is sought because it was concluded that native writers of MA dissertations are prone to write with higher SC level when compared to non-native writers of MA dissertations. Keywords: Syntactic complexity, academic writing, native writer, non-native writer 1. Introduction The process of building a sentence requires a range of cognitive processes occurring either naturally (as in a native speaker’s mind) or systematically (as with a non-nativespeaker) and these cognitive processes turn out language production in varying complexity levels. Linguistic Complexity is an indicator of overall development in Second Language Learning (SLL) and it determines that linguistic complexity may show variance depending on your stance on the issue; for example, Droop and Verhoeven (1998) correlated linguistic complexity and background knowledge while Gibson (1998) excluded any chance of positive correlation between lexical and linguistic complexity. The common sense as to linguistic complexity accumulates over what determines the complexity level (Klebanov & Flor, 2018) and how to measure its internal structure (c.f. Newmeyer & Preston, 2014) . Out of many linguistic factors determining text complexity, syntactic complexity (SC), i.e. sophistication degree of structures in discourse, is one of the linguistic subdomains that is frequently regarded as a reliable way to categorize the spoken or written productions. Accordingly, a growing body of research involves the measuring of SC to determine overall complexity level of particularly written works because different from written discourse there are many other linguistic and extra-linguistic factors that may convolute the processing of speech (Roll, Frid, & Horne, 2007) . Therefore, compared to myriad factors affecting the complexity of spoken discourse, the measuring of SC provides much more elaborate and accurate results concerning linguistic maturity of writing. On this account, SC can function as the capacities of the language resources deployed by the writer to bolster the claims, which is particularly of importance for authors who write in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) . Building up texts with high SC necessitates linguistic competence a

FAQs

What is the main objective of the study?

To compare native and non-native writers’ fluency by measuring syntactic complexity (SC) and to create a reference SC point for non-native English MA dissertation writers.

How are the two groups of writers defined?

Group 1 consists of native speakers from inner-circle countries (USA, England, Canada, Australia), while Group 2 consists of non-native speakers from expanding countries (Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Russia, China).

What data and methods are used to analyze syntactic complexity?

The study uses 200 ELT MA dissertations and divides SC realizations into 14 subcategories, then analyzes them using tests such as ANOVA, Kruskal-Wallis, independent sample t-test, and Mann-Whitney.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Dipper