Syntactic complexity and L2 Chinese proficiency: An analysis of Malaysian CSL learners’ writing

A substantial body of research has investigated the role of syntactic complexity in gauging second language (L2) learners’ writing performance, but Malaysian Chinese-as-a-second-language (CSL) learners remain largely underexplored. This study examined the relationship between syntactic complexity and L2 Chinese proficiency in Malaysian CSL learners’ writing. Our data consisted of a corpus of 976 essays written by Malaysian CSL learners over eight consecutive semesters spanning four academic years. Each essay was analyzed using 13 syntactic complexity measures based on length, quantity and dependency distance at both global and phrasal levels. Results revealed that 12 of the 13 indices showed significant differences across four proficiency levels, with mean dependency distance of sentence having the largest effect size. Our findings contribute to the multidimensional measurement of L2 syntactic complexity, promote a more inclusive representation of learner diversity in L2 writing research, and offer valuable insights for L2 Chinese writing research and pedagogy.