Professor of Chinese Hong Gang Jin published an article on Syntactic Complexity and Second Language Writing in the Journal of Chinese Language Teachers Association a refereed journal in the field of teaching Chinese as a second/foreign language. "Syntactic Complexity in Second Language Writings: A Case of Chinese as a Foreign Language (CFL)," appears in Vol. 42:1, pp. 27-52.
Abstract: As we know, language development entails, among other processes, the growth of a language learner's syntactic ability. The present study intends to investigate the process of syntactic development in learning Chinese as a foreign language (CFL). 60 US college students and 20 native speakers of Chinese participated in the study. The data was collected through a rewrite procedure after the participants read two short passages displayed on a computer screen. The discussion of the results will focus on three areas with regard to syntactic maturity: (a) the developmental patterns of Chinese learners' syntactic development at different proficiency levels through a cross sectional study; (b) applicability and validity of the established syntactic maturity categories and measures, whether existing measures are sufficient and appropriate, whether additional measures and categories are necessary to establish in investigating an Asian language like Chinese; (c) necessity and formation of the new categories and measures that are appropriate for measuring syntactic complexity/maturity in non-western languages.
