Abstract
One of the main assumptions of Complex Dynamic Systems Theory (CDST) is that internally complex language subsystems develop non-linearly while entering different kinds of supportive, competitive, conditional, or dual relationships which are characterised by trade-offs caused by learners’ restricted cognitive processing, especially in foreign language speech. The present paper belongs to a short series of articles which examines various aspects of the development of L2 English speech at secondary school on basis of the same longitudinal, exploratory, and corpus-based case study. The aim of this paper is to investigate the dynamics of the relationships between fluency and both syntactic and lexical complexity in the speech of a good, average, and poor language learner at the level of secondary school. Syntactic complexity was investigated in terms of general sentence complexity, subordination, coordination, and nominalisation, whereas lexical complexity was construed in terms of lexical density, sophistication, and variation. In general, the results indicated predominantly supportive relationships between fluency and different measures of syntactic complexity but competitive or dual relationships between fluency and lexical complexity. However, the relationships between the selected variables fluctuated over time and often differed in the case of a good, average, and poor language learner.
Highlights
Complex Dynamic Systems Theory (CDST) constitutes one of alternative approaches to second language acquisition (Atkinson 2011)
Following de Bot (2017), the name is used here to refer to both Complexity Theory (CT) (Larsen-Freeman and Cameron 2008) and Dynamic Systems Theory (DST) (Verspoor, de Bot and Lowie 2011) which were developed in different academic centres but share common linguistic and methodological assumptions as well as offer practical instruments to study second language development (SLD)
With respect to the second research question, which focused on the relationships between fluency and lexical complexity in L2 English speech, it was observed that these relationships were characterised with greater competition
Summary
Complex Dynamic Systems Theory (CDST) constitutes one of alternative approaches to second language acquisition (Atkinson 2011). One of the main assumptions of Complex Dynamic Systems Theory (CDST) is that internally complex language subsystems develop non-linearly while entering different kinds of relationships which may be supportive, competitive, conditional, or dual. What is more, these subsystems remain in the state of competition for learners’ limited linguistic and cognitive resources, which leads to trade-offs between them in that progress in the development of one subsystem may cause some regress in the development of the other subsystem. Many researchers point out that these three aspects of language proficiency are complex and inter-related phenomena which develop in non-linear ways (Michel 2017)
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