Abstract
This study attempts to reveal the syntactic complexity of online English newspaper editorials across countries. The data was taken from ten online English newspaper and was analyzed by using L2 syntactic complexity analyzer (Lu, 2010). Second Language Syntactic Complexity Analyzer (L2SCA) program displays fourteen syntactic complexity measures. Those editorials were derived from ten online newspaper in the USA, UK, Egypt, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Russia and Singapore. All the editorials were written in English by the local newspaper editors, so they contain varied production units and grammatical structures from native English writers and non-native English writers. The results of the study reveal that the non-native online newspaper, The Vaguardgnr from Nigeria, shows the most complexity of sentence structure as indicated in the length of production unit which correlate with higher levels of proficiency. Meanwhile, the native online newspaper, The New York Times from USA, displays the highest score of subordination, which indicate complexity at the beginning and intermediate levels of proficiency. Hence, in most newspapers, the purpose of editorials is to influence the opinions of readers on some controversial issues.
Highlights
Rapid growth of technology has changed many aspects of social life, including how people access and share news, as Doyle (2014, p. 359) stated, “the reading patterns of people as news readers are shifting, print media is no longer as the only way to access news, people are spending their time more on online media and use their mobile devices”
After ten editorial texts were input into the L2SCA program, the analyzer counted the frequency of nine structures in the text
The results of the study reveal the manifestation of syntactic complexity in second language writing in terms of how varied and sophisticated the production units or the grammatical structures are (Foster & Skehan, 1996; Ortega, 2003; Wolfe-Quintero et al, 1998; Lu, 2010)
Summary
Rapid growth of technology has changed many aspects of social life, including how people access and share news, as Doyle (2014, p. 359) stated, “the reading patterns of people as news readers are shifting, print media is no longer as the only way to access news, people are spending their time more on online media and use their mobile devices”. Rapid growth of technology has changed many aspects of social life, including how people access and share news, as Doyle 359) stated, “the reading patterns of people as news readers are shifting, print media is no longer as the only way to access news, people are spending their time more on online media and use their mobile devices”. According to Smith (2005) newspapers have a tradition of seeking, gathering, processing, and producing news in a one-way daily delivery, but the internet can give users the ability to make the reporting process more transparent if site visitors can see, hear, or read the sources reporters relied on
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
