This study proposed a set of measures for assessing noun phrase (NP) complexity in second language (L2) Chinese writing and compared the predictive power of these measures for L2 Chinese writing quality to that of a set of syntactic complexity measures based on the topic-comment unit (TC-unit). Our data consisted of 101 narratives written by beginning-intermediate, intermediate-advanced, and advanced Korean Chinese-as-a-second-language (CSL) learners and rated by 2 trained CSL teachers. Results showed that the NP complexity measures explained a substantially larger proportion of variance in holistic writing scores than the TC-unit-based measures. Our findings confirmed the validity of the NP complexity measures we proposed and the need to attend to phrasal complexity in assessing L2 Chinese writing quality.

This study investigated the relationship of a set of word‐combination‐based measures of phraseological diversity, sophistication, and complexity to second language (L2) Chinese proficiency and writing quality in comparison to that of a set of large‐grained topic‐comment‐unit‐based measures. Our dataset consisted of 101 assessed narratives produced by Korean learners of Chinese as a L2 at 3 proficiency levels. Multiple phraseological measures exhibited stronger correlations with quality ratings and/or larger effect sizes for proficiency than did the large‐grained topic‐comment‐unit‐based measures. Measures pertaining to language‐specific features, including topic‐comment‐unit‐based measures and phraseological measures based on language‐specific word combination types, exhibited stronger discriminative power for intermediate and advanced levels than for beginning and intermediate levels. Our results also revealed the importance of predicate‐related combinations in assessing L2 Chinese phraseological diversity and complexity. We discuss the implications of our findings for L2 Chinese writing research and L2 Chinese pedagogy.

The present study investigated the influence of literacy environment on the performance of writing narratives for primary school students. Two hundred and fifty Chinese children participated in this study. There were 146 third graders (71 boys and 75 girls) and 104 fifth graders (53 boys and 51 girls). Results showed that children’s writing abilities differed at the word level and sentence level between third grade and fifth grade. Formal literacy experience (parent teaching of characters) predicted the writing performance of third graders, while informal literacy experience (the visiting frequency of various places) predicted the writing performance of fifth graders. After controlling the effect of reading efficiency on the writing skills, the prediction of formal and informal literacy experiences on the writing performance remained. The results suggest the importance of formal and informal literacy experiences on the writing development of primary school students.