Abstract
The study reports on the results of a corpus-based evaluation of automatically extracted syntactic complexity measures as indices of Russian as a foreign language (FL) and Russian as a heritage language (HL) writing development. A list of 12 syntactic complexity measures was tested on a set of longitudinal, classroom-based data.
The analyses demonstrated that the syntactic complexity measures help delineate four proficiency levels (Intermediate Mid, Intermediate High, Advanced Low and Advanced Mid as established through the ACTFL proficiency guidelines), and that the changes in syntactic complexity indices across levels pattern slightly differently in the FL vs. HL learner groups.
Our research confirms that the overall trends in interlanguage development in Russian align with the “complexification” trends found for other second languages.