Development of noun phrase complexity in the writing of English for Academic Purposes students

Compared to conversation or other written registers, written academic prose favours heavy nominal groups, in which the head noun is typically accompanied by premodifiers such as adjectives or nouns, and/or by postmodifiers such as prepositional phrases. Focussing specifically on the noun phrase, this article uses the hypothesised developmental progression index suggested by Biber, Gray, and Poonpon (2011) to consider academic writing produced by...