Does L2 writing proficiency influence noun phrase complexity? A case analysis of argumentative essays written by Chinese students in a first-year composition course

This corpus-based study investigated the association between noun phrase complexity and L2 writing proficiency based on the 11 noun modifiers in Biber, Gray, and Poonpon's (2011) index of complexity features. A corpus was built based on 100 argumentative papers written by first-year Chinese students, including 50 papers from high-proficiency students (TOEFL writing score > 23) and 50 papers from low-proficiency students (18 < TOEFL writing score...