Tesis

Exploring syntactic complexity in academic writing: a comparative study of master’s thesis abstracts and published article abstracts / Dhini Anjarwati

Abstrak
Syntactic complexity has gained much attention from scholars. It is because of its benefits for education. It can be a reliable assessment of writing. It is also the benchmark of EFL writing quality and writing proficiency. Thus it is beneficial for students in higher-level education to assess their academic writing quality and proficiency. Many studies compared L1 writing to L2 writing of academic writing and extensive use of large-grained measures. However the results of large-grained measures still need to be investigated since they lack clear and operational definitions regarding syntactic complexity. Furthermore the studies on the comparison between advanced proficiency writers and master students still lack attention in the Indonesian context. In response to this issue this study analyzed and compared the syntactic complexity of expert writing to master theses through fine-grained measures. Fine-grained measures of the study were at the phrasal level which is the best discriminator of syntactic complexity. This study used a quantitative design using a corpus-based method. The corpus data consists of two sub-corpora expert writing and master theses. Expert writings were collected from reputable international journals and master theses from English Language Education of Universitas Negeri Malang. The data were chosen through a stratified sampling technique based on years and issues. Those were 255 abstracts of expert writing and 125 abstracts of master theses. A syntactic complexity tool called Tool for the Automatic Analysis of Syntactic Sophistication and Complexity (TAASSC) generated twelve phrasal complexity measures. Then the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) investigated the results of the TAASSC tool through descriptive and inferential (MANOVA and ANOVA) analysis. The findings showed the characteristics of Indonesian academic writers. They tend to employ more dependents per direct object and fewer prepositions per object of the preposition measures. The findings also revealed that expert writings are more complex in phrasal complexity and have higher writing quality than master theses. Furthermore the significant differences in phrasal complexity measures between master theses and expert writings were captured such as dependents per nominal dependents per direct object dependents per object of the preposition dependents per nominal (standard deviation) dependents per nominal subject (standard deviation) dependents per direct object (standard deviation) prepositions per nominal adjectival modifiers per object of the preposition and adjectival modifiers per direct object. However the three measures show no significant difference between master theses and expert writing. Those are dependents per object of the preposition (standard deviation) determiners per nominal and prepositions per object of the preposition. These findings offer syntactic complexity knowledge to Indonesian students about the implications of using complex phrasal structure in master thesis writing and expert writing. The study emphasized the need for more attention to syntactic complexity in higher education of academic writing to improve writing quality and writing proficiency.

Informasi Detail

DDC

Rt 421 ANJ e

Prodi

Universitas Negeri Malang. Program Studi Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris, 2024.

Deskripsi Fisik

xiii, 64 lembar : ilus. ; 30 cm.

Bahasa

Indonesia

No Reg

00429/RT/24

Edisi

Tesis (Pascasarjana)--Universitas Negeri Malang. 2024

Subjek

1. BAHASA INGGRIS - MENULIS
2. ENGLISH - WRITING

Pembimbing

1. Prof. Dr. Yazid Basthomi, S.pd, M.a.; Evynurul Laily Zen, S.s., M.a., Ph.d

Lampiran Berkas