Dr. Jihua Dong, Professor

The School of Foreign Languages and Literature, Shandong University, Jinan, China

Biography

Dr. Jihua Dong is a professor, PhD supervisor, and postdoc supervisor in the Foreign Language Department of Shandong University, a Young Taishan Scholar of Shandong Province, and a Young Qilu Scholar of Shandong University. She obtained her doctoral degree in Applied Linguistics from the University of Auckland, New Zealand. She is also working as a co-supervisor for doctoral students at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Dr. Jihua Dong is the principal investigator (PI) for over 10 research funds at the national, provincial, and university levels. Her publications have appeared in renowned SSCI journals such as English for Specific Purposes, International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, Journal of English for Academic Purposes, System and ReCALL, etc.

Topic

Mapping Out the Disciplinary Variation of Syntactic Complexity in Student Academic Writing

Abstract

This study investigated disciplinary variation with respect to syntactic complexity in students' written аcаԁemіc texts from the British Αᴄaԁemiᴄ Written English (BAWE) corpus. We measured syntactic complexity using the Tool for Automatic Analysis of Syntactic Sophistication and Complexity and then conducted quantitative and qualitative analyses to examine the disciplinary differences across four disciplinary groups and 31 disciplines. The analyses identified statistically significant variation in length, subordination, coordination, phrasal sophistication, and overall sentence complexity among the disciplinary groups as well as disciplines, which was discussed from a form-function mapping perspective. This study also revealed the systematic variation and form-function mappings of syntactic complexity in discipline-specific аcаԁemіc writing in both disciplinary groups and disciplines. Pedagogically, these findings can be incorporated into the curriculum design and class instruction to cultivate students' discipline-specific аcаԁemіc literacy.