At first, the group average of the seven CAF indexes generally exhibited stable trends, with lexical diversity, general syntactic complexity, and lexical accuracy showing a slight decrease, while lexical sophistication, phrasal complexity, syntactic accuracy, and fluency displayed a slight increase. The findings indicate that the participants’ writing has become less diverse and accurate in vocabulary and employed less complex sentences, but utilized more difficult words, complex phrases, and accurate sentences. This is not consistent with existing studies. For example, Zheng and Feng (2017) noted decreasing trends in group syntactic complexity, Wang and Wang (2020) observed increasing trends in group lexical diversity and sophistication, and Zhang and Zhang (2022) found that variables of lexical complexity, syntactic complexity, accuracy and fluency all rise in fluctuations. One reason for this discrepancy may be that the participants are different, as different groups of participants may have different writing features. In addition, the indexes those studies explored are limited, as the present study is rather comprehensive in exploring writing CAF with seven indexes, thus observing both increasing and decreasing trends regarding writing development. Furthermore, it can be explained by self-organization in DST, that language evolves with the interaction between subsystems, wherein individual writers adapt to their writing environments, resulting in emergent patterns of behavior.
Chapter Six Conclusion
6.1 Major Findings
The present research aims to achieve two primary objectives: (1) To examine the development of writing performance among Chinese EFL learners and analyze the interaction between CAF indexes; (2) To investigate the factors contributing to written language development. The initial two research questions align with the first objective, whereas the third research question pertains to the second objective. The major findings are outlined as follows:
Firstly, the development trends of group average CAF showed steady growth, except for lexical diversity, general syntactic complexity, and lexical accuracy, which exhibited decreasing trends. Additionally, the continuation material contributed to significant differences between certain collection times in lexical diversity, lexical sophistication, general syntactic complexity, and fluency. Regarding development trends between individuals, individual development trajectories did not always align with the group average trend and displayed non-linear patterns. Intra-individual development trends validated the concept of “growth accompanying variation”, with CAF indexes showing alternating patterns of growth and variability over time. These findings suggest that self-organization, along with differences in cognitive resources, contribute to individual differences, resulting in varying developmental trajectories within and between learners across different indicators.
Secondly, there were complex dynamic interactions among the indicators of complexity, accuracy, and fluency, sometimes supporting and sometimes competing. Moreover, interaction patterns varied among individuals, which were sensitive to initial conditions. These findings reveal the dynamic and complete interconnectedness characteristics of the writing CAF system, with subsystems constantly interacting and interconnected.
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