Intra-individual variability in the emergence of syntactic complexity in L2 English speech at secondary school: A case study of a good, average, and poor language learner
Intra-individual variability in the emergence of syntactic complexity in L2 English speech at secondary school: A case study of a good, average, and poor language learner

Summary/Abstract: According to complex dynamic systems theory (CDST), language development is a highly variable process in which various subsystems develop in different ways, forming supportive, competitive, or conditional relationships. Intra-individual variability, that is, variability within individual learners between repeated measurements in a time series, is said to be the main factor responsible for language development. In contrast to inter-individual variability, which is caused by individual learner differences connected with cognitive, affective, and social factors and which has so far received substantial attention in SLA research, intra-individual variability, which is predominantly connected with linguistic factors, remains to a large extent unexplained. Following the first part of a corpus-based case study, which focused on intra-individual variability in the emergence of complexity, accuracy, and fluency in speaking English as a foreign language at secondary school, the present paper describes the second part of the study, whose aim was to analyze this phenomenon in more detail with respect to various measures of syntactic complexity in the case of a good, average, and poor language learner.

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