This study proposed a set of measures for assessing noun phrase (NP) complexity in second language (L2) Chinese writing and compared the predictive power of these measures for L2 Chinese writing quality to that of a set of syntactic complexity measures based on the topic–comment unit (TC-unit). Our data consisted of 101 narratives written by beginning–intermediate, intermediate–advanced, and advanced Korean Chinese-as-a-second-language (CSL) learners and rated by 2 trained CSL teachers. Results showed that the NP complexity measures explained a substantially larger proportion of variance in holistic writing scores than the TC-unit-based measures. Our findings confirmed the validity of the NP complexity measures we proposed and the need to attend to phrasal complexity in assessing L2 Chinese writing quality.

中文翻译：

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汉语名词短语复杂度测量及其与二语汉语写作质量的关系：与基于主题-评论单元测量的比较

本研究提出了一套评估第二语言 (L2) 中文写作中名词短语 (NP) 复杂度的测量方法，并将这些测量方法对 L2 中文写作质量的预测能力与一组基于主题的句法复杂度测量方法的预测能力进行了比较——评论单元（TC-单元）。我们的数据包括 101 篇由初级-中级、中级-高级和高级韩国汉语作为第二语言 (CSL) 学习者撰写的叙述，并由 2 名训练有素的 CSL 教师评分。结果表明，与基于 TC 单元的测量相比，NP 复杂性测量解释了整体写作分数方差的比例要大得多。我们的研究结果证实了我们提出的 NP 复杂度测量方法的有效性，以及在评估 L2 中文写作质量时关注短语复杂度的必要性。