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Article published In:
Register Studies
Vol. 4:1 (2022) ► pp.55–90

Assessing linguistic complexity and register flexibility in advanced second language learners

Evidence from group- and individual-level analyses

ORCID logo | RWTH Aachen University
ORCID logo | RWTH Aachen University
ORCID logo | RWTH Aachen University

The aim of the present study is twofold: (1) to assess the degree of register flexibility in advanced second language (L2) learners of English and (2) to determine whether and to what extent this flexibility is impacted by inter-individual variability in experiential factors and personality traits. Register flexibility is quantitatively measured as the degree of differentiation in the use of linguistic complexity – gauged by a range of lexical, syntactic, and information-theoretic complexity measures – across three writing tasks. At the methodological level, we aim to demonstrate how a corpus-based approach combined with natural language processing (NLP) techniques and a within-subjects design can be a valuable complement to experimental approaches to language adaptation.

Keywords: register flexibility, second language learning, linguistic complexity, inter-individual variability, experience-related factors, personality traits
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Related work on register flexibility and L2 writing complexity
    • 1.2Inter-individual variability in L2 learning
    • 1.3The present study
  • 2.Method
    • 2.1Participants
    • 2.2L2 writing samples
    • 2.3Automated assessment of linguistic complexity
    • 2.4Individual differences factors
      • 2.4.1Experiential factors
      • 2.4.2Personality
    • 2.5Statistical modeling
  • 3.Results
  • 4.Discussion
  • 5.Conclusion and future directions
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 14 June 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/rs.20014.ker
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