Genre researchers have found that writing in different genres involves different cognitive task loads and requires different linguistic demands. Generally speaking, narratives involve the description of events with a focus on people and their actions within a specific time frame, whereas non-narrative genres focus on making an argument or discussing ideas or beliefs in a logical fashion, thus resulting in distinct language features. However, the vast majority of genre-based studies have either focused on one single genre or made comparisons between narrative and non-narrative writing (mostly argumentative) in academic contexts without examining how EFL writers perform across non-narrative genres. Moreover, the measures used in quantifying the syntactic complexity of writing are varied, leading to inconsistent findings. This study investigated the effects of genre on the syntactic complexity of writing through comparing argumentative and expository compositions written by Chinese English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) learners over one academic year. Fifty-two participants were asked to write eight compositions (with two genres alternated), four argumentative and four expository, which were parsed via the Syntactic Complexity Analyzer. The results with time as the within-subjects variable showed a significant development of syntactic complexity in both argumentative and expository compositions over one academic year. Meanwhile, the paired-sample t-test with genre as the within-subjects variable exhibited a higher syntactic complexity in argumentative compositions than in expository ones on most of the 14 measures examined at four time points over the year. Additionally, a two-way repeated measures analysis of variance with genre and time as independent variables ascertained an interactional effect of time and genre on some of the 14 measures. The present study tested and verified the impact genre exerts on the syntactic complexity of writing, providing implications for teachers to be more informed in teaching and assessing EFL writing and for students to be more conscious of genre difference in EFL writing.

In alignment with a strong increase of fully or partially English-taught programmes worldwide, intense research interest has been drawn to English as a medium of instruction (EMI) in higher education. In the meanwhile, much research has been done concerning cohesion and coherence in second language writing, which reveals that the appropriate use of cohesive devices will ultimately lead to text coherence. This study adopts a longitudinal perspective to examine the use of cohesive devices by Chinese English majors in argumentative writing in the EMI context. Thirty-one second-year Chinese English majors participated in this study. They were given three writing prompts at the initial, middle, and final time-points of one academic year, respectively. Altogether, 93 argumentative writings were collected, and 30 cohesion indices were selected and investigated at local, global and text levels via two automatic computational tools: Coh-Metrix and TAACO. The major findings of the study indicate (1) Chinese English majors were capable of a variety of cohesive devices in their writing. They tended to use local cohesive devices, especially connectives, more than global and text cohesive devices; (2) Most of the cohesion indices demonstrated growth. Of the 30 selected cohesion indices, 13 presented significant development over one academic year, and among them, 3 were at local level, 10 at global level and 3 at text level. Informed of the possible learning trajectories of cohesive devices, teachers may be guided to focus on their teaching in some specific areas of cohesion, and students may be more aware of what contributes to their writing performance and what to emphasize when writing in English.

Lexical richness, a crucial aspect of L2 writing research, has been shown to make a difference in L2 writing performance. Nonetheless, the majority of empirical studies have focused either on a single text type or on the comparison between narrative and non-narrative writing (mostly argumentative writing) in academic contexts, whereas there has been a dearth of research regarding the lexical features pertaining to varied non-narrative writing genres. Considering the cognitive demands intrinsic in different writing task types, this study examined the development of lexical richness, which includes lexical density, lexical variation, and lexical sophistication, in Chinese EFL students’ argumentative and expository compositions over the course of one academic year. Fifty-four participants were asked to write eight compositions (in two alternating genres)—four argumentative and four expository—which were parsed using two computational tools. The results indicated a significant increase in all three subconstructs of lexical richness in argumentative compositions over the year, while in expository compositions, only lexical density and lexical sophistication demonstrated an increasing trend. As time went on, the participants in both genres tended to use more high-frequency words with more senses, more academic words, more high-frequency bigrams, and words that are less familiar and more precise. Moreover, the argumentative compositions displayed higher lexical density than the expository ones, while the expository compositions manifested greater lexical variation and lexical sophistication than the argumentative ones. The findings of the study suggest some implications for L2 writing teaching and research.