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This article explores the word-formation dimension of learner text complexity which indicates how skilful the non-native speakers are in using more and less complex - and varied - derivational constructions. In order to analyse the association between complexity and writing accuracy in word formation as well as interactive effects of task type, text register, and native language background, we examine the materials of the REALEC corpus of English essays written by university students with Russian L1. We present an approach to measure derivational complexity based on the classification of suffixes offered in Bauer and Nation (1993) and then compare the complexity results and the number of word formation errors annotated in the texts. Starting with the hypothesis that with increasing complexity the number of errors will decrease, we apply statistical analysis to examine the association between complexity and accuracy. We found, first, that the use of more advanced word-formation suffixes affects the number of errors in texts. Second, different levels of suffixes in the hierarchy affect derivation accuracy in different ways. In particular, the use of irregular derivational models is positively associated with the number of errors. Third, the type of examination task and expected format and register of writing should be taken into consideration. The hypothesis holds true for regular but infrequent advanced suffixal models used in more formal descriptive essays associated with an academic register. However, for less formal texts with lower academic register requirements, the hypothesis needs to be amended.

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The paper analyses data of automated evaluation of syntactical complexity of scholarly texts from four comparable corpora – two of expert texts and two of learner texts – in two subject areas. The research applied two different computer tools – UDPipe parser and AntConc set of programs. The following conclusions were made: – Expert scholarly texts demonstrated high clausal and phrasal complexity, and its level was higher in Business Studies than in Economics. – Clausal complexity in expert texts was much higher than in student texts, while phrasal complexity was at about the same level as, or even slightly lower than that of students. The largest difference was attested for genitive construction with preposition of, which was 1.7 times as frequent in student texts in both subject areas as in expert texts. The results contradict the conclusion of the prior research that with the growth in proficiency clausal complexity decreases, while phrasal complexity grows.

This paper reports on the NLP4CALL shared task on Multilingual Grammatical Error Detection (MultiGED-2023), which included five languages: Czech, English, German, Italian and Swedish. It is the first shared task organized by the Computational SLA 1 working group, whose aim is to promote less represented languages in the fields of Grammatical Error Detection and Correction, and other related fields. The MultiGED datasets have been produced based on second language (L2) learner corpora for each particular language. In this paper we introduce the task as a whole, elaborate on the dataset generation process and the design choices made to obtain MultiGED datasets, provide details of the evaluation metrics and CodaLab setup. We further briefly describe the systems used by participants and report the results.