Effects of the Xu -Argument-Based Continuation on L2 Syntactic Complexity: The Case of Verb-Argument Constructions

Abstract This study investigated the impact of the xu -argument-based continuation on Chinese high school students’ English syntactic complexity captured using verb-argument constructions (VACs) over an 8-week period. Participants were two comparable groups of students: one group worked with English input texts (i.e., E-E), while the other worked with Chinese input texts with the same content (i.e., C-E). The results showed that over time, the E-E group exhibited a greater tendency to use a wider range of VACs, such as caused-motion constructions, attributives, passives, and phrasal verbs. At the same time, they reduced their use of simpler VACs like intransitive-motion and simple transitive constructions, especially when compared to the C-E group. This pattern was also evident in the topic-based writing during the posttest. These findings strongly support the effectiveness of xu -argument-based continuation tasks in promoting the development of L2 VAC knowledge. They suggest that tasks combining language input with output can significantly enhance learners’ ability to use more sophisticated VACs.