THE USE OF COMPLEX SENTENCES IN ENGLISH ACADEMIC BOOKS AND IN ULIS FRESHMEN’S ACADEMIC WRITINGS

Abstract

It is strongly believed that complexity is considered one of most crucial feature of academic writing. Thanks to longer and more complex sentences, complicated thought can be expressed more logically and cohesively by linking ideas together in a sentence, so using complex sentences frequently and effectively is of great important to academic writers. Attempting to investigate the use of complex sentences in different English documents, this study aimed at conducting types of complex sentences used in freshmen’s academic writings at ULIS, VNU and in reading text as well as the similarities and differences of their use. In order to achieve these aims, sixty ULIS freshmen were chosen to be participants based on the technique simple random sampling, and stratified random sampling was used to choose seven academic books. Then, sixty freshmen’s writings and thirty five reading texts from academic books were collected to analyze both quantitatively and qualitatively. The results revealed that simple sentence covered a big area in freshmen’ s writings, which was almost twice as much as that in academic books; conversely, long and sophisticated structures were popular in academic books. Besides, it was found out that all complex sentence types were employed in both documents, but the nominal and adverbial clauses were more commonly used than comparative and comment clauses. Also, the results indicated that authors of reading texts in academic books were able to use a larger variety of clause types compared with students. As a result, the findings suggested that the importance of complex sentences in academic writing should be mentioned at early stages for students. Besides, more types of complex sentences and their functions should be introduced to students in class or books. Also, reading lessons or reading texts should be used as a reference for practicing writing skill.