Abstract

HERNANDEZ OCHOA, Guillermo; DUARTE HUERTAS, Gloria Esperanza  and  ESPEJO OLAYA, María Bernarda. Spanish Syntactical Maturity Level of the First and Last Two Semesters at the Licenciatura en Lengua Castellana, Inglés y Francés Program at La Salle University. Leng. [online]. 2013, vol.41, n.1, pp.17-34. ISSN 0120-3479.

This project belongs to the field of applied linguistics. By using the index proposed by Kellogg W. Hunt, this study aims to assess the degree of syntactic maturity in Spanish of Colombian students of the first two and the last two semesters of a BA in Spanish, English and French Languages at University of La Salle, following the Kellog W. Hunt´s indexes. It also examines the impact posed by variables such as age, gender, academic shift (day or night) and type of discourse used in textual development. The analysis considers other aspects that influence textual quality (thematic progression, structuring paragraphs, etc.). The collected data includes 64 argumentative texts and 64 narrative texts written by 32 students from the first two and 32 students from the last two semesters. The results show that the syntactic maturity is a process that continues throughout the individual's training. According to the data, the differences between the first group (semesters I and II) and the second group (semester IX and X) are not considered significant. The type of text is a variable that affects the development of syntactic maturity, as the argumentative texts present a more complex structure than the narrative, where coordination and structured order of the sentences predominate

Keywords : syntactic maturity; narrative text; argumentative text; text quality; Hunt index variables.

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