Complexity and second language writing quality

Given the key role played by writing skills in higher education and in pro fessional contexts, in both one’s native language and, in a globalized world, increasingly in English, research purporting to determine the best ways to assess writing proficiency/quality and to track writing development has grown exponentially in recent years. In the Second Language Acquisition (SLA) field, an influential approach analyses the quality of learners’ output in a second language in terms of the degree of complexity, accuracy and fluency it exhibits. While the notions of fluency and accuracy have a long history, complexity is little explored. This article reviews the most recent developments in second language studies that have sought to relate linguis tic complexity indices to criteria of writing proficiency/quality. The article further reports on the findings of an exploratory study into complexity and writing quality which has analysed a small corpus of L2 English writing by Italian undergraduates, an as yet under-researched population.