The adjustment of syntactic and phraseological complexity is a key consideration in text adaptation. However, research on this topic in the context of Chinese as a second language (CSL) remains limited. Using 700 CSL reading texts graded following the newly issued Chinese Proficiency Grading Standards for International Chinese Language Education, this study examines differences in syntactic and phraseological complexity across texts of varying grade levels using 12 indices and assesses the predictive power of these indices for the grade levels of adapted texts. The results reveal that the 12 indices at the sentence, collocation, and phrase levels significantly differentiate the grade levels of the reading texts, with 11 showing medium to large effect sizes. Whereas all indices exhibit an upward trend overall, their specific patterns of cross‐level changes vary. The strongest predictors of the grade levels of the texts are diversity of total collocations, mean length of sentences, and mean length of noun phrases. We discuss the implications of these findings for establishing syntactic and phraseological complexity benchmarks in CSL teaching materials, adapting CSL learning and assessment texts, and devising effective instructional strategies.

中文翻译：

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汉语作为第二语言的句法和短语复杂性改编教材


句法和短语复杂性的调整是文本改编中的一个关键考虑因素。然而，在中文作为第二语言 （CSL） 的背景下对这一主题的研究仍然有限。本研究使用根据新发布的《国际汉语教育汉语水平分级标准》对 700 篇 CSL 阅读文本进行评分，使用 12 个指数检查了不同年级文本的句法和短语复杂性差异，并评估了这些指数对改编文本年级的预测能力。结果显示，句子、搭配和短语级别的 12 个指数显著区分了阅读文本的年级水平，其中 11 个指数显示出中等到大的效应量。虽然所有指数总体上都呈上升趋势，但它们的跨层次变化的具体模式各不相同。文本年级的最强预测因子是总搭配的多样性、平均句子长度和名词短语的平均长度。我们讨论了这些发现对在 CSL 教材中建立句法和短语复杂性基准、调整 CSL 学习和评估文本以及设计有效的教学策略的影响。