Chapter 1 the study of collocations

Table 23. Percentage of Error-Free T-Units in Larsen-Freeman (1978)  
Group Number %EFT 
1 37  11.4 
2 39  18.5 
3 45  22.1 
4 56  34.3 
5 35  49.6 
(Adapted from Larsen-Freeman 1978:445) 
 
 
In line with the above interpretation, that more proficient subjects in 
Group 3 try harder to produce more complex syntax and so make greater 
numbers of errors, it was shown that Group 3 students write longer T-Units 
than subjects in the other groups.  They should therefore have a higher chance 
factor of making mistakes than subjects in the  other two groups.  The shorter 
the  T-units, the less chance subjects have of making  spelling, punctuation, 
grammatical, or syntactic mistakes. 
 
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Also in line with this argument are the results for the dependent variable 
S-Nodes per T-Unit. The higher the level of the students’ proficiency, the more 
syntactically complex sentences they produce in writing (see Bardovi-Harlig 
1992a).  In summary,  the higher the level students belong to, the more accurate 
they are in the use of articles, and the more syntactically complex and longer 
sentences they produce, while their lexical density decreases and their chance 
of making an error increases.