EFL Learners’ Development of Multiword Sequences and Constructions in Longitudinal Integrated Narrative Writings and Their Relationships to Essay Scores

ABSTRACT Drawing on 444 English narrative continuation essays composed by 111 Chinese high school English learners at four time points during an academic year, in this study we delved into the changing patterns of five measures of fiction trigrams and six usage‐based indices of fiction verb‐argument constructions (VACs) and examined their impacts on essay scores. The results showed that both the sophistication of verb lemmas and the usage of simple and common VACs increased over time. Additionally, higher‐rated narrative continuation essays contained more common and strongly associated trigrams containing sophisticated words, as well as more sophisticated VACs containing less frequent verb lemmas. Overall, the findings support the usage‐based theory of language development, enrich current limited understanding of the longitudinal effects of writing narrative integrated essays on the development of English phraseology and VACs among high school EFL learners, and unravel their relationships to holistic scores in narrative writings.