Abstract：Sentences play an important role in writing. The syntactic features of the sentences can affect the quality of the writing, it can also reflect students’ writing ability. This research chooses the English majors’ timed writings of Xuzhou Institute of Technology as material and studies the syntactic features in terms of syntactic variety, syntactic complexity and cohesion. The research makes a contrastive and quantitative approach on syntactic features in writings from sophomore and junior of English majors. 

　　　T-unit and Wordsmith tool were used in this thesis as a analysis tool, and a quantitative method was used. The results of this study are as follows: in terms of syntactic variety, loose and periodic sentences were largely used and declarative sentences covered most portion of the writing. As to complexity, the writings were too short in length and full of mistakes. Besides, only adverbial, objective and attributive clauses were often used. As for conjunctions, causals and adversatives were mostly used.

　　　This study reveals the general syntactic features of the English majors’ writings in Xuzhou Institute of Technology, and it has a positive effect on the writing teaching of our school.

Key words:  timed writing  syntactic feature  syntactic complexity  syntactic variety

摘要：句子在写作中扮演着重要的角色，文章的句子特点直接影响文章的精彩与否，同时也反映出了学生的写作水平。本研究以我校英语专业学生课堂限时写作作业为研究语料，从句子多样性、复杂性及句子的衔接进行研究。研究采取随机抽样调查的方式，对我校英语专业学生课堂限时作文的句法特点进行了描述和探讨。

　　　论文运用Wordsmith软件和量化分析的方法，对所得出的数据结果进行分析检验，从而得出结论。研究发现，徐州工程学院专业二三年级学生在句法使用上有如下特点：在多样性方面，句子缺乏多样性，较多使用松散句与掉尾句，主要用陈述句论述问题，而疑问句，祈使句，感叹句使用很少；在复杂性方面，文章长度不够，句子错误率过高，结构上较多使用简单句，较多使用的从句只有状语，宾语和定语从句；在连接词方面，较多使用因果与转折连接词。

　　　本研究揭示了徐州工程学院英语专业大学生写作句法的总体特点，对我校今后的外语写作教学有积极参考意义。

关键词：限时写作；句法特点；句法复杂性；句法多样性