Sentence Length in Education Research Articles: A Comparison between Anglophone and Turkish Authors

Members of a scientific discourse community can use a variety of stylistic features to share their research with others in a clear fashion. One such feature is sentence length. Although there has been much discussion about how long the average sentence length in scientific writing should be, limited attention has been given to the ways in which educational scientists write. In the era of English as a lingua franca, it is also useful to identify how Anglophone and non-Anglophone scholars compose their research. To this end, this study adopted a descriptive approach to investigate sentence lengths in 100 education research articles from 26 peer-reviewed journals. Sentence types in long sentences were also studied. Analyses were conducted both manually and using online applications. Results showed that the average sentence length was 24.7 words, and authors used longer sentences in the Discussion (26.24) and Literature Review (26.10) sections. Results also revealed that Anglophone authors used longer sentences. Both groups used complex sentences frequently. Turkish authors used simple sentences more often in the Discussion section, while Anglophone authors opted for complex structures more often. Results suggest that scholars writing education research articles tend to lengthen their sentences in particular sections, and that Turkish scholars lengthen their sentences using an increased number of complex and compound-complex sentences which may not always be necessary. Results are discussed, followed by recommendations for teaching and future researchers.