Am I getting my point across? Microstructure of English classroom discourses by Acehnese teachers

For English teaching practice, productive talks that spur students’ comprehension, creativity, and problem-solving ability are vital. This research aimed at finding out the spoken discourse based on six phases of microstructure in English classrooms. The data were obtained recordings and observations of two English teachers, chosen through purposive sampling, from Islamic senior high schools in Aceh. The data were concerned with the lexical density or the ratio of content to grammatical or function words within a clause. They were analyzed through thematic analysis which consists of five steps: data familiarization, code generation, theme search, themes revision, and theme definition. It was found that the total lexical density obtained by the first teacher in Class A was 63.66% and in class, B was 66.52%, while the second teacher in Class A was 71. 74% and in Class B was 68.12%. The second teacher 2 in Class A had a higher lexical density than the first teacher even though both of them are considered to produce a high lexical density of around 60-70%. The formality of spoken discourse of the two teachers shows that the first teacher produced 172.5 while the second teacher produced 184. It means that the second teacher's spoken discourse was more formal than the first teacher’s discourse. To analyze the utterances of teachers and to find the density of language used in the classrooms during the teaching and learning process is important because they implicitly inform whether the language used is understandable for the students or not.

A Corpus-Assisted Translation Study of Strategies Used in Rendering Culture-Bound Expressions in the Speeches of King Abdullah II

Translation is defined as transferring meaning and style from one language to another, taking the text producer's intended purpose and the audience culture into account. This paper uses a 256,000-word Arabic-English parallel corpus of the speeches of King Abdullah II of Jordan from 1999 to 2015 to examine how some culture-bound expressions were translated from Arabic into English. To do so, two software packages were used, namely Wordsmith 6 and SketchEngine. Comparing the size of the Arabic corpus with its English counterpart using the wordlist tool of WS6, the researchers found that the number of words (tokens) in the English translation is more than the Arabic source text. However, the results showed that the Arabic language has more unique words, which means that it has more lexical density than its English counterpart. The researchers carried out a keyword analysis and compared the Arabic corpus with the ArTenTen corpus to identify the words that King Abdullah II saliently used in his speeches. Most of the keywords were culture-bound and related to the Jordanian context, which might be challenging to render. Using the parallel concordance tool and comparing the Arabic text with its English translation showed that the translator/s mainly resorted to the strategies of deletion, addition, substitution, and transliteration. The researchers recommend that further studies be conducted using the same approach but on larger corpora of other genres, such as legal, religious, press, and scientific texts.

Potential Effect of Informal Learning of English Through Watching a Medical Television Series on the Development of Maritime Medical English Competence

As a result of the widespread use of online technologies and vast opportunities for the use of English in everyday online life, the field of online informal learning of languages, in particular English, has attracted a new wave of research attention. Nevertheless, the number of corpus studies in this field remains low. More specifically, to date no research study has focused on the suitability of the language input to which online users are exposed while performing online activities with regard to the development of language skills in English as a language for specific purposes. In order to bridge this research gap, the objective of this paper is to apply the corpus approach to examine whether watching a medical television series may have an effect on the development of medical Maritime English for future deck officers. The results indicate that in terms of lexical density, lexical diversity, terminology, and word clusters, watching a medical television series may have a limited effect on the development of medical Maritime English for future deck officers. However, future research should examine whether watching television series may have an effect on the acquisition of typical speech patterns in spoken maritime communication, which are closely related to everyday spoken communication. Importantly, the results also seem to indicate that online informal learning of English cannot replace all segments of the formal learning of English for Specific Purposes, but can significantly contribute to the development of general English competence, which is a precondition for the further development of discipline-specific language competence.

The representativeness threshold for the CETA subcorpus of the Coruña Corpus

The concept of representativeness is the main distinguishing characteristic of specialised corpora in comparison to other sets of texts. The Coruña Corpus of English Scientific Writing currently comprises four published subcorpora (astronomy, life sciences, history, and philosophy) plus three others under compilation (physics, chemistry and linguistics). In this paper we aim to assess the lexical density of the text samples in CETA, the Corpus of English Texts on Astronomy, by means of the ReCor tool, a posteriori. The study is motivated by the following question: does quantitative representativeness analysis using ReCor provide, in the form of a cross-check, further validation of previous research on the representativeness of CETA? Previous work (Crespo and Moskowich, 2010) has indicated that the CETA corpus is well designed and valid for the purposes for which it was intended. We will here suggest metrics to measure these findings. The most important contribution of this study is to offer quantitative data collection results using the ReCor tool, which allows data triangulation and consequently ensures overall data quality. Results show that data analysis with the ReCor tool supports previous findings, and thus we are able to verify that CETA is indeed representative of the language of its time and register.

What the frequency list can teach us about Turkish sign language?

Recent studies on linguistics, cognitive science and psychology have shown that describing lexical frequency characteristics can answer many critical questions on language acquisition, mental lexicon and language use. Given the importance of corpus-based methodology, this study reports the preliminary findings from the objective lexical frequency list in TİD based on 103.087 sign tokens. This paper shows that frequency occurrence has a very decisive role on the linguistics categories and language in use. With respect to the multi-functionality of pointing in signed languages, the top ranked ID-gloss occurrences are mostly shaped by the pronominal references. Moreover, when compared to previous studies in terms of lexical density and lexical diversity, TİD shares both similar and different statistical features observed in other signed languages.

L2 Theme development in Discursive and Experimental undergraduate student writing

To complement earlier studies of writing development in the BAWE corpus of successful student writing (Nesi & Gardner 2012; Staples et al. 2016), we examine the Systemic Functional Linguistics notion of Theme as used by L2 writers across first- and third-year and in two distinctive discourse types: persuasive/argumentative Discursive writing of assignments in the soft disciplines and Experimental report writing of assignments in the hard sciences. Theme analysis reveals more substantial differences across the two discourse types than between first- and third-year L2 undergraduate writing. Textual Themes are consistently more frequent than interpersonal Themes, and some variance is found within subcategories of each. Significant differences in lexical density occur across third-year discourse types and between first- and third-year Experimental writing where a predominance of N+N topical Themes is also found. These findings are important as previous research has tended to focus on L1 Discursive writing.

Improved morpho-syntax in discourse following intensive voice treatment in Parkinson's disease: Secondary outcome variables from a Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT)

It is well established that voice is disordered in nearly 90% of individuals with Parkinsons disease (PD). Given the role of voice in language expression, we pose that optimizing vocal function may lead to improved language production. Verb production is an area of language deficit in PD, particularly for verbs associated with an individuals location of impairment (upper vs. lower limbs). It is thought that damage to the motor system, given its connection to action verbs, underlies this lexical effect. If this is the case, then treatment improving vocal motor function may also improve access to verbs. Nineteen participants with PD underwent Lee Silverman Voice Treatment (LSVT LOUD), a 4-week intensive voice treatment (TXPD), in an IRB-approved randomized controlled voice treatment trial. Language production was contrasted with 20 untreated PD (UNTXPD) and 20 age-matched neurotypical control participants. Each provided 1-minute picture description narratives at baseline and after 4-weeks. Pre-post treatment within- and between-group comparisons identified effects of assessment time point and isolated treatment effects in the TXPD relative to UNTXPD and Controls. Given the intervention, the TXPD group demonstrated a significant increase in loudness during the picture description, as well as increased utterance length, diversity of word types used, verbs per utterance, and lexical density.

Developmental Features of Lexical Richness in English Writings by Chinese L3 Beginner Learners

Lexical richness is considered as one of the most efficient methods for assessing writing proficiency and development. However, the developmental features of lexical richness in L3 writing remain relatively poorly understood compared with that of L2 writings. This study reports a cross-sectional corpus-based study that aims to explore the developmental features of lexical richness in L3 writings by Chinese beginner learners of English from the perspective of the dynamic usage-based approach. Specifically, this study compares samples of English writing by Chinese L3 secondary students (grades 7–12) aged 13–18 across three learning stages in terms of lexical sophistication, lexical diversity and lexical density. The writing samples were collected from the Writing Corpus of Chinese Ethnic Minority Beginner Learners as the Third Language (WCCMBL), and the sample sizes of the three stages remained almost the same. The results revealed that lexical richness was generally low in L3 beginner learners' writing. Specifically, L3 beginner learners used fewer diverse words and lexical words, but used numerous high-frequency words in their writing. Additionally, lexical sophistication and lexical density yielded positive growth across the three learning stages, whereas lexical diversity developed non-linearly. These findings reveal a dynamic development of lexical richness in L3 writings, with each of the three measures developing unevenly. Drawing upon these findings, several suggestions for L3 vocabulary teaching are also proposed.

Lexical density and variation in Indonesian folklores in English student textbooks: an SFL study

This study aims to study the lexical density and lexical variation in Indonesian folklore narrative texts in English textbooks for grade X which were published by the Ministry of Education and Culture of The Republic of Indonesia. This study uses qualitative method since this study focuses on lexical density and lexical variation in the texts from the textbooks. This study applies the theory of Systemic Functional Linguistics based on lexical density theory of Ure (1971) which was refined by Halliday (1985) and the theory of lexical variation of Castello (2008). In addition, Gunning Fog Index and Estimated Reading Grades by Heydari (2012) are also applied to help measure suggested reading grades of the texts. The data are three narrative texts about Indonesian folklore from Bahasa Inggris: third edition (2017) and Interlanguage (2008) textbooks. This study revealed that the texts vary in terms of their lexical density and lexical variation. Moreover, in some of the texts, their lexical variation does not go in line with their lexical density and affect the difficulty level of the texts to be comprehended. This study also revealed that the texts vary in terms of Gunning Fog Index and many of the texts are suggested for lower graders.