‘As we all know’: Examining Chinese EFL learners' use of interpersonal grammatical metaphor in academic writing

2018 ◽  
Vol 50 ◽  
pp. 64-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cassi L. Liardét
Keyword(s):  
Academic Writing ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Grammatical Metaphor

scholarly journals Exploring the use of grammatical metaphor in Indonesian EFL learners’ academic writing

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nur Afifi
Keyword(s):  
Academic Writing ◽  
Academic Literacy ◽  
First Year ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Efl Context ◽  
Academic Texts ◽  
Linguistic Resource ◽  
Grammatical Metaphor ◽  
Strategic Role

Grammatical metaphor is considered to be the key linguistic resource in the creation of academic discourse. In a pedagogical context, identification of grammatical metaphor in students’ writing can be used as a measurement of students’ academic literacy level to determine actions to improve the existing situation. In Indonesian EFL context, students’ grammatical metaphor deployment and development has not been much studied, despite its strategic role in improving students’ academic literacy. This paper presents a first step towards understanding Indonesian tertiary students’ linguistic strengths and weaknesses in academic literacy through the identification of ideational grammatical metaphor deployment and development. Using cross-sectional data from first year and third year students in a State Islamic College in a rural area of Indonesia, the students’ academic writing were analyzed for the deployment of experiential grammatical metaphor. The findings show that the two groups of different levels of participants deployed similar types of reconstrual of experiential grammatical metaphor. Process to Thing transcategorisation was the most frequent type of experiential grammatical metaphor reconstrual across the two groups, while Relator to Process was the most frequent logical grammatical metaphor reconstrual in both groups.  Third-year students surpassed the first-year group in the frequency and proportion of instances of grammatical metaphor deployment. This study has shown that the development of learners’ academic writing was limited. Thus, it was suggested that a more explicit pedagogy to expose students to grammatical metaphor and more basic lexicogrammar teaching to enable the students to write academic texts is warranted.

scholarly journals A Corpus-Based Study on the Use of the Logical Connector ‘Thus’ in the Academic Writing of Turkish EFL Learners

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 64
Author(s):  
Serpil Ucar ◽  
Ceyhun Yukselir
Keyword(s):  
Likelihood Ratio ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
American English ◽  
Advanced Learners ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Log Likelihood ◽  
Log Likelihood Ratio ◽  
Effect Relation ◽  
Academic Genre

This research was conducted to investigate how frequently Turkish advanced learners of English use the logical connector ‘thus’ in their academic prose and to investigate whether it was overused, underused or misused semantically in comparison to English native speakers. The data were collected from three corpora; Corpus of Contemporary American English and 20 scientific articles of native speakers as control corpora, and 20 scientific articles of Turkish advanced EFL learners. The raw frequencies, frequencies per million words, frequencies per text and log-likelihood ratio were measured so as to compare varieties across the three corpora. The findings revealed that Turkish learners of English showed underuse in the use of the connector ‘thus’ in their academic prose compared to native speakers. Additionally, they did not demonstrate misuse in the use of the connector ‘thus’. Nevertheless, non-native learners of English tended to use this connector in a resultative role (cause-effect relation) more frequently whereas native speakers used it in appositional and summative roles more as well as its resultative role. Furthermore, the most frequent occurrences of ‘thus’ have been in academic genre.

Linking or delinking of ideas?

2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Noelia Navarro Gil ◽  
Helena Roquet Pugès
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Initial Position ◽  
American University ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Learner Corpus ◽  
Native Speakers Of English ◽  
Argumentative Texts ◽  
Linguistic Backgrounds

Abstract This paper explores the use of adversative Linking Adverbials (LAs) in the academic writing of advanced English Foreign Language (EFL) learners with different linguistic backgrounds. The learner corpus used in this study consists of 50 argumentative texts, which are contrasted with a native corpus: the American university students’ corpus (LOCNESS). Liu’s (2008) comprehensive list of adversative LAs has been used for the analysis. Findings reveal that both non-native (NNS) and native speakers of English (NS) use similar types of adversative LAs, but NNS place them regularly in sentence- and sometimes in paragraph- initial position, which often results in punctuation issues and misuse. A total of 9 LAs were found to be overused (e.g., nevertheless) and underused (e.g., actually) by NNS. The analysis performed according to L1 has yielded unexpected results in terms of preference, frequency, and placement of adversative LAs. The so-called ‘teaching effect’ is considered one of the main factors influencing the learners’ choices.

Too chatty

2008 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gaëtanelle Gilquin ◽  
Magali Paquot
Keyword(s):  
Academic Writing ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
Academic Discourse ◽  
L1 Transfer ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Developmental Factors ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Corpus Data

The study reported on in this paper uses corpus data in order to examine how upper-intermediate to advanced EFL learners from a wide range of mother tongue backgrounds perform a number of rhetorical functions particularly prominent in academic discourse, and how this compares with native academic writing. In particular, it is shown that one of the problems experienced by EFL learners is that they tend to use features that are more typical of speech than of academic prose, which suggests that they are largely unaware of register differences. Four possible explanations are offered to account for this register confusion, namely the influence of speech, L1 transfer, teaching-induced factors and developmental factors.

scholarly journals Exploring Metadiscourse Use in Thesis Abstracts: A Cross-Cultural Study

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ardi Nugroho
Keyword(s):  
Academic Writing ◽  
English Language ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Writing Studies ◽  
Cultural Backgrounds ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
American Students ◽  
Integral Role ◽  
Native Speakers Of English

<p>The use of metadiscourse in academic writing has become a topic of interest in recent years. It can be defined as the words and phrases that writers use in their writing to express their ideas and thoughts to make it easier for readers to process the information presented. It is especially crucial in academic writing since writers are expected to present their arguments in an appropriate and acceptable manner. It has also been said that culture plays a role influencing how arguments and ideas are expressed, especially in academic writing. Although metadiscourse plays an integral role in academic writing, studies have shown how EFL learners often make mistakes in employing this linguistic device. From this, the writer would like to explore the metadiscourse produced by Indonesian EFL learners and compare it with how native speakers of English employ metadiscourse in their writing. In other words, this study is basically an attempt to find out whether the metadiscourse produced by the two groups with different cultural backgrounds are different or similar. The source of data for the current study is the metadiscourse markers from the thesis abstracts of students of the English Language and Culture Department at Bunda Mulia University and American students from a university in the U.S. In order to analyze the metadiscourse markers found in the thesis abstracts of the Indonesian and American students, the writer will make use of the AntConc software version 3.5.6 by Anthony (2018). The result of the study reveals that there are some differences and similarities in the way both group of students employed these markers.<strong></strong></p><strong>Keywords: </strong>metadiscourse, thesis abstracts, Indonesian and American students

scholarly journals Blogging in EFL Learners' Academic Writing

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (6) ◽  
pp. 344-351
Author(s):  
Selim Soner Sütçü ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Academic Writing ◽  
Efl Learners
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