scholarly journals Does EAP affect written L2 academic stance? A longitudinal learner corpus study

System ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 69 ◽  
pp. 92-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Crosthwaite ◽  
Kevin Jiang
Keyword(s):  
Corpus Study ◽  
Learner Corpus

scholarly journals Plural Marking in Spoken and Written Narratives: A Corpus-based Study of Japanese Learners of English

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (5) ◽  
pp. 224
Author(s):  
Yumiko Yamaguchi ◽  
Hiroko Usami
Keyword(s):  
Picture Book ◽  
Developmental Sequence ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Written Narratives ◽  
Learner Corpus ◽  
Japanese Learners Of English ◽  
L2 Development ◽  
Plural Marking ◽  
Japanese Learners ◽  
Linguistic Structures

This paper aims to present the results of a learner corpus study on spoken and written narratives by Japanese learners of English using Processability Theory (PT) (Pienemann, 1998). PT assumes that there is a universal hierarchy of second language (L2) development and many studies (e.g., Di Biase, Kawaguchi, & Yamaguchi, 2015; Pienemann, 1998) have shown support for PT stages for English L2. However, few PT studies have addressed the issues of whether learners use linguistic structures in the same way in spoken and written tasks. The current study focuses on learners’ use of plural marking on nouns, since contradictory results have been reported for the developmental sequence of lexical plural -s and phrasal plural -s (Charters, Dao, & Jansen, 2011). The participants in this study comprised 291 university students learning in English programs in Japanese universities. Each of them performed spoken and written narratives using a picture book titled Frog, where are you? (Mayer, 1969) containing 24 wordless pictures. The learner corpus including both 291 audio-recorded and transcribed spoken narratives and 291 written narratives was compiled. The results of the analyses showed a connection between learners’ use of plural marker -s in speaking and that in writing, while a small number of students were found to perform differently in two different tasks. Moreover, this study demonstrated support for the developmental sequence of lexical and phrasal plural marking predicted in PT. 

scholarly journals Multi-Word Expressions in Second Language Writing: A Large-Scale Longitudinal Learner Corpus Study

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Siyanova ◽  
S Spina
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Second Language Writing ◽  
Low Frequency ◽  
University Of Michigan ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Learner Corpus ◽  
Language Writing ◽  
Complex Picture

© 2019 Language Learning Research Club, University of Michigan In the present study, we sought to advance the field of learner corpus research by tracking the development of phrasal vocabulary in essays produced at two different points in time. To this aim, we employed a large pool of second language (L2) learners (N = 175) from three proficiency levels—beginner, elementary, and intermediate—and focused on an underrepresented L2 (Italian). Employing mixed-effects models, a flexible and powerful tool for corpus data analysis, we analyzed learner combinations in terms of five different measures: phrase frequency, mutual information, lexical gravity, delta Pforward, and delta Pbackward. Our findings suggest a complex picture, in which higher proficiency and greater exposure to the L2 do not result in more idiomatic and targetlike output, and may, in fact, result in greater reliance on low frequency combinations whose constituent words are non-associated or mutually attracted.

scholarly journals A Corpus Study of the English Suffixes -ness and -acy: Productivity, Genre, and Implications for L2 Learning

2021 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-137
Author(s):  
Ben Naismith ◽  
Matthew Kanwit
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
American English ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Word Structure ◽  
Learner Corpus ◽  
Academic Texts ◽  
Construction Morphology ◽  
L2 Learning ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
The Relationship

Despite substantial scholarship relating to word structure (Anderson, 2018), for English affixes the relationship between productivity, genre, and second language (L2) learning remains unclear. Analysis of the existing literature reveals that deadjectival noun suffixes (i.e., nouns derived from adjectives such as appropriacy or goodness) have been underexamined. To address this gap, we examine two rival suffixes, -acy and -ness, through the lens of Construction Morphology (Booij, 2010), considering numerous factors which might condition their varying usage. Critically, corpus data in the Corpus of Contemporary American English and the British National Corpus (Davies, 2008-) reveal the importance of considering these affixes’ productivity in relation to genre, since -acy is especially frequent in academic texts, principally within certain social sciences. The implications for learners and teachers of English as a second language are discussed, particularly higher-level learners building communicative competence in academic contexts, along with a preliminary learner corpus comparison of the two variants.

Definite article bridging relations in L2: A learner corpus study

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 297-319 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Robert Crosthwaite
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Definite Article ◽  
English Learner ◽  
World Knowledge ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Learner Corpus ◽  
L2 Production ◽  
L1 And L2 ◽  
Lexical Relations ◽  
Selection Of

Abstract Bridging relations are used when the identity of a discourse-new entity can be inferred via lexical relations from an antecedent (e. g. a cake … the slice) or non-lexically via reference to world knowledge or discourse structure (e. g. a war … the survivors). Such relations are marked in English via the definite article, which is considered a difficult feature of the English language for L2 learners to acquire, particularly for L1 speakers of article-less languages. This paper provides an Integrated Contrastive Model (e. g. Granger 1996) of the L1 and L2 production of definite article bridging relations using L2 English learner corpus data produced by native Mandarin and Korean speakers at four L2 proficiency levels, alongside comparative native English data. The data is taken from the International Corpus Network of Asian Learners of English (ICNALE, Ishikawa 2011, 2013), totalling just under 400,000 words with over 1500 bridging NPs identified. Results suggest subtle but significant differences between L1-L2 and L2-L2 groupings in terms of the frequency of particular bridging relation types and lemmatised wordings identified in the data, although there was little evidence of pseudo-longitudinal development. Such differences may suggest an effect of L1-L2 linguistic relativity, influencing the selection of relational links between given/new discourse entities during L2 production.

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