Negative Evidence in Language Classroom Activities

2003 ◽  
Vol 141-142 ◽  
pp. 301-344 ◽  
Author(s):  
Teresa Pica ◽  
Gay N. Washburn
Keyword(s):  
English Language Learners ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
English Language ◽  
Matter Content ◽  
Negative Evidence ◽  
Academic English ◽  
Classroom Activities ◽  
Sentence Construction ◽  
Language Classroom ◽  
Subject Matter Content

This study sought to identify and describe how negative evidence was made available and accessible in responses to learners during two classroom activities: a teacher-led discussion, which emphasized communication of subject matter content, and a teacher-led sentence construction exercise, which focused on application of grammatical rules. Data came from adult, pre-academic English language learners during six discussions of American film and literature, and six sets of sentence construction exercises. Findings revealed little availability of negative evidence in the discussions, as students' fluent, multi-error contributions drew responses that were primarily back-channels and continuation moves. Greater availability and accessibility of negative evidence were found in the sentence construction exercises, as students were given feedback following their completion of individual sentences. Results from the study suggested several pedagogical implications and applications.

Hedged Assertion

2019 ◽  
pp. 243-263
Author(s):  
Matthew A. Benton ◽  
Peter van Elswyk
Keyword(s):  
Speech Act ◽  
Epistemic Modals ◽  
Epistemic Position ◽  
Normative Issues

Surprisingly little has been written about hedged assertion. Linguists often focus on semantic or syntactic theorizing about, for example, grammatical evidentials or epistemic modals, but they pay far less attention to what hedging does at the level of action. By contrast, philosophers have focused extensively on normative issues regarding what epistemic position is required for proper assertion, yet they have almost exclusively considered unqualified declaratives. This article considers the linguistic and normative issues side by side. It aims to bring some order and clarity to thinking about hedging, so as to illuminate aspects of interest to both linguists and philosophers. In particular, it considers three broad questions. (1) The structural question: when one hedges, what is the speaker’s commitment weakened from? (2) The functional question: what is the best way to understand how a hedge weakens? And (3) the taxonomic question: are hedged assertions genuine assertions, another speech act, or what?

Instruction of Nominalization by Applying Enabling of POA

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 342-358
Author(s):  
Hao Chen
Keyword(s):  
Academic Writing ◽  
English Learners ◽  
Academic English ◽  
English Writing ◽  
Writing Course ◽  
Learning Journals ◽  
English Majors ◽  
Chinese English Learners ◽  
Oriented Approach

AbstractIt is noticeable that the academic papers written by Chinese English learners are lacking in academic features largely due to their poor ability to use nominalization. Therefore, the instruction of nominalization in an academic English writing course is badly needed. The author conducted one-semester-long instruction of nominalization to 90 non-English majors under the guidance of the production-oriented approach (POA). This research demonstrated how to apply POA, specifically, the enabling procedure to the teaching of nominalization. By triangulating the data of students’ interviews, learning journals and written output, and the data of 4 teachers’ class observations and interviews, this study found that the accurate application of the three criteria of effective enabling contributed to the improvement of the quantity and quality of nominalization in academic writing.

A comparison of degree intensifiers across English corpora: Is it ‘flagrant’, ‘blatant’, or ‘sheer’ audacity?

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 74-92
Author(s):  
Julija Korostenskienė ◽  
◽  
Lina Bikelienė
Keyword(s):  
Media Studies ◽  
English Language ◽  
Academic English ◽  
News Values ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Grammatical Relations ◽  
Language Classrooms ◽  
The Media ◽  
Present World ◽  
Linguistic Means

Due to its free-adjoining nature, the category of adjuncts is generally viewed as somewhat peripheral to the forefront of grammatical relations. Meanwhile, given the significance of the media in the present world and the ever-growing prevalence of the notion of news values, outlining the criteria conducive to a message becoming news and including values such as negativity, superlativeness, prominence, timeliness, proximity, etc. (Bednarek, Caple 2014), the broad range of linguistic means encoding intensification, thereby foregrounding a given phenomenon, presents a considerable interest. In this corpus study, we focus on three adjectival emphasisers, flagrant, blatant, and sheer, and examine their use in adjective + noun collocations across a variety of English corpora on the Sketch Engine tool (Kilgarriff et al. 2014) in the academic and the news registers: the “British Academic Written English Corpus”, the “Cambridge Academic English Corpus”, the “English Language Newspapers Corpus”, the “Brexit WR Corpus”, and the “English Timestamped JSI Corpus 2020–10”. We also consider the nominal element the adjectives in question collocate with, seeking to provide an account as to their differences in English. The findings of the study may have implications both for language classrooms and for more specialized fields, such as media studies.

Actual Issues оf Bilingual Hungarian-Bulgarian Lexicography

2021 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-129
Author(s):  
Lilyana Lesnichkova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Academic English ◽  
Current State ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Theoretical Foundations ◽  
Selection Of

The article focuses on the presentation of the Hungarian-Bulgarian valence dictionary, which is currently in preparation, against the background of an extremely actual task – the creation of an academic English-Bulgarian dictionary, adequately reflecting the current state of vocabulary in both languages. The author substantiates the need for such a dictionary, given the lack of general and specialized Hungarian-Bulgarian dictionaries, based on the theoretical foundations and principles of modern lexicography. Outlined are the main features of the dictionary, the specificities and approaches in the work of its compilation. The selection of material and the methods of its presentation are in accordance with the practical needs of learners of Hungarian as a foreign language.

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