scholarly journals Comparing the Lexical Features of EAP Students’ Essays by Prompt and Rating

2015 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 30
Author(s):  
Maxime Lavallée ◽  
Kim McDonough
Keyword(s):  
High Frequency ◽  
Content Word ◽  
Lower Percentage ◽  
Lexical Diversity ◽  
Word Use ◽  
Proficiency Levels ◽  
Writing Class ◽  
Word Familiarity ◽  
Novice Writers ◽  
Holistic Rubric

Previous research has shown that high frequency lexical items, such as AWL words and formulaic expressions, may differentiate between texts written by ex- pert and novice writers (Chen & Baker, 2010; Hancioğlu, 2009), and that lexical features related to breadth, depth, and accessibility differentiate among texts from L2 writers of different proficiency levels (Crossley & McNamara, 2009, 2012; Crossley, Weston, McLain Sullivan, & McNamara, 2011). The current study compared the essays written by EAP students in response to either a cause or an effect writing prompt. As part of their EAP writing class, the students (N = 94) had two weeks to read six source texts and take notes to prepare for an integrative-writing exam. Students’ essays were assessed by three raters using a holistic rubric, and five lexical features of their essays were analyzed: percentage of AWL word use, content word frequency, word familiarity, imagability, and lexical diversity. The results indicated that responses to the effect prompt were rated sig- nificantly lower than cause essays, contained more frequent and familiar words, and had a lower percentage of AWL words. However, there was no significant correlation between essay ratings and lexical features. Potential explanations for the findings and pedagogical implications are discussed. Des recherches antérieures ont révélé que les items lexicaux à haute fréquence, tels la liste des mots académiques et les formules rigides, peuvent varier selon que le texte soit écrit par un expert ou un débutant (Chen & Baker, 2010; Hancioğlu, 2009), et que les éléments lexicaux liés à l’envergure, la profondeur et l’accessi- bilité varient dans les textes écrits par des auteurs L2 de compétences différentes (Crossley & McNamara, 2009, 2012; Crossley, Weston, McLain Sullivan, & McNamara, 2011). La présente étude a comparé des rédactions écrites par des élèves d’anglais académique où la tâche d’écriture évoquait des causes ou des effets. Le cours d’anglais académique exigeait que les élèves (N=94) lisent, en deux semaines, six textes originaux et qu’ils prennent des notes pour se préparer à un examen écrit intégratif. Trois évaluateurs se sont appuyés sur une rubrique globale pour analyser cinq éléments lexicaux : pourcentage de l’utilisation des mots de la liste des mots académiques, fréquence des mots lexicaux, capacité à évoquer des images mentales et diversité lexicale. Les résultats démontrent que les évaluations des rédactions basées sur la tâche d’écriture évoquant des effets étaient nettement inférieures aux évaluations des rédactions basées sur la tâche d’écriture évoquant des causes. Ces premières comptaient également plus de mots familiers et répandus, et moins de mots figurant dans la liste des mots académiques. Les auteurs présentent des hypothèses pour expliquer ces résultats, ainsi que les impli- cations pédagogiques de leur recherche. 

scholarly journals Abay and modern Kazakh art texts

2020 ◽  
Vol 101 (4) ◽  
pp. 6-12
Author(s):  
A Adilova ◽  
◽  
B.S. Kaukerbekova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
High Frequency ◽  
National Language ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Verbal Art ◽  
Cultural Community ◽  
Word Use ◽  
Frequency Of Use ◽  
Literary Process

The article considers the place of Abay's poems in modern Kazakh artistic texts. Each author conveys his worldview and worldview in different situations through an artistic text. His lexicon includes, along with various means of the national language, fragments of various texts known to varying degrees in a certain linguistic and cultural community, as well as the word use of poets and writers who lived and worked before him. Such fragments may be used without change or А.С. Əділова, Б.С. Каукербекова 12 Вестник Карагандинского университета with a transformation. In the Kazakh linguistic and cultural community, Abay's poems can be called strong literary texts with a high frequency of use. Quotation at the level of structure, word, phrase, sentence, whole text can be seen in poetic and prose texts of the last 60–70 years in the Kazakh literary process. In this regard, the texts of such writers as M. Makataev, M. Magauin, J. Abdrashev, G. Zhailybai, G. Sаlykbai, M. Raiymbek, J. Sarsek are immediately recalled. Pointing out that this trend continues by young poets engaged in creativity in the last decades of this, XXI century, the authors concludes that the legacy of Abay is a standard of verbal art for more generations of poets and writers.

scholarly journals A Collocation Inventory for Beginners

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Dongkwang Shin
Keyword(s):  
High Frequency ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Incidental Learning ◽  
Course Design ◽  
Content Word ◽  
Written Language ◽  
Spoken English ◽  
Balanced Approach ◽  
Teaching Learning ◽  
The Right

<p>This study has two goals - (1) to see what criteria are needed to define collocations and (2) to make a list of the high frequency collocations of spoken English that would be useful for guiding teaching, learning and course design. The existing criteria for defining collocations are generally not well defined and have not been applied consistently. Wray and Perkins (2000) identify more than forty terms used for designating multi-word units. To avoid this confusion, three criteria are strictly applied - frequent co-occurrence, grammatical well-formedness and predictability in L1. The ten million word British National Corpus (BNC) spoken corpus is used as the data source, and the 1,000 most frequent spoken word types from that corpus are all investigated as pivot words. It is found that the three criteria can be applied in a systematic way. The most striking finding is that there are a large number of collocations meeting the first two criteria and a large number of these would qualify for inclusion in the most frequent 2,000 words of English, if no distinction was made between single words and collocations. There are nine major findings in this study - 1) there is a very large number of grammatically well-formed high frequency collocations, 2) collocations occur in spoken language much more frequently than they occur in written language, 3) the more frequent the pivot word, the greater the number of collocates, 4) a small number of pivot words account for a very large proportion of the tokens of collocations, 5) adjectives tend to have more collocates than other content words, 6) the shorter the collocation, the greater the frequency, 7) content word plus content word collocations outnumber other patterns of content word collocations, 8) there are more collocates on the left than collocates on the right, but this difference is not striking, 9) a third of the 500 most frequent collocations of English did not have word for word equivalents in Korean (L1). A balanced approach is needed for the teaching and learning of collocations, employing opportunities for both deliberate and incidental learning, and giving appropriate attention in each of the four skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing.</p>

scholarly journals Behaviors of High-Frequency Subscribers in Cellular Data Networks

2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jingtao Li ◽  
Yang Liu ◽  
Wengang Pei ◽  
Zhen Cao
Keyword(s):  
High Frequency ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Network Performance ◽  
Optimal Allocation ◽  
User Behavior ◽  
Radio Channel ◽  
Lower Percentage ◽  
Data Traffic ◽  
Data Volume ◽  
Cellular Data Networks

Cellular networks operate under restrictive constraints of resources including radio channel capacity and network processing capability. The tremendous growth in the cellular data network usage brings operators with unprecedented signaling overloads and threatens the stability of the network. High-frequency subscribers, who produce low data volume but cause high signaling overhead, are extremely resource-inefficient. For subscribers who activate more than 5 sessions per hour, they only account for 1.19% of the total subscribers and generate about 3.81% data traffic but consume roughly 19.46% of the signaling resources, resulting in the inconsistent signaling-data bandwidth consumptions. Understanding the characteristics of those users has an important significance of capacity design and optimal allocation of resources. A lack of understanding of this active group potentially leads to low network performance and security threats. In this paper, we perform the first city-wide, large-scale investigation of high-frequency subscribers. By applying a set of novel approaches, such as pattern extraction and user behavior rebuilding, we observed that high-frequency subscribers correspond to a lower percentage of none-pattern traffic, showing positive correlation between access regularity and session activation frequency. Besides, we found that amount of high-frequency subscribers has abnormal behaviors, resulting in unwanted signaling loads. We demonstrate that our findings have significant implications on network optimization.

Verb Use in Specific Language Impairment

1997 ◽  
Vol 40 (6) ◽  
pp. 1298-1313 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gina Conti-Ramsden ◽  
Melanie Jones
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
High Frequency ◽  
Critical Mass ◽  
Verb Morphology ◽  
Lexical Diversity ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Normal Language ◽  
Matched Samples

The aim of the present study was to use longitudinal data to provide a detailed profile of early word combinations by children with SLI. Three children with SLI were videotaped during mother-child interactions in the home over a 2-year period. The data obtained were compared to MLU-matched samples of normal language-learning children from Wells’ (1981) longitudinal database, which provided a control for the linguistic measures used in this study. A range of analyses were carried out on controlled data samples in order to determine how the children with SLI’s early utterances compared with those of MLU-matched normal language peers. The measures were specifically designed to assess the children’s use of verbs and verb morphology because recent research has suggested that verbs may play a central role in the acquisition process, and children with SLI may have particular problems with verbs. We found that children with SLI used verbs less frequently, nouns more frequently, and were more input-dependent than their MLU-matched peers. The children with SLI used verb bare stems incorrectly more often than their MLU-matched counterparts. However, further analyses showed that this high frequency of incorrect bare stems may be at least partly due to the fact that children with SLI have particular difficulties using auxiliaries. Furthermore, the proportion of verb use that consisted of General All Purpose (GAP) verbs for children with SLI was similar to that of the MLU-matched children. The above findings were compared with those from other relevant studies of lexical diversity in children with SLI, and the potential implications of these data for theories of SLI language development were discussed, particularly with reference to Marchman and Bates’ (1994) "critical mass" hypothesis.

scholarly journals CERVICAL INSUFFICIENCY: ANAMNESIS, PREGNANCY AND CONSEQUENCES OF PREGNANCY (RETROSPECTIVE ANALYSIS)

2021 ◽  
pp. 30-38
Author(s):  
A. V. KAMINSKYI ◽  
O. I. ZHDANOVYCH ◽  
T. V. KOLOMIICHENKO ◽  
R. I. ISMAILOV ◽  
S. M. YANUTA
Keyword(s):  
Risk Factors ◽  
Pregnant Women ◽  
Retrospective Analysis ◽  
High Frequency ◽  
Premature Birth ◽  
Uterine Cavity ◽  
Lower Percentage ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Cervical Canal ◽  
Cervical Insufficiency

Cervical insufficiency (CI) remains one of the leading causes of miscarriage and premature birth. Purpose of the study: to determine the frequency of CI, the characteristics of the anamnesis, the course of pregnancy, childbirth, the state of the newborn and the identification of potential risk factors. Material and research methods. 8728 birth histories were analyzed, among which 166 (1.9%) stories of women whose pregnancy was complicated by CI were found. The main group consisted of 166 pregnant women with CI, the control group included 55 women without CI and other severe obstetric- gynecological and somatic pathologies. The results obtained and their discussion. The incidence of CI on average over 5 years was 1.9%. With CI, there is a significantly lower percentage of young women, and at the age of 35 and over - 27.1% of pregnant women versus 10.9% in the control group. Only one third (33.7%) of women with CI can be considered somatically healthy. The morbidity structure is dominated by endocrine pathology (30.7%), among which metabolic syndrome / obesity (19.9%) and diseases of the urinary excretory system (27.7%) are distinguished. High frequency of pathology of the cardiovascular system (21.1%) and autonomic dysfunction syndrome (25.9%), hepatobiliary pathology (15.1%), gastrointestinal diseases (19.3), allergic manifestations (16.9%). A third of patients (28.9%) have a combination of two or more somatic diseases. Every fourth woman has a history of an infectious pathology of the urinary excretory sphere (25.9). In 27.7% of patients - a combination of several infectious pathologies. Half of the patients (53.0%) had a complicated gynecological history: cervical ectopy (33.7%), chronic infectious diseases of the genital area (16.3%) and PCOS: (13.9%), synechiae of the uterine cavity (6.6 %) and congenital malformations of the genitals (3.0%). The combination of several gynecological pathologies was observed in 18.1% of women. Every fourth woman underwent an excision of the cervix (25.9%), 42.8% - intrauterine interventions with the expansion of the cervical canal, 59.2% of them two or more times. According to the obstetric anamnesis, spontaneous miscarriages and medical abortions in 27.7% and 33.7% of women, in 18.1% - a missed pregnancy, every fourth patient has premature birth (25.9%), and every 10th patient has suffered injuries cervix. With a current pregnancy, the threat of premature birth is most often noted (51.2%), in second place is an exacerbation of infection of the genitourinary sphere (41.0%) and the threat of premature birth (38.0%). High incidence of placental dysfunction (30.7%), gestational diabetes (13.9%), fetal growth retardation (12.0%) and preeclampsia (7.3%). Premature birth in 38.0% of cases, in 31.9% - premature rupture of membranes, delivery by cesarean section in 19.3% of cases. Noteworthy is the high frequency of intrauterine infection (13.9%). Conclusion. Based on the results of a retrospective analysis, after a more detailed assessment of possible risk factors for CI, the most informative ones will be identified and proposed for use in clinical practice.

scholarly journals A Collocation Inventory for Beginners

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Dongkwang Shin
Keyword(s):  
High Frequency ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Incidental Learning ◽  
Course Design ◽  
Content Word ◽  
Written Language ◽  
Spoken English ◽  
Balanced Approach ◽  
Teaching Learning ◽  
The Right

<p>This study has two goals - (1) to see what criteria are needed to define collocations and (2) to make a list of the high frequency collocations of spoken English that would be useful for guiding teaching, learning and course design. The existing criteria for defining collocations are generally not well defined and have not been applied consistently. Wray and Perkins (2000) identify more than forty terms used for designating multi-word units. To avoid this confusion, three criteria are strictly applied - frequent co-occurrence, grammatical well-formedness and predictability in L1. The ten million word British National Corpus (BNC) spoken corpus is used as the data source, and the 1,000 most frequent spoken word types from that corpus are all investigated as pivot words. It is found that the three criteria can be applied in a systematic way. The most striking finding is that there are a large number of collocations meeting the first two criteria and a large number of these would qualify for inclusion in the most frequent 2,000 words of English, if no distinction was made between single words and collocations. There are nine major findings in this study - 1) there is a very large number of grammatically well-formed high frequency collocations, 2) collocations occur in spoken language much more frequently than they occur in written language, 3) the more frequent the pivot word, the greater the number of collocates, 4) a small number of pivot words account for a very large proportion of the tokens of collocations, 5) adjectives tend to have more collocates than other content words, 6) the shorter the collocation, the greater the frequency, 7) content word plus content word collocations outnumber other patterns of content word collocations, 8) there are more collocates on the left than collocates on the right, but this difference is not striking, 9) a third of the 500 most frequent collocations of English did not have word for word equivalents in Korean (L1). A balanced approach is needed for the teaching and learning of collocations, employing opportunities for both deliberate and incidental learning, and giving appropriate attention in each of the four skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing.</p>

Lexical diversity in an L2 Spanish learner corpus

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 230-258
Author(s):  
Paloma Fernández-Mira ◽  
Emily Morgan ◽  
Sam Davidson ◽  
Aaron Yamada ◽  
Agustina Carando ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Lexical Diversity ◽  
Proficiency Levels ◽  
Learner Corpus ◽  
The Subject ◽  
L2 Spanish ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Spanish Program

Abstract This study examines the impact of two topic-related variables (i.e., valence polarity and everyday-life closeness) on the lexical diversity scores (i.e., MTLD) of learners of L2 Spanish at different proficiency levels. The analysis included 3,045 texts written in response to two pairs of prompts by 1,165 students enrolled in an L2 Spanish program. The first pair of prompts asked learners to narrate an event: prompt 1 focused on a perfect vacation (positive event), while prompt 2 asked participants to tell a terrible story (negative event). The second pair asked to describe a person: prompt 1 required that the subject be famous, thus not close to the writer, whereas prompt 2 required that the subject be special and close to the writer. Results indicate that lexical diversity scores were higher for the texts written about the positive event and the famous subject across all proficiency levels.

Applying phraseological complexity measures to L2 French

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 197-229 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Vandeweerd ◽  
Alex Housen ◽  
Magali Paquot
Keyword(s):  
Complexity Measures ◽  
Linguistic Validation ◽  
Lexical Diversity ◽  
Proficiency Levels ◽  
Morphological Complexity ◽  
The Mean ◽  
Direct Objects ◽  
Argumentative Essays ◽  
Adverbial Modifiers ◽  
Grammatical Dependencies

Abstract This study partially replicates Paquot’s (2018, 2019) study of phraseological complexity in L2 English by investigating how phraseological complexity compares across proficiency levels as well as how phraseological complexity measures relate to lexical, syntactic and morphological complexity measures in a corpus of L2 French argumentative essays. Phraseological complexity is operationalized as the diversity (root type-token ratio; RTTR) and sophistication (pointwise mutual information; PMI) of three types of grammatical dependencies: adjectival modifiers, adverbial modifiers and direct objects. Results reveal a significant increase in the mean PMI of direct objects and the RTTR of adjectival modifiers across proficiency levels. In addition to phraseological sophistication, important predictors of proficiency include measures of lexical diversity, lexical sophistication, syntactic (phrasal) complexity and morphological complexity. The results provide cross-linguistic validation for the results of Paquot (2018, 2019) and further highlight the importance of including phraseological measures in the current repertoire of L2 complexity measures.

scholarly journals WPŁYW EWALUACJI WYBRANYCH KOMPETENCJI NA POPRAWNOŚĆ WYPOWIEDZI PISEMNEJ

Neofilolog ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 249-262
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Dryjańska
Keyword(s):  
Language Proficiency ◽  
Evaluation Method ◽  
Mutual Influence ◽  
First Year ◽  
Main Study ◽  
Primary Interest ◽  
Proficiency Levels ◽  
Complex Skill ◽  
Writing Class

Writing is a complex skill since it requires the integration of various competences, which is a phenomenon extensively examined and discussed by researchers. However, the relation among these competences and their mutual influence, particularly at lower language proficiency levels (A1-A2/A2+), are analyzed more seldom. This issue constitutes the primary interest of our research. Carried out in the Institute of Romance Studies at Warsaw University, it focused on the following questions: how to adjust the evaluation method taking into account the above relation in order to facilitate the understanding of the complexity of the process of writing and to increase its effectiveness. The main study was preceded by a survey, conducted among all the students of the first year, who were beginners, concerning their perception of the difficulties of writing as well as their needs and expectations towards the writing class.

scholarly journals Word frequency, Range and Lexical diversity: Picking out Changes in Lexical Proficiency among University Learners in an EFL Context

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 22-38
Author(s):  
Brahim Ait Hammou ◽  
Mohammed Larouz ◽  
Mustapha Fagroud
Keyword(s):  
Word Frequency ◽  
Frequency Of Occurrence ◽  
Frequency Range ◽  
Valuable Contribution ◽  
Lexical Knowledge ◽  
Lexical Diversity ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Proficiency Levels ◽  
Efl Context

While frequency of occurrence and lexical diversity are common measures of lexical proficiency, very few studies have examined range along with these two other lexical indices, especially in EFL contexts. Using a sample of 529 undergraduate EFL learners’ essays, the present study examined the development of three indices of lexical proficiency (word frequency, range and lexical diversity) across 3 different proficiency levels. No similar study has been conducted so far in the Moroccan context, which makes this study a valuable contribution to a better understanding of university learners’ productive lexical knowledge. Unexpectedly, although frequency is an established measure which can successfully show differences in learners’ proficiency, the results of this study indicate that at the productive level, the range of content words and lexical diversity might better reflect differences among learners of different proficiency levels. While word frequency was stable among the three groups, indices of range and lexical diversity reflected better lexical knowledge in higher proficiency levels. We concluded that in EFL contexts, range and diversity might be better measures of proficiency. This suggests that there should be more focus on developing these two aspects in EFL classes.

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