scholarly journals Academic Phraseology: A Key Ingredient in Successful L2 Academic Literacy

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sylviane Granger

One of the weaknesses of most current academic word lists is that they fail to do justice to the large stock of multiword units that are typical of academic language. The objective of this chapter is to raise awareness of the importance of phrasal academic vocabulary. After a brief critical survey of three recently compiled phrasal academic lists, the chapter highlights the potential contribution of learner corpus data to identifying the most useful units for teaching purposes. The approach is illustrated with a case study of phrasal metadiscourse based on corpora of novice and expert native writing, and subcorpora from the International Corpus of Learner English representing L2 writers from six different mother tongue backgrounds.

2021 ◽  

This is the first book to investigate the field of phraseology from a learner corpus perspective. It includes cutting-edge studies which analyse a wide range of multiword units and extensive learner corpus data to provide the reader with a comprehensive theoretical, methodological and applied perspective onto L2 use in a wide range of situations.


2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-54
Author(s):  
Irmala Sukendra ◽  
Agus Mulyana ◽  
Imam Sudarmaji

Regardless to the facts that English is being taught to Indonesian students starting from early age, many Indonesian thrive in learning English. They find it quite troublesome for some to acquire the language especially to the level of communicative competence. Although Krashen (1982:10) states that “language acquirers are not usually aware of the fact that they are acquiring language, but are only aware of the fact that they are using the language for communication”, second language acquisition has several obstacles for learners to face and yet the successfulness of mastering the language never surmounts to the one of the native speakers. Learners have never been able to acquire the language as any native speakers do. Mistakes are made and inter-language is unavoidable. McNeili in Ellis (1985, p. 44) mentions that “the mentalist views of L1 acquisition hypothesizes the process of acquisition consists of hypothesis-testing, by which means the grammar of the learner’s mother tongue is related to the principles of the ‘universal grammar’.” Thus this study intends to find out whether the students go through the phase of interlanguage in their attempt to acquire second language and whether their interlanguage forms similar system as postulated by linguists (Krashen).


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stewart M. McCauley ◽  
Colin Bannard ◽  
Anna Theakston ◽  
Michelle Davis ◽  
Thea Cameron‐Faulkner ◽  
...  

2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 407-437
Author(s):  
Markus Bader

Abstract In German, a verb selected by another verb normally precedes the selecting verb. Modal verbs in the perfect tense provide an exception to this generalization because they require the perfective auxiliary to occur in cluster-initial position according to prescriptive grammars. Bader and Schmid (2009b) have shown, however, that native speakers accept the auxiliary in all positions except the cluster-final one. Experimental results as well as corpus data indicate that verb cluster serialization is a case of free variation. I discuss how this variation can be accounted for, focusing on two mismatches between acceptability and frequency: First, slight acceptability advantages can turn into strong frequency advantages. Second, syntactic variants with basically zero frequency can still vary substantially in acceptability. These mismatches remain unaccounted for if acceptability is related to frequency on the level of whole sentence structures, as in Stochastic OT (Boersma and Hayes2001). However, when the acceptability-frequency relationship is modeled on the level of individual weighted constraints, using harmony as link (see Pater2009, for different harmony based frameworks), the two mismatches follow given appropriate linking assumptions.


Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 50
Author(s):  
Akhmad Habibi ◽  
Amirul Mukminin ◽  
Lalu Nurul Yaqin ◽  
Lalu Parhanuddin ◽  
Rafiza Abdul Razak ◽  
...  

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is currently the most potent threat to educational systems, a crisis that may become disastrous. For the current study, a qualitative design within a case study tradition was implemented to investigate instructional barriers during COVID-19 faced by Indonesian teachers in Islamic boarding schools (Pesantren). Within this study, we applied a purposeful convenient sampling in which the access was obtained through communication with the principals of two Pesantren. Seven invited participants with more than ten years of teaching experience agreed to participate. Semi-structured interviews were addressed for data collection; each interview lasted from 40 to 50 min. The interviews were conducted in the participants’ mother tongue to provide an in-depth understanding of their perceptions, ideas, and arguments regarding instructional barriers during the COVID-19 outbreak. The thematic analysis revealed three major findings regarding the barriers; technological barriers, financial barriers, and pedagogical barriers affecting instructional activities in the two Pesantren. Based on the three themes, the development of a qualitative conceptual map of teachers’ instructional barriers was finalized. Recommendations are also proposed by the participants and the study for the betterment of Indonesian Islamic education facing future similar outbreaks.


2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nikolas Koch ◽  
Stefan Hartmann ◽  
Antje Endesfelder Quick

AbstractUsage-based approaches assume that children’s early utterances are item-based. This has been demonstrated in a number of studies using the traceback method. In this approach, a small amount of “target utterances” from a child language corpus is “traced back” to earlier utterances. Drawing on a case study of German, this paper provides a critical evaluation of the method from a usage-based perspective. In particular, we check how factors inherent to corpus data as well as methodological choices influence the results of traceback studies. To this end, we present four case studies in which we change thresholds and the composition of the main corpus, use a cross-corpus approach tracing one child’s utterances back to another child’s corpus, and reverse and randomize the target utterances. Overall, the results show that the method can provide interesting insights—particularly regarding different pathways of language acquisition—but they also show the limitations of the method.


2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Crosthwaite ◽  
Lavigne L.Y. Choy ◽  
Yeonsuk Bae

AbstractWe present an Integrated Contrastive Model of non-numerical quantificational NPs (NNQs, i.e. ‘some people’) produced by L1 English speakers and Mandarin and Korean L2 English learners. Learner corpus data was sourced from the ICNALE (Ishikawa, 2011, 2013) across four L2 proficiency levels. An average 10% of L2 NNQs were specific to L2 varieties, including noun number mismatches (*‘many child’), omitting obligatory quantifiers after adverbs (*‘almost people’), adding unnecessary particles (*‘all of people’) and non-L1 English-like quantifier/noun agreement (*‘many water’). Significantly fewer ‘openclass’ NNQs (e.g a number of people) are produced by L2 learners, preferring ‘closed-class’ single lexical quantifiers (following L1-like use). While such production is predictable via L1 transfer, Korean L2 English learners produced significantly more L2-like NNQs at each proficiency level, which was not entirely predictable under a transfer account. We thus consider whether positive transfer of other linguistic forms (i.e. definiteness marking) aids the learnability of other L2 forms (i.e. expression of quantification).


Lipar ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol XXI (73) ◽  
pp. 203-216
Author(s):  
Jovana Milovanović ◽  

This article discusses reception and production of academic vocabulary among native speakers of Serbian language. Academic vocabulary is one of the key elements of academic language competence, and a modest lexicon and underdeveloped academic language competence can cause problems in both comprehension and production. In this research, we used a vocabulary test consisting of 12 items taken from general culture entrance exams used at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade. The participants are BA students of French language at the Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade, years 1-4. The participants were instructed to provide a synonym or a definition for each item, as well as a sentence containing the given word. The aim of this research is to highlight issues in comprehension of academic vocabulary and establish the influence of factors such as word etymology or university level on the success of the participants. We analysed the results and classified them in three categories: correct, incorrect and unanswered. The majority of participants successfully identified just half of the given words (in order of success: poliglota 95,76%, bestseler 92,37%, pacifista 66,10%, suveren 58,47%, prototip 57,63%, elokventan 56,78%). The success level for the other half of the items from the test was below 50% (in order of success: erudita 49,15%, hipokrizija 39,83%, nepotizam 22,03%, skrupulozan 18,64%, šprahfeler 10,17%, eksproprijacija 8,47%). The influence of etymology was analysed through a comparison of the results for six items of French/Latin origin with the results for the other six items which did not originate from Romance languages. This analysis shows that the participants had similar results in both groups of items, with three words from each group having above 50% of correct answers (suveren, elokventan, pacifista; poliglota, bestseler, prototip). Lastly, we examined success levels from year 1, year 2, year 3 and year 4 students and determined that the median of correct answers for each year does vary, but that there is no strong linear progression (median year 1=5, year 2=6, year 3=7, year 4=6). The results indicate a lack of knowledge of academic vocabulary and difficulties in identifying and manipulating this type of lexis. We believe it is necessary to integrate academic language skills, including academic vocabulary, in high school curriculum and introduce Serbian language as a subject at university level.


2012 ◽  
Vol 56 (4) ◽  
pp. 998-1021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miguel ángel Jiménez-Crespo ◽  
Maribel Tercedor

Localization is increasingly making its way into translation training programs at university level. However, there is still a scarce amount of empirical research addressing issues such as defining localization in relation to translation, what localization competence entails or how to best incorporate intercultural differences between digital genres, text types and conventions, among other aspects. In this paper, we propose a foundation for the study of localization competence based upon previous research on translation competence. This project was developed following an empirical corpus-based contrastive study of student translations (learner corpus), combined with data from a comparable corpus made up of an original Spanish corpus and a Spanish localized corpus. The objective of the study is to identify differences in production between digital texts localized by students and professionals on the one hand, and original texts on the other. This contrastive study allows us to gain insight into how localization competence interrelates with the superordinate concept of translation competence, thus shedding light on which aspects need to be addressed during localization training in university translation programs.


2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 35-40
Author(s):  
Monika Łodej

Research indicates that L2 reading competence is influenced by L1 reading ability, L2 proficiency, and L2 decoding competence. The present study investigates the significance of two variables, regularity and frequency, in relation to English as a Foreign Language (EFL) reading accuracy in students with a transparent L1. Fifteen 6th grade students in their sixth year of regular instruction in English took part in this study. Their mother tongue is Polish whereas English is their foreign language; thus, their language competence in L1 and L2 differs substantially. The research design followed Glusko (1979), Plaut (1996), and Wang and Koda (2007). There are four sets of real words. Two features of real words are manipulated for regularity and frequency. The study reveals that both conditions of script, regularity and transparency, affect reading accuracy in EFL students. However, the dimension of regularity is a stronger predicator of accuracy than the frequency with which the students encounter a word. From the pedagogical perspective, the collected data supports the use of structured reading instructions in the EFL classroom in order to restrain negative transfer of L1 to L2 reading strategies.


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