This corpus-based study compares L1-English and L1-Chinese undergraduate students' use of lexical bundles in English argumentative essays, and identifies the most common bundle misuses in L2 student writing. Data consist of two corpora of student-produced argumentative essays: 101 high-rated essays written by L1-English students and 105 high-rated essays written by L1-Chinese students. Using Biber's (Biber et al., 1999; Biber et al., 2004) structural and functional taxonomy, we compared the forms and functions of four-word bundles used by L1-English and L1-Chinese university students. Findings indicate that L2 students not only use substantially more bundle types and tokens than L1 writers, but the structural and functional patterns of bundles also differ. While L1 writers' bundles consist of mostly noun and preposition phrases, L2 students use significantly more verb phrase (clausal) bundles. Results also show that L2 student writers use significantly more stance bundles than L1 writers. In addition, most of the misused bundles in the L2 writers' essays pertain to grammatical mistakes, particularly with articles and prepositions. We conclude with some pedagogical implications for ESL composition.
This genre-oriented analysis explores the rhetorical structure and linguistic features of EAP classroom lessons. The analysis is based on a corpus of 24 EAP classroom lessons taught by highly experienced IEP teachers. Using a focused Swalesian move analysis combined with corpus-based methods, the study examines the rhetorical moves in different phases of EAP lessons and frequent lexical phrases used to signal discourse organization in each phase. In addition, four EAP teachers were interviewed in order to gain insider perspectives into their discursive practices. The analysis reveals that EAP lessons consist of three major phases, each with three distinct moves, and with varying linguistic realizations. Findings suggest that these experienced EAP teachers have generated and internalized a stable lesson frame in response to the recurrent situation of providing meaningful, activity-driven, and logically organized EAP lessons. The paper concludes with a discussion of the power of Swales's move analysis in studying classroom lessons as well as implications for EAP teacher education.
This study reports findings of an analysis of the citation practices of L2 undergraduate students in the context of first-year writing (FYW). Data consist of a corpus of 100 source-based research papers written by L2 students in a FYW course. Taking a multi-perspective analytical approach, we examine L2 undergraduate students' citation practices in terms of surface forms, rhetorical functions, and writer stance. Results indicate that L2 students use a restricted range of reporting structures, and they primarily use sources for attribution function to display their knowledge of the topics. Furthermore, as opposed to taking a strong positive or negative position, the findings show that L2 student writers mainly adopt a non-committal stance by merely acknowledging or distancing themselves from cited materials, suggesting that L2 students are inclined to show deference to the perceived authority of published sources. We conclude with pedagogical options for enhancing L2 university students' citation practices.
This study reports findings of a comparative analysis of the use of (un)attended this/these in high- and low-rated L2 university student argumentative essays. Specifically, the analysis systematically compares the frequencies, antecedents, verb patterns, and attending noun stance options of (un)attended this/these in 174 assessed essays written by Chinese ESL undergraduate students in a first-year composition course, grouped into high- and low-rated essays. Results reveal that high- and low-rated L2 students use this/these in different ways to establish rhetorical cohesion in building their arguments. Both groups tend to employ attended this/these more frequently, but the low-rated essays include significantly more unattended this/these. The low group relies more on copular verbs and phrasal antecedents, but the high group prefers lexical verbs and clausal/extended discoursal referents; however, with unattended this/these, both groups use copular and lexical verbs equally and the antecedents are predominantly clausal/extended discoursal referents. These two groups of student writers also select different types of stance options for attending nouns, especially in relation to the antecedent referents to which this/these plus noun indicates. We conclude with pedagogical implications for ESL composition instruction.
Learner corpus research involves studying large collections of data to achieve a certain degree of representativeness, which means that it is often not doable to examine a full set of data qualitatively. An important issue, then, is how to select a subset for further qualitative analysis. This study illustrates a selection method, taking quantitative results as a starting-point, for a qualitative study of a lexicogrammatical pattern. Three configurations are examined, involving not only statistically significant differences (overuse and under-use), but also similarities (equal use). What is studied is the anticipatory it pattern ("It is however important to interpret these findings with caution") in apprentice writing in linguistics by learners and native speakers of English. The method yielded 463 tokens in 62 learner and 82 native-speaker essays. The research questions were (i) What are the connections between the selected subpatterns of anticipatory it and specific rhetorical moves? and (ii) Are there indications of learner behaviour in the connections between subpatterns and rhetorical moves? Most subpatterns were found to be specialised for a few moves. The two groups mostly used the subpatterns for the same rhetorical work, but the learners used important and clear subpatterns for a greater range of moves.