Learner Corpus Research in EAP:
Past, Present and Future
Lynne Flowerdew
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Outline of talk
• Research in:
– English for General Academic Purposes (EGAP)
– English for Specific Academic Purposes (ESAP)
• Some core issues
• Current and future directions
Focus on academic writing
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EGAP learner corpus research: key areas
• Epistemic modality/stance markers
• Tense and aspect
• Vocabulary, collocations and phraseology
(also connectors)
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ESAP Learner Corpus Research
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ESAP learner corpus research: key areas
•Lexical bundles
•Keywords to phraseology
•Metadiscoursal expressions
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Some core issues
• Starting point for analysis:
–derived from existing framework or inductive
corpus-based vs. corpus-driven (Tognini Bonelli)
–bottom-up vs. top-down
•Choice of reference/control corpus
• Explanation for data (taking into account
variables)
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EGAP Learner Corpus Research
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Epistemic modality/stance markers
Argumentative essays, e.g. ICLE sub-corpora
•governed by epistemic modality
•overlaps with Hyland’s (1999) stance markers
hedges, boosters, self-mentions, attitude markers
• difficult for students to master complex interplay
between hedges and boosters
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1.
Learner Corpus Research (L1 & L2)
Doubt and certainty (Hyland & Milton 1997)
• 2 corpora, 500,000 words each
Learner
Native-speaker
150 essays by
HK students for
A Level UofEng
A level scripts
British school leavers
of similar age + education
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1.Learner Corpus Research
• Procedure
– Inventory of 75 of most frequently occurring
epistemic lexical devices from:
• Holmes’ (1983) analysis of ‘learned’ sections of
Brown & LOB
• Research literature on modality (Coates 1983)
• Reference grammars (Quirk et al. 1972)
– 50 sentences of each item(cut-off point, cf.
Altenberg)
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1.
Learner Corpus Research
• Key findings
– Chinese learners: limited range of devices,
inappropriate strong convictions
e.g. As I know, I am quite sure some parents are
willing to pay… vs. native-speaker:
e.g. On balance, it would seem that the only real
solution to the problem would be to….
• Explanation
– due to lack of awareness of socio-pragmatic norms
– Teaching induced effect – tutorial schools
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2.
Learner Corpus Research (L1 & L2)
Impact of culture on use of stance exponents
in GRICLE (Hatzitheodorou & Mattheoudakis 2011)
•2 sub-corpora of around 200,000 words each
Learner
Native-speaker
Greek component
of ICLE (timed)
LOCNESS (not all timed)
+ PELCRA (timed)
(cf. Ädel 2008)
•Procedure
–Focus on adverbials (hedges, boosters, attitude
markers)
–Hyland’s (2005) categories of metadiscourse as
reference point
–own list (e.g. happily)
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2.
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Learner Corpus Research (L1 & L2)
Results
– Motivation for research: initial reading (Greek
learners preference for wide range of boosters)
– Preliminary observations borne out by results: Greek
learners more emphatic + extensive use of boosters
• Explanation (with reference to cultural factors)
– Consulted 1.7 million word Hellenic National Corpus
– Culturally induced from the Greek, authoritative style
of writing
NB unlike Hyland & Milton’s (1997) study and GRICLE (2011)
study, McEnery & Kifle (2002) found overuse of hedging in
argumentative writing of Eritrean students
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3. Learner Corpus Research (L2 vs. L2)
Use of modal and reporting verbs in
expression of stance (Neff et al. 2003)
• Corpora
– 5 learner sub- corpora from ICLE (French, Spanish,
Italian, Dutch, German)
290,000 words in French …. 195,000 in Spanish
– LOCNESS (150,000 words) as native reference
corpus
•Focus on:
modal verbs (can, could, may, might, must)
9 reporting verbs (suggest, argue etc.; among 12 most
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frequently used in preliminary analysis)
3. Learner Corpus Research (L2 vs. L2)
• Results & explanations
– can overused by all groups of non-native writers
(massive overuse in Italian and Spanish sub-corpora)
• L1 transfer involving meaning, typology and
sociolinguistic norms
– Typology
Se puede apreciar un contraste entre...
It can be appreciated a contrast between…
– Positive politeness strategies
The problems that we can find…
• Developmental factors may play a role
(cf. Aijmer 2002; Gilquin & Paquot 2008)
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4.
ESAP Learner Corpus Study
Stance options in data-description task in
statistics (Wharton 2012)
• Corpus: 40 student texts (4705 words)
• Procedures
– Inductive using Nvivo
(small set of data in under-researched genre)
– Examination and reexamination of texts
• Common Content Assertions (5 propositions)
• Common Stances in Assertions (bare, hedged,
vague, boosted, reader-inclusive)
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ESAP Learner Corpus Research
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ESAP learner corpus research: key areas
•Lexical bundles
•Keywords to phraseology
•Metadiscoursal expressions
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1. Learner Corpus Research: keywords …. phraseology
Function keywords in academic writing
(Lee & Chen 2009)
•2 apprentice corpora
–Chinese undergraduate dissertations (Eng. Lang.)
–Comparable L1 student corpus from BAWE
–Both compared with expert corpus of journal articles
from same field
•Key finding (article usage)
e.g. the students in this study…
students will be more motivated if….
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2. ESAP Corpus Research: keywords …. phraseology
Content keywords in Problem-Solution text
(Flowerdew 2008)
•2 corpora of around 225,000 words each
– Learner corpus of recommendation-based reports
– Expert corpus of professional reports
(analogue rather than exemplar corpus;Tribble 2002)
•Key finding
– Overuse of superordinate terms in topic sentences
e.g. find a solution to the problem…
Over-reliance on rubrics from assignment (‘lexical teddy
bears’, Hasselgren 1994)
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Cf. Paquot’s (2010) six interlanguage features
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Limited lexical repertoire
Lack of register awareness
Unidiomatic phraseology
Semantic misuse (problem vs. issue or question)
Overuse of connective devices
Strings of connectives in subject-initial position
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ESAP Learner Research: metadiscourse
Hyland’s (2005) model of metadiscourse
•Interactive:
guide reader through text using transitions etc.
•Interactional:
involves reader in text using hedges, boosters,
attitude markers
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1.
ESAP Corpus Research: Interactional
Anticipatory “it” in student and published
writing (Hewings & Hewings 2002)
•2 corpora of business writing
– Student corpus: 15 MBA dissertations by NNS
(123,633 words)
– Comparable corpus: 28 papers from three different
business studies journals (203,389 words )
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1.
ESAP Corpus Research: Interactional
• Procedures
– Excluded “it” when propositional content, or textorganising role
– four categories derived from data
• Hedges, attitude markers, emphatics, attribution
– Results normalised per 1,000 words
• Results & explanations
– Learners made less use of “it” clauses in hedging
– Greater use of “it” in other 3 categories
– Speculate: more overt effort at persuasion on
account of readership
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2.
ESAP Corpus Research: Interactive
Use of we in a learner corpus of reports (Luzon 2009)
•2 corpora
– Learner corpus of reports written by Spanish
engineering students
– Corpus for comparison (analogue): engineering RAs
•Key finding
– Lack of awareness of conventions for we
e.g. With this paper we want to give you some recommendations
We are going to consider the advantages and …
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Current and future directions
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Very recent initiatives in Learner Corpora
• Aggregate vs. individual data (cf. Hong article
on software in Tono et al. 2012, ICCI project)
• Longitudinal studies (Meunier & Littre 2013)
• More individual metadata
– MUCH longitudinal corpus (Eriksson et al.)
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Very recent initiatives in Learner Corpora
• Domain- and genre-specific
–VESPA (Paquot) , CALE (Callies)
• Linguistic theories (genre, SFL,
pragmatics, politeness strategies,
cognitive linguistics etc.
•Computer-mediated, synchronous &
asynchronous (McDonald et al. 2013)
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Thank you
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