The Development of Collocations as Constructions in L2 Writing

Cross-sectional and longitudinal learner corpus studies utilizing phraseological, frequency, and association strength approaches to phraseological unit identification have shown how the use of phraseological units varies across proficiency levels and develops over time. However, these methods suffer from several limitations, such as a reliance on native speaker intuition, a limited focus on contiguous word sequences, and a neglect of part of speech information in association strength calculation. This study seeks to address these limitations by defining lexical collocations as constructions (henceforth “collconstructions”) within the framework of Construction Grammar and investigating their cross-sectional variation and longitudinal development in two corpora of L2 writing. The cross-sectional corpus consisted of beginner and intermediate EFL learner texts assessed for overall writing proficiency, while the longitudinal corpus contained freewrites produced by ESL learners over the course of one year. Contiguous and non-contiguous adjective-noun, verb-noun, and adverb-adjective collconstruction tokens were extracted from each learner text in the two learner corpora. Each learner text was assessed for multiple constructional and collostructional indices of collconstruction production. Constructional indices included type frequencies, token frequencies, and normalized entropy scores for each collconstruction category. Collostructional indices consisted of proportion scores for different categories of adjective-noun, adverb-adjective, and verb-noun collconstruction types and tokens based on covarying collexeme scores calculated using frequency information from an academic reference corpus. Variation across proficiency levels was evaluated both qualitatively and quantitatively. The qualitative analysis consisted of examining variation in the production of specific functional collconstruction subcategories from a Usage-based Second Language Acquisition perspective. The quantitative analysis consisted of the calculation of an ordinal logistic regression in order to determine whether any indices of collconstruction production were predictive of L2 writing quality. Longitudinal development at the group level was investigated through the use of linear mixed effects models. Development for individual learners was examined from a Dynamic Systems Theory perspective that focuses on the role of variability in language development as well as interconnected development for multiple indices of collconstruction production. This study has important implications for future research on L2 phraseology research and second language acquisition research as well as phraseology pedagogy

Assessing Collocational Competence: Insights Derived from Libyan Learners of English in an EFL Context

This paper aims to investigate the difficulties Libyan undergraduate university English major students have in the use of verb-noun and adjective-noun collocations by looking at their performance in free production. Furthermore, twelve verbs and twelve adjectives identified in this research were investigated in depth as part of their combinations. To achieve this aim, a 250-word academic writing task was used to collect data from fourth-year university students at Tripoli University. The data were analysed using AntConc 3.2.1w (Anthony, 2007). After extracting the learners’ collocations, four methods were used to determine the acceptability of learners’ collocations in terms of conforming to native-like use. They were: (1) the Oxford Collocations Dictionary (2009), (2) the online British National Corpus (3) consultations with two native speakers[1], and (4) the acceptability-of-collocations survey, which was used to triangulate the above three methods. Overall, the results from the academic writing data revealed that (1) verb-noun collocations were more difficult for the participants than adjective-noun collocations; and (2) the participants’ use of the twelve adjectives in adjective-noun collocations showed significantly more accuracy ratings compared to their use of the twelve verbs in verb-noun collocations. [1] According to Crystal (1997), the term native-speaker is used in the linguistic field to refer to “someone for whom a particular LANGUAGE is a ‘native language’ (also called ‘first language’, ‘mother-tongue’)”. The implication is the acquisition of this language has taken place since childhood. Therefore, it can be safely asserted that a native speaker possesses the most reliable intuition and for that reason has the best judgement of how the language is used, making him/her the most trusted kind of informant.

An investigation of noun frequencies in cohesive nominal groups

General purpose academic word lists, such as Coxhead’s (2000) academic word list, are widely used in the teaching English for Academic purposes. However, word frequencies in some micro-level aspects of academic discourse are yet to be determined, such as subject-specific word lists in some areas. This study has generated knowledge of noun frequencies in sentence transitions containing anaphoric lexical references to the preceding sentence. Investigating a corpus of approximately 5.6 million words of academic texts from the Social Sciences and Humanities has led to a list of 71 nouns most frequently used in cohesive nominal groups in these areas. This list was compiled with Antconc (Anthony, 2014) by examining eight syntactic structures containing an anaphoric determiner and noun. The list can be used alongside more general purpose lists to support L2 academic writing development. As well as the main list, two significant sub-lists have been identified: a list of items particularly useful for anaphoric references to a citation and a group of nouns that nominalise processes. Four frequently occurring nouns in the data have been identified as forming partitive constructions with a cohesive aspect enabling the writer to narrow or broaden the range of analysis in the writing. In addition, there is a proposed order in which the eight cohesive structures investigated could be introduced within an EAP syllabus

An Error Analysis of the Use of Lexical Collocations in the Academic Writing of Libyan EFL University Students

The main aim of this paper is to explore the difficulties Libyan undergraduate university English major students have in the use of verb-noun and adjective-noun collocations by looking at their performance in free production. Furthermore, twelve verbs and twelve adjectives[1] identified in this research were investigated in depth as part of their combinations. To achieve the main aim, a 250-word academic writing task was used to collect data from fourth-year university students at Tripoli University (the Department of English). The data was analysed using AntConc 3.2.1w (Anthony, 2007). After extracting the learners’ collocations, four methods were used to determine and judge the acceptability of learners’ collocations in terms of conforming to native-like use. They are: (1) the OCD (2009), (2) the online British National Corpus (3) consultations with two native speakers, and (4) the acceptability-of-collocations survey was used to triangulate the above three methods Findings from the academic writing data reveal that: (1) three broad categories of errors were identified in the erroneously produced verb-noun and adjective-noun collocations in the LLC: (i) grammatical errors, (ii) lexical errors and (iii) errors related to usage; and (2)  Furthermore, these categories were classified into sixteen and twelve error types in verb-noun and adjective-noun collocations respectively such as wrong choice of verb, wrong choice of adjective, wrong choice of noun, determiner errors, preposition errors, number errors, wrong word order errors, word form errors, usage category errors, intensifier errors and wrong register errors. [1] The twelve verbs are do, provide, acquire, gain, enhance, make, offer, take, give, get, have and require. The twelve adjectives are good, academic, high, higher, modern, current, practical, specific, basic, general, great and special

Collocates of 'great' and 'good' in the Corpus of Contemporary American English and Indonesian EFL textbooks

Previous studies have proven some discrepancies between language presented in EFL textbooks and the real use of English. This fact contradicts the teaching materials’ aim, which is intended to equip the learners to be communicatively competent. This study then investigates the use of adjectives, limited to ‘great’ and ‘good’ in terms of the frequent and strong co-occurrences, i.e., collocations, in a general reference corpus of Standard English to be compared with those in Indonesian EFL textbooks. The data were collected from both the corpus and the textbooks, but the analyses in the textbooks were generated based on the Mutual Information (MI) score of the collocates. Based on the comparison, it is evident that there are some similarities between adjective use in the textbooks and the corpus in terms of verb collocates of the adjectives. The mismatches, however, are quite remarkable, especially in terms of the variability of adverb collocates and the absence of prominent noun collocates in the textbooks. Pedagogically speaking, these results should be taken into consideration in writing the textbooks to enhance the quality of the language content prepared for the learners in the EFL context

Raising awareness around writers' voice in academic discourse : an analysis of writers' (in)visibility

This paper aims to contribute to the study of the concept of writer's visibility inspired by approaches to the analysis of identity in written discourse (see Ivanic 1998, Charles 1999 and John 2005). The way medical academic writers selfrepresent themselves in their research articles can be seen in terms of a gradable visibility cline crafted and constrained by the academic genre expectations of these texts (Swales and Feak 2004; Stock and Eik-Nes 2016). Traditionally, authorial visibility has been studied within frameworks such as evaluation, authorial voice and stance. Still, there is no framework as yet been proposed that binds together possible textual realisations that can be considered as visibility features in academic written texts. This paper conducts a study of 40 medical research articles that reveal different manifestations of the authors' presence. A cline is proposed that encompasses different lexico-grammatical realisations such as self-mentions, passive constructions and non-animated subjects followed by active verbs. These features can be interpreted as authorial voice realisations that allow us to measure or grade writers' visibility and its rhetorical implication in the text

A staircase model for teaching grammar for EAP writing in the IEP: freshman composition and the noun phrase

The interface of corpus linguistics and second language writing has led to extensive corpus-based research focusing on a description of academic writing. The overwhelming majority of this research, however, has focused on scholarly writing, which may not be a valid model for novice writing. This thesis proposes the teaching of second language writing should be informed by a staircase model of writing progression which aims instruction at the level of student writing. For English for academic purposes writers in intensive English programs, this target is first year undergraduate writing, specifically freshman composition as it is taught in North American higher education contexts. This study specifically compares the frequency of the noun phrase in freshman composition writing and scholarly writing with two main aims: to provide empirical evidence of the differences between the two levels of writing and to contribute to a description of freshman composition writing. The findings from this comparison clearly demonstrate that noun phrases in both levels of writing employ a discernible pattern, and there are distinct differences between those patterns. A critical need form pedagogical materials to focus more on phrasal structures in general, but especially nounphrases, is evident

Co-varying verbs and adjectives of it-extraposed constructions with to-infinitive clauses in academic discourse: a quantitative corpus-driven study

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The Frequency Effect on the Acquisition of –ING Form Structure by Indonesia L2 Learners

Even though –ing form is acquired earlier based on the natural order hypotheses of L2 morpheme acquisition, it remains difficult for L2 learners to acquire mainly for those who are not frequently exposed to the targeted linguistic feature inputs. A number of investigations were already carried out to find out the frequency effect on the acquisition of verbs as a complement (gerund and infinitive), yet this paper was designed to identify the role of frequency on the acquisition of English –ing form structure by Indonesia L2 learners. Participants consisted of four groups from different semester (1,3,5, and 7). Each semester also indicated various language exposure experienced by L2 learners. Each group comprised 10 participants. Data were collected by employing the writing test to elicit –ing form production including interview and observation. The coding of students’ composition was carried out to determine the correct productions—which were scored to interpret frequency effect on students’ acquisition and their misconceptions in composing a sentence containing –ing forms. The findings revealed that the rate of frequency inputs of –ing form structure accessed by learners fairly contributed to students’ constructional schemas in accordance with the high score. Each word possessed various frequency inputs of distribution which then led them to any deviant production.  In addition, intra-lingual errors were responsible for any misconception perceived by learners (overgeneralization, ignorance of rule restriction, and false concepts hypothesized).