Stance in the Introductory it Construction: A Comparative Study of Argumentative Writing by Korean EFL and English L1 Students

The construction of an introductory it followed by an extraposed subject has been found to be frequently used in academic prose. Recent research has focused particularly on rhetorical motivations for the construction and demonstrated that it provides the writer with a means of marking authorial stance while concealing its source. This study investigated how Korean EFL university students used this rhetorical device in their argumentative writing to encode stance, in comparison with a group of English L1 students. Results showed that while the Korean EFL writers used the construction far more frequently to mark attitudinal stance than their native speaker counterparts, its use was more limited in terms of lexical choice and the rhetorical function of depersonalized stance marking. Based on these findings, this paper offers suggestions on how to help EFL writers acquire the multi-faceted usage of the construction

The Use of This + Noun by Korean EFL Writers: Focusing on Shell Nouns and Nominalization

The study investigated the use of this + noun as a textual device for creating cohesion and constructing stance in corpora of argumentative essays in English written by Korean university students and native speaker students. Focusing on the uses and distributions of shell nouns and nominalizations within the demonstrative construction, the study examined how they differed in the two corpora. In addition, the study identified major patterns of inappropriate use of this + noun by the Korean student writers. Results showed that while the Korean university students made much less use of this + noun for text reference, their use of shell nouns was less successful in creating cohesion and incorporating stance in ways valued in academic writing. Moreover, the limited range of general nouns used in the construction indicates the Korean writers use of shell nouns was often habitual rather than strategic. This paper concludes by discussing pedagogical implications of the findings

Beyond 5G URLLC Evolution: New Service Modes and Practical Considerations

Ultra-reliable low latency communications (URLLC) arose to serve industrial IoT (IIoT) use cases within the 5G. Currently, it has inherent limitations to support future services. Based on state-of-the-art research and practical deployment experience, in this article, we introduce and advocate for three variants: broadband, scalable and extreme URLLC. We discuss use cases and key performance indicators and identify technology enablers for the new service modes. We bring practical considerations from the IIoT testbed and provide an outlook toward some new research directions.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Wireless Commun. Ma

Web-based Concordancing and Other Reference Resources as a Problem-solving Tool for L2 Writers: A Mixed Methods Study of Korean ESL Graduate Students’ Reference Resource Consultation

The present study investigated how 6 Korean graduate students at a Canadian university used a suite of multiple Web-based reference resources (named i-Conc), consisting of concordancers and dictionaries, as a cognitive tool for solving linguistic problems encountered over the course of completing—in English, their second language (L2)—an academic writing assignment for one of their graduate courses. Using a mixed methods design employing surveys, interviews, screen recordings, a query tracking log, and detailed case studies, the thesis provides rich descriptions of (a) the processes, and outcomes of the 6 participants’ uses of i-Conc as a reference tool for their writing authentic academic tasks and (b) their perceptions of the suite as a means of writing assistance. Overall, i-Conc served as an intellectual partner that aided the participants in strategically solving lexical and grammatical problems during their writing assignments: About 70 % of the problems they addressed with i-Conc resulted in correct text formulations or revisions. The different resources in i-Conc were each shown to have unique functions for which they were best suited, suggesting that concordancing may optimally be consulted in combination with, not in place of, other resources. The benefits of consulting i-Conc for L2 writing went beyond simply helping the participants’ problem solving to potentially facilitating their language acquisition. Input-feedback interactions with the reference suite prompted the participants to carry out robust meaning negotiations in their efforts to verify their intuitive hypotheses and to venture beyond their current linguistic repertoires. Participants acted on these potential benefits somewhat differently. Case studies and cross-case analyses demonstrated complex interactions between the participants’ individual traits and goals, the educational contexts for which they were writing, and their perceptions and evaluations of particular affordances provided by i-Conc. These findings imply that to build meaningful cognitive partnerships with reference tools, L2 writers should receive progressive guidance on principles for effective reference resource consultation along with training in strategies for using different types of resources, contingent on individuals’ abilities and ongoing needs arising from their macro and micro contexts for writing and for language learning.Ph

Corpus Linguistics Research Trends from 1997 to 2016: A Co-Citation Analysis

Corpus linguistics is one of the fastest growing areas of linguistics because of its interface with neighboring academic disciplines and the data-processing capability of a large amount of empirical linguistic data. This study reviews research trends from the last two decades within the corpus linguistics fields. Specifically, the study applied systematic citation analysis procedures to summarize and identify the salient research themes and publications from citation-reference data of peer-reviewed research articles published and indexed in the Web of Science (WoS) between 1997 and 2016. The co-citation analysis of 5,600 research articles and their 172,352 references indicated that, over the four time spans of five years, the corpus linguistics research articles have cited works ranging from general linguistics journal titles to specialized journal titles and individual books. In terms of the research themes of corpus linguistics, the topics of the linguistics research have rapidly changed over the time span. More recently, the development of web-based large monitor corpora and corpus analysis software has contributed significantly to the dynamic and productive interaction of research in the discipline. This may indicate the evolving and juvenile nature of corpus linguistics and its possibility of growing into a multi-disciplinary field. Although there are exceptions to all of the research patterns found in the co-citation analysis, the current study also discusses the most up-to-date research trends and the future directions of corpus linguistics