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Adverbial markers and tone in L1 and L2 students' writing
Abstract
In the past several decades, analyses of large corpora of published written texts in English have allowed for new insights into the meanings, uses, and functions of adverbials of all types. However, far less is known about the uses of adverbials in second language (L2) text. This paper presents a quantitative analysis of deictic, modifying, and intensifying adverbials, as well as several semantic classes of adverb clauses, and compares their median frequency rates in academic essays written by first-year NS and academically-advanced NNS students. The analysis focuses on NS and NNS uses of twelve semantic and syntactic classes of adverbials. The greatest pronounced differences between the essays of NSs and those of NNSs are identified in the frequency rates of amplifiers and emphatic adverbs, both of which are very common in informal conversations. Because for most NNS academically-oriented learners, the greatest amount of exposure to L2 usage takes place in conversational discourse, the frequency rates of adverb clauses in L2 texts is determined by the frequency of a particular clause type in the conversational genre, i.e. the more common certain types of adverb clauses in conversational discourse, the greater the likelihood of their high frequency rates in L2 academic essays.
... These studies show close similarities; however, it seems that some studies outperformed as they assured that the writers have the same educational level whether they are L1 or L2 users of English. Field and Oi (1992) and Hinkel (2003), for instance, carried out their study among students with English-native and non-Englishnative backgrounds. It seems that these studies take the academic experience as an indicating factor into account. ...
... Having concluded the overuse of these devices in Cantonese essays, they pointed out the importance of presenting conjunction with their real syntactic and semantic features. Hinkel (2003) exclusively explored the concessive adverbs in texts written by students in five universities with five different background languages and Americans were one of those groups. The results proved the significant use of conceiving adverbs in Americans' essays. ...
... It was also shown that first-year learners are more likely to use adversatives such as 'however' and 'though' which are more flexible while avoiding employing adversatives like 'nevertheless' , 'in contrast, or 'on the other hand' that make a strong concession. Hinkel (2003), reported that concessive markers like 'although' , 'even though, 'while' , and 'whereas' were rarely employed in the writing of first-year natives and academically-advanced non-natives. She explained that "concession clauses are syntactically and semantically advanced subordinate constructions", and are rarely found in the texts developed by both natives and non-natives. ...
The present study was aimed at a diachronic investigation of conjunction as a grammatical cohesive device in ELT research articles. A total number of 100 research articles concentrating on teaching writing skills in the EFL context, and were released in two extremes of 1980–82 and 2020–22 were selected. The caution was taken to choose the papers which were written by expert English writers. Working within a descriptive-analytical framework, the type and frequency of conjunctions used in the articles were examined. The results depicted that the frequency of conjunctions increased at the expense of dropping in their variation. Having looked more closely, we found that particular conjunctions grew in use while the others fell out of the writers' favor. This pattern was also visible in the studies in which non-English writers' research articles were examined. This change, therefore, is attributed to the development of the speech community and the rise of non-English writers. Eventually, we concluded that it might be better to revise our material in ESP classes to adapt to the changes in a speech community.
... The English adverbials have been studied by several linguists such as Adejare and Adejare (1996); Aliyu (2001); Boadi, Grieve and Nwankwo (1968); Christopherson and Sandved (1980); Gleason (1965); Hinkel (2002). These studies have looked at various categories of adverbials in conjunction with other grammatical features and aspects, transformations, mobility and sequence of occurrence. ...
... These studies have looked at various categories of adverbials in conjunction with other grammatical features and aspects, transformations, mobility and sequence of occurrence. However, many of these scholars dwelt on the descriptive studies of adverbials (Boadi, Grieve and Nwankwo 1968;Halliday and Fawcett 1987;Quirk and Greenbaum 1973;Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech and Svartvik 1985;Aremo 2004;Greenbaum and Qurik 2005) without applying these studies to texts while scholars such as Fabusuyi (1986); Ugray and Ujvarosi (2003); Hinkel (2002); Jacobson (1964,1975,1978); Michaels (1992); Ogura, Bond and Ikehara (1994); Olagoke (1975Olagoke ( , 1979 carried out various research on English adverbials in diverse academic essays, medianewspapers/magazines, conversational discourse and other special areas such as adverbial functions in English verse and in machine translation. Each of these studies has its own specification and goals which make it distinct from others. ...
... On the other hand, Jacobson's (1978) subsequent investigation included semantic and pragmatic components that classified certain types of adverbials according to their meanings. Hinkel (2002) however observed that Jacobson's semantic classification of adverbials was based on broad and somewhat indeterminate and subjective principle that group adverbials into such categories as those of degree, frequency, quality etc and their prototypical pragmatic and often over-lapping functions. We need to state that this study favours such categorization as found in Jacobson (1978). ...
The study investigated the acquisition of adjuncts by students in selected tertiary institutions in Southwestern, Nigeria with a view to examining the problems encountered by students in the usage of these structural components and its effects on their mastery of English. The data for the study were drawn from an essay writing assignment given to selected 675 first year students across nine tertiary institutions in Southwestern Nigeria. Stratified random sampling technique was adopted in selecting the participants. Seventy-five students were drawn from each institution using purposive random sampling procedure. The findings revealed that out of the 12,573 instances of adjuncts, process adjuncts accounted for 6,844 (54.43%), place adjuncts 4,066 (32.34%) and time adjuncts 1,663 (13.23%). In spite of the high frequency rate of process adjuncts, there were deviant usages such as inappropriate choice of process adjuncts, semantic and orthographic errors and some instances of the influence of Nigerian languages on their usage of place and time adjuncts. The study concluded that the students' poor mastery of adjuncts has a lot of influence on their communicative repertoire. The study is therefore, a focus for the teachers of English and curriculum designers of the use of English course in Nigerian tertiary institutions.
... The latter point echoes analyses of the expression of stance in argumentative texts by NNS which found that the use of boosters (amplifiers), together with other stance-taking strategies, enable students to develop a stronger voice (Fallas Escobar & Chaves Fernández, 2017: 118). Hinkel (2003) has argued in a similar vein, stating that the patterning 2. It is crucial to note that the terms "deviation", "difference", "divergence", or "non-target-like", as well as the notion of what is expected, are not used to indicate deficiencies on the part of NNS but to refer to statistical or quantitative differences. As such, these phrases are used descriptively and neither teleologically nor in a sense that implies value-judgements. of adverbs in data coming from NNS with Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Indonesian language backgrounds mirrored the frequencies in conversational style. ...
... As such, these phrases are used descriptively and neither teleologically nor in a sense that implies value-judgements. of adverbs in data coming from NNS with Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Indonesian language backgrounds mirrored the frequencies in conversational style. Hinkel (2003) interpreted this to indicate that learners used a colloquial style rather than a more appropriate formal style due to a limited lexical repertoire (2003: 1058). ...
... Despite providing relevant insights into the use of adjective amplifiers by NNS, the variety of L1 learner populations investigated is rather limited, focusing predominantly on French, German, and Dutch learners; only Hinkel (2003) focused on learners with non-Indo-European language backgrounds. Furthermore, all comparative studies that have investigated adjective amplification among NS and NNS have relied on mono-or bivariate statistics and were thus not able to control for confounding factors. ...
This paper analyzes the use of very as an adjective amplifier by native speakers and advanced learners of English with diverse language backgrounds based on the International Corpus of Learner English (ICLE) and the Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays (LOCNESS). The study applies Multifactorial Prediction and Deviation Analysis Using Regression/Random Forests (MuPDARF) to find differences between native speakers and advanced learners and evaluate which factors contribute to learners’ non-target-like use of very . The analysis finds language background and adjective-specific differences in the use of very between learners and native speakers. It shows that collocational preferences of specific adjective types are the most important factor, which is interpreted to show that differences between native speakers and learners are predominantly dependent upon the collocational profiles of individual adjective types. This finding supports approaches that focus on teaching collocations and contextualizing word use.
... Style adverbs are employed to comment on the manner of presenting information. They are usually used to strengthen the truth-value of a proposition or claim (Hinkel, 2003). ...
... Style adverbs reflect the comment on the manner of presenting information. They serve to strengthen the truth-value of a proposition or claim (Hinkel, 2003). The findings suggest that Anglo-American writers overall favor the use of style adverbs. ...
... Thus, in the light of these findings it can be concluded that native and non-native academic writers employ different strategies in conveying authorial stance in their writings. These results are rather similar to those obtained in previous studies (Melander, Swales, & Fredrickson, 1997;Martín-Martín, 2002;Hinkel, 2003;Kafes, 2009;Chang & Schleppegrell, 2011;Çakır, 2011;Çandarlı, 2012;Ülker Eser, 2012;Önder Özdemir & Longo, 2014;Uysal, 2014;Yağız & Demir, 2014, 2015 comparing different scientific communities. ...
... Meanwhile, some researchers focused on the effect of mother language on conjunction use. Hinkel (2003), investigated the concessive adverbs in 569 essays written by speakers of five languages of American English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Indonesian. The non-native speakers were advanced English speakers. ...
... They also pointed out that first-year students tended to use adversatives that are more flexible like 'however' and 'though' while avoid using of adversatives that make a strong concession such as 'nevertheless', 'in contrast' or 'on the other hand'. Hinkel (2003), found out that concessive markers such as 'although', 'even though', 'while', and 'whereas' were rarely used in the writing of first-year NS and academically-advanced NNS students. She states that "because concession clauses are syntactically and semantically advanced subordinate constructions", are rarely used in both groups of NS and NNS. ...
... However, such hyperbolic and inflated style can be damaging to L2 writers with respect to the evaluations of their writing because it can create an impression of "unnatural" communication particularly in the case of beginning writers. Hinkel (2002Hinkel ( , 2003a has come to a similar conclusion that L2 writers often produce formal written prose that appears to be overstated with many exaggerated claims due to the comparative prevalence of intensifiers and exaggeratives in contexts where hedging devices would seem to be more appropriate. ...
... Persian learners of English because numerous studies have pointed to the fact that a lack of necessary skills in constructing formal academic text places NNS university degree-bound students at a great disadvantage when they compete for grades and academic achievement in the same courses and in competition with NS students (e.g., Dudley-Evans & St. John, 1998;Hinkel, 1997Hinkel, , 2002Hinkel, , 2003aHinkel, , 2003bHolmes, 1984Holmes, , 1988Johns, 1997;Jordan, 1997). Hinkel (2005, p. 48) emphasizes that teachers who are responsible for teaching the importance of hedging in L2 academic writing need to be persistent and consistent in their instruction "because the need to hedge propositions and claims to show an appropriate amount of hesitation and uncertainty in writing is a textual feature more specific to the Anglo-American rhetorical tradition than to others". ...
Different constructs of Sociocultural Theory (SCT) are so interwoven
that providing a separate account of them does not seem to be easy.
However, the approach of separating its constructs has been adopted in
literature during the previous years (Ellis, 2008). The researchers in
this paper try to follow the same approach, and to provide a more or
less comprehensive account of the key construct of mediation, different
types of mediation and their implication in second language
acquisition.
Keywords: Private speech, Symbolic mediation, Technology mediation,
Tool mediation.
... Furthermore, Hinkel (2003) investigated frequency differences across several adverbial domains including intensifying adverbs between L1 English speakers as well as L2 speakers with Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Indonesian language backgrounds. The results show that the patterning of adverbs in the learner data mirrored the frequencies of conversational style, thus indicating that learners used a colloquial style (rather than a more appropriate formal style) due to a limited lexical repertoire. ...
... What appears to be happening, especially with respect to the overuse of really, is that learners apply the collocational patterns they have encountered and appropriately applied in conversational discourse to the more formal genre of essay writing. This trend is indeed widely acknowledged and has been reported on for more than two decades (see, for instance, Granger & Rayson, 1998or Hinkel, 2003 for a more recent study). From this perspective, the overuse of really, completely, and, although to a lesser degree, extremely is not an overuse per se, but the result of an unawareness of stylistic constraints on the use of amplifiers that are considered inappropriate in more formal written texts by native speakers. ...
This study aims to exemplify how language teaching can benefit from learner corpus research (LCR). To this end, this study determines how L1 and L2 English speakers with diverse L1 backgrounds differ with respect to adjective amplification, based on the International Corpus of Learner English (ICLE) and the Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays (LOCNESS). The study confirms trends reported in previous research, in that L1 speakers amplify adjectives more frequently than L2 English speakers. In addition, the analysis shows that L1 and L2 English speakers differ substantially with respect to the collocational profiles of specific amplifier types and with respect to awareness of genre-specific constraints on amplifier use, and that even advanced L2 speakers tend to be unaware of stylistic constraints on adjective amplification because they model their academic output based on patterns generalized from informal conversation. These findings are useful for language teaching in that the data can be used to target L1-specific difficulties experienced by L2 English speakers.
... However, such hyperbolic and inflated style can be damaging to L2 writers with respect to the evaluations of their writing because it can create an impression of "unnatural" communication particularly in the case of beginning writers. Hinkel (2002Hinkel ( , 2003a has come to a similar conclusion that L2 writers often produce formal written prose that appears to be overstated with many exaggerated claims due to the comparative prevalence of intensifiers and exaggeratives in contexts where hedging devices would seem to be more appropriate. ...
... Persian learners of English because numerous studies have pointed to the fact that a lack of necessary skills in constructing formal academic text places NNS university degree-bound students at a great disadvantage when they compete for grades and academic achievement in the same courses and in competition with NS students (e.g., Dudley-Evans & St. John, 1998;Hinkel, 1997Hinkel, , 2002Hinkel, , 2003aHinkel, , 2003bHolmes, 1984Holmes, , 1988Johns, 1997;Jordan, 1997). Hinkel (2005, p. 48) emphasizes that teachers who are responsible for teaching the importance of hedging in L2 academic writing need to be persistent and consistent in their instruction "because the need to hedge propositions and claims to show an appropriate amount of hesitation and uncertainty in writing is a textual feature more specific to the Anglo-American rhetorical tradition than to others". ...
... These expressive devices usually werecalled as amplifier (Quirk, 1985;Biber et. al., 1999;Hinkel, 2003) or intensifier ( P?rez-Paredes & D?ez-Bedmar, 2012). Partington (1993) describes that amplifier is a vehicle for impressing, praising, persuading, insulting, and generally influencing the listener's reception of the message. ...
... Biber et al. (1999) argue that too is describing the degree of a characteristic as excessive relative to the requirements of a particular set of circumstances (See Figure 1). The rest words such as quite, extremely, highly, completely, and fully are also included in Hinkel (2003) amplifier's formulations as scalar lexical intensity. The example of the usage of extremely and highly as scalar lexical intensity can be seen in the examples 1 and 2 below : 1 phosphoric acids, perhaps, so this control is extremely difficult if not at times impossible The functions of extremely and highly in example 1 and 2 are to stress the scalar lexical intensity of the adjective (i.e.,difficult, and sensitive). ...
... Критиком поділу прислівників на модифікатори предиката й модифікатори пропозиції виступив А. Цероніс (А.Tseronis), автор однієї з сучасних праць про англійський прислівник. Усі перелічені як субстанціональні прислівники він об'єднує терміном stance adverbs ʻприслівники настанови (ставлення)ʼ і вважає, що, попри їх мобільність і здатність вживатися на початку речення, вони стосуються не його всього, а лише дієслова [22]. ...
... Мотивовані прикметниками прислівники мети на -о (-е) // -ly (Adv fi n), як і причини, «належать до периферійних ділянок системи; це засвідчує невелика їх кількість, стилістична маркованісь і прагматична навантаженість» [11,22]), попри те, що властиві вони обом досліджуваним мовам, наприклад, навмисно, зумисне, марно, безцільно // intentionally, deliberately, vainly, aimlessly: [Жінка] безцільно блукає великим містом (І. Роздобудько); Марно зором блукаєш ген по верхів'ях Пірину (Р. ...
У статті розглядається проблема семантичної класифікації прислівників, яка залишається постійним об’єктом дискусій учених різних лінгвістичних течій. Систематизовано основні підходи українських та англійських мовознавців до аналізу функціонально-семантичних характеристик прислівників. Семантико-синтаксичний критерій, покладений в основу новітніх поглядів на природу морфологічних класів слів, дає змогу виділити 2 мегарозряди прислівникової лексики та виокремити підрозряди цих одиниць.
... 328). Exaggerations, which have been proved to be frequently used in non-native speakers' writings, must be avoided in scientific prose, in the view of the fact that these expressions make the text substantially unnatural (Alimorad & Sahragard, 2012;Hinkel, 2002Hinkel, , 2003Hinkel, , 2005. Hinkel (2002Hinkel ( , 2003 has laid emphasis on the fact that L2 writers often write formal prose with many inflated claims. ...
... Exaggerations, which have been proved to be frequently used in non-native speakers' writings, must be avoided in scientific prose, in the view of the fact that these expressions make the text substantially unnatural (Alimorad & Sahragard, 2012;Hinkel, 2002Hinkel, , 2003Hinkel, , 2005. Hinkel (2002Hinkel ( , 2003 has laid emphasis on the fact that L2 writers often write formal prose with many inflated claims. Comparing Persian texts with native ones, Alimorad and Sahragard (2012) have drawn the conclusion that Persian writers, like other non-native writers, employ intensifiers more frequently than native writers. ...
Abbas MONFARED, Allameh Tabataba'i University, Iran In recent years teacher cognition research has attracted a great amount of attention among different scholars. The current study aimed to discover what the most prevalent perspectives of English language center teachers in Iran are regarding teaching grammar and how much these perspectives are consistent with teachers' actual grammar teaching practices as well as current principles of grammar teaching. An adapted version of Burgess-Etherington questionnaire was used for data collection. Data were gathered from 120 teachers, and the classroom teaching practices of 10 of them were observed and video recorded for further analysis. The results of the study showed that the teachers mostly had a proper understanding of grammar teaching issues and its current principles. However, their actual practices did not always go together with their stated perspectives.
... Research on metadiscourse has shown that advanced learners and native speakers use more metadiscourse markers in terms of frequency and accuracy. For example, in comparing essays written by native and non-native English-speaking students, Hinkel (2003) found that native English-speaking students used fewer boosters and hedges than their peers. Wu (2007) found that high-rated essays showed a higher frequency of hedges and transitions than low-rated essays. ...
This study investigated the use and functions of metadiscourse markers in English as a foreign language (EFL) virtual classroom during the Covid-19 pandemic. The study examined which metadiscourse markers-interactive or interactional-were used more frequently and how they were employed in an EFL context. It explored two interactive metadiscourse resources (code glosses and evidentials) and two interactional metadiscourse resources (attitude and engagement markers). The study utilized a mixed-method approach, using Hyland's (2004) two-componential taxonomy, to analyze a corpus of 303,148 words from 35 online lectures (90 minutes each) delivered by three university instructors in the UAE. The Mann-Whitney U test was employed to determine any significant differences in the use of these resources and their subcategories. The results revealed that the three instructors used more interactional than interactive resources. The qualitative analysis showed that code glosses and evidentials were primarily used to manage the flow of information, provide elaboration on propositional content, and provide evidence to support arguments. They were also employed to achieve cohesion and logical coherence in online classrooms. In contrast, attitude and engagement markers were used to engage students and signal the instructors' attitudes toward their material and audience. The study concludes with pedagogical implications for EFL instructors, students, and syllabus designers to foster social justice and fairness in the online learning environment, ensuring all students feel valued and empowered in their educational journey.
... Additionally, a similar study by Hinkel (2003) was conducted in which he analyzed occurrence rates of deictic, modifying, and intensifying adverbials, as well as other semantic categories of adverb clauses. The findings revealed that there were notable distinctions between articles written by native speakers (NS) and non-native speakers (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Indonesian students) who mostly manifested in the use of amplifiers and emphatic adverbs, which were more prevalent in their writing compared to native students. ...
The use of stance adverbials in academic writing is of great significance as they have the ability to influence the rhetorical stance of the author. Within this domain, Adverbials that express certainty or doubt play a critical role in indicating the amount of commitment the authors have towards the information they communicate. This study presents findings from corpus-based research conducted to examine the use of adverbials expressing certainty and doubt by both native English authors and non-native Kurdish writers. The data for quantitative analysis is taken from two corpora: the Non-Native speaker corpus (KNNSC) and a subcorpus of academic discourse by English native speakers complied from CAEC (Cambridge Academic English Corpus) as a reference corpus. The analysis in both corpora was carried out using the Sketch Engine (SkE) software. This study addresses the significance of stance adverbials in academic writing, especially for Kurdish scholars, filling a gap in the literature and illuminating their role in reflecting cultural, linguistic, and identity. Author study focuses on the restricted comprehension of adverbial markers of stance in academic writing, especially in our EFL context . The study underlines the need of studying stance markers in non-native English authors, who struggle to communicate certainty and doubt in their research. The results obtained from data analysis in this research revealed a notable disparity in the frequency of the use of the aforementioned adverbials between the two groups of authors. In addition, the underuse of these adverbials by non-native Kurdish authors can be explained in terms of culture and the degree of the proficiency in the use of adverbials by the writers
... Thus, this paper offers further evidence of the ostensible differences in the use of intensifying adverbs and adjectives between native and non-native (especially ESL) speakers of English. Most of the studies on intensification between native and non-native varieties have been based on learner corpora (e.g., Gogovi, 1997;Hinkel, 2003;Hyland & Milton, 1997;Lorenz, 1999;Milton & Tsang, 1993;Pérez-Parades & Díez-Bedmar, 2012;Rutledge & Fitton, 2015) and in academic writing (e.g., Heidler, 2011;Hinkel, 2005;Ngula, 2015). Comparative studies of adverbial and adjectival use between native and non-native speakers have hardly considered other institutional contexts, such as the court and parliamentary interactions, which makes this study significant. ...
Studies on the use of adverbs and adjectives by nonnative speakers of English have largely focused on learner corpus. Using Hansards of British and Ghanaian parliamentary debates as data, this paper attempts to partly fill this gap by comparatively examining the use of adverbs and adjectives as intensifiers by British parliamentarians as first/native speakers of English and Ghanaian parliamentarians as second language/non-native speakers of English. Parliamentarians’ use of adverbial and adjectival intensification is consequent on parliamentary debates being truth and validity judgement, which includes speaker involvement and commitment. While both groups of MPs employ intensifiers to strengthen their convictions and arguments, it leads to exaggeration. However, the British parliamentarians use more complex adverbs and adjectives than their Ghanaian counterparts, who use simpler forms. The paper has implications for second language teaching and learning, the theory of nativisation and the characterisation of Ghanaian English.
... One possible explanation may be that Chinese student writers might acknowledge the function of causal relationships as an important linguistic device in helping them support arguments with a somewhat simplified account of the logical reasoning. Unlike reason-result combination, expert writers' greater preferences for concession clauses may serve to "present ideational content in a balanced fashion to provide evidence of the writer's credibility" [16], emphasize their need to avoid 'mybias' in argumentation, and position themselves with other-side arguments [47] or to introduce and concede the validity of a projected reader's view and interact with their readers [4][5]28]. ...
... Within the broadly quantitative approach we can also include studies of individual features such as adverbials (Biber & Finegan 1988;Bondi 2002;Charles in press;Conrad & Biber 2000;Hinkel 2003); reporting verbs (Charles 2006b(Charles , 2006cHyland 1999b;Thompson & Ye 1991) and that-clause patterns (Charles 2000(Charles , 2003(Charles , 2007Hyland & Tse 2005). An alternative, more qualitative approach is to investigate how stance is produced through the accumulation of writer choices throughout the running text. ...
... Research on syntactic complexity in English as a First Language has been carried out by linguists such as (Hunt, 1965;O'Donnell et al., 1967;Hunt, 1970a;Harpin, 1976;Perera,1984;Beard et al., 2002;Keen, 2004;& Mazur-Palandre, 2007. With regard to English as a Second Language (L2), such studies were conducted by researchers such as (Schleppegrell, 1996;Hinkel, 2003;Ortega, 2003;Myhill, 2004& Muñoz et al., 2010. These researchers used different measures of syntactic complexity that include subordination. ...
The paper explores the use of nominal subordinate clause as a syntactic complexity measure in some examination scripts of the National University of Lesotho (NUL) fourth year students. The study is based on the employment of the interpretivist paradigm as well as descriptive and case study designs. Data was collected from the students’ essays in the (2016/2017) examination papers and analysed qualitatively, following the Transformational Generative Grammar (TGG) and the Cognitive Grammar (CG), both of which formed the theoretical frameworks for the study. The paper shows that NUL students have a reasonably high level of syntactic complexity with the use of nominal subordinate clause.
... Research on syntactic complexity in English as a First Language has been carried out by linguists such as Hunt, (1965), O'Donnell et al. (1967), Hunt (1970a), Harpin (1976), Perera (1984), Beard et al. (2002), Keen (2004) and Mazur-Palandre (2007). With regard to English as a Second Language, different studies on syntactic complexity were conducted by researchers such as Schleppegrell (1996), Hinkel (2003), Ortega (2003), Myhill (2004) and Muñoz et al. (2010). Such researchers explored syntactic complexity of their research subjects using other measures of syntactic complexity that include subordination. ...
The present study explores the use of adverbial clause of concession as a syntactic complexity measure among the National University of Lesotho (NUL) students. The research subjects were NUL fourth year students across the seven faculties namely, the Faculty of Agriculture (FOA), the Faulty of Education (FOE), the Faculty of Health Sciences (FOHS), the Faculty of Humanities (FOH), the Faculty of Law (FOL), the Faculty of Social Sciences (FOSS) and the Faculty of Science and Technology (FOST). Data was collected from their past examination papers (2016/2017). This paper employed the interpretivist paradigm and has analysed the data qualitatively. The study has also employed the descriptive and case study designs. The students’ continuous writing was the focus of this study since Transformational Generative Grammar (TGG) and Cognitive Grammar (CG) are the theoretical frameworks which the present paper was based on and therefore require continuous writing. The findings of the present paper reveal that NUL students have a relatively low level of syntactic complexity in their writing as shown by how they used adverbial clauses of concession. The study therefore concludes that NUL students have a moderately low level of syntactic complexity demonstrated by how they used this feature.
... Thus, this paper offers further evidence of the ostensible differences in the use of intensifying adverbs and adjectives between native and non-native (especially ESL) speakers of English. Most of the studies on intensification between native and non-native varieties have been based on learner corpora (e.g., Gogovi, 1997;Hinkel, 2003;Hyland & Milton, 1997;Lorenz, 1999;Milton & Tsang, 1993;Pérez-Parades & Díez-Bedmar, 2012;Rutledge & Fitton, 2015) and in academic writing (e.g., Heidler, 2011;Hinkel, 2005;Ngula, 2015). Comparative studies of adverbial and adjectival use between native and non-native speakers have hardly considered other institutional contexts, such as the court and parliamentary interactions, which makes this study significant. ...
Studies on the use of adverbs and adjectives by non-native speakers of English have largely focused on learner corpus. Using Hansards of British and Ghanaian parliamentary debates as data, this paper attempts to partly fill this gap by comparatively examining the use of adverbs and adjectives as intensifiers by British parliamentarians as first/native speakers of English and Ghanaian parliamentarians as second language/non-native speakers of English. Parliamentarians' use of adverbial and adjectival intensification is consequent on parliamentary debates being truth and validity judgement, which includes speaker involvement and commitment. While both groups of MPs employ intensifiers to strengthen their convictions and arguments, it leads to exaggeration. However, the British parliamentarians use more complex adverbs and adjectives than their Ghanaian counterparts, who use simpler forms. The paper has implications for second language teaching and learning, the theory of nativisation and the characterisation of Ghanaian English.
... The literature is concerned with indirectness in NNS academic writing (e.g., Hinkel, 1997;Burrough-Boenisch, 2005), while some lexical items in certain discourse positions (e.g., adverbials) trigger chief academic stance attributes (cf. Hinkel, 2003;Biber, Csomay, Jones and Keck, 2004). ...
The concern with academic English writing as performed by NNS (non-native speakers of
English) has led to extensive literature and research over the past three decades. The origins
were probably best represented in the British Council’s realization of the term EAP (English
for Academic Purposes), in 1975, to refer to “interdisciplinary studies in relation to existing
practices and institutions” (Brumfit, 1984: 17), or to “exchange of knowledge [...] according
to specific features of specialised subject fields” (Baunmann, 1994: 1). Different perspectives
ever since on the matter have been adopted, such as academic vocabulary knowledge (e.g.,
Martin, 1976), or writing in the genre conventions (e.g., Swales, 1995). Various schools or
associations have also formed as a result, for instance, in Britain, BALEAP, from which
significant studies have developed (e.g., corpus data-driven learning, academic phraseology,
discourse analysis in the academic setting, etc —see, among others, work by Johns, 1993;
Howarth, 1998; Lockett, 1999, etc—).
EAP often stands to the test in the achievement of foreign undergraduate and graduate
writing proficiency for specialized fields. The focus is on university compositions or essays
where L2 learners ought to go through the re-writing procedures of content clarification,
structure revision, lexical-grammatical revision, and so forth, and where aspects of register
and genre conventions play significant reference roles. Less consideration seems to be given,
by comparison, to NNS research writing for publication aims, although just to give two
examples, Burrough-Boenisch (2003; 2005) examine proof-reading procedures in this line,
observing, among other aspects, the important position of rhetorical organization in the
reviewing process. As far as my knowledge goes, however, no work has been done on corpus
material with the aim of analyzing L2 writing in the last phase prior to publication.
In this paper, the aim is to examine corpus-based analysis with both NS and NNS
material. The texts available for the corpus analysis are those authored by Spanish writers in
Computer Science in their final versions; however, they are accessed prior to the journal
editors’ last review. The corpus examination has been done by comparing the texts with NS
material from a selection of the BNC (British National Corpus) Sampler (Burnard and
McEnery, 1999). The chief objective in the process has been to identify both similarity and
divergence in terms of the significant lexical items used, especially academic lexical items
and / or rhetorical-lexical items. Word co-occurrence and use probability in the contrasted
contexts determine academic competence, since the mastery of specific lexical patterns should
indicate specialized writing (cf. Hoey, 2005). Based on the literature described below, an
attempt at assessing two general hypotheses on NNS writing is also included.
... Within the broadly quantitative approach we can also include studies of individual features such as adverbials (Biber & Finegan 1988;Bondi 2002;Charles in press;Conrad & Biber 2000;Hinkel 2003); reporting verbs (Charles 2006b(Charles , 2006cHyland 1999b;Thompson & Ye 1991) and that-clause patterns (Charles 2000(Charles , 2003(Charles , 2007Hyland & Tse 2005). An alternative, more qualitative approach is to investigate how stance is produced through the accumulation of writer choices throughout the running text. ...
... This finding apparently coincides with earlier findings that Chinese writers would make assertive claims with reduced hedges and more boosters (Hyland & Milton, 1997), but it has often been considered evidence of how East Asian learners of English would use interactional resources, mainly due to the lack of research on interactional metadiscourse involving East Asian learners with different L1 backgrounds. Nevertheless, a few L2 studies endeavored to explore the writing of East Asian learners with different L1 backgrounds and in fact found some distinct patterns of language use among different L1 groups (e.g., Hinds, 1990;Hinkel, 2003Hinkel, , 2009). Based on the ethnic and linguistic composition of the East Asian English learner population (Williams, 2017), these studies tended to target Chinese, Japanese, and Korean speakers. ...
This study examined how students of English as a foreign language (EFL) with different first language (L1) backgrounds use interactional metadiscourse markers in argumentative writing. Specifically, to explore unique patterns of metadiscourse features that reflect context and development, the essays written by Chinese, Japanese, and Korean EFL students at three proficiency levels were analyzed for topic, L1 background, and L2 proficiency. For a comprehensive analysis of 1986 essays, I used a natural language processing tool that generates quantity scores for Hyland’s (2005) metadiscourse categories (i.e., hedges, boosters, attitude markers, self-mentions, reader pronouns, and directives). The results showed notable differences in the students’ use of metadiscourse features across topics, and significant variation was also found across different L1 groups. However, their use of interactional metadiscourse did not differ by L2 proficiency. A post hoc analysis of a parallel native-speaker corpus further revealed EFL students’ underuse of hedges and overuse of reader pronouns. Findings are discussed in terms of academic writing instruction, writing prompt development, and L2 learner categorization.
... Pastebėta, kad skirtingų kultūrų kalbėtojai skiriasi NK raiška bei jos įvairove, vartosenos dažnumu bei komunikacinėmis funkcijomis (Cheng, Warren 2001;Cheng 2007;Drave 2002;Hinkel 2003, Sabet, Zhang 2015 Šie rezultatai paremia Powell (1985) ir Channell (1994: 179) ...
Vagueness is a controversial issue, which was long stigmatised by both researchers and laypeople and largely neglected in linguistics until the publication of Channell’s (1994) study, which demonstrated that vague language (VL) is a multi-faceted phenomenon of high pragmatic importance. The present study focuses on one of the most central categories of VL in Lithuanian, i.e. vague quantifiers, which can be defined as non-numerical expressions used for referring to quantities, e.g. daug (“a lot”), mažai (“little/few”), keletas (“several”), or šiek tiek (“a little bit”). The meaning of quantifiers frequently encodes some evaluative content concerning the significance of a quantity. The evaluative function is an important and intended speaker’s message, expressed by choosing a vague expression, and is lost if reformulated into a precise expression. A systematic account of this pragmatic category has not been carried out yet in Lithuanian, and the vast majority of research on vague quantifiers focuses mainly on English with only very few exceptions.
VL is omnipresent and is used in all discourse types, but to a different extent and for different purposes; therefore, this investigation has a two-fold aim: (a) to determine the distribution of quantifiers in different discourses including spoken interaction and a variety of written texts (i.e. academic texts, newspapers and magazines, publicist texts, administrative texts, and fiction); and (b) to overview when and why vague quantifiers are prioritized over precise numerical references.
The data for this investigation has been obtained from the Corpus of the Contemporary Lithuanian Language (tekstynas.vdu.lt), which is a reference corpus comprising over 140 mln words; it represents five major discourse types analysed in this paper. The present analysis has been carried out within the framework of corpus linguistics, pragmatics, variationist sociolinguistics, and discourse analysis; it is primarily quantitative, but to explain some dominant tendencies in the results, it also deals with some qualitative aspects.
The findings obtained from spoken and written discourse have revealed that quantifiers are distributed very unevenly in the two modes of language; the results have also shown some dramatic differences in the use of quantifiers in different written texts. Their distribution and functions depend on the formality of quantifiers and their semantic type. Multal quantifiers (i.e. those referring to large quantities) are emphatic, whereas paucal quantifiers (i.e. those referring to small quantities) are mainly used for mitigation and are more prone to soften the effect of negatively loaded lexemes. Importantly, quantifiers are used for persuasion since they evaluate a quantity and convey the speaker’s interpretation of its significance. They can be important in discourse structuring, in shaping interpersonal relationships, and as a face-saving strategy. Due to the large variety of communicative functions that quantifiers can perform, they are an important category in second language teaching and should be adequately dealt with in lexicography.
... Yet, it is likely to attribute the disparity between the two corpora in terms of the used hedges and downtowners to two different reasons. First, it is a general tendency on the part of learners to use fewer hedges and downtowners than native speakers (Hinkel, 2003;Hinkel, 2005 ...
... Studies on writing process mainly focus on writing strategies and the sub-process of writing, such as the integrative writing strategies [11], the single writing strategies [12] and the means of writing [13]. The text analysis of academic writing mainly focuses on the linguistic features, such as metadiscourse [14], directives [15], adverbial markers [16], lexical bundles [17], genre [18], etc. ...
... Asian-Pacific Journal of Second and Foreign Language Education (2019) The present research, offering the compartments of the RMs competence of writing academic RAs in a new model, helps the students in higher education that today experience increasing difficulties in publishing scholarly RAs. Earlier studies have applied different models of RMs in different sections of research papers (e.g., Hinkel, 2003;Jalilifar, 2008;Sznajder, 2005;Vold, 2006;Rahimpour, 2006). However, this model can fill the gap in the literature concerning the lack of a systematically organized theoretical framework in that it synthesizes the currently available markers in one model. ...
The knowledge of diverse rhetorical relations is a remarkable component of competence in research article (RA) writing for learners’ successful handling of scholarly writing tasks in English for academic purposes (EAP) programs. This study aimed to present a model of Rhetorical Markers (RMs) competence in writing EAP RAs. In so doing, a ‘qualitative meta-synthesis’ approach was adopted as the research method. A meta-synthesis exercise was framed and the currently available literature on various models of RMs was investigated. 385 relevant abstracts and 321 full papers were screened and a number of 23 studies were appraised for final inclusion. Afterwards, a reciprocal translation was conducted to extract the latent themes and concepts in the general model. More specifically, a thematic coding strategy was applied for synthesizing the selected studies. Then, different obtained themes and categories were synthesized to build the major components of the model of RMs competence. Finally, three super themes of RMs were emerged including: pragmatic markers, meta-discourse markers, and metaphorical markers. The new model, as a conceptual frame of reference, can provide awareness to the EAP researchers regarding the underpinning components of the knowledge of RMs in writing up academic research papers.
... However, there are studies that have questioned NSs' increased use of stance adverbs. For example, Hinkel (2003) reported a higher use of amplifiers and downtoners in the written essays of advanced Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Indonesian students as compared to the written essays of first year native students. Similarly, Gilquin et al. (2007) reported overuse of adverbs expressing a high degree of certainty as well as underuse of common hedging adverbs in non-native academic writing. ...
Abstract
This paper examines the most frequent certainty adverbs in the extended LOCNEC (Aguado et al. 2012) and their frequency and use in three datasets of the LINDSEI (Chinese, German and Spanish LINDSEI components). Our analysis of certainty adverbs yields a complex picture. Obviously was fundamentally used by English speakers while really was used significantly more frequently by German speakers. The frequency of actually was not significantly different between the English native speakers and two of the learner language datasets, but Germans also showed significant differences with the English and the other two non-native groups. NSs and Chinese frequencies of use for actually and really were not significantly different, which reinforces the notion that, quantitatively, these two groups of speakers approached the picture task in ways that diverged from the German and Spanish speakers. An examination of the pragmatic contexts of use of the certainty adverbs revealed that both NSs and NNSs restricted their semantic choice to classic epistemic meanings with few instances of more complex pragmatic meanings. However, the position of those adverbs was different in the English data.
Key words: spoken English; native speaker;, non-native-speakers; certainty adverbs; pragmatic meanings
... It was found that writers of high-rated scripts showed a higher frequency to moderate their hypotheses with hedges and to develop their points with transitions; and those of low-rated essays used boosters more frequently in an attempt to emphasize the validity of their claims. Hinkel (2003) compared essays written by native English (NS) speaking university students and those by non-native English speaking (NNS) ones. It was found that the NNS students used both boosters and hedges (termed amplifiers/emphatics and downtoners respectively in Hinkel's study) significantly more frequently than NS. ...
This study attempts to obtain a better understanding of the way first-year university students construct persuasive arguments in writing by exploring their pattern of use of metadiscourse. A total of 181 argumentative essays produced by first-year university students while completing a timed writing task were analyzed by drawing upon the interpersonal model of metadiscourse as the analytical framework. The findings indicate that, while writers of low-rated essays differ significantly from those of high-rated ones only in the use of a few metadiscourse markers, they have problems using metadiscourse in constructing convincing arguments. Our study suggests that direct and explicit teaching and learning of metadiscourse should be implemented at both secondary education and at the early stage of tertiary education to enable students to use metadiscourse effectively in creating convincing arguments in English academic writing.
... Analysing a corpus of learner writing enables researchers to "gain new insights into the meanings, uses, and functions of adverbials of all types, and much new information has become available about the uses of these features in text construction" (Hinkel 2003(Hinkel :1051. Researchers can give precise descriptions of learner writing, and teachers can obtain evidence about what does and does not constitute an area of difficulty for learners (Granger 2002). ...
This paper applies Halliday’s systemic functional grammar to examine the ways conjunctive adjuncts are used in the written English of Malaysian undergraduates. Student essays selected from the Malaysian Corpus of Learner English were examined with a focus on cohesion in the light of a preliminary study of the texts which pointed to the insufficient or inappropriate use of cohesive devices. The aim is to find out what conjunctive adjuncts are used and how they are used in linking successive sentences in their texts. The students had difficulty in using conjunctive adjuncts effectively in paragraphs, and left sentences juxtaposed in inappropriate ways. Only a small part of the range of cohesive devices available in English was used at all, and much of what was used was incorrect or otherwise unsuitable. Keywords: cohesion, conjunctive adjuncts, argumentative essays, SFG
... Evidence from several studies (e.g. Granger and Rayson 1998;Hinkel 2003Hinkel , 2005Ä del 2008;Gilquin and Paquot 2008) suggests that even advanced L2 users struggle to adjust their linguistic choices according to the context or genre of the discourse. Examining learner performance across two broad modes of communication (speech and writing), these studies showed that L2 users tend to draw on the same set of linguistic means irrespective of the purpose and context of discourse. ...
The article discusses epistemic stance in spoken L2 production. Using a subset of the Trinity Lancaster Corpus of spoken L2 production, we analysed the speech of 132 advanced L2 speakers from different L1 and cultural backgrounds taking part in four speaking tasks: one largely monologic presentation task an dt hree interactive tasks. The study focused on three types of epistemic forms: adverbial, adjectival, and verbal expressions. The results showed a systematic variation in L2 speakers’ stancetaking choices across the four tasks. The largest difference was found between the monologic and the dialogic tasks, but differences were also found in the distribution of epistemic markers in the three interactive tasks. The variation was explained in terms of the interactional demands of individual tasks. The study also found evidence of considerable inter-speaker variation, indicating the existence of individual speaker style in the use of epistemic markers. By focusing on social use of language, this article seeks to contribute to our understanding of communicative competence of advanced L2 speakers. This research is of relevance to teachers, material developers, as well as language testers interested in second language pragmatic ability.
... However, research evidence seems to suggest that non-native speakers of English experience difficulty with adverbial markers in their academic texts (cf. Granger 1998;Hinkel 2003Hinkel , 2004Hinkel , 2005Louw 2005). Hinkel (2004: 209) observes that non-native speakers frequently use intensifying adverbs (really, totally, extremely, etc.), but not hedging adverbs (possibly, perhaps, etc.) meant to limit the breadth of claims and generalisations used in academic texts. ...
The present study examines English as a Foreign Language (EFL) junior researchers’ use of adverb-verb collocations of academic vocabulary in both free written and controlled productions. A small corpus was compiled and analysed in order to identify verbs in adverb-verb combinations and examine which ones were collocated correctly or erroneously. A controlled productive test of adverb-verb collocations, with verbs selected from the Academic Word List (Coxhead 2000) and adverbs selected from Lea, Crowther and Dignen’s (2002) Oxford collocations dictionary for students of English was also administered to participants. Results indicate that free productive knowledge of adverb-verb collocations is challenging for EFL users. This finding supports previous studies that focused mainly on verb-noun collocations, and that reached the conclusion that EFL students are not sensitive enough to collocations to use them in their written productions (cf. Nesselhauf 2005). This finding is extended here to adverb-verb collocations. The study also reveals that controlled productive knowledge of adverb-verb collocations is less problematic. Based on these results, teaching strategies aimed at improving the use of adverb-verb collocations among EFL users are proposed.
... Common variants of inferential variants are because, so, then, because of, in conclusion, and therefore. Because is frequently used for showing a causal relation although it is perceived to be less formal for showing a causal relation in academic writing and mostly occurs in spoken discourse (Hinkel, 2003). In addition, EFL undergraduate students are tied with the idea of so for showing a conclusion (Gilquin & Paquot, 2007). ...
Discourse Markers (DMs) are beneficial to build coherence and cohesion in writing. Some studies carried out in EFL (English as a Foreign Language) contexts show the dominance of a particular type of DMs in a certain text type. Accordingly, this study attempts to reveal three cases of using DMs in expository essays of five development methods which are: (1) most frequently used type of DMs, (2) common variants of DMs, and (3) the appropriateness and inappropriateness of the use of DMs. The study analyzed 275 essays written by 55 undergraduate students of English Language Teaching (ELT) program in State University of Malang, Indonesia, in the academic year of 2014/2015 enrolling in Essay Writing Class. The essays were developed using five development methods: (1) exemplification, (2) comparison and contrast, (3) classification, (4) process analysis, and (5) cause-and-effect analysis. The results revealed that exemplification, comparison and contrast, and classification essays show more elaborative markers. Then, process analysis and cause-and-effect analysis essays show more inferential markers. Each type of DMs showed some common variants: (1) contrastive markers (i.e. but, however, although, on the other hand, and in contrast), (2) elaborative markers (i.e. also, and, for example, or, moreover, and in addition), and (3) inferential markers (i.e. because, so, then, because of, in conclusion, and therefore). From the analysis of appropriateness of using DMs, the most frequent misuse is in the wrong relation. The problem should be overcome by raising students' awareness of deploying DMs appropriately and purposively.
The purpose of this study was to compare the discussion sections of research articles in applied linguistics in Thai and international journals. The corpus consisted of 20 English research articles: 10 from Thai journals and 10 from international journals. The adverbials framework of Biber et al. (1999) was employed in this study. The study explained the different usage of adverbials in discussion sections of both corpora. The results show that most of the use of adverbials in research article discussion sections in Thai and international journals is similar. There are five adverbials which are different and influence the presentation of content in discussion sections. It is hoped that this study may help teachers to design writing courses for novice writers or undergraduate and postgraduate students in writing research article discussion sections to publish in an international level.
The integration into the tertiary curriculum of problem-based learning, and the growing awareness of the need for university graduates to enter the workforce with highly developed communication skills, has led to a greater focus in academic classrooms on oral communication. One aspect of this is the increased use of monologic student oral presentation tasks, a requirement that presents challenges for international and local students alike. There is little research beyond lexical features that centres on the rhetorical level in student presentations. This study attempts to characterise the rhetorical moves within undergraduate oral presentations. The data comprise transcribed presentations by local and international high-scoring students in core first-year undergraduate subjects in three different faculties (n = 30). The methodology for the analysis was Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST). The analysis, which distributed RST relations into those contributing to the presentation's coherence and listener-oriented comprehensibility, identified the range and frequency of rhetorical moves within the dataset. Differences across disciplines appeared to be due to task requirements rather than disciplinary requirements per se. To conclude, we discuss the value of RST in the analysis of oral student data and its potential to inform the preparation of students for formal academic spoken discourse.
The polysemous adverb just is frequently used by efl learners, but many learners are still unaware of how just should be used. The aim of this study is to examine how frequently different meanings of the adverb just are employed by native speakers and Taiwanese efl learners in their essays and to identify the differences in the lexico-grammatical patterns. Drawing data from one native-speaker corpus and two Taiwanese efl learner corpora, we investigated ( i) the overall frequencies of just, ( ii) the frequencies of just by meaning categories, and ( iii) the lexico-grammatical patterns of the different meanings of just, as well as their semantic and syntactic features. Results showed that the overall frequencies of just were similar in the native speaker and learner corpora, but there was a smaller variety of the use of adverbial just in the learner corpora. By examining the lexico-grammatical patterns, we found that the meanings of the adverbial just were induced in the following patterns: first, when it modified different syntactic structures; secondly, when it co-occurred with specific contextual clues; and, thirdly, when it interacted with particular tense/aspect of a verb. In addition, semantic features and lexical choices had a pivotal role in determining whether the use of a particular sense of just was acceptable in a sentence. By providing corpus-based teaching material for the uses of adverbial just, it is hoped that our study will shed light on the perplexing issue of adverb acquisition.
The book includes work presented at the 24th National Linguistics Conference held at Middle East Technical University, Ankara, on May 17-18, 2010.
Abstract The integration into the tertiary curriculum over the last few years of problem-based learning, and the growing awareness of the need for university graduates to enter the workforce with highly developed communication skills, has led to a greater focus in academic classrooms on oral communication. One aspect of this is the increasing use of oral presentations as learning and assessment tasks, a requirement which presents challenges for international and local students alike. This study represents an attempt to characterise the rhetorical moves within student oral presentations. The data consist of transcribed presentations by ten local and international high-scoring students in a core first-year undergraduate subject in each of three different faculties, a total of thirty presentations. The methodology for the analysis was based on Rhetorical Structure Theory (Mann and Thompson, 1987, 1988; Carlson and Marcu, 2001). The analysis identified the range and frequency of rhetorical moves within the dataset. Differences across disciplines appeared to be due to task requirements rather than disciplinary requirements per se. The study concludes with a discussion of the value of Rhetorical Structure Theory in the analysis of oral student data and its potential to inform the preparation of students for formal academic spoken discourse.
Blogs are an integral component of blended learning environments in English as a second language (ESL)/English as a foreign language (EFL) contexts. Although they are used in higher education to promote language learning, their impact on EFL preservice teachers' writer identity development in academic writing is underexplored. Utilizing Hyland's metadiscourse model, this qualitative case study in the Turkish higher education context investigated EFL preservice teachers' writer identity development on blogs. The data were collected via reflective journals, semi-structured interviews and reflective essays. Triangulation and corpus-based analysis of Hyland's metadiscourse markers were used in the data analysis. The findings revealed the EFL preservice teachers' multifaceted and even contradictory academic writer identities on blogs and numerous challenges they encountered regarding their identity displays. This study highlighted a blended and corpus-based futuristic perspective on the exploration of EFL writer identities.
Despite the commonly reported underuse of linking adverbials of contrast and concession (such as yet, nevertheless) by English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners in writing, relatively little is known about the use of structural conjunctions in this regard. The present work uses a corpus approach to investigate the use of while, a polysemous conjunction of contrast and concession, in the writing of Chinese EFL learners as compared with their British native-speaker counterparts. The analysis of while-clauses is informed by clause-complexing and textual descriptions of clause in Systemic Functional Linguistics (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2013). Preference for initial concessive while-clauses by native-speaker students was found, in sharp contrast to the dominant use of final adversative while-clauses by Chinese EFL learners. Analysis of the native-speaker data revealed that initial concessive while-clause is characterized by equivalence or relatedness of topical themes of while-clause and its main clause, confirming the discourse-organizing function of thematic hypotactic clauses. In addition, the pattern of non-human subjects and low-value modal operators (e.g. While this … may …) associated dominantly and exclusively with initial concessive while-clauses in the native corpus serves further evidence of distinctive features of concessive while-clauses. This study adds to a growing body of literature on the SFL approach to second language writing and is among the first to combine corpus-based methodologies and SFL theoretical framework to analyze logico-semantic relations. The study concludes with some pedagogical implications for teaching adversative and concessive while-clauses to EFL learners.
Journal publications written in English are a sina qua non condition for national and international recognition. Recent literature in applied linguistics and other fields has denounced the existence of some conventions and “rules” that govern a given research writing. That is, using a concise, clear and error-free language is demanded in order to increase accessibility and ease of understanding. With the aid of textual descriptive analysis, this paper attempts to review the most common linguistic reasons behind papers’ rejection. Eight papers of Ph.D. computer science students were collected and analyzed qualitatively in order to diagnose the main problems and challenges Ph.D. students face while writing for scholarly publication. Other than other linguistic lacunes, it is found out that the authors had problems mainly with using the right tone, choosing the correct words and the adequate tense use. Indeed, the results of this study are supposed to be of some use to writers who want to know what writing conventions, if there are any, are adequate for paper publication. Finally, some recommendations related to students’ problems in writing for scholarly publication are made.
Journal publications written in English are a sina qua non condition for national and international recognition. Recent literature in applied linguistics and other fields has denounced the existence of some conventions and “rules” that govern a given research writing. That is, using a concise, clear and error-free language is demanded in order to increase accessibility and ease of understanding. With the aid of textual descriptive analysis, this paper attempts to review the most common linguistic reasons behind papers’ rejection. Eight papers of Ph.D. computer science students were collected and analyzed qualitatively in order to diagnose the main problems and challenges Ph.D. students face while writing for scholarly publication. Other than other linguistic lacunes, it is found out that the authors had problems mainly with using the right tone, choosing the correct words and the adequate tense use. Indeed, the results of this study are supposed to be of some use to writers who want to know what writing conventions, if there are any, are adequate for paper publication. Finally, some recommendations related to students’ problems in writing for scholarly publication are made.
The construction of opposition relations is highly expected in writing at higher-university levels. Through specific discourse markers, writers signal these relations to demonstrate precision and awareness of complexity of others’ views and to evaluate those views critically. However, despite the high value of opposition relations in advanced academic writing, little is known about students’ construction of these relations. To contribute to this knowledge, this study built a corpus of argumentative essays written by native speakers of Chinese as part of their master’s course assignments and compared the form and function of opposition relations in low-, middle-, and high-scored student writing. The quantitative analysis showed that the relationship between the frequency of opposition markers and writing score was not significant. However, considerable differences were found between the function and writing score when analysing the results qualitatively. High-scoring students used substantially more concessive and contrast expressions than middle- and low-scoring students. Suggestions for the teaching of opposition relations are discussed.
This study investigates the potential for linguistic microfeatures related to length, complexity, cohesion, relevance, topic, and rhetorical style to predict L2 writing proficiency. Computational indices were calculated by two automated text analysis tools (Coh-Metrix and the Writing Assessment Tool) and used to predict human essay ratings in a corpus of 480 independent essays written for the TOEFL. A stepwise regression analysis indicated that six linguistic microfeatures explained 60% of the variance in human scores for essays in a test set, providing an exact accuracy of 55% and an adjacent accuracy of 96%. To examine the limitations of the model, a post-hoc analysis was conducted to investigate differences in the scoring outcomes produced by the model and the human raters for essays with score differences of two or greater (N = 20). Essays scored as high by the regression model and low by human raters contained more word types and perfect tense forms compared to essays scored high by humans and low by the regression model. Essays scored high by humans but low by the regression model had greater coherence, syntactic variety, syntactic accuracy, word choices, idiomaticity, vocabulary range, and spelling accuracy as compared to essays scored high by the model but low by humans. Overall, findings from this study provide important information about how linguistic microfeatures can predict L2 essay quality for TOEFL-type exams and about the strengths and weaknesses of automatic essay scoring models.
This study investigates the use of reflexive intensifiers by L1 German-speaking learners of L2 English against the background of previous research which has identified non-target-like distribution of such features which are sensitive to discourse constraints and/or register variation. Occurrences of intensified NPs are compared between the Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays and the German component of the International Corpus of Learner English. In line with previous research, it is found that learners overuse this lexico-grammatical means of information highlighting. However, there is only significant overuse of a specific sub-type of intensifier, the inclusive adverbial intensifier. These results are discussed in terms of (i) general learnability considerations which may account for learners’ problems in mastering the use of register-sensitive information-structural patterns, and (ii) pedagogical issues which arise in connection with addressing residual non-target performance in written production beyond the stage at which target properties of lexico-grammar have generally been acquired.
The aim of this paper was to explore how tonal variations occur in Standard Chinese (SC) and Taiwanese Standard Chinese (TWSC). An experimental research design was first conducted and integrated into a multimodal framework with 30 participants divided into two groups (SC and TWSC). The results of a Mann–Whitney U Test showed that the variations were significant between the two groups. Four phonological rules were then proposed. Additionally, three video clips were integrated into the multimodal study to explain how the tonal variations occur and how a low-rising tone is used for various pragmatic purposes and politeness strategies. The results were also confirmed using Praat to measure the pitch shape. It is suggested that tonal variations in different language layers such as rising tones are likely to occur for pragmatic purposes in TWSC.
Though pragmatic elements such as hedging have been recognised as potentially challenging in intercultural communication, translation of hedging devices has received limited research attention. To gain a better insight into the impact of translating on the use of hedging, it is necessary to explore both translated texts and the reasons for modifications. The paper investigates trainee translators’ performance in translating hedging devices; it also investigates their perceptions of the pragmatic role that these devices play in a journalistic text. The translation task analysis reveals a considerable degree of omission and modification of hedging devices in translation. The analysis of the target texts, combined with subsequent discourse-based interviews, showed that several factors, including pragmatic competence, the discourse position and form of hedging devices, as well as intentional interventions, contributed to modifications. Our findings offer important insight into the challenges that pragmatic elements may present in translation.
Given the consensus that the discussion section of a doctoral thesis is a difficult text to write, we conduct an investigation into the evaluative language choices made in a small corpus of twelve doctoral discussions from a single institution and discipline. Our analytical approach is based on the Engagement sub-system of Martin and White's (2005) Appraisal framework. Using this framework we are able to uncover the evaluative language choices which appear most typical of this part-genre, and additionally to propose a genre-specific addition to the framework. We then make a series of comparisons of the choices made by L1 (first language) Chinese and L1 English writers in our corpus. We show that there are no statistically significant differences in the patterns of choices, and so conclude that, in the context and at the level researched, first language does not seem to be a variable which influences evaluative language choices.
This book provides a comprehensive study of hedging in academic research papers, relating a systematic analysis of forms to a pragmatic explanation for their use. Based on a detailed examination of journal articles and interviews with research scientists, the study shows that the extensive use of possibility and tentativeness in research writing is intimately connected to the social and institutional practices of academic communities and is at the heart of how knowledge comes to be socially accredited through texts. The study identifies the major forms, functions and distribution of hedges and explores the research article genre in detail to present an explanatory framework based on a complex social and ideological interpretive environment. The results show that hedging is central to Scientific argument, individual scientists and, ultimately, to science itself. The importance of hedging to student writers is also recognised and a chapter devoted to teaching implications.
Similarities and differences between speech and writing have been the subject of innumerable studies, but until now there has been no attempt to provide a unified linguistic analysis of the whole range of spoken and written registers in English. In this widely acclaimed empirical study, Douglas Biber uses computational techniques to analyse the linguistic characteristics of twenty three spoken and written genres, enabling identification of the basic, underlying dimensions of variation in English. In Variation Across Speech and Writing, six dimensions of variation are identified through a factor analysis, on the basis of linguistic co-occurence patterns. The resulting model of variation provides for the description of the distinctive linguistic characteristics of any spoken or written text andd emonstrates the ways in which the polarization of speech and writing has been misleading, and thus enables reconciliation of the contradictory conclusions reached in previous research.
Indirectness strategies and markers have been identified in written discourse in many languages, including English. However, in Anglo-American academic writing, explicit points and direct support are expected. In the view of specialists and ESL instructors alike, indirectness seems to characterize the writing of students raised in Confucian, Taoist, and Buddhist societies. The reasons that non-native speaker (NNS) second language writing appears vague and indirect may lie in the specific and contextual uses of indirectness devices in English writing rather than in the fact that they are used. This study, based on corpus analysis, compares specific indirectness devices employed in native speaker (NS) and NNS student essays and focuses on NS and NNS uses of twenty-one rhetorical, lexical, referential (deictic), and syntactic indirectness devices. The results of the study indicate that speakers of Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Indonesian utilized rhetorical questions and tags, disclaimers and denials, vagueness and ambiguity, repetition, several types of hedges, ambiguous pronouns, and the passive voice in greater frequencies than NSs did. However, NSs and NNSs did not differ significantly in their use of other types of indirectness devices and markers, such as point of view distancing, downtoners, diminutives, discourse particles, and understatements, as well as nominalization and conditional tenses.
A major problem for second language students writing academic essays in English is to convey statements with an appropriate degree of doubt and certainty. Such epistemic comments are crucial to academic writing where authors have to distinguish opinion from fact and evaluate their assertions in acceptable and persuasive ways. Despite its importance however, we know little about how second language writers present assertions in their writing and we often measure their attempts to master appropriate forms against the work of expert writers. Based on a corpus of one million words, this paper compares the expression of doubt and certainty in the examination scripts of 900 Cantonese speaking school leavers writing in English with those of 770 British learners of similar age and educational level. A detailed analysis of the texts reveals that these L2 writers differ significantly from the NSs in relying on a more limited range of items, offering stronger commitments, and exhibiting greater problems in conveying a precise degree of certainty. The authors highlight a number of issues raised by the research and make some pedagogical suggestions for developing competence in this important pragmatic area.
Introduction Since its publication in 1985, the outstanding 1,800-page Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, by Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, and Jan Svartvik, has been the definitive description of the grammar of English and an in-. dispensable reference for any research in the analysis or generation of English that attempts serious coverage of the syntactic phenomena of the language. The new Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English, by Douglas Biber, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad, and Edward Finegan, is an important complement to the earlier work, extending and sometimes revising the descriptions of Quirk et al., by means of an extensive corpus analysis by the five authors and their research assistants. Now, the bookshelf of any researcher in English linguistics is incomplete without both volumes. Like Quirk et al. (hereafter CGEL), Biber and his colleagues attempt a detailed description of all the syntactic phenomena of English. But
Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Pearson, Harlow, Essex. 1066 E Linguistic differences produced by differences between speaking and writing
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- Finegan
Biber, Douglas, Johansson, Stig, Leech, Geoffrey, Conrad, Susan, Finegan, Edward, 1999. Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Pearson, Harlow, Essex. 1066 E. Hinkel/Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 1049–1068 rChafe, Wallace, 1985. Linguistic differences produced by differences between speaking and writing. In: Olson, D.R., Torrance, N., Hildyard, A. (Eds.), Literature, Language, and Learning: The Nature and Consequences of Reading and Writing. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 105–123
Contrastive Rhetoric Typology and Universals The structure of events and the structure of language The New Psychology of Language
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The Languages of Japan A Writer's Workbook
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Shibatani, Masayoshi, 1990. The Languages of Japan. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Smoke, Trudy, 1999. A Writer's Workbook, third ed. Cambridge University Press, New York.
Chinese A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language Intercultural Communication Optimality and economy of expression in Japanese and Korean
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Norman, Jerry, 1990. Chinese. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Quirk, Randolph, Greenbaum, Sidney, Leech, Geoffrey, Svartvik, Jan, 1985. A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. Longman, London. Scollon, Ron, Scollon, Suzanne W., 2001. Intercultural Communication, second ed. Blackwell, Oxford. Sells, Peter, 1998. Optimality and economy of expression in Japanese and Korean. In: Akatsuka, N., Hoji, H., Iwasaki, S., Sohn, S.-O., Straus, S. (Eds.), Japanese and Korean Linguistics. Center for Study of Language and Information, Palo Alto, CA, pp. 499–514.
The Bedford Handbook for Writers
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Hacker, Diane, 1994. The Bedford Handbook for Writers, fourth ed. Bedford, Boston.
So? (On Japanese connectives)
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Hudson, Mitsuko, 1998. So? (On Japanese connectives). In: Akatsuka, N., Hoji, H., Iwasaki, S., Sohn, S.-O., Straus, S. (Eds.), Japanese and Korean linguistics. Center for Study of Language and Informa-tion, Palo Alto, CA, pp. 59–77.
Understatements and Hedges in English
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Huebler, Alan, 1983. Understatements and Hedges in English. John Benjamins, Amsterdam.
Cohesion in English. Longman, London. Hamp-Lyons, Liz, 1991. Scoring procedures for ESL contexts Assessing Second Language Writing
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Variation across Speech and Writing Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English
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Biber, Douglas, 1988. Variation across Speech and Writing. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Biber, Douglas, Johansson, Stig, Leech, Geoffrey, Conrad, Susan, Finegan, Edward, 1999. Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Pearson, Harlow, Essex. E. Hinkel / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 1049–1068 Chafe, Wallace, 1985. Linguistic differences produced by differences between speaking and writing. In:
Factors Influencing the Placement of English Adverbials in Relation to Auxiliaries
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Jacobson, Sven, 1975. Factors Influencing the Placement of English Adverbials in Relation to Auxiliaries. Almqvist & Wiksell International, Stockholm.
Subjectivization and adverbs in Japanese
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McGloin, Naomi, 1996. Subjectivization and adverbs in Japanese. In: Akatsuka, N., Iwasaki, S., Strauss, S. (Eds.), Japanese and Korean Linguistics. Center for Study of Language and Information, Palo Alto, CA, pp. 187–199.
The Every Day Writer, second ed. Bedford's/St
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Lunsford, Andrea, 2001. The Every Day Writer, second ed. Bedford's/St. Martin's Press, Boston.
Second Language Writers' Text: Linguistic and Rhetorical Features Adverbs and Modality in English
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Hinkel, Eli, 2002. Second Language Writers' Text: Linguistic and Rhetorical Features. Lawrence Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ. Hoye, Leo, 1997. Adverbs and Modality in English. Longman, London.
Labelling discourse: an aspect of nominal-group cohesion
- Francis
Francis, Gil, 1994. Labelling discourse: an aspect of nominal-group cohesion. In: Coulthard, M. (Ed.), Advances in Written Text Analysis. Routledge, New York, pp. 83–101.
On the Use, Meaning, and Syntax of English Preverbal Adverbs Continuity of action and topic in discourse
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Jacobson, Sven, 1978. On the Use, Meaning, and Syntax of English Preverbal Adverbs. Almqvist & Wiksell International, Stockholm. Kim, Haeyeon, 1990. Continuity of action and topic in discourse. In: Hoji, H. (Ed.), Japanese and Korean Linguistics. Center for Study of Language and Information, Palo Alto, CA, pp. 79–96.
Academic Writing. Techniques and Tasks
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Leki, Ilona, 1999. Academic Writing. Techniques and Tasks, third ed. Cambridge University Press, New York.
Contrastive Rhetoric
- Ulla Connor
Connor, Ulla, 1996. Contrastive Rhetoric. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Continuity of action and topic in discourse
- Kim
Kim, Haeyeon, 1990. Continuity of action and topic in discourse. In: Hoji, H. (Ed.), Japanese and Korean
Linguistics. Center for Study of Language and Information, Palo Alto, CA, pp. 79–96.
Labelling discourse: an aspect of nominal-group cohesion Advances in Written Text Analysis
- Gil Francis
Francis, Gil, 1994. Labelling discourse: an aspect of nominal-group cohesion. In: Coulthard, M. (Ed.),
Advances in Written Text Analysis. Routledge, New York, pp. 83–101.
Academic Writing. Techniques and Tasks, third ed
- Ilona Leki
Leki, Ilona, 1999. Academic Writing. Techniques and Tasks, third ed. Cambridge University Press, New
York.
Scoring procedures for ESL contexts Assessing Second Language Writing
- Liz Hamp-Lyons
Hamp-Lyons, Liz, 1991. Scoring procedures for ESL contexts. In: Hamp-Lyons, L. (Ed.), Assessing
Second Language Writing. Ablex, Norwoord, NJ, pp. 241–277.
- Ron Scollon
- Suzanne W Scollon
Scollon, Ron, Scollon, Suzanne W., 2001. Intercultural Communication, second ed. Blackwell, Oxford.
On the Use, Meaning, and Syntax of English Preverbal Adverbs
- Sven Jacobson
Jacobson, Sven, 1978. On the Use, Meaning, and Syntax of English Preverbal Adverbs. Almqvist &
Wiksell International, Stockholm.
A Writer's Workbook, third ed
- Trudy Smoke
Smoke, Trudy, 1999. A Writer's Workbook, third ed. Cambridge University Press, New York.
Disciplinary discourses
- Hyland
Scoring procedures for ESL contexts
- Hamp-Lyons