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Writer visibility in EFL learner academic writing: A corpus-based study
Abstract
This study examines the degree of writer/reader visibility in argumentative aca- demic essays written by university-level Japanese learners. Previous studies by Petch-Tyson (1998) and Cobb (2003) concluded that non-native English speaker writing contains far more personal involvement than equivalent native English speaker writing and tends to resemble spoken language as a result. Echoing the findings of these previous studies, this study's findings show that academic essays written by Japanese learners contain far more writer/reader visibility features than similar native English speaker writing. In addition to these quantitative differences are several important qualitative differences that distinguish writer visibility in academic writing produced by native and non- native English speakers.
... Drawing on the framework of Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis (CIA) (Granger, 1996), corpus linguistics studies have consistently found that L2 English learners over-represent I, we, and you in academic writing, including argumentative essays, compared to native speakers (NS) (Chang, 2015;Lee, 2008;Lee & Oh, 2018;McCrostie, 2008;Natsukari, 2012;Paquot et al., 2013;Petch-Tyson, 1998;Recski, 2004). While some studies have documented reduced pronoun usage in non-native speakers' (NNS) essays, these cases typically involve highly proficient writers-such as undergraduate students in an ESL (English as a Second Language) environment (Hong Kong) in Hyland (2002) or professional researchers in Martinez (2005)-who understand the rhetorical impact of I and we in academic registers. ...
... One of the first studies to examine proficiency-based variation in personal pronoun use was McCrostie (2008), who compared data from Petch-Tyson (1998) with Japanese first-year university students' essays. He found that these students used writer/reader visibility features approximately four times more frequently than native speakers in argumentative essays, but this figure was nearly halved in second-year students' essays-a decline he described as "a dramatic drop", bringing their usage closer to NS levels. ...
... 4.1. Variation in the use of I, we, and you across proficiency levels Overall, pronoun usage trends align with previous studies, suggesting that higher-proficiency learners tend to be less overtly present in their writing, using fewer first-and second-person pronouns (Choung & Oh, 2017;Lee & Oh, 2018;McCrostie, 2008). However, the ICNALE's inclusion of four distinct proficiency levels offers a more detailed view of developmental trajectories. ...
Based on the ICNALE corpus, this study investigates the use of first-and second-person pronouns in argumentative essays by Chinese, Korean, and Japanese leaners of English as a foreign language (EFL) across four proficiency levels. The findings indicate that higher-proficiency learners use these pronouns less frequently, which aligns with prior studies on Western EFL learners. Additionally, Korean and Japanese learners show stronger preference for I over we, whereas Chinese learners exhibit the opposite pattern. These differences may stem from various factors, such as cultural influences or first-language (L1) rhetorical conventions. Statistical analyses suggest that L1 background exerts a stronger effect on pronoun usage than proficiency level. This challenges the prescriptive English for Academic Purposes guidelines, which discourage first-person pronouns for novice writers regardless of their linguistic background. Meanwhile, pedagogical approaches that emphasize the rhetorical functions of pronouns may better equip learners in making informed lexical choices based on their communicative intent.
... However, a dearth of evidence regarding how informality changes over the years is evident. There were a few previous studies that discovered such changes in informality in academic writing (i.e., Atkinson, 1998;Constantinou et al., 2019;Hundt & Mair, 1999;Hyland & Jiang, 2017;McCrostie, 2008;Praminatih et al., 2018), yet the context of ESL academic writing remains understudied, specifically that of Filipino scholars using a diachronic approach. Diachronic study is not new in language research. ...
... In the study of Callies (2013), strategies in ( Diachronic studies on informality features were also common. Aside from the studies mentioned earlier in this paper (e.g., Atkinson, 1998;Hyland & Jiang, 2017;McCrostie, 2008;Praminatih et al., 2018), Hundt and Mair (1999) Ultimately, they advanced that the studentsʼ writing had undergone informalisation. The increase of omitted stops omitted and/or uncommon use of apostrophes, non-capitalised sentences and non-standard English, and the decrease in lexical sophistication and lexical diversity contributed to the higher level of informality committed by students. ...
... Among the previous studies mentioned above, only four have considered and examined the informality features in an ESL country (i.e.,Callies, 2013;Lee et al., 2019;Sholihah, 2018;Tang & John, 1999). Furthermore, diachronically analysing the informality features in writing (i.e.,Atkinson, 1998;Constantinou et al., 2019;Hundt & Mair, 1999;Hyland & Jiang, 2017;McCrostie, 2008;Praminatih et al., 2018) has been a point of interest. With these concerns, the present study aligned its aim at attempting to do a diachronic analysis of informality features among Filipino ESL scholars in the applied linguistics discipline since such a discipline has been taken into account by few researchers (i.e.,Alipour & Nooreddinmoosa, 2018;Hyland & Jiang, 2017;Kuhi et al., 2020). ...
The observation of informalities in academic writing has become tremendous in recent years, as revealed by a plethora of cross-cultural and diachronic studies. Different users of English have already been explored; however, none has centered on the case of English as a Second Language (henceforth ESL) writers, such as Filipino academic writing scholars, in terms of delineating informalities in their academic writing discourse over time. For this reason, this quantitative study aimed to diachronically analyze informality features in academic writing of Filipino ESL researchers in the applied linguistics field. Using the framework of Hyland and Jiang (2017), a significant association between the years of writing and overall use of informalities was found, signifying an increasing number of informality features as time progresses. Specifically, there were five informality features that the writers noticeably observed over the years. However, only two categories of the informality framework, unattended anaphoric pronouns, and sentence-initial conjunctions or conjunctive adverbs, were most pronounced in writing and were increasing. On the other hand, the categories of first-person pronouns, sentence-final prepositions, and listing expressions were less salient and were decreasing. This paper ends with pedagogical implications for academic writing instructions as far as appropriating such features as (in)formal is concerned.
... regulate their use appear to be challenging for non-native speakers of English (Natsukari, 2012). Exploring self-mention in relation to the proficiency levels has received little attention (Choung & Oh, 2017;Lee & Oh, 2018;McCrostie, 2008;Oh & Kang, 2013). This issue has been reported by several scholars that written texts by non-native speakers have been characterized by having greater subjectivity (Gilquin & Paquot, 2008;Herriman & Aronsson, 2009;Hinkel, 1999;Ishikawa, 2008;Luzon, 2009;Natsukari, 2012;Petch-Tyson, 1998). ...
... As Milton (1999) states, personal pronouns used by nonnative English speakers are associated with conversation. While there has been research into the use of the first-person pronouns in academic writing, few studies have been reported in L2 writing, particularly the essays produced by learners with lower proficiency levels (Chang, 2015;McCrostie, 2008). Therefore, the aim of this study is to contribute to the research on the learners' use of the first-person pronouns used by Yemeni EFL learners of Arabic cultural background through comparing the occurrences and distribution of these features across three proficiency levels (i.e. ...
... It has been observed that the use of self-mention can be a challenging task for native speakers and much more so for non-native speakers (Atkinson, 2004). In regard to the proficiency level, previous results revealed that low achieved learners tend to use more self-mentions than their counterparts at higher levels (Choung & Oh, 2017;McCrostie, 2008;Neff et al., 2004). ...
Self-mention used by university-level Yemeni writers is regarded as a challenging task. The overuse use of this feature is often considered as less formal and objective in academic writing. Despite the significance of this feature in academic writing, previous studies were mostly conducted in the Western cultural context. Research on self-mention produced by EFL learners of Arabic cultural background seems to be overlooked. Therefore, this study aimed to explore and compare the use of the first-person pronouns across three proficiency levels in an argumentative paragraph written by 80 third-year undergraduate students. Data were collected, assessed by ELT specialists, and then quantitatively analyzed. The results revealed that Yemeni EFL learners make extensive use of the first-person pronouns in their argumentative paragraphs. Differences were found in the occurrences of the first-person pronouns across three proficiency levels. The results also indicated that learners with a high proficiency level tend to use the first-person pronouns less than learners at low and intermediate proficiency levels. Since low-proficient learners rely more on the use of the first-person pronouns than those at higher levels, learners need to be exposed to a variety of strategies of how they can project their voice appropriately in their written texts.
... Previous studies have reported mixed results in terms of writer visibility in L2 student writing. Some studies have found that English as a foreign language (EFL) student writers tend to use first-person pronouns/determiners much more frequently than their L1-English counterparts (Cobb, 2003;McCrostie, 2008;Paquot et al., 2011;Petch-Tyson, 1998). Other studies, however, report that L2 student texts produced in university contexts include far fewer first-person pronouns/determiners than RAs (Hyland, 2002) and L1 student papers (Lee & Deakin, 2016;Leedham, 2015). ...
... Second person pronouns/determiners are reflective of highly interactive discourse, such as conversations (Biber et al., 1999), so their use is prohibited by textbooks, style manuals, and composition instructors. Yet, compared to L1 writers, these pronouns have been found to be highly present in L2 learners' texts across language groups (Cobb, 2003;McCrostie, 2008;Paquot et al., 2011;Petch-Tyson, 1998). Similarly, Table 8 shows that significantly more of these pronouns/determiners occur in COLTE than MICUSP. ...
... Supporting previous research comparing L1 and L2 student writers (e.g., McCrostie, 2008;Petch-Tyson, 1998), COLTE (0.17 ptw) includes significantly more listing expressions (i.e., and so on, etc., and so forth); the L1 students (0.04 ptw) rarely used them. L1 students' avoidance may be due to their awareness that such expressions are regarded as overly vague and highly uncommon in academic writing, unlike some L2 writers who appear less sensitive to their vagueness. ...
This study reports findings of a comparative corpus-based analysis of informality in L1 and L2 undergraduate student argumentative essays. Data consist of two corpora of student essays: 101 high-rated essays written by L1-English students and 254 high-rated essays written by ESL students in US universities. Based on a taxonomy of the 10 most common informal features cited in style manuals, we compared informal language use in L1-English and ESL undergraduate student essays. Results reveal that overall frequency of informal features is significantly greater in L2 student texts. Findings also indicate that both groups rely on similar informal elements, yet they differ in distinct ways. While ESL student writers tend to employ significantly more anaphoric pronoun it and second-person pronouns, they use most other types less frequently than L1 writers, and generally appear to observe prescriptive rules more strictly. In contrast, L1-English writers tend to adopt a more liberal attitude toward these rules, employing a broader range of informal types, particularly those that have become relatively legitimized in academic writing. The paper concludes with implications for ESL composition pedagogy.
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... As a result, one of the major characteristics observed in the learners' argumentative writing is the excessive use of first personal pronouns (McCrostie 2008;Petch-Tyson 1998;Y Choung & S-Y Oh 2017). When compared against native speakers' productions, learners often used personal pronouns with high frequencies and in contexts where the use of the pronouns increased the subjectivity of learners' arguments (Akahori 2007). ...
... While abundant research has been conducted on learners' use of first person pronouns in argumentative essays as well as published research articles individually (Martinez 2005;Henderson & Barr 2010), not much attention has been given to genre-specific characteristics of learners' productions of I through comparisons between genres (Paquot et al. 2013). Also, while some studies observed I according to learners' grade levels in university (McCrostie 2008;Neff et al. 2004), only limited research has been conducted on the difference according to learners' proficiency (Y Choung & S-Y Oh 2017). Considering the view that appropriate use of personal pronouns plays genre-specific roles in argumentative essays (Kuo 1999;Hinkel 1999) and the possibility of acquisition of such knowledge as proficiency increases (Y Choung & S-Y Oh 2017), the present study aims to conduct a detailed examination of learners' I in the argumentative writing, focusing on its genre-and proficiencyspecific characteristics. ...
... Learners used first person pronouns (I, me, my, mine, we, us, our, ours) in their writing two to four times the rate in native speakers' writing. This study was picked up by McCrostie (2008), in which Japanese EFL learners overused the personal pronouns that were observed in Petch-Tyson (1998). Both studies showed that learners tended to use the pronouns to deliver personal thoughts in a more direct manner. ...
... On the other hand, Tang and John's (1999) findings contrast heavily with those of other scholars including Chang (2015); Ryoo (2010) and McCrostie (2008). McCrostie's (2008) learners used personal pronouns more frequently than NSs (Native Speakers) but their use declined as students moved through their academic studies leading McCrostie (2008) to view their overuse as a developmental problem. ...
... On the other hand, Tang and John's (1999) findings contrast heavily with those of other scholars including Chang (2015); Ryoo (2010) and McCrostie (2008). McCrostie's (2008) learners used personal pronouns more frequently than NSs (Native Speakers) but their use declined as students moved through their academic studies leading McCrostie (2008) to view their overuse as a developmental problem. However, in contrast to Tang and John (1999), Ryoo's (2010) students were comfortable using pronouns to give opinions on the work of others and their own opinions of the topic. ...
... (9) "In conclusion, I feel it is a must for every person who loves knowledge and research" (Text 5). (10) "For me, I previously did not like to work in a group" (Text 16) Giving opinions/making claims was not as frequent as other functions and while, Chang (2015) and McCrostie (2008) found the clusters and patterns of "I think" and "I feel" common, they were much less common in this study with 7 and 3 occurrences respectively. The more popular "I feel" was used to show the writer's opinion as was "I think". ...
... Authorial stance, as a part of metadiscourse, has received a considerable amount of attention in linguistic literature. It has been examined from various perspectives: native vs. non-native language (Hyland 2002, Callies 2010, McCrostie 2008, Natsukari 2012, Herriman 2007, Taki & Jafarpour 2012, Lancaster 2011, Neff et al. 2004), spoken vs. written language (Biber 2006), gender variable (Kuhi et al. 2012), discipline variable (Maroko 2013, Dzung Pho 2013), language variable (Thomas & Chambers 2012), different stance features (Sayah & Hashemi 2014), etc. Authorial presence in the text is a scalar phenomenon. The present study focuses on person, or self-mentioning, markers, which refer to " the use of first person pronouns and possessive adjectives " (Hyland 2014Hyland (1999, p. 104). ...
... Previous research on the use of first person markers most commonly stressed the role of discipline (Gray 2015). The role of genre (Poudat & Loiseau 2005, Petch-Tyson 1998, Rahimivand & Kuhi 2014, Paquot et al. 2013), language proficiency (Abbuhl 2012, McCrostie 2008 ) or nativeness (Tyson 1998, Paquot et al. 2013, Behnam et al. 2014), however, yielded controversial results. Figure 1presents an overview of quantitative results in the corpora under examination. ...
... The classification of stance proposed by Hyland (2014Hyland ( (1999) consists of five elements; this study, however, focuses on person markers, which refer to " the use of first person pronouns and possessive adjectives " (Hyland 2014Hyland (1999, p. 104), since they belong to a group of the most important linguistic means to create authorial presence (Burneikaitė 2013). Although authorial stance has been examined from various perspectives: native vs. non-native language (Hyland 2002, Callies 2010, McCrostie 2008, Natsukari 2012, Herriman 2007, Taki & Jafarpour 2012, Lancaster 2011, Neff et al. 2004), spoken vs. written language (Biber 2006), gender variable (Kuhi et al. 2012), discipline variable (Maroko 2013, Dzung Pho 2013 ), language variable (Thomas & Chambers 2012), different stance features (Sayah & Hashemi 2014), there has been little analysis of Lithuanian learner English data (cf. Burneikaitė 2008Burneikaitė , 2013). ...
The present paper seeks to analyse person markers, which refer to “the use of first person pronouns and possessive adjectives” (Hyland 2014(1999), p. 104), in university learner English. Students are constantly encouraged to aim at academic register, one of the features of which is an attempt at objectivity. While this could be achieved by using an impersonal style, “writers gain credibility by projecting an identity invested with individual authority, displaying confidence in their evaluations and commitment to their ideas” (Hyland 2002, p. 1091). Writers, therefore, have to find the right level of balance between invisibility and visibility in their work. Person markers, as one of the most important linguistic means to create authorial presence (Burneikaitė 2013), being subjected to genre constraints, pose numerous problems to non-native students who have repeatedly been characterised as lacking in awareness of genre conventions and having problems with formal register (Breeze 2007). Though the topic of authorial stance has been researched widely, there has been little analysis of Lithuanian learners’ English data (cf. Burneikaitė 2008, 2013). In addition, no research has been found that analysed genre or institution variables in the use of person markers in Lithuanian undergraduates’ writing. This shows a need for the present study, which focuses on genre, language proficiency, institutional, and L1 variables. The data for the study was retrieved from a number of corpora representing non-native (Lithuanian) and native (English) university students’ language. The results indicate different roles of the variables in the explicit expression of authorial stance by person markers.
... In research pertaining to the aforementioned issues, numerous linguists and academics have also scrutinised the use of author pronouns as the cornerstone of projecting identity in academic writing (e.g., Hyland, 2002aHyland, , 2002bMartínez, 2005;Harwood, 2005;McCrostie, 2008). Nonetheless, most of the research only deals with authorial presence in academic texts produced by L1 or L2 writers. ...
... Our comparative outlook, as native Indonesians, indicates that the phrase 'the researcher' shares aspects in common with the use of 'peneliti' in academic texts written in Indonesian. This appears to imply the Indonesian daily oral communicative practices of framing and/ or ventriloquizing (Tannen, 2003(Tannen, , 2007, which are also closely related to the notion of referents (Chafe, 1994), which appear in written texts (McCrostie, 2008). ...
... Following McCrostie's (2008) argument about the interference of L1 in L2 writing, we also considered this aspect, that is, L1 and L2 (Indonesian and Javanese) presumably influence the EFL academic writing in this study. In relation to ventriloquizing, we can safely assume that the EFL learners in this study have consciously or unconsciously used the self-framing strategy in their daily communication. ...
This study examines the use of author self-reference, but pronouns, in the form of third person point of view in academic writing. The data for analysis were retrieved from C-SMILE (Corpus of State University of Malang Indonesian Learners' English), which consisted of 124 theses and 138 research articles of EFL learners, who were undergraduate students of the Department of English, State University of Malang. Results demonstrated abundant uses of the researcher as author self-reference. This leads to the possibility to expand the notion of ventriloquizing drawn on spoken discourse for application into written discourse. We hypothetically believe that ventriloquizing, which occurs in academic writing, has a strong relation with self-effacing device as a strategy to disguise authors' identity. We conclude that the authors' (EFL learners') choice of the researcher as referent is highly affected by the "ventriloquizing-like" strategy in their L1 and L2 although they are different in terms of purposes.
... Compared to previous studies on the first-person pronoun in novice scholars' academic writing, there is a relatively limited amount of research on EFL/ESL students' use of the pronoun in L2 essay writing (McCrostie, 2008;Petch-Tyson, 1998;Ryoo, 2010;Tang & John, 1999). First, Petch-Tyson (1998) compared Writer/Reader (W/R) visibility between NS and European (e.g., French, Dutch, Swedish and Finnish) NNS English writing in the International Corpus of Learner English (ICLE). ...
... This tendency was found more widely in Korean student writers' essays, thereby increasing the number of essays where the pronoun was used. Korean students' tendency to overuse the pronoun as the opinion provider in English argumentative writing is consistent with earlier research on other EFL students such as French, Dutch, Swedish and Japanese students (McCrostie, 2008;Petch-Tyson, 1998), but not with Ryoo's (2010) study on her undergraduate Korean students. ...
... In line with the studies on Japanese (McCrostie, 2008), Turkish (Unaldi, 2013), Swedish (Aijmer, 2002) and French (Granger, 1998) EFL students, Korean student writers also heavily relied on the verb think when they provided their opinions. The overuse of the phrase I think was also confirmed in EFL students' spoken English with a variety of discourse functions served (Baumgarten & House, 2010;Yong, Jingli, & Zhou, 2010). ...
... The third commonly-discussed characteristic of NNS writing considered in this section is the high use of first (and for some studies, second) person pronouns among L2 writers (e.g. Cobb, 2003;Lee and Chen, 2009;Lu, 2002;McCrostie, 2008;Petch-Tyson, 1998). For example, Petch-Tyson (1998) found that the NNSs in her study (French, Dutch, Swedish and Finnish L1s) used first and second person pronouns between two and four times more frequently than the reference group of NSs (cf. ...
... For example, Petch-Tyson (1998) found that the NNSs in her study (French, Dutch, Swedish and Finnish L1s) used first and second person pronouns between two and four times more frequently than the reference group of NSs (cf. findings in Cobb, 2003, andMcCrostie, 2008). A keyword in Lee and Chen"s (2009) study of Chinese undergraduate writers was the plural first person pronoun; this was often used within the lexical chunk we can see and functioned to direct the reader to a table or figure, or to organize the discussion (e.g. ...
... In the literature on NNS student writing (reviewed in 2.3), the use of first and second person pronouns are often described as "overused" in comparison with "expert" writing (e.g. Cobb, 2003;Lee and Chen, 2009;Lu, 2002;McCrostie, 2008;Petch-Tyson, 1998). The literature is not in complete agreement, however, as Hyland"s (2002) study found that his Hong Kong Chinese students employed first and second person pronouns less frequently than professional academic writers. ...
Chinese people now comprise the ‘largest single overseas student group in the UK’ with more than 85,000 Chinese students registered at UK institutions in 2009 (British Council, 2010a). While there have been many studies carried out on short argumentative essays from this group (e.g. Chen, 2009), and on postgraduate theses (e.g. Hyland, 2008b), there has been comparatively little research conducted on the high-stakes genre of undergraduate assignments. This study examines assessed writing from Chinese and British undergraduates studying in UK universities between 2000 and 2008; these are investigated using corpus linguistic procedures, supported by qualitative reading.
A particular focus is the use of lexical chunks, or recurring strings of words. Findings from the literature on Chinese students’ written English indicate high use of informal chunks, connecting chunks, and those containing first person pronouns (e.g. Milton, 1999). This study found that while the Chinese students make greater use of particular connectors and the first person plural, both student groups make (limited) use of informal language. These areas of difference are more apparent in year 1/2 assignments than those from year 3, suggesting that students gradually conform to the academy’s expectations. Unexpected findings which have not been previously identified in the literature include Chinese students’ significantly higher use of tables, figures (or ‘visuals’) and lists, compared to the British students’ writing. Detailed exploration of writing within Biology, Economics and Engineering suggests that using visuals and lists are different, yet equally acceptable, ways of writing assignments.
Since the writing of both student groups has been judged by discipline specialists to be of a high standard, it is argued that the difference in use of visuals and lists illustrates the range of acceptability at undergraduate level. The thesis proposes that scholars therefore need to consider expanding the notion of what constitutes ‘good’ student writing.
... Contrastive studies have shown that culture also plays a relevant role in the construction of authorial voice in academic writing. Cultural backgrounds of authors contribute to their visibility or neutrality in academic prose (Al-Shujairi, 2018;Carciu, 2009;Dontcheva-Navra tilova , 2013;Martin, 2003;Martí nez, 2005;McCrostie, 2008;Mur Duen as, 2007;Vassileva, 1998). Results obtained are rather contradictory: non-native writers either overuse (Carciu, 2009;McCrostie 2008) or underuse (Hyland, 2002;Martí nez, 2005;Mur Duen as, 2007;Vassileva, 1998) authorial presence markers compared with their Anglophone counterparts. ...
... Cultural backgrounds of authors contribute to their visibility or neutrality in academic prose (Al-Shujairi, 2018;Carciu, 2009;Dontcheva-Navra tilova , 2013;Martin, 2003;Martí nez, 2005;McCrostie, 2008;Mur Duen as, 2007;Vassileva, 1998). Results obtained are rather contradictory: non-native writers either overuse (Carciu, 2009;McCrostie 2008) or underuse (Hyland, 2002;Martí nez, 2005;Mur Duen as, 2007;Vassileva, 1998) authorial presence markers compared with their Anglophone counterparts. According to Martin (2003), writers who prefer to explicitly reveal their personal identity in academic prose may be heavily reliant on the social practices engaged in by a particular academic discourse community, and such writing conventions may also reveal cultural differences. ...
In recent decades, the traditional perception of academic writing as impersonal prose conveying facts has given way to a view that sees it as an interactional process laden with cultural influence. Due to this shift, authorial voice has become a major research focus in applied linguistics studies. This study involved a corpus-based textual analysis of self-representation markers in research papers by Russian and Chinese authors in the field of engineering. Using Hyland's interactional metadiscourse model (2005) and Tang and John's (1999) taxonomy of writer's roles as the analysis frameworks, the study aimed to compare the features of authorial voice in English-medium research article (RA) abstracts by non-native writers from two different cultural backgrounds. To achieve this purpose, 98 RA abstracts were collected from four reputable Scopus-indexed engineering journals. The differences in the use of self-mention markers are explained in terms of the national and international academic writing traditions and the level of competitiveness among scholars influencing an authorial stance in English-medium academic prose. The study has important implications for novice non-native English academic writers who aspire to take their work to an international audience.
... In the corpus-based research on Japanese EFL learners' writing, some researchers have focused on error analysis of essays written by Japanese EFL learners (e.g., Okada, 2005;Yamaguchi & Usami, 2017). Regarding the use of particular vocabulary, McCrostie (2008) focused on the extensive use of the first-person pronouns in argumentative essays written by the Japanese university students compared with the international students from Sweden, France, and the United States. ...
... In addition, almost all essays began with the pronoun I. The frequent use of I in Japanese EFL learners' writing has been highlighted by Natsukari (2012) and McCrostie (2008). Schleppegrell (2004) argues that the use of first-person pronouns is discouraged in academic writing. ...
Many Japanese university students' English writing skills are insufficient despite completing at least six years of English language instruction before entering university. Several researchers have explored this topic. A corpus-based approach to this field, for example, has improved the understanding of the writing skills of learners of English. In Japan, the recent developments in corpus linguistics have enabled instructors and researchers to analyse English linguistic features written by Japanese EFL learners. For example, Mizusawa (2015) referred to the Japanese EFL learner Corpus, a collection of junior high and high school students' English essays, to investigate the linguistic features, such as lexical density, grammatical intricacy, and semantic variations framed by systemic functional linguistics (SFL). This paper aimed to examine English academic writings written by 38 Japanese university students. Their writings were analysed in terms of lexical density and semantic features within the SFL frameworks. The results highlighted that the critical limitation in Japanese university students' writing skills suggested teaching students the lexicogrammatical differences between written and spoken modes of the English language.
... An academic essay writing is coherent when it is organized in such a way meeting the organization for an essay. Therefore, students' difficulties deal with essay organization Trang and Hoa [7]; McCrostie [15]. There are eight difficulties-to write a good introduction, formulate a good thesis statement, relate relevant main ideas of each paragraph in the body to the thesis statement, develop main ideas into complete paragraphs, express each main controlling idea in one paragraph only, write a good concluding sentence for each paragraph, and to write a good concluding paragraph to the essay. ...
... Students' difficulties in cohesion fall into four problems McCrostie [15]; Ahmed [14]. First, the difficulty is to link sentences and paragraphs using appropriate cohesive devices. ...
... A similar set of results has been found in the writing of Japanese learners of English. McCrostie (2008) found an overuse of first and second person pronouns and the phrase 'I think' when comparing academic writing in a local learner corpus to native speaker corpora. However, it should be noted that only raw and normalized frequencies were reported in this study and no statistics are provided on how to account for the size differences between the corpora. ...
... This study also found that 'I' was used to explain personal matters and give opinions, and was the most common collocate of 'I' was 'think'. However, the same criticisms of the statistics reported in McCrostie (2008) are present for Natsukari (2012). Furthermore, the LOCNESS is comprised of native speaker student data. ...
Teachers and researchers often have a shared interested in understanding the nature of learner academic writing. In particular, learner use of personal pronouns and sentence-initial coordinating conjunctions are two linguistic features commonly covered in past research. The development of 'local learner corpora' are often seen as one method both teachers and researchers can use to gain a better understanding of the academic writing of a cohort of learners. This study investigated whether the 'local learner corpora' approach is a reliable method for analyzing learner academic writing. While some significant results that were in line with other studies were found, the current study explains a number of precautions that should be taken during the corpus development and analysis stages.
... The existing research base on the use of first person in writing is inconclusive, and is focused mainly on postsecondary students learning English as a foreign language. Some research suggests that English language learners at the university level overuse the first person as compared to native speakers (Callies, 2013;Cobb, 2003;Herriman, 2007;McCrostie, 2008;Petch-Tyson, 2014), while native English speakers are more likely to make use of "inanimate subjects," as in "the results show. . ." or "this paper discusses. . ...
... Several researchers assert that the overuse of first person by nonnative speakers of English is due to their inappropriately informal manner of constructing writing as "talk written down" (Cobb, 2003;p. 98;McCrostie, 2008). ...
Although many secondary teachers prohibit use of the first person in academic writing, little empirical evidence exists linking first person use with writing quality. This study examined first person use in 111 brief argumentative essays composed by sixth grade students (ages 11–14) in American public schools. It first analyzed the ways in which students use the first person, and then investigated whether there is any association between first person use and overall quality of writing. Findings suggest that students used the first person frequently, often in its more assertive forms, and that there is no association between use of the first person and quality of argumentative writing. Implications for instruction are that teachers should not ban the use of the first person, but should teach students how to use it more effectively.
... A considerable amount of research has been conducted into the use of stance markers in undergraduate students' essays written in English (Aull & Lancaster, 2014;Chen, 2010;Gilquin & Paquot, 2008;Hinkel, 2003Hinkel, , 2005Li & Wharton, 2012;McCrostie, 2008;Tang & John, 1999;Vergaro, 2011;Wu, 2007). Some of these studies found that learners overused first person singular pronouns in their academic writing, a trait that could result from their lack of register awareness and the influence of spoken language ( € Adel, 2006;Gilquin & Paquot, 2008;McCrostie, 2008;Petch-Tyson, 1998). ...
... A considerable amount of research has been conducted into the use of stance markers in undergraduate students' essays written in English (Aull & Lancaster, 2014;Chen, 2010;Gilquin & Paquot, 2008;Hinkel, 2003Hinkel, , 2005Li & Wharton, 2012;McCrostie, 2008;Tang & John, 1999;Vergaro, 2011;Wu, 2007). Some of these studies found that learners overused first person singular pronouns in their academic writing, a trait that could result from their lack of register awareness and the influence of spoken language ( € Adel, 2006;Gilquin & Paquot, 2008;McCrostie, 2008;Petch-Tyson, 1998). It was also reported that novice L2 writers in an EFL context expressed greater certainty and commitment to propositions in comparison to L1 novice writers ( € Adel, 2006;Bayyurt, 2010;Gilquin & Paquot, 2008;Hinkel, 2003Hinkel, , 2005Hyland & Milton, 1997;Petch-Tyson, 1998). ...
This study involved a corpus-based textual analysis of authorial presence markers in the argumentative essays of Turkish and American students. Utilising Hyland's interactional metadiscourse model (2005a) as the analysis framework, it aimed to compare the features of stance in L1 and L2 essays by Turkish learners of English with those in essays by monolingual American students. Also, discourse-based interviews with ten students contributed to an understanding of the use of markers in their L1 and L2 writing. The results indicate that the use of authorial presence markers in English essays by Turkish students was more similar to the use of these markers in writing by novice native English-speaking students than to the use of markers in the Turkish students' own writing in Turkish. The textual and interview data are discussed in relation to writing instruction, L1 writing conventions, and the institutional context.
... Jedno od značajnih pitanja je i pitanje identiteta i vidljivosti autora u studentskim akademskim tekstovima (npr. Tang/John, 1999;McCrostie, 2008) ili u objavljenim naučnim radovima eksperata (npr. Hyland, 2001). ...
... General observations about the importance of epistemic modality in academic writing, difficulties this area may present for learners, and the lack of research specifically on the Japanese context motivated this corpus-based study on the three main modal verbs which are used to express "epistemic possibility": may, might, and could. 1 There is a substantial amount of scholarship on the nature of academic writing more generally by English learners with different L1 backgrounds that points to learners using language that is more reminiscent of informal and/or spoken language (e.g., Aijmer 2002;Altenberg 1997;Breeze 2008;Gilquin and Granger 2015;Gilquin and Paquot 2008;Granger and Rayson 1998;Leedham 2011;McCrostie 2008;Özhan 2012;Petch-Tyson 1998;Tåqvist 2018;Virtanen 1998). Our hypothesis, based on the preponderance of studies that suggest that learners tend toward insufficiently formal use in their academic writing, is that this may apply to Japanese students' use of modals as well. ...
Modifying and hedging one’s claims appropriately is an important characteristic of academic writing. This study focuses on the three main English modal verbs used to express “epistemic possibility” to avoid making strong statements, viz., may, might, and could. The purpose of this corpus-based study is to explore modal verb usage by Japanese EFL undergraduate students and consider pedagogical implications of our findings. Our analysis suggests that the Japanese students’ use of these modal verbs, especially could, has a tendency to be informal and insufficiently academic. While the Japanese students use could very frequently, they do not use it sufficiently in the sense of “epistemic possibility”, and some of their use is inappropriate not just in academic English but in English more generally. The observed high frequency of could may be related to topics and may also be due to the influence of L1. We discuss different factors that may explain the findings, based mainly on the overview of factors impacting on EFL learners’ use of academic English offered by Gilquin and Paquot (2008). Too chatty: Learner academic writing and register variation. English Text Construction 1(1). 41–61), suggest several additions to this overview, and discuss implications for the instruction of these modal verbs in academic writing and in order to improve relevant teaching materials.
... This can be interpreted as what Hyland (2005:181) suggests: "The presence or absence of explicit author reference is generally a conscious choice by writers to adopt a particular stance and disciplinary-situated authorial identity". In short, there is no singular approach in the conventions of English academic writing because it depends heavily on the type of discipline the writer belongs to, and what might be acceptable in one subject might not meet the expectations of another (McCrostie, 2008). ...
The current study was set out to investigate the use of interactional metadiscourse markers in students' written texts (assignments) in four different disciplines: Linguistics, Business, Engineering, and Biological Sciences. It also seeks to investigate the similarities and differences between native and non-native students in using these markers and their collocates. Data was extracted from the BAWE corpus, and was analyzed using a model proposed by Hyland (2005). Identical distributions of these markers were found across the disciplines and between the two groups of students. Nevertheless, in terms of frequency, more markers were found in soft disciplines than in hard disciplines; and slightly higher in NS students' subcorpus than in NNS, except in self-mentions. The qualitative analysis of self-mentions revealed some differences in their uses between the two groups of students in that they were mainly used for discussing activities in NNS students' texts and for organizing the texts in NS student's texts. Some differences also were attested in preference of collocates between the two groups, and with overuse of one clause by some NNS students. The differences attested from the current study's analysis regarding NS and NNS writing indicate the gap between these groups; therefore, they should be taken into consideration in teaching English academic writing, particularly for advanced L2 learners.
... Academic writing in different disciplines is getting less formal (Adel, 2008;Hyland & Jiang, 2017;McCrostie, 2008) and all researchers need to be aware of this shift. Research articles should be responsive to the demands of the new conditions. ...
International scientific communication is mostly conducted in English. Consequently, writing and publishing in English is of significant importance in academic settings. Alongside many other factors, proper academic writing has an appropriate level of linguistic formality. Research has shown that linguistic features can distinguish between formal and informal texts. Different scholars have utilized different methods to define and measure formality. The present study compares the degree of formality of applied linguistics articles written in English by native English speaking and Iranian non-native English-speaking researchers by calculating their F-scores, a measure of formality introduced by Heylighen and Dewaele (1999). In total, 80 articles were selected from four international journals. Half of them were written by Iranian non-native researchers and the other half by native researchers. The results indicated a medium level of formality in both groups. However, articles written by Iranian non-native researchers were found to have a significantly higher degree of formality. Broadly, this research has implications for teachers of English in different areas, journal editors, materials developers and researchers who want to publish internationally.
... other comparative studies investigated the use of informality features in learners' academic writing. Be they studies examining one category like writer/reader visibility (e.g., Petch-Tyson, 1998;McCrostie, 2008) or studies comparing a range of syntactic and lexical features (e.g., shaw & Liu, 1998;Hinkel, 2003;Lee, Bychkovska & Maxwell, 2019), a similar conclusion was drawn, namely that learners' academic writing was infused with spoken, informal language features. Among them, a study by Crawford (2005) found that German, spanish and Bulgarian learners used more spoken features (personal pronouns, contractions, etc.) than native speakers, a study by Granger and rayson (1998) reported that French learners overused many lexical and grammatical features typical of speech, and a study by Gilquin and Paquot (2007) provided further evidence for this claim reporting that learners of different backgrounds tend to use spoken features in their academic writing. ...
This paper aims at quantitatively and qualitatively analyzing the use and distribution of informality features in a comparable corpus of research articles (rAs) written by L1 Chinese scholars (Css) and L1 English scholars (Ess) across four disciplines. The normalized frequencies of eleven informal features were calculated and compared first between Ess’ and Css’ rAs in the same discipline and then across the four disciplines. Four features, namely first person pronouns, pronominal anaphoric reference, sentence-initial conjunctions/conjunctive adverbs, and imperatives, were identified to be the contributing factors and analyzed qualitatively. The results demonstrate that: (i) there is significant difference in the use of informality features between Ess and Css with Css employing informality features less frequently than Ess; (ii) disciplinary variations are present with Physics rAs sounding more informal and Linguistics rAs more formal; (iii) the distribution of specific informality features presents a diversified picture: Css’ use of first person pronouns and pronominal anaphoric references is less frequent, and their use of imperatives and sentence-initial conjunctions/conjunctive adverbs is more frequent than Ess’. These findings shed light on teaching academic writing and provide writers with some guidance about stylistic choice
... In similar vein, Thonney (2013) found that students, unlike experts, used 'I', not to express authority but to signal uncertainty and a lower relationship status with the audience. The expert/novice distinction here is repeated elsewhere, particularly with respect to native and non-native speakers (see, for example, McCrostie, 2008 ;Dontcheva-Navratilova, 2013 ;Lee & Deakin, 2016 ;Leedham & Fernandez-Parra, 2017 ). ...
Students’ metalinguistic understanding of the written academic argument is important both to increase writer independence and inform writing instruction. This article draws on a study which investigated undergraduate students’ metalinguistic understanding of the metadiscourse features in their own written arguments. The specific focus of the paper is to determine what metalinguistic understanding students express about the use of pronouns in written argument as engagement or stance markers to build a relationship with the reader. The analysis indicates many students believed the use of reader pronouns were inappropriate in written argument, often because this was what they had been taught. Students’ metalinguistic understanding was shaped more by notions of formality and objectivity than by understanding of how pronouns play a role in reader engagement. The article argues that greater emphasis on the function of pronouns rather than the form, drawing on metadiscourse theory, and on generating metalinguistic understanding of the differing ways that pronouns function in written argument might better support writers in agentic linguistic decision-making.
... Despite the ongoing discussion on the functions of first person pronoun in academic writing, EFL authors still find them problematic (Luzón, 2009;McCrostie, 2018). Investigating the use of first person pronoun in academic reports written by Spanish students, Luzón (2009) unveils authors' difficulty in understanding the specific functions of the pronouns to project authorial identities. ...
This study aims to decipher the use of authorial pronoun we as a politeness strategy in the EFL academic writing. The data consist of 56 published research articles taken from the Corpus of State University of Malang Indonesian Learners’ English. The articles were written by Indonesian undergraduate students co-authored with their thesis supervisors. Attempting to categorize pronoun we into inclusive, exclusive, and ambiguous types in the co-authored texts, we identify seven functions of the authorial pronoun. The result unveils that the ambiguous authorial pronoun we appear to be the most frequently used politeness device to minimize face threatening acts (FTA).
... e.g. Hinkel, 2002;McCrostie, 2008), the present study has shown that this characteristic is reflected through quantifiers and some interpersonal MWEs. However, the keyness of the textual MWEs also points to a characteristic of the academic genre in Thai learner English argumentative essays. ...
... e.g. Hinkel, 2002;McCrostie, 2008), the present study has shown that this characteristic is reflected through quantifiers and some interpersonal MWEs. However, the keyness of the textual MWEs also points to a characteristic of the academic genre in Thai learner English argumentative essays. ...
Mobile devices, technology such as smartphones and tablets, are resulting in escalating transformations of the educational world, particularly as an aid to language acquisition.This study examined the ways Thai high-school students use mobile devices to aid learning English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in educational settings, and if school size and location affects the level of access and ability students have. The participants were two hundred and seventy-seven students studying in eight schools in Southern Thailand, which were split into urban and rural sub-groups during analysis. Participants completed a questionnaire regarding access, time spent using devices in school, and the specific ways they used mobile devices for EFL related school work. The findings indicated that whilst almost all students had ability and access to mobile devices, there were significant differences (p < 0.01) across all items relating to urban and rural school location, due to what appeared to be policy issues. Recommendations are made for schools and policymakers to promote the use of mobile devices, and the ways EFL students reported using and not using mobile devices are detailed, allowing suggestions for teachers on which specific uses to promote.
... They treat academic writing genres such as RA as a genre with formal, fix and strict style of writing. Regarding the use of second person pronoun and contractions, Iranian writers of AL RAs were more careful about using these informality features due to the impact of their mother tongue because it was expected to see greater attention towards using this informality feature based on the findings reported by Cobb (2003), McCrostie (2008) and Leedham (2015). In a nutshell, this study could help reaching the following main conclusions: First, Iranian writers of ALs RAs do not follow the changes created by the use of informality features. ...
This study was motivated by the recent study on informality in academic writing carried out by Hyland and Jiang (2017), to see the status of informality in Applied Linguistics research articles published in Iranian local journals. To this end, 50 research articles from two Journals of “Research in Applied Linguistics” and “Iranian Journal of applied Linguistics” were selected. The research articles were published in 2014 and 2015 issues. They were analyzed based on Hyland and Jiang’s (2017) taxonomy. The results imply that unattended anaphoric pronouns and sentence initial conjunctions have received the greatest attention from Iranian writers of Applied Linguistics writers while exclamations and contractions were totally ignored. Compared to the results reported by Hyland and Jiang (2017), the use of features of informality by Iranian writers of the present study varies to a great extent. The variations could stress the necessity of awareness of Iranian Applied Linguistics and related fields of study writers concerning the use of these features by successful writers.
... These findings are surprising given the fact that most previous studies reported involved and spoken-like features of L2 writing (e.g. Petch-Tyson 1998;Hinkel 2002;2003;McCrostie 2008;Gilquin and Paquot 2008;Paquot 2010). For example, Hinkel (2003) found that L2 learners usually use simple lexical and grammatical structures (e.g. ...
A new multidimensional analysis exploring linguistic variation in L1 and L2 academic writing across three advanced proficiency levels (Master’s theses, PhD dissertations, and research articles) is conducted. Through an exploratory factor analysis, I identify and interpret four dimensions that capture the lexical and grammatical differences between L1 and L2 academic writing in applied linguistics. Two-way ANOVAs show that there are significant differences between L1 and L2 academic writing on three of the four dimensions. Compared with L1 academic writing, L2 academic writing is generally less attitudinal, narrative, and academically involved. Among the three proficiency levels, L2 research articles are closest to L1 research articles, while L2 Master’s theses differ most from L1 Master’s theses on three dimensions. ANOVA tests also show that proficiency levels have a main effect on Dimension 2, as well as having an interactive effect with language backgrounds on Dimensions 2 and 3. Our findings have important pedagogical and methodological implications. First, L2 writers need to increase their awareness of the importance of stance expressions in academic writing. Second, proficiency levels need to be given considerable attention in corpus design to minimise their influence on the results of L1–L2 comparisons.
... The overall findings of our study are comparable with previous findings from studies such as Cobb (2003), McCrostie (2008), Petch-Tyson (1998, and Leedham (2015) which indicate a greater use of informality by non-native writers. Shaw (1991) argues that non-native writers seem to be commonly affected by the discipline, genre, and the knowledge about the audience which give rise to their writings problems. ...
This quantitative-qualitative study aimed to fathom out whether and how informal features are exploited in articles of applied linguistics written in English by natives and non-natives. To this end, a corpus of 200 articles was compiled. We employed the classification of informal features proposed by Chang and Swales (1999) representing 10 informal features in academic writing. The AntConc software was used, along with manual search, to detect the informal features. The frequency, percentages, and the density per 1000 words of each informal feature were calculated. The results revealed that informal features are utilized more frequently in native articles than non-native ones, with no significant differences in the two corpora in terms of their most and least frequent informal features. Sentence initial conjunctions are the most recurrent informal features, while exclamation marks are employed the least frequently in both native and non-native articles. Implications for EAP courses are delineated in the study as well.
... The familiarity with the genre is an issue with student writers, whose overuse of personal pronouns in academic writing has been found to decrease after a focused instruction in English academic writing style (McCrostie 2008). Once they understand the requirements of the genre, however, students and young scholars may underuse self-mention pronouns if they feel they lack the necessary authority to voice their claims (e.g. ...
The tension between the need to present oneself in academic discourse unobtrusively on the one hand and promotionally on the other hand results in a range of options of hiding and revealing authorial presence in the text. The choice from among these options is, among other factors, determined by cultural background. This paper explores how Anglophone writers and Slovak authors writing in Slovak and in non-native English position themselves in linguistic research papers as individuals or as part of a society, and as participants or non-participants of the given communicative exchange. The study concludes that English academic culture is largely individualistic while Slovak academic culture is largely collectivist, a trait that Slovak authors also transmit into their writing in English for a mainly local audience.
... Several studies have identified a greater degree of author/reader visibility in NNS texts as a feature which is at odds with the expected register conventions for academic writing. A range of features that are assumed to be indicative of the level of visibility in a text has been investigated with the assumption that greater author/ reader presence in texts is indicative of a more spoken/conversational style in L2 writing (see PetchTyson 1998;Cobb 2003;McCrostie 2008). The basic insight from this research is that " learner writers are much more overtly present within the discourse than NS writers " (Petch-Tyson 1998: 117) and the greater presence of author (and reader) in the discourse is indexed, among other things, by significant overuse of first and second person pronominal forms I/me/mine/you/your. ...
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.
... They believed that learning the rules of formal academic English was already a considerable burden and was further complicated by changing styles which allows them to mix formal and informal language effectively. It is true that some studies have shown that L2 English students often make considerable use of some informal features, so that Cobb (2003) and McCrostie (2008) found substantially greater use of first and second person pronouns compared with expert prose and Leedham (2015) found Chinese student writers made substantial use of contractions and informal connectors such as besides, lots and what's more in their essays. Whether these choices simply mimic conversational practices due to limited proficiency is uncertain, but it is generally frowned upon by those assessing their writing. ...
Informality has become something of a contemporary mantra as, from the denim-clad offices of internet startups to the pages of business reports, we are encouraged to shed old constraints and relax conventions. This paper explores the perception that since informality has now invaded a large range of written and spoken domains of discourse, academic writing has also followed this trend. It asks the question whether academics are now freer to construct less rigidly objective texts and craft a more inclusive relationship with their readers. Taking a corpus of 2.2 million words from the same leading journals in four disciplines at three periods over the past years, we explore changes in the use of ten key features regarded by applied linguists and style guide authors as representing informality. Our results show only a small increase in the use of these features, and that this is mainly accounted for by increases in the hard sciences rather than the social sciences. It is also largely restricted to increases in first person pronouns, unattended reference and sentences beginning with conjunctions. We discuss these results and argue they represent changes in rhetorical conventions which accommodate more obvious interpersonal interactions in the sciences.
... Zum einen zeichnet sich ab, dass Pronomina wie I, you und we, auch in Verbindung mit Kognitionsverben, die den Autor / die Autorin direkt sichtbar werden lassen, in Lernertexten stark überrepräsentiert sind (z.B. Petch-Tyson 1998, Cobb 2003, Neff et al. 2003, Breeze 2007, McCrostie 2008, Károly 2009). Dieser Befund scheint mit der generell beobachteten Tendenz zu einem stärkeren Maß an persönlicher Einbindung und subjektiver Färbung von Lernertexten übereinzustimmen. ...
Der vorliegende Beitrag thematisiert am Beispiel des Forschungspro-jekts " Lexiko-grammatische Variation in fortgeschrittenen Lernerva-rietäten " die Möglichkeiten der Lernerkorpuslinguistik, eine Brücken-funktion im Spannungsfeld von Sprachwissenschaft und Fremdspra-chenerwerbsforschung auf der einen Seite, sowie Fremdsprachen-didaktik und den praktischen Erfordernissen des Fremdsprachenunter-richts auf der anderen Seite zu erfüllen. Im Rahmen des Forschungs-projekts wird mit dem Corpus of Academic Learner English (CALE) eine empirische Basis zur detailierteren Erforschung und Beschrei-bung fortgeschrittener Lernervarietäten im Hinblick auf wissenschaft-liches Schreiben in der Fremdsprache geschaffen. Die Ergebnisse ei-ner vor diesem Hintergrund durchgeführten Lernerkorpusstudie wer-den bezüglich ihrer unterrichtsrelevanten Implikationen im Kontext des Nutzens und der Verwendung von (Lerner-)Korpora in Fremd-sprachenunterricht und Fremdsprachendidaktik diskutiert.
Since its release in 2022, ChatGPT has found widespread application across various disciplines. While previous studies on Generative AI’s capabilities have predominantly concentrated on content quality assessments, little attention has been directed toward investigating the model’s linguistic patterns compared to human-generated language. To address this gap, we built two specialized corpora comprised of academic texts in social sciences generated by ChatGPT-4o mini and selected the Elsevier OA CC-BY Corpus as a reference for comparison, with a view to identifying commonalities and differences between AI-generated and human academic language and determining whether academic language instructions improve the model’s output in terms of formal rigor. The findings revealed limitations in ChatGPT’s handling of academic discourse in the following respects: overuse of infrequent “academic” vocabulary, limited use of subordination, and syntactic and semantic homogeneity. Besides, the effect of specific language-oriented prompts is primarily reflected in minor lexical adjustments. This study expands the scope of corpus linguistics research by incorporating AI-generated texts into the analytical framework and lays the groundwork for future improvements inthe language model’s
genre discrimination.
At the discourse level, personal pronouns have been acknowledged as one of the most important features used to express writer visibility – involvement of the author in the text. Studies have shown that writer visibility depends on discourse type, cultural conventions, writer’s L1, etc. (Petch-Tyson 1998; Ädel 2001; Rodríguez, Vázquez and Guzmán 2011; Zolotova 2014). This paper investigates the discourse function of personal pronouns in argumentative writing in the Croatian language, a Slavic pro-drop language. For the purpose of this paper argumentative essays written by Croatian native speakers (N=100) are analysed for the frequencies of 1st and 2nd person personal pronouns and their discourse functions.
The results confirmed low frequency of 1st and 2nd person personal pronouns in the corpus, with the dominance of the 1st person singular personal pronoun I . The qualitative analysis shows that the pronoun I is most frequently used to express discourse functions of writer’s stance and writer’s experience, whereas all of the other pronouns were used mostly to express more general claims. The obtained results gave more insight into the use of personal pronouns in a pro-drop language and confirm cultural and linguistic influences on argumentative writing in the first language.
In the context of foreign and second language learning, multi-word units constitute a particularly interesting phenomenon since they are known to cause problems for learners. One group of multi-word units that causes great difficulty even for advanced learners of English is multi-word verbs. Their acquisition and active usage is a challenge since they are complex both in terms of their grammatical form and their lexical meaning. This study provides a detailed, descriptive investigation of four different categories of multi-word verbs – namely phrasal, phrasal-prepositional, prepositional verbs and verb-noun collocations – in the essays written by intermediate to advanced level of Turkish learners of English. The Turkish sub-corpus (TICLE) of the International Corpus of Learner English (ICLE) has been the basis for the investigation. In order to thoroughly capture difficulties the learners experience in the use multi-word verbs and gain a better understanding of their phraseological competence, both the qualitative and quantitative aspects of the learners’ performance are investigated. An important aim of the study is to determine whether, and if so, to what extent, the learner’s first language (L1) influences their use of multi-word verbs in English. In addition to the learner’s L1, possible effects of other factors (both learner-related and external variables) are also investigated in the context of two categories of multi-word verbs, namely phrasal and phrasal-prepositional verbs – the two verb categories reported to be avoided and/or underused by many learner groups.
The use of first-person pronouns (I, we) in writing research articles was remaining problematic for both inexperienced and advanced authors. Nevertheless, some research suggested that the FPPs were increasingly used in writing research articles (RAs) to indicate the authorial identity. This research aimed to investigate types, functions, and correlation of the FPPs in tourism RAs by employing the diachronic corpus linguistics method. The data of this research were accessed and downloaded through five open access journals published by Elsevier. There were 80 selected tourism RAs from the year 2015 to 2020 that classified into five corpora. AntConc was software that was employed to retrieve the FPPs from the corpora. This research discovered the FPPs I and we were constructed as six types of authorial identity that range from the least to the strongest authoritative identity in the past five years. The constructed authorial identity had three main functions for the authors of tourism RAs, tourism as an academic discipline, and the readers of tourism RAs. The statistical calculation showed that the correlation was 0.87 that signified the use of the FPPs was increasing in the following year.
Keywords: authorial identity, diachronic corpus linguistics, the first-person pronouns, tourism research articles.
Koca, F. (2021). Yabancı Dil Öğretiminde Derlem, Derlem Dilbilimi ve Veri Yönlendirmeli Öğrenim Yaklaşımı. H. Asutay (Ed.) Dil Öğretiminde Yeni Teknik ve Yöntemler (s. 163-176) içinde. Çanakkale: Paradigma Akademi.
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Bu çalışmada derlem dilbilimi ile yabancı dil öğretiminin ilişkisi ele alınmıştır. Çok sayıda otantik metinden oluşan bütünce anlamına gelen derlemler temelde referans derlem, özelleştirilmiş derlem, yazı dili derlemi ve konuşma dili derlemi olmak üzere dörde ayrılır. Nitelikli bir derlem otantik olmalı, gerçek dil kullanımı yansıtmalı, derlemdeki veriler yeterince büyük olmalı ve veriler işaretlenmiş olmalıdır. Derlem dilbilimi ise veri grubu olarak derlemler üzerinde çalışan deneye dayalı bir dilbilim disiplinidir. Derlem dilbiliminin temel amacı, bilgisayar hesaplamaları yardımıyla yüksek sayıdaki otantik metinle çalışmak ve doğal dil kullanım özelliklerini tespit etmektir. Derlem dilbilimi, klasik dilbilim araştırmalarının yanında sözlük oluşturma veya yabancı dil öğretimi gibi amaçlarla da kullanılmaktadır. Derlem dilbiliminin yabancı dil öğretimindeki yansıması ise veri yönlendirmeli öğrenim yaklaşımı ile olmuştur. Veri yönlendirmeli öğrenimde yabancı dil öğrencileri derlemleri kullanarak hedef dili keşfeder ve doğal dil kullanımını içselleştirir. Bu yaklaşım öğrenci merkezlidir. Öğretmenler ise öğrencileri yönlendiren ve onlara yardımcı olan bir konumdadır. Derlem dilbiliminin yabancı dil öğretiminde kullanıldığı ikinci bir alan ise ders kitabı, sözlük ve alıştırma oluşturma gibi materyal geliştirmeye yönelik yapılan çalışmalardır. Derlemler sayesinde bu materyallerdeki dil kullanımı, kelime seçimi vb. nitelikler hedef dilin doğal ortamındaki gerçek kullanımıyla daha uyumlu hale getirilebilir. Son olarak, derlem dilbilimi yabancı dil öğretimi alanında yapılan bilimsel araştırmalarda da geniş kullanım alanları bulmaktadır. Yabancı dil öğrencilerinin dil kullanımlarının hedef dildeki referans derlemlerle karşılaştırılması, ders kitaplarındaki söz varlığının referans derlemlerle karşılaştırılması, derlem kullanımının öğrencilerin kelime ve dil bilgisi öğrenimlerine katkısı vb. konulu araştırmalar bu alanda yapılan çalışmalara örnek olarak verilebilir.
This study explored stance-taking in Chinese heritage language writing. Analysis focused on a prominent stance expression, wo juede ‘I think.’ Frequency, function, and formulaic usage of wo juede were compared across 3 written Chinese corpora by heritage learners, second language (L2) learners, and native speakers (L1 writers). The analysis revealed distinctive linguistic features and collocational patterns of stance-taking among the 3 groups. Overall, heritage writers’ stance performance was found to be self-centered and text oriented. They exhibited a strong reliance on wo juede combined with textual organizers such as contrastive or causal conjunctions. In contrast, L1 writers were more reader oriented, exhibiting a strong tendency to combine wo juede with interpersonal devices including attitudinal markers, modal verbs, sentence-final particles, and question forms. The study also found that heritage writers’ stance-taking performance consistently fell between that of L1 and L2 writers. Findings and pedagogical implications are discussed in light of heritage learner pragmatics and learner agency.
The aim of the literature review is to map the research field associated with the topic of the frequency use of personal pronouns in written academic discourse of university students. The work discusses the main concepts, presents the analyses of 14 empirical studies, and answers two research questions: What are the main findings of the current research? What methods and approaches are preferred in this type of research?
A thesis is a formal academic writing; however, since nowadays communication tends to become more informal, some theses may also use informality features. This study aims at analyzing the undergraduate thesis abstracts from the years of 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, and 2016 of Indonesian EFL students. This study found that the thesis abstracts contained eight types of informality features: first-person pronouns, second-person pronouns, sentence-initial conjunctions/conjunctive adverbs, sentence-final prepositions, run-on sentences/expressions, sentence fragments, contractions, and direct questions. From those eight features, four of them have constantly appeared over time. The statistical calculation shows a negative correlation between the years and these four features: the first-person pronouns, the sentence-initial conjunctions/conjunctive adverbs, the run-on sentences/expressions, and the sentence fragments. This means that the use of informality features has decreased overtime. This could signify that there has been an improvement in the teaching and learning process or that the EFL learners have become more conservative in their academic writing.
The use of I in academic writing is a topic which causes debate among academics and academic language teachers and much confusion among students writing for assessment. Although some research into the use of pronouns in academic texts has been completed, the effect of genre on pronoun use in academic writing is under-researched. This paper therefore aims to identify the rhetorical function for which first person singular pronouns are used across different genres of business students’ academic writing. The rhetorical functions of the instances of I in thirteen genres of good quality student academic writing were analysed using a modified version of Hyland's (2002) typology. The results showed that the genre of writing seems to influence the rhetorical functions for which I is used.
This paper reports on a study that comparatively investigated the differences and similarities in the use of first-person pronouns by English and Chinese native speakers (ENSs and CNSs) in their academic English writing. Using a corpus comprising journal research articles (RAs) from the fields of Physics, Computer Science, Linguistics and Management written by ENSs and CNSs, I present data to reveal that (i) the use of first-person pronouns in Physics is more frequent than that in other disciplines for both ENSs and CNSs; (ii) there are no consistent ENS/CNS frequency differences in first-person pronoun usage across the four disciplines; (iii) the plural first-person pronoun
Research have reported that one of the challenges faced by non-native English writers to have their research articles (RAs) accepted by English-medium journals is to fulfill the journals’ expectations in terms of linguistic aspect. In addition, non-native English writers seem to be having the problem in expressing their authorial identity which is needed to build one’s academic arguments. Therefore, this research was conducted to 1) explore whether linguistic disadvantage exists among native English writers or Thai writers in international publication, and 2) discover how the native English and Thai writers assert their identities through different rhetorical purposes of RAs. Eight university lecturers in Applied Linguistics (AL) from a few universities in Thailand were interviewed to understand their views on the issues of writing for scholarly publication in the English language. The findings revealed two salient emerging themes: (1) the role of linguistic disadvantage and (2) variation in authorial identity between native English and Thai writers. The study has found that linguistic disadvantage exists among the Thai writers. The native English writers expressed their authorial identity overtly but the Thai writers deferred their authorial identity. It is suggested that teachers in Thailand emphasize more on the knowledge of linguistic aspect required in international publication and the effective use of linguistic realization of authorial identity in academic writing.
p>The present study is focused on analyzing the uses of some expressions showing expectations in academic texts. A corpus-based study specifically dealing with the uses of the verbs "expect" and "hope", this project seeks to understand the phenomenon as reflected in C-SMILE (Corpus of State University of Malang Indonesian Learners’ English). Analyzing the corpus of about 6 million words composed of texts of undergraduate theses written in English by Indonesian EFL learners, this study has arrived at an interpretive point that Indonesian cultural norms are influential to the manifestation of the expressions. The expressions reflect some degree of the writers’ religiosity. This unfortunately also suggests a lacking point of evidentiality in academic written works.
Keywords: C-SMILE, corpus linguistics, EFL </p
In this paper we address the issue of conjunction use in learner writing from a text-structuring angle, focusing on hortatory expositions by NNS learners and NS professionals. The learners are advanced Dutch-speaking students of English, while the professionals are journalists writing for British quality newspapers. We investigate how external conjunctive items (CIs), which express real-world relations between states of affairs,
interact
with internal CIs, which relate to the writer’s speech acts or modal positions, to construct specific rhetorical macro-structures, or conjunctive profiles. On the basis of qualitative and quantitative analysis, we identify four profiles: (1) predominance of internal CIs, (2) predominant use of external CIs, (3) spreading of external and internal CIs over the whole essay, (4) concentration of internal CIs in introduction and conclusion. The first profile is exclusive to NNS learner writing, but the other three profiles are found in both NNS and NS expositions. Gross overuse of CIs is found in the first and second learner profiles only. Overall, the advanced learner essays display emergent conjunctive macro-structuring, which teaching can build on.
The large number of Economic journals publishing in English in Romania prompted an investigation into the language circulated to establish whether there are significant deviations from the language in articles by native English researchers. Two corpora were created and various linguistic features were compared: first reference pronouns, relative pronouns, passive forms, modal verbs, use of tense - aspect forms. With one exception, there were statistically significant differences between the two corpora. Further research can provide guidelines for more efficient reviewing of Romanian journals of Economics and improved didactics of academic prose, especially article writing, in terms of syllabi and teaching materials. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer review under responsibility of Prof. Dr. Huseyin Uzunboylu
This paper introduces the Corpus of Academic Learner English (CALE), a Language for Specific Purposes learner corpus that is currently being compiled for the quantitative and qualitative study of lexico-grammatical variation patterns in advanced learners' written academic English. CALE is designed to comprise seven academic genres produced by learners of English as a foreign language in a university setting and thus contains discipline-and genre-specific texts. The corpus will serve as an empirical basis to produce detailed case studies that examine individual (or the interplay of several) determinants of lexico-grammatical variation, e.g. semantic, structural, discourse-motivated and processing-related ones, but also those that are potentially more specific to the acquisition of L2 academic writing such as task setting, genre and writing proficiency. Another major goal is to develop a set of linguistic criteria for the assessment of advanced proficiency conceived of as "sophisticated language use in context". The research findings will be applied to teaching English for Academic Purposes by creating a web-based reference tool that will give students access to typical collocational patterns and recurring phrases used to express rhetorical functions in academic writing.
Despite a mere decade of existence, the field of computer learner corpus (CLC) research has been the focus of so much active international work that it seems worth taking a retrospective look at the research accomplished to date and considering the prospects for future research in both Second Language Acquisition (SLA) studies and Foreign Language Teaching (FLT) that emerge. One of the main distinguishing features of computer learner corpora – and indeed one of their main strengths – is that they can be used by specialists from both these fields and thus constitute a possible point of contact between them. The first three sections of this chapter are devoted to a brief overview of the main aspects of CLC research: data collection, methodological approaches, learner corpus typology, and size and representativeness. Sections 4 and 5 review the tangible results of CLC research in the fields of SLA and FLT.
The acquisition sequences of 11 English functors were compared for native Chinese- and Spanish-speaking children learning English. Three different methods of speech analysis used to obtain the sequences are described in detail. All three methods yielded approximately the same sequence of acquisition for both language groups. This finding provides strong support for the existence of universal child language learning strategies and suggests a program of research that could lead to their description.
The characterization of learner interlanguage has been largely confined to the early acquisition of speech in a second language (L2), with later acquisition not commonly analyzed in this framework for lack of theory, lack of data, and the fact that late acquisition is intermeshed with the acquisition of literacy. The current trend to electronic submission of classroom writing relieves the data problem, defines steps in the acquisition of literacy, and may even contribute to the growth of theory. When assembled by teachers or researchers into a learner corpus (LC) of suitable size and character, such a corpus provides the empirical means to discover what advanced learners know and do not know about their L2. A strong tradition of LC analysis has emerged in Europe; the present study introduces this work and tests its applicability to a North American context.
Argues that current controversies about meaning, comprehension, acquisition, reading, and reasoning as functions of language are rooted in differing assumptions about the extrinsic or intrinsic relation of meaning to language. On both individual and cultural levels, there has been development from language as utterance (meaning extrinsic to language) to language as text (meaning intrinsic to language). Schooling, particularly learning to read, is for the individual the critical process in the transformation from utterance to text. The history of conventionalized, explicit language is traced from the invention of the Greek alphabet to the rise of the British essay. The resulting concept of language is discussed, with its implications for the linguistic, psychological, and logical issues previously raised. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The overall goal of this study is to clarify the nature of Japanese students’ first language (L1) writing experience and instruction in high school to help university second language (L2) English writing teachers understand their students’ needs. Building on the results of a previous large-scale questionnaire study of Japanese (N=389) and American students (N=66), this interview study attempts to gain insight into Japanese L1 literacy instruction in high school through individual students’ experiences. The questionnaire study had indicated that Japanese high school language classes provide significantly more instruction in reading than writing and significantly less emphasis on writing than American classes. However, analysis of the data from in-depth interviews (N=21) presented here reveals a more complex picture. Most notably, many Japanese high schools provide intensive writing instruction and practice, outside of regular Japanese classes, to help increasing numbers of individual students prepare for essay writing on university entrance exams. The results of the study call into question the common assumption that Japanese high school students receive little training related to L1 writing. The findings suggest specific ways for teachers to draw on students’ strengths in terms of their literacy background to help them bridge the gap between their L1 and L2 writing skills.
Academic writing has traditionally been thought of as a convention-bound monolithic entity that involves distant, convoluted and impersonal prose. However, recent research has suggested a growing recognition that there is room for negotiation of identity within academic writing, and thus academic writing need not be totally devoid of a writer’s presence. In this article, we explore the notion of writer identity in academic essays by focusing on first person pronouns, arguably the most visible manifestation of a writer’s presence in a text. Our main argument is that the first person pronoun in academic writing is not a homogeneous entity. Accordingly, we set up a typology of six different identities behind the first person pronoun in academic writing. We then apply this framework to a specific examination of the essays of 27 first-year undergraduates at the National University of Singapore. We focus on how the identities of these student writers are revealed through uses of the first person pronoun, and reflect on the implications of our results on issues of critical thinking and writing education at the tertiary level.
This paper is a qualitative corpus-based study of how academic writers can use the personal pronouns I and we to help to create a self-promotional tenor in their prose. Using a corpus comprising journal research articles (RAs) from the fields of Business & Management, Computing Science, Economics, and Physics, I present data extracts which reveal how I and we can publicize the writer and their work even though the pronouns are ostensibly helping to perform other functions, such as creating a research space, organizing the discourse, outlining procedure and/or methodology, explaining the researcher's previous work, reporting or summarizing findings, disputing other researchers’ findings, or indicating potential future directions for research. The study shows that even supposedly ‘author-evacuated’ articles in the hard sciences can be seen to carry a self-promotional flavour with the help of personal pronouns.
In this paper, I examine the view that research writing is a modest, self-effacing task which involves authors eradicating themselves from their texts to gain acceptance for their work. Conflicting advice in textbooks and style guides, and the apparently diverse conventions of different disciplines, mean that the extent to which writers can explicitly intrude into their discourse is highly problematic for students, teachers, and experienced writers alike. However, the choices which express writer presence are also closely associated with authorial identity and authority and these not only affect the ideational meaning that writers convey, but also influence the impression they make on their readers. Self-mention is therefore a powerful rhetorical strategy for emphasising a writer’s contribution. Here I focus on the use of self-citation and exclusive first person pronouns in a corpus of 240 research articles in eight disciplines. Through an analysis of these texts and interviews with expert informants I seek to reveal something of how self-mention is used and perceived as a way of understanding more about writing in the disciplines and about the kinds of options available to students.
Predicting paper-and-pencil TOEFL scores from KEPT data. Studies in Linguistics and Language Education of the Research Insti-tute of Language Studies and Language Education
- Bonk
- William
Bonk, William. 2001. Predicting paper-and-pencil TOEFL scores from KEPT data. Studies in Linguistics and Language Education of the Research Insti-tute of Language Studies and Language Education, Kanda University of International Studies 12: 65–86