DevelopingresearchreportwritingskillsusingcorporaEnglishforSpecificPurposes.docx

DevelopingresearchreportwritingskillsusingcorporaEnglishforSpecificPurposes.docx

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DevelopingresearchreportwritingskillsusingcorporaEnglishforSpecificPurposes

EnglishforSpecificPurposes32（2013）208–220

ContentslistsavailableatSciVerseScienceDirect

EnglishforSpecificPurposes

journalhomepage:

www.elsevier.com/locate/esp

Developingresearchreportwritingskillsusingcorpora

EricFriginal⇑

GeorgiaStateUniversity,Atlanta,GA,USA

articleinfo

Articlehistory:

Availableonline27July2013

Keywords:

CorporaandresearchreportwritingCorpusanalysis

Genre-specificcorpus

Locallearnercorpora

abstract

Thisexploratorystudyinvestigatestheuseofcorporatodeveloptheresearchreportwrit-ingskillsofcollege-levelstudentsenrolledinaprofessionalforestryprogram.Specifically,thestudyidentifiesthecontributionofaconcordanceprograminhighlightingthecharac-teristicsofeffectivewritinginthefieldofforestrybyfocusingonasetofselectedlinguisticfeatures:

（a）linkingadverbials,（b）reportingverbs,（c）verbtenses（pastandpresent）,and

（d）passivesentencestructures.Thesefeatureswereselectedforthestudybasedonacom-parisonofacorpusofpublishedforestryarticlesvis-à-visacorpusofstudents’researchreports.Initialanalysisshowedinterestingdifferencesinthedistributionsoftheselinguis-ticfeaturesbetweenprofessionalandstudenttexts.Twogroupsofforestrystudents（N=28,with14studentspergroup）wererandomlyassigned,onereceivingsixhoursofinstructionoveratwo-weekperiodusingcorpustoolsandmaterials,whiletheothergroupwasgiventraditionalresearchreportwritinginstruction.Thereportswrittenbythestu-dentsinthetwogroupsbeforeandafterthetreatmentwerecomparedwiththedistribu-tionaldatafromthecorpusofpublishedarticles（i.e.,professionalcorpus）.Overall,resultsshowthatcorpusinstructioncontributedpositivelytothepatterningofthefrequenciesanddistributionaldataoflinkingadverbials,reportingverbs,andverbtensesinthestu-dents’researchreportsrelativetotheprofessionalcorpus.

PublishedbyElsevierLtd.

1.Introduction

Recenttechnicaladvancementsincorpus-basedresearchhavecontributedawealthofdataandinformationaddressingtheeffectivedescriptionofwrittentextsacrossacademicgenres（Biber,2006;Biber,Conrad,&Reppen,1998;Flowerdew,2005;Hyland,2004,2008）.Forexample,thelinguisticcharacteristicsofwritingwhichdefinespecificsub-genressuchasnarrative,argumentative,analytical,ortechnicalwritinghavebeenidentifiedandexploredbycorpus-basedresearchersessentiallyfocusingonawiderangeofdescriptiveandteachingapplications.Resultsfromcorpusdescriptionsofgenre-spe-cificwritingandtheuseof‘‘locallearnercorpora’’（Seidlhofer,2002,p.213）inwritingresearchhaveprovidedinterestinginsightsintotheuniquenessoftheseindividualgenresandhaveexposedthesystematicpatternsofworduse,structure,andconventionallexicalassociationscommonlyemployedbywritersinthesamefield（Henderson&Barr,2010;Hyland,2008）.Intuitively,knowledgegleanedfromcorpus-basedresearch,whichidentifiesfeaturesandsystematicassociationsoflanguagecharacteristicofwritersinaparticularfield,couldaidtheteachingofwritingforspecificpurposesandwritingacrossvariousdisciplines.

StudiesanalyzingtheapplicationsofcorporaandcorpustoolsinEnglishforAcademic/SpecificPurposes（EAP/ESP）con-

tinuetomatchtheincreasingavailabilityoffreewareandinternet-basedtoolsandresources（e.g.,Flowerdew,2008;Hafner

&Candlin,2007）.Inmanyacademicwritingcontexts,vocabularyacquisitionandthemasteryofgrammaticalstructuresfor

⇑Address:

POBox4099,DepartmentofAppliedLinguisticsandESL,Atlanta,GA30302,USA.Tel.:

+14044135186;fax:

+14044135201.

E-mailaddress:

efriginal@gsu.edu

0889-4906/$-seefrontmatterPublishedbyElsevierLtd.http:

//dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2013.06.001

differentproficiencylevelsoflanguagelearnersappeartobethemoredominantareasofinvestigationpursuedbymanycor-pus-basedresearchers（Bloch,2010;Hinkel,2002）.Studieshighlightingacademicvocabularyinsustained-contentlanguageteaching（SCLT）andcontent-basedlanguageinstruction（CBI）（e.g.,Coxhead,2000;Donley&Reppen,2001;Flowerdew,1993;Nesselhauf,2003;Salsbury&Crummer,2008）havedemonstratedthefeasibilityandpotentialutilityofmergingcorpustechniquesandtheteachingofvocabulary.Forexample,Cobb（1997）andHorst,Cobb,andNicolae（2005）reportedspecificlearninggainsinvocabulary（thetransferofwordknowledge）thatareattributabletotheuseofcomputer-basedtoolsbylanguagelearners.AsimilarstudybyChanandLiou（2005）showedhowweb-basedconcordancinginstructionsignificantlyhelpedstudents’learningofverb–nouncollocations.ChanandLioualsoreportedthattheuseofanonlineconcordancerwasdeemedacceptableandusefulbymostparticipantsinthestudy.Innovativecorpustoolsthataidintheintroductionofnewwordsandcollocationshelpedlearnerstoimprovetheirawarenessofmeaningsandusesofwordsinvariouscontexts.Inaddition,hands-onconcordancingalsoassistedinthesuccessfullearningofnewvocabularyandstu-dents’performanceintestsandactivities.

Corpus-basedactivitiesintheteachingofthegrammarandsentencestructureofEnglishhavealsobeenusedinthelan-guageclassroomthroughpioneeringendeavors,suchastheCOBUILDprojectanditsEnglishdatabase（Sinclair,1987）.Biber,Johansson,Leech,Conrad,andFinegan’s（1999）seminalworkintheLongmangrammarofspokenandwrittenEnglish（LGSWE）hasbroughtsignificantcorpusdataandinformationthatarepropitioustopedagogy.From2004to2012,newcorpus-basedreferencematerialsforteachersandresearchersthatfeaturespecificactivitiesinteachingwithcorporaincludeSinclair’s（2004）Howtousecorporainlanguageteaching;O’Keeffe,McCarthy,andCarter’s（2007）Fromcorpustoclassroom;ConradandBiber’s（2009）Realgrammar:

Acorpus-basedapproachtoEnglish;Bennet’s（2010）Usingcorporainthelanguagelearningclassroom;Reppen’s（2010）Usingcorporainthelanguageclassroom;andFlowerdew’s（2012）Corporaandlanguageeducation.Thesedevelopmentsinresearchandmaterials/textbookproductionintheclassroomsuggestthatthecombinationofSCLT/CBIandcorpustoolscontributestotheacquisitionofvocabularyandgrammarinthecontextoflanguageteachingandlearning.

Corpus-informedapproachestowritingresearchandinstruction

Therearemanychallengesinvolvedwiththedevelopmentofcorpus-basedlessonsandmaterialsintheteachingofwrit-ingandrhetoric,includingthedifficultcollectionofapplicablecorpora,limitedaccesstocomputerprogramsandcomputerlabs,andinadequatetrainingofwritingteachers.Inaddition,anumberofempiricalstudiesofdirectcorpusconsultationandusebylearnersreportednegativecommentspresentalongsidepositivereactionstocorpora（see,e.g.,Chambers,2005;Cheng,Warren,&Xu,2003）.Nevertheless,itappearsthatthefuturedirectionofteachingwritingforspecificpurposeswillincludecorpus-basedtextbooks,materials,anddata.Researchinacademicandtechnicalwriting,albeitstilllimitedatthemoment,hasalsoslowlyintroducedtheuseofcorporaandquantitativeanalysisofdistributionaldatafromwrittentexts（Conrad,2011）.

LeeandSwales（2006）providedresultssuggestingthedevelopmentofadvancedsecondlanguage（L2）academicwriting

fordoctoralstudentswhoutilizedcorporaandconcordancingactivitiesinanEAPcourse.Theparticipantsintheirstudyfol-loweda13-weekcourseincorpus-informedEAPandwereabletocomparetheirwritingwiththatofthepatternsshowninacorpusofpublishedresearchpapers.Theuseofcorporainanacademicwritingclassroomwasgenerallyregardedas‘‘con-fidence-buildingandempowering’’（p.71）bytheparticipants.ThesamepositiveperceptionoftheuseofcorporaandcorpustoolsinL2writingwasreportedbyYoonandHirvela（2004）.ResultsofqualitativeandquantitativeanalysesintheirstudyindicatedthatthecorpusapproachinL2academicwritingwasbeneficialtothedevelopmentofwritingskillsandcontrib-utedtothestudents’increasedconfidenceintheirownwriting.ThemajorityoftheparticipantsinYoonandHirvela’sstudysaidthattheywouldrecommendcorpus-informedwritingclassestootherstudentswhoarenon-nativespeakersofEnglish.

Writelikeachemist,acorpus-informedwritingmanualbyRobinson,Stoller,Jones,andConstanza-Robinson（2008）makesuseofinformationgatheredfromcorpusanalysesofchemistrytexts.ThismaterialappliesprimarilytochemistrystudentsintheUnitedStates,bothnativeandnon-nativespeakersofEnglish,whenwritingfield-specificpaperssuchasjournalarticles,researchproposals,andscientificpostersinchemistry.Similarly,asetoflessonsusingcorpustoolsandtechniquesinteach-ingacademicwritingwasdevelopedbyDonleyandDresher（2000）andDinizandMoran（2005）toheightenstudents’aware-nessofregistervariationinacademictexts,aswellastoanalyzethefeaturesofsuccessfulandfailedsamplesofstudentwriting.Finally,onlinedatabasesincludingtheCorpusofcontemporaryAmericanEnglish（COCA）（Davies,2006）（availableat:

http:

//www.americancorpus.org/）andtheMichigancorpusofupper-levelstudentpapers（MICUSP）（2010）（availableat:

http:

//search-micusp.elicorpora.info/simple/）bothprovidesearchabletextsamplesofwritingacrossacademicregisters,withmorespecificsub-categoriesintheMICUSP,suchaspapertypes,studentlevels,textualfeatures,anddisciplines.Itisclearthatthe