Distinguishing between learner vs. novice writing features: A crosslinguistic approach
(2019) 5th Learner Corpus Research Conference — Location: University of Warsaw (12.September.2019)
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- In recent decades, studies in Learner Corpus Research have highlighted features that are considered to be typical of English as a foreign Language learner writing, such as register unawareness and overuse of reader/writer visibility features (e.g. Gilquin et al., 2007; Paquot, 2010). There is, however, a debate surrounding this tendency to portray these features as “learner-typical”. A number of studies found similarities between L2 and L1 (English) novice writing, and therefore emphasize that “expertise is a more important aspect to consider than nativeness” (Römer, 2009: 99). Academic writing might thus be better described in terms of novice writing vs. expert writing. If the aforementioned features are in fact characteristic of novice academic writing rather than learner writing, it could be hypothesized that they are shared by novice writers across languages. However, to date hardly any studies have compared novice academic writing across languages to better tease apart features of learner vs. novice academic writing. This is what this study seeks to investigate via a crosslinguistic approach to lexical bundles in novice L1 French, novice L1 English and French learner L2 English. The choice to work on lexical bundles was primarily motivated by that the fact that, while some authors state that “phraseology is one of the aspects that unmistakably distinguishes native speakers of a language from L2 learners” (Granger & Bestgen, 2014: 229), others claim that phraseological features uncovered in EFL writing are better explained by the noviceness of these writers rather than by their non-nativeness (Römer, 2009). The challenge, however, is to take into account the typological differences between French and English, which raise interesting questions concerning bundle extraction and analysis. In this first case study, I focus on two research questions: RQ1: To what extent do the lexical bundles used by L1 French and L1 English students resemble the lexical bundles found in comparable corpora of expert academic writing? RQ2: To what extent do features of novice writing in L1 French and L1 English share commonalities? To answer these questions, I zoom in on 2- to 4-word bundles with personal pronouns and analyze them in terms of frequencies, structures and functions in corpora of novice and expert writing in the discipline of linguistics. To answer RQ1, I draw intralanguage comparisons between novice and expert academic writing. First, the French Academic wRiting corpus (FAR; 216,470 words), a corpus of French novice writing, is compared with the KIAP-LING-FR, a corpus of French expert academic writing (339,490 words). For the English counterpart, samples drawn from the British Academic Written English (BAWE) corpus and the Michigan Corpus of Upper-Level Student Papers (MICUSP), two corpora of L1 English novice academic writing, are compared to the Louvain Corpus of Research Articles (LOCRA-LING; 1,071,494 words). Lexical bundles in the two novice corpora are then compared to answer RQ2. Results will also be compared with lexical bundles as used in the Varieties of English for Specific Purposes dAtabase (VESPA-LING-FR; 413,161 words), thus starting to address a third research question: RQ3: To what extent does French EFL learner writing resemble L1 French vs. L1 English novice writing? By questioning the status of features put forward as learner-typical in the literature, my PhD project will help to gain deeper understanding of the interplay between non-nativeness and noviceness in academic writing. It also aims to inform the development of the Louvain EAP dictionary (LEAD) by determining whether there is a need for more EFL-specific usage notes or, on the contrary, whether users would be better served if “more emphasis be put on expertise than on nativeness” (Römer, 2009: 99). References Biber, D., Conrad, S., & Cortes, V. (2003). Lexical bundles in speech and writing: An initial taxonomy. In A. Wilson, P. Rayson, & T. McEnery (Eds.), Corpus linguistics by the lune: A festschrift for Geoffrey Leech (pp.71–92). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Gilquin, G., Granger, S., & Paquot, M. (2007). Learner corpora: the missing link in EAP pedagogy. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 6(4), 319–335. Granger, S., & Bestgen, Y. (2014). The use of collocations by intermediate vs. advanced non-native writers: A bigram-based study. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 52, 229–252. Louvain EAP dictionary (LEAD), https://leaddico.uclouvain.be/login (last accessed 15 January 2019) Paquot, M. (2010). Academic Vocabulary in Learner Writing: From Extraction to Analysis. London & New-York: Continuum. Römer, U. (2009). English in academia: Does nativeness matter? Anglistik: International Journal of English Studies, 20(2), 89–100.
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Jadoulle, P. (2019). Distinguishing between learner vs. novice writing features: A crosslinguistic approach. 5th Learner Corpus Research Conference, University of Warsaw. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/247336