A technological profiling of lexical verbs: A contrastive corpus-based analysis of L1 and L2 learner writing: Implications towards second language learning and teaching

Abstract

Writing is often perceived as a very difficult skill for second language learners as compared to other language skills. Ineffective use or lack of vocabulary items often sets the L2 learners apart from native L1 learners. Not only should learners have a large repertoire of vocabulary to improve their writing quality, they also must know how to use the words correctly in order to assist them in achieving communicative competence. The words used will form sentences and it is the verbs that form the main structure of a sentence. Lexical verbs often pose problems to learners as they appear in many different forms which are dependent on tense and aspect system in English. To date, very few studies have done a lexical profile that highlights on the use of lexical verbs by Malay ESL learners. Since a lexical profile of a written learner language enables a researcher to look in depth into the actual use of language and identify usage problems, this paper reports on an investigation of salient features of the use of lexical verbs in two learner corpora. For this purpose, a contrastive analysis was done between Written English Corpus of Malay ESL Learners (WECMEL), a non-native learner corpus, and Learner Corpus of Native English Essays (LOCNESS). WECMEL comprises a collection of argumentative essays written by pre-degree university students whose first language is Malay; LOCNESS, on the other hand, consists of argumentative essays written by native speaker learners. The findings of this comparative analysis suggest pedagogical implications towards the learning and teaching of grammar, in particular the lexical verbs.