“All These Nouns Together Just Don’t Make Sense!”: An Investigation of EAP Students’ Challenges with Complex Noun Phrases in First-Year College-Level Textbooks

Dmitri Priven

doi:10.37213/cjal.2020.28700

Abstract

Complex noun phrases (CNP) are a major vehicle of academic written discourse (Halliday, 1988; 2004). However, in spite of the view that they pose significant challenges to English language learners, they are often overlooked in preparatory English for Academic Purposes (EAP) programs. This mixed methods study aims to investigate to what extent CNP present syntactic parsing challenges for upper-level college EAP students, and whether there is a perceived need for direct instruction in CNP in EAP programs. A special CNP proficiency test was administered to 70 upper-level Ontario college EAP students and a native speaker comparator group, and the results were compared with those obtained from interviews with seven of the test-takers. The results obtained from the statistical analyses and the interviews indicate that CNP are challenging to parse for upper-level EAP students and that direct instruction in CNP may be beneficial for improving their reading comprehension. Some teaching implications of the findings are also addressed.

Highlights

Complex noun phrases (CNP) are a major vehicle of academic written discourse (Halliday, 1988; 2004)
This paper presents the results of a pilot study for a larger project envisioning a CNP-based teaching intervention in a bridging-level college-based preparatory English for Academic Purposes (EAP) program
Comprehension of CNP by English language learners (ELLs) in academic contexts has been measured through test tasks involving identification of the head noun (NOUN ID task in the CNP test), pre- and post-modifiers, and comprehension questions based on paraphrases (PARA task in the CNP test) (Benassi et al, 2011), and through having ELLs write sequences of CNP immediately after reading them (Jullian, 2002)

Summary

Study design

In order to address the research question and the sub-questions, I conducted a mixed method study integrating quantitative and qualitative data analyses in a convergent design (Creswell, 2015). This type of design involves collecting quantitative and qualitative data separately and merging the results. The convergent design lends itself well for the purposes of this study because the extent of EAP students’ CNP comprehension challenges in reading comprehension (or lack thereof) can be assessed through quantitative measures and probed further through a qualitative component. For the quantitative component of this study, the participants took part in a specially designed CNP comprehension test (see Description of test section). The tests scores were analyzed statistically and informed the semi-structured interview protocol, which served as the qualitative component of the study

Participants

Which phrase is the closest in meaning to the underlined phrase in Lines 3-4?

Findings from the quantitative phase

Findings from the qualitative phase