Native English Students Research Articles

Frequency and Functions of Non-Finite Clauses in Native and Non-Native Academic Texts

Non-finite clauses are one of the elements considered as an index of syntactic complexity, which is a distinguishing feature of academic register. In this sense, the current study aims to reveal the frequency and syntactic functions of non-finite clauses in the academic writings of non-native and native English students. In order to reach this aim, a specialized corpus with two sub-corpora consisting of the MA and PhD theses of natives and non-natives was compiled. The native and non-native corpora were similar in terms of size and the topics of the texts. The data were analyzed using the Antconc concordancing tool, and the log-likelihood tool was used to calculate the significance of the findings. The result of the study showed that non-natives significantly underused the non-finite clauses in their academic texts compared to their native counterparts. Although there is a statistically significant difference in terms of the overall frequency of non-finite clauses, the distribution of the forms of the non-finite clauses was found to be balanced in NS and NNS texts. That is, both NSs and NNSs used bare infinitives less frequently and to infinitival most frequently in academic papers. In terms of the syntactic functions of the non-finite clauses, adjectival (adnominal) was used more frequently and nominals were used less frequently in both corpora. The findings of this study were compared with the previous findings, and educational implications were presented.

Beyond Words: A Case Study Exploring Visual and Audio Strategies in the Poetry Classroom

This paper reports a case study that explores ways to improve Saudi students’ engagement with poetry in English by providing them with alternative opportunities to analyse and express themselves using technology and multimedia. It is a strategic implementation of a culturally appropriate pedagogy that utilises visual language to interpret poems in English. Independently constructing their own videos provided students with a chance to replace traditional written interpretations of poems in the classroom. Allowing L2 students to communicate and express emotions visually gives them access to their creative potential, from which they can construct more meaningful interpretations. This supports the concept of no wrong answers in the reading and analysis of poetry and allows the students to create an exploratory relationship towards reading poetry. This is important for Saudi students in particular since they are not as proficient in written English as native English students. This article also reports the students’ perceptions to determine the effectiveness of visual poetry as an alternative to written analysis of poetry. I investigate the relationship between poetry and pedagogy to allow for individualised attempts to present a particular framework as a medium for studying poetry. The study showed, through their personalised videos, that Saudi students are open to using technology and multimedia that liberate them from traditional teaching techniques and allow them to unlock their interpretive skills and represent their interpretations in original ways. These findings might also have greater relevance to wider debates on extending the use of technology and multimedia as a key element for educators hoping to engage L2 students with reading and responding to poetry in English.

Underproduction or Overproduction? A Corpus-based Study of Chinese EFL Learners’ Use of English Relative Clauses

This paper attempts to examine whether Chinese English learners adopt the underproduction or overproduction behavior when using English relative clauses in academic writing. To achieve the objective of the study, the researchers used a corpus-based method to analyze and compare the production of the restrictive relative clause among Chinese students and native English students. The aims were to find out if the Chinese students underproduce the English relative clause and also examine how frequently they use that, which, and zero relative pronouns as reported in the sub-corpus of the Written English Corpus of Chinese Learner (WECCL) and the British Academic Written English corpus (BAWE). Based on the findings, conclusions are drawn as follows; compared to native English students, Chinese EFL learners generally tend to underproduce the restrictive relative clause in academic writing; and on the other hand, overuse the relative pronoun that. The observations from this study concur with the findings from previous studies

The Impact of Clinical Review Bias on Child Language Grammaticality

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of clinical review bias on the coding of grammaticality in child language. Seventy-four native-English students studying communication disorders and sciences made judgments about the grammaticality of 250 utterances presented in five language samples. Each language sample included grammatical, ungrammatical, and ambiguous utterances. Participants were randomly assigned to a blind or nonblind group. The nonblind group was presented with diagnostic information, whereas the blind group was not. We employed a generalized linear mixed model to examine the binary data. Our results suggest that both blind and nonblind participants were accurate in judging grammatical and ungrammatical utterances. However, nonblind participants were slightly more likely to judge ambiguous utterances as ungrammatical when the language sample identified the child as having a language impairment, suggesting that there was an effect of clinical review bias in this study. This effect, although statistically significant, was small.

Analysis on the Orthographic Errors Marked By the Native English Learners of Sinhala

The purpose of this research is to study the orthographical errors made by the native English second language (L2) learners of Sinhala. A blend of similarities and dissimilarities are visible between the orthography of English and Sinhala. Even though both languages are written horizontally in left to write direction, they do not share any scripts (letters) in common such as in English and French or English and Spanish. Sinhala has an alpha-syllabary written system, whereas English has an alphabetic written system. Due to the transfer effect (the influences from the first language (L1) on learning a second language (L2)) the native English students, who were learning communicative Sinhala, tended to mark errors in orthography in and outside the classroom. I have used the three most related theories for this study: The Transfer Theory, the Error Analysis and the Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis. This paper discusses five major categories in which the second language students of beginner level have made errors while practicing their Sinhala orthography. The data was collected from 35 students over a period of 5 years and has been analyzed using qualitative methods. The qualitative data analysis revealed seven major categories of errors commonly done by the second language students of beginner level while practicing their Sinhala orthography.

A Corpus-based Study on the Use of Contractions by EFL Learners in Argumentative Essays

Contraction forms in English are mostly occur in speech and informal writing and they are generally avoided in formal writing types such as academic prose, business reports and journal articles, therefore, most teachers discourage their use in academic essays (Biber, Johansonn, Leech, Conrad and Finegan 1999). Contractions in English have two types; negative contractions (isn’t, haven’t, doesn’t) and verb contractions (I’m, they’ve, that’s). This corpus based study attempts to investigate contraction usage in learner and native English speaker essays. Major goal is to examine whether learners consider essay writing rules in respect of contractions which are accepted inappropriate for academic prose style. Five corpora, three learner and two native English, were utilized in order to analyze verb and not-contraction forms. Frequency calculations of contraction forms in each corpus compared via log-likelihood measurement for statistical significance. Results revealed that learners use considerably more contraction forms, especially negative ones, than native English students in their argumentative essays.Keywords: English for Academic Purposes, learner corpus, contractions

A Genre Analysis of English and Iranian Research Articles Abstracts in Applied Linguistics and Mathematics

In recent years, genre studies have attracted the attention of many researchers. The aim of the present study was to observe the differences in generic structure of abstract written by English native and non-native (Iranian) students in two disciplines of mathematics and applied linguistics. To this end, twenty native English students’ abstract texts from each discipline and the same number of non-native (Iranian) ones were selected. In this study, Hyland’s (2000) five‐move model was used to identify the rhetorical structure of the four sets of texts. After analyzing each text, the main moves were extracted and the frequencies of each one were calculated and compared. The cross-disciplinary and cross‐linguistic analyses reveal that linguistics abstracts follow a conventional scheme, but mathematics abstracts in these two languages do not exhibit the usual norms in terms of moves. Besides, greater difference in move structure is seen across languages in mathematics. The findings of the study have some pedagogical implications for academic writing courses for graduate students, especially students from non-English backgrounds in order to facilitate their successful acculturation into these disciplinary communities.

Cultural Factors in EAP Teaching — Influences of Thought Pattern on English Academic Writing

In the last decade, more and more EFL teachers in the universities of China have been aware of the feasibility and necessity of teaching English for Academic Purpose (EAP), which is identified as one type of English for Specific Purposes, to students of non-English majors. Among the EAP courses, academic writing is considered as the most helpful one. More and more scholars of ESP in China have conducted researches on English academic writing (EAW) including analysis on the syntactic characteristics of English for academic purposes, corpus-based study of English dimension adjectives in academic speaking and writing, and comparative study on Natives’ EAW and Chinese EAW. It was pointed that the EAW research in China focuses on language form and rules, but neglects the correlation of contents and thoughts. Therefore, this research studies the influences of cultural thought patterns on English academic writing by employing product approach to contrast vocabulary and discourse differences in EAW writings produced by Chinese students and native English students. Key Words : English for Academic Purpose (EAP); Cultural factors; Thought pattern; English Academic Writing