write like an academic - the thesis
DESCRIPTION
This is the Phd thesis of Nilgun Hancioglu completed at the Eastern Mediterranean University, Famagusta in 2009. The research is a corpus-informed study of thesis writing by non-native English speakers and describes the development of an advanced academic writing course that helps them to 'write like an academic'.TRANSCRIPT
Incorporating Corpus data into an Advanced Academic Thesis Writing Course
Nilgün Hancıoğlu
Submitted to theInstitute of Graduate Studies and Research
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
in
English Language Teaching
Eastern Mediterranean UniversityJanuary 2009, Gazimağusa
North Cyprus
Approval of the Institute of Graduate Studies and Research
________________________________Prof. Dr. Elvan Yılmaz
Director(a)
I certify that this thesis satisfies the requirements as a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Language Teaching.
________________________________Assist. Prof. Dr. Fatoş Erozan
Chair, Department of English Language Teaching
We certify that we have read this thesis and that in our opinion it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Language Teaching.
________________________________Assoc. Prof. Dr. Gülşen Musayeva Vefalı
Supervisor
Examining Committee___________________________________________________________________
1. Prof. Dr. Gürkan Doğan ______________________________
2. Prof. Dr. Ülker Vancı Osam ______________________________
3. Prof. Dr. Deniz Zeyrek ______________________________
4. Assoc. Prof. Dr. Necdet Osam ______________________________
5. Assoc. Prof. Dr. Gülşen Musayeva Vefalı ______________________________
ABSTRACT
Since English remains the primary language of science and research across the
globe, many academics are required to produce research in a language that is not
their own. This research has been motivated by the difficulties this presents for the
post-graduate students at the Eastern Mediterranean University (EMU). The main
aim of the study is to construct a comprehensive pedagogic corpus for such students,
and to incorporate it into an advanced academic thesis writing course. To this end, a
learner abstract corpus (LAC) and a target abstract corpus (TAC) were compiled
respectively from work produced by post-graduate students at EMU, and from
abstracts written by post-graduate students in English speaking countries. Both
quantitative and qualitative methods were utilized to analyse the corpora. The
comparison of the corpora exhibited extensive use of higher frequency vocabulary, a
tendency to repeat similar items, and recurrent inadequacy in using appropriate
collocations and lexico-grammatical patterns in the LAC. The work in the TAC,
however, demonstrated the use of a wider range of lower frequency words, as well
as a more varied lexico-grammatical utilization of these items. Accordingly, a
pedagogic corpus was constructed. This corpus includes the Academic Abstract
Corpus (AAC) Bank, which offers alternative lexico-grammatical patterns for
fulfilling the required generic moves and sub-moves in abstract and thesis writing;
the TAC Wordlist of 165 key words for thesis writing; the web concordances of the
LAC and the TAC; and a variety of teacher-led data driven and learner-led discovery
tasks as well as other diverse academic writing resources. The corpus-informed
course is mounted on Moodle, a virtual learning platform founded on social
constructivist principles. The study produced major conclusions regarding corpora,
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wordlists, and lexico-grammatical patterns, the broader implications and
applications of which are explored from a range of perspectives.
Keywords: corpus, pedagogic corpus, learner corpus, lexico-grammar, genre,
academic writing
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ÖZET
Günümüzde İngilizce’nin tüm dünyada bilim ve araştırma dili olması, birçok
akademisyenin kendi dili olmayan bir dilde araştırma üretmesini gerektiriyor. Bu
çalışma, Doğu Akdeniz Üniversitesi’nde lisansüstü eğitim yapmakta olan
öğrencilerin bu bağlamda yaşadıkları zorluklardan esinlenmiştir. Araştırmanın temel
amacı bu tür öğrenciler için kapsamlı bir eğitsel bütünce oluşturup, bunu ileri
düzeyde tez yazımı dersine kazandırmaktır. Bu amaçla, biri Doğu Akdeniz
Üniversitesi lisansüstü öğrencilerinin, diğeri ise ana dili İngilizce olan ülkelerdeki
üniversitelerde lisansüstü eğitim görmüş öğrencilerin yazdığı tez özetlerinden oluşan
iki bütünce oluşturulmuş ve oluşturulan bütüncelerin çözümlemesinde nitel ve nicel
yöntemlerden yararlanılmıştır. Bu bütünceler öğrenci tez özeti bütüncesi (LAC) ve
hedeflenen tez özeti bütüncesi (TAC) olarak adlandırılmıştır. İki bütüncenin
karşılaştırılması sonucu LAC’taki tez özetlerinde en sık kullanılan sözcük
listelerindeki sözcüklerin yaygın olarak kullanıldığı, benzer sözcüklerin
tekrarlandığı, eşdizimsel sözcük ve sözcük gruplarının doğru kullanımlarının
yetersiz olduğu gözlemlenmiştir. Diğer yandan, TAC’taki tez özetlerinin
çözümlemesi, daha ender sözcüklerin sıkça ve eşdizimsel sözcüklerle ve sözcük
grupları içinde doğru olarak kullanıldığını göstermiştir. Çözümleme sonuçlarından
çıkan verilere dayanarak yaratılan kapsamlı eğitsel bütünce, tez özeti ve tez
yazımında kullanılan hamleleri oluşturmak için gereken eşdizimsel sözcüklerden ve
sözcük gruplarindan oluşan bir banka (AAC Bank), tez özeti yazımında en çok
kullanılan 165 sözcük ailesi (TAC list), çözümlemede kullanılan iki bütüncenin örüt
dizini (web concordance), bilgisayar ve veri destekli öğretmen ve öğrenci
önderliğinde farklı türde aktiviteler ile çeşitli akademik yazı kaynaklarından
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oluşmuştur. Bütünce destekli ileri düzey tez yazımı dersi sosyal oluşturmacılık
ilkesine dayanan sanal etkileşimsel bir örüt (web) ortamına (Moodle) taşınmıştır.
Bu çalışma, bütünce, sözcük sıklığına dayalı listeler, eşdizimsel sözcük ve sözcük
gruplarıyla ilgili önemli sonuçlar üretmiştir. Bu sonuçların çıkarımları ve uygulama
alanları çalışmada değişik açılardan irdelenmektedir.
Anahtar sözcükler: bütünce, öğrenci bütüncesi, eğitsel bütünce, eşdizimsel
sözcük ve sözcük grupları, yazı türü (genre), akademik yazı
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
In a unique corpus-based study of dissertation acknowledgements, Ken Hyland
remarks that completing a thesis is a long and difficult task, and that many students
see “an acknowledgement as an important way of publicly recognizing the role of
mentors and the sacrifices of loved ones” (2004b, p. 306). As I have now reached
this concluding stage, I can understand these sentiments only too well.
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor, Assoc. Prof. Dr.
Gülşen Musayeva Vefalı, for being my constant guide and mentor, for providing me
with invaluable feedback by reading my numerous drafts not merely line by line, but
word by word, to ensure that there were no gaps or omissions. I genuinely appreciate
her tireless work, and support.
I am extremely grateful to the members of the thesis monitoring committee, Prof.
Dr. Gürkan Doğan and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Necdet Osam. It is thanks to their
comprehensive, thoughtful, and highly useful feedback that this research developed
in the way that it has. I would also like to thank the members of the jury, Prof. Dr.
Ülker Vancı Osam, Prof. Dr. Deniz Zeyrek and Assist. Prof. Dr. Ali Sıdkı Ağazade
for their valuable comments towards the improvement of this thesis.
I decided to conduct corpus related research in 2002. It was during this period that I
first read Averil Coxhead’s article on the development of the Academic Word List.
Her article then led me to Prof. Dr. Tom Cobb’s extraordinary Lexical Tutor
Website, the riches of which have generously been made freely available to us all. I
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would therefore like to acknowledge the genuinely inspirational role of both these
researchers in the realization of this study.
I would like to thank all those friends that accompanied me on the long road to this
PhD. It was fun because of them. Special thanks go to my closest companion,
Elmaziye Özgür Küfi, with whom I went through thick and thin.
My colleagues at the Department of General Education have been extremely
understanding and helpful. I would like to thank all of them, especially Ayfer Şen
and Yeşim Dede for helping ensure that time and space was made available for me
to focus on my research, especially in the last period, and Aytül Dereboylu for being
by my side when I most needed support and a helping hand.
I should also thank all those ENGL501 students who have taken this course over the
years, for bearing with me as the course evolved, and for willingly taking time out of
their own busy research schedules to assist me further when I asked. This research
and accompanying course has been developed on their behalf, and their positive
responses and appreciation therefore make me feel immensely proud and privileged.
I would like to thank my whole family, and especially my sister, Berna, my brother,
Attila, my aunt and my uncle Jennifer and Engin Kemal Örek, and my niece and
three nephews for their encouragement and support. Special thanks go to Özbil Ege,
who showed a genuine interest in my work despite his young age.
This has indeed been a long and stressful journey. I would like to express my
deepest gratitude to my beloved parents, Serpil and Özbil Hancıoğlu, for teaching
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me the meaning of hard work and sacrifice, for encouraging me, and believing in me
not only through this period, but all my life. It really means a lot to me.
How can I ever thank my dear friend, Steve Neufeld, who was always there when I
needed help, guidance, and advice? On this strenuous journey, it was wonderful to
be accompanied by a true friend, and a positive personality, one who seems to lack
words of negation in his mental lexicon.
I owe the greatest debt and gratitude to my dear husband, who looked after me,
encouraged me, guided me with his wisdom, and always stood by me. It is a cliché
to say “I could not have done it without you”. In my case, it is the essential reality. I
could not have done it without you, John P. Eldridge.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT .........................................................................................................................iiiÖZET ..........................................................................................................................vACKNOWLEDGEMENTS..................................................................................................viiTABLE OF CONTENTS.........................................................................................................xCHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY.........................................................................................11.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM........................................................................................91.3 PURPOSE OF THE STUDY................................................................................................121.4 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY.......................................................................................151.5 DEFINITION OF TERMS..................................................................................................17
CHAPTER II: REVIEW OF LITERATURE2.1 TEXTS............................................................................................................................21
2.1.1 Text and textuality................................................................................................212.1.2 Text Creation........................................................................................................262.1.3 Intertextuality.......................................................................................................34
2.1.3.1 Genre and Text Type....................................................................................................362.1.3.2 Genre and Register.......................................................................................................382.1.3.3 Genres, Generic Structure, and Moves.........................................................................39
2.1.4 Academic Discourse.............................................................................................412.1.4.1 Genres in Academia.....................................................................................................44
2.1.4.1.1 An academic genre: The Abstract.......................................................................45
2.2 WRITING PEDAGOGY.....................................................................................................482.2.1 Approaches to Writing.........................................................................................482.2.2 The Process Genre Approach in EAP..................................................................55
2.3 CORPORA AND APPLICATIONS.......................................................................................572.3.1 Corpora.................................................................................................................572.3.2 Types of Corpora..................................................................................................632.3.3 The Use of Corpora in Applied Linguistics.........................................................652.3.4 The Use of Corpora in Language Teaching.........................................................66
2.4 RELATED STUDIES.........................................................................................................732.5 SUMMARY.....................................................................................................................81
CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGY3.1 OVERALL RESEARCH DESIGN.......................................................................................843.2 RESEARCH QUESTIONS..................................................................................................893.3 THE CONTEXT...............................................................................................................903.4 PARTICIPANTS...............................................................................................................943.5 DATA COLLECTION INSTRUMENTS................................................................................96
3.5.1 Interviews with course instructors........................................................................963.5.2 Questionnaires administered to course participants.............................................973.5.3 Compilation of the Learner Abstract Corpus.......................................................993.5.4 Compilation of the Target Abstract Corpus.......................................................100
3.6 DATA COLLECTION PROCEDURES...............................................................................1033.7 METHODS FOR DATA ANALYSIS.................................................................................105
3.7.1 Analysis Procedure for Interviews.....................................................................1063.7.2 Analysis Procedure for Questionnaires..............................................................1083.7.3 Corpus Analysis Methodology...........................................................................109
3.7.3.1 Corpus Analysis Tools...............................................................................................113
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3.7.3.2 Corpus Analysis Procedures.......................................................................................117
3.8 MOODLE - A VIRTUAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENT......................................................1193.9 LIMITATIONS AND DELIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY....................................................121
CHAPTER IV: DATA ANALYSIS4.1 ANALYSIS OF THE PRELIMINARY DATA.......................................................................125
4.1.1 Interviews with EFL 501 (ENGL501) course instructors..................................1264.1.2 Needs Analysis Questionnaires and End-of-the-semester Feedback
Questionnaires administered to course participants...........................................1284.1.3 A sample of participants’ writing profiles..........................................................1364.1.4 Cross-reference of the Findings from the Interviews and the Questionnaires...1374.1.5 Sample work from the LAC and some preliminary assumptions......................138
4.2 ANALYSIS OF THE CORPUS EVIDENCE........................................................................1404.2.1 Analysis of the LAC...........................................................................................1404.2.2 Analysis of the Target Abstract Corpus (the TAC)............................................1524.2.3 Comparison of the LAC with the TAC..............................................................162
4.2.3.1 Comparison of the LAC with an equal-sized TAC....................................................178
4.3 CONSTRUCTING A PEDAGOGIC CORPUS FOR THESIS WRITING...................................1844.3.1 The development of the TAC (Target Abstract Corpus) Wordlist.....................1844.3.2 The development of the AAC (Academic Abstract Corpus) Bank of Moves and
Sub-moves..........................................................................................................1984.3.2.1 Description of the AAC (Academic Abstract Corpus) Bank of Moves and Sub-moves
based on IMRD...........................................................................................................2014.3.2.2 Significance of the AAC Bank of Moves and Sub-moves.........................................215
4.3.3 The Pedagogic Corpus.......................................................................................2174.3.3.1 Task Framework and Taxonomy................................................................................2194.3.3.2 The Pilot Implementation and Evaluation of the course- 2007-2008 Fall Semester..2334.3.3.3 The Pilot Implementation and Evaluation of the course- 2007-2008 Spring Semester235
4.4 SUMMARY...................................................................................................................243CHAPTER V: CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS
5.1 DISCUSSION.................................................................................................................2445.1.1 Aims and methods..............................................................................................2465.1.2 Major findings....................................................................................................248
5.2 CONCLUSIONS..............................................................................................................2525.2.1 Wordlists............................................................................................................2525.2.2 Lexico-grammatical patterns and banks.............................................................2565.2.3 Semantic frequency: Moves and Sub-moves.....................................................2575.2.4 Generic versus discipline-specific lexico-grammatical patterns........................2585.2.5 A genre-based corpus-informed data-driven lexico-grammatical approach to
thesis writing......................................................................................................2605.2.6 Virtual learning environments............................................................................2615.2.7 The use of Corpora.............................................................................................263
5.3 IMPLICATIONS..............................................................................................................2685.3.1 Teachers and Teacher Education........................................................................2685.3.2 Students..............................................................................................................2695.3.3 Software Applications and Virtual Learning Environments..............................2695.3.4 The Use of Vocabulary Profiling Software........................................................271
5.4 IMPLICATIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH.....................................................................2725.5 THE FINAL WORD.......................................................................................................274
REFERENCES.....................................................................................................................276APPENDICESAPPENDIX A: EFL 501 COURSE DESCRIPTION........................................................289APPENDIX B: ENGL501 COURSE DESCRIPTION.....................................................291
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APPENDIX C: INTERVIEW GUIDE...............................................................................294APPENDIX D: NEEDS ANALYSIS QUESTIONNAIRE...............................................295APPENDIX E: COURSE EVALUATION QUESTIONNAIRE.....................................297APPENDIX F: LIST OF ABSTRACTS.............................................................................299APPENDIX G: INTERVIEW 1..........................................................................................320APPENDIX H: INTERVIEW 2..........................................................................................323APPENDIX I: COMPARISON OF THE TOP 50 WORDS IN THE LAC AND THE
TAC.............................................................................................................328APPENDIX J: FAMILY HEADWORDS AND WORD TYPES USED IN THE LAC
AND THE TAC...........................................................................................330APPENDIX K: THE TAC WORDLIST - 165 WORD FAMILIES SELECTED FOR
FURTHER ANALYSIS...........................................................................338APPENDIX L: THE AAC BANK OF MOVES AND SUB-MOVES BASED ON IMRD344APPENDIX M: SCREENSHOTS OF ENGL501 MOODLE..........................................361APPENDIX N: A STUDENT-LED DISCOVERY TASK................................................362APPENDIX O: TEACHERS’ NOTES FOR THE ADVANCED ACADEMIC THESIS
WRITING COURSE................................................................................363
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CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think.
Edwin Schlossberg
This research study adopts a corpus-informed approach to academic writing
pedagogy, and employs two corpora with the aim of constructing a pedagogic
corpus with multiple components that incorporate teacher-directed data-driven in-
class work, complemented by a virtual learning environment providing access to the
authentic corpus data and learner-led exploratory tasks. The pedagogic corpus
incorporating manifold constituents is envisaged to assist non-native post-graduate
students involved in research and publication in producing accurate and appropriate
written texts.
This introductory chapter first provides the background to the study. After the
problem that prompted this research is described in detail, the chapter presents the
purpose of the study. Following a discussion of the factors that make this research
significant, the terms that are exploited in this study are defined.
1.1 Background to the Study
English is the primary international language of research communication (Garfield
& Welljams-Dorof, 1990; Krashen, 2003; Swales, 1990), “today’s premier research
language” (Swales, 2004, p. 33), and “indeed the international language of science”
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(Wood, 2001, p. 71). As the overall trend in many domains, including education
and academic scientific research, is toward globalization, “more and more nonnative
speakers are seeking to publish in international journals devoted to English language
teaching, applied linguistics, and related areas” (Flowerdew, 2001, p. 121). Further,
while the percentage of articles written in English in the 1977 Science Citation Index
was 83% (Krashen, 2003), by 1997, this number had increased to 95% and of this,
only half came from authors in English-speaking countries (Graddol, 1997). This
increase was not due to more research done by scholars in English-speaking
countries, but because of more scholars from non-English speaking countries
publishing in English (Krashen, 2003). It is clear, therefore, that non-native speakers
do write ‘a considerable number’ of research articles even in the “most prestigious
journals in science” (Wood, 2001, p. 80).
Swales (2004) refers to today’s ‘Anglophone research world’, and states that “the
status and contribution of the non-native speaker of English has become somewhat
more central than it used to be and increasingly (albeit slowly) is perhaps recognized
as such by native speakers of English” (p. 52). He further holds that by the
beginning of the 21st century, there has been some internationalization of the
research world, and the role of ‘non-Anglophones in that Englishized world’ has
gained greater recognition (Swales, 2004, p. 46). According to Wood (2001), to
become a member of this world, the scientist needs to produce research accepted by
the community. “The more central the claim and the more widely accepted by the
community, the more central a member of the community the researcher becomes”
(Wood, 2001, p. 81). For the achievement of these aims, Wood (2001) claims, “the
researcher must deploy a skilful use of language” (p. 81).
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Such statistics and observations stated above clearly indicate that non-native
speakers of English are under increasing pressure to both follow the latest research,
and probably even more so, to have their own research published. Non-native
speakers of English “risk being unaware of- and overlooked by- mainstream
international research unless they learn to read, write, and publish in English”
(Garfield & Welljams-Dorof, 1990). Given the speed of change and development in
all aspects of science, technology, and research in general, and the generally
accepted view, and necessity that a common language of research is required to
disseminate research and findings with efficiency, it is unlikely that the position of
English as the dominant research language will diminish in the near future. Wood
(2001) states that:
for scientists to become recognized and successful their work must be read and cited by their peers as frequently as possible. To ensure such citation it is imperative that their work be accessible to as many as possible and thus that it be written in English. (p. 71)
Hence, non-native speaker researchers and academics would seem to have little
choice, but to continue to try and master the prevailing conventions of academic
English. This may not be a major problem for NNS (non-native speaker) researchers
with experience, as “experienced NNS writers are familiar with the discourse
requirements of their discipline” (Wood, 2001, p. 77). Nevertheless, Wood (2001)
acknowledges that the beginning writer faces difficulties in terms of publishing
research (p. 77), and cites Canagarajah (1996), Jernudd and Baldauf (1987), St John
(1987), and Swales (1990, 1996), who have emphasized non-native writers’
difficulties in publishing in English (p. 77).
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There seems to be little question, then, that non-native speakers of English need and
will continue to need a lot of guidance and support in developing acceptable
performance levels in reporting research. This is more so for beginning researchers.
Whether or not they have traditionally been provided with this support is a different
issue. Swales, for example, points out that there is little research on “how non-native
speakers of English manage to survive in an increasingly English-dominated
research world” (1990, p. 102).
Hyland (2004a) also agrees that “in an era of globalisation, English is now
established as the world’s leading language for the dissemination of academic
knowledge” (p. ix). He further emphasizes that:
whether we see this as a facilitative lingua franca or a rampaging Tyrannosaurus rex (Swales, 1997), the dominance of English has transformed the educational experiences and professional lives of countless students and academics across the planet. (Hyland, 2004a, p. ix)
Writing, therefore, has become a central element of university courses, as well as
professional development programs, which necessitated the understanding of “what
these discourses of the academy are, and what counts as ‘good writing’” (Hyland,
2004a, p. x).
According to Grabe and Kaplan (1996), “academically valued writing requires
composing skills which transform information or transform the language itself” (p.
17). Therefore, writing, particularly the more complex composing skill appreciated
in the academy, “involves training, instruction, practice, experience, and purpose”
(Grabe and Kaplan, 1996, p. 6). Conventionally, English for Academic Purposes
(EAP) classes have offered academic language support to especially university
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students. Yet, these courses have generally tended to focus on the general needs of
students involved in academic studies, and catered more for university students at
undergraduate level, who are not expected to carry out or publish research.
However, post-graduate candidates who are engaged in conducting and
disseminating research have more sophisticated needs in terms of language
knowledge and related skills, the most important of which is producing cohesive and
coherent written text. Hyland (2005) holds that EAP teachers should do more
research in their classes to better understand their teaching context (p. 60). This need
is even more pressing for EAP teachers of post-graduate students who have very
specialized needs, and who need a lot of guidance and support in attaining a
language level whereby they can report their research and compete in the
international academic discourse community.
Written text is “the product of a series of complicated mental operations” (Clark and
Clark 1977, cited in Richards, 1990, p. 101), and is not easy to construct. After
deciding on a meaning to be conveyed, writers must consider the genre, the style
they are going to employ, the purpose they want to achieve and the amount of detail
required to achieve it (Richards, 1990, p. 101-102). Nunan agrees that “producing a
coherent, fluent, extended piece of writing is probably the most difficult thing there
is to do in language” and “it is something most native speakers never master”. He
also acknowledges the enormity of this challenge for second language learners,
“particularly for those who go on to a university and study in a language that is not
their own” (1999, p. 271).
One very important consideration in text creation is that language does not exist in a
vacuum, but is a social phenomenon used for social interaction. Gumperz (1968, p.
5
219) emphasizes this fact by referring to verbal interaction as “a social process in
which utterances are selected in accordance with socially recognized norms and
expectations”. He states that “the communication of social information presupposes
the existence of regular relationships between language usage and social structure”
(Gumperz, 1968, p. 220). The fact that language use is closely related to the social
context naturally leads to the concept of ‘genre’.
Hyland characterizes genres as “socially recognized ways of using language” (Johns
et al., 2006, p. 3). For Swales, a genre is “a class of communicative events, the
members of which share some set of communicative purposes” (1990, p. 58), and
this purpose determines the genre’s ‘generic’ (Flowerdew, 2000; Halliday & Hasan,
1985; Henry, 2007; Nunan, 1993), ‘organizational’ (Flowerdew, 2000), ‘discourse’
(Swales, 1990), ‘generic move’ (Flowerdew, 2000), or ‘schematic’ (Swales, 1990)
structure. This structure is achieved through units of purpose, called ‘moves’
(Swales, 1990) or ‘move structures’ (Flowerdew, 2000) which are fulfilled by
lexico-grammar (Henry, 2007, p. 1-2). Key lexical phrases represent the move
structures of a genre (Flowerdew, 2000, p. 374). Moves, in turn, are realized through
different ‘strategies’ or ‘tactics’ (Henry 2007), which are tactical selections of the
writer in accomplishing the purpose (Bhatia, 1993, p. 19). These tactics or strategies
similarly necessitate the exploitation of lexico-grammar. Therefore, it can be
concluded that lexico-grammar has a major function in the fulfillment of strategies
or tactics leading to moves, which in turn form the generic structure of a genre, and
thereby reflect its communicative purpose.
The major role lexico-grammar plays in text creation requires a thorough analysis of
lexico-grammatical features employed to fulfill different communicative purposes in
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texts, and this comprehensive analysis is nowadays viable through the use of a
corpus, “a collection of naturally-occurring language text, chosen to characterize a
state or a variety of a language” (Sinclair, 1991, p. 171). Referring to the late 1950s,
Leech (1991) recalls that “for years, corpus linguistics was the obsession of a small
group which received little or no recognition from either linguistics or computer
science” (cited in Granger, 2003, p. 538). Due to the recent developments in
computer technology, however, it is now possible for anyone to store large amounts
of language data on a computer for analysis. Like many other scholars and
researchers, Hunston holds that “corpora, and the study of corpora, have
revolutionized the study of language and the applications of language” (Hunston,
2002, p. 1). Referring to the emergence of this new view of language and the use of
technology related to it, Sinclair points out that “the analysis of language has
developed out of all recognition” (1991, p. 1).
In the last two decades, extensive vocabulary research has been carried out using
corpora. In the 1980’s, the English Language Research group at the University of
Birmingham collaborated with Collins publishers to create language reference
works, and the Collins Cobuild dictionary project produced new research areas in
the study and teaching of languages (Sinclair, 1991, pp. 1-3). Extensive research has
also been done on compiling wordlists based on frequency, as research shows that
most English texts are covered by a limited number of words, with the most frequent
2,000 word families making up 79.7% of all text (Cobb, 2002). Basing her research
on West’s manually compiled list of the most commonly used 2,000 words in
English (GSL, General Service List) in 1953, Coxhead (2000) produced the
Academic Word List (AWL), which is based on a corpus of academic texts from
different fields and consists of the most frequent 570 word families not included in
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the GSL. More recently, Billuroglu and Neufeld (2005), in an attempt to tackle the
weaknesses they observed in the GSL and the AWL, compiled the BNL (Billuroglu
Neufeld List), which is based on an analysis of six different wordlists comprising
2,709 word families. These lists are invaluable in teaching English, especially for
academic purposes, and are, undoubtedly, indispensable resources for vocabulary
recognition and tools for staged vocabulary development. However, they are
criticized for treating words as isolated units, and separating lexis and grammar.
Wordlists, inasmuch as they are very useful resources in language learning, cannot
be the sole resource to rely on for productive vocabulary teaching purposes, as in
real life, words are never encountered or produced in isolation, but in a social
context.
As regards grammar, the belief is that corpus-based studies have the potential to
revolutionize grammar teaching in the 21st century through providing register-
specific descriptions of English grammar, shifting the emphasis from structural
accuracy to appropriate use of structures, and most importantly, incorporating
grammar teaching with the teaching of vocabulary (Conrad, 2000, p. 549). Extensive
research employing corpora is also being increasingly carried out by genre analysts,
especially by researchers involved in EAP. In addition to studies that focus on the
generic move structure of many different kinds of genres, there has also been
considerable research concerned with how different moves are achieved through
language, i.e, lexico-grammar (Bonn & Swales, 2007; Flowerdew, 2000; Henry,
2007; Hyland, 2004a; Hyland & Tse, 2005; Ozturk, 2007; Paltridge, 2002; Weber,
2001). However, in spite of the wealth of the research in this field, there are few
studies analyzing problems that non-native post-graduate students face in producing
coherent and appropriate language to write their thesis, and to publish in
8
internationally recognized journals. In addition, although there are books (Swales &
Feak, 1994), websites (http://www.uefap.com/index.htm), and university academic
writing centres trying to provide support for post-graduate students in writing their
theses, there has been insufficient attention to the thesis writing instruction.
As already stated, EAP practitioners need to do more research in the classroom so as
to be able to acquire a better understanding of the teaching-learning experiences, and
provide continuous and up-to-date support and guidance to students. The need,
therefore, is to focus more on classroom practices, and exploit corpora not only for
research but also for pedagogic purposes.
1.2 Statement of the Problem
In academic settings, especially at post-graduate levels, non-native speakers of
English are faced with a serious problem. They are specifically expected to produce
work at a native-like level to be admitted into the academic discourse community.
As the conventions in text types determine the intertextuality of texts, creating texts
should not be considered an “individually-oriented, inner directed cognitive
process….but an acquired response to the discourse conventions which arise from
preferred ways of creating and communicating knowledge within particular
communities” (Swales, 1990, p. 4). These communities are known as discourse
communities and they are:
recognized by the specific genres that they employ, which include both speech events and written text types. The work that members of the discourse community are engaged in involves the processing of tasks which reflect specific linguistic, discoursal and rhetoric skills. (Swales, 1990, p. vii)
9
This study focuses on the academic genre of ‘theses’. ENGL501 (currently
Advanced Thesis Writing) is an advanced writing course offered to Masters’ and
PhD candidates from all faculties by the Modern Languages Division of the
Department of General Education at EMU (Eastern Mediterranean University), an
English-medium university in North Cyprus. The students taking this course come
from a variety of countries and backgrounds. The original EFL 501 course was
designed by the former School of Foreign Languages, upon the request of the EMU
Graduate Institute to support Master’s and PhD students languagewise in the thesis
writing stage, as although language support is provided for undergraduate students,
post-graduate students were not previously given language guidance.
The course was first designed to focus on the common language functions and lexis
in academic writing prior to thesis writing. Gradually it evolved into a thesis writing
course with a language focus. Currently, the aims of the course are specified in the
course description as follows: The purpose of this course is to develop the academic
thesis writing knowledge and skills of post-graduate candidates. The course focuses
on improving the participants’ academic study skills, and their knowledge of
academic conventions, and thesis structure and format. It is also the objective of the
course to systematically develop post-graduate candidates’ academic vocabulary
knowledge and skills, to develop their awareness of the need and benefit of
producing multiple drafts with the aim of improving the structure, lexis and style of
their own text, and bringing their work to an acceptable level.
The participants of the thesis writing course observe and analyze the organization,
the discourse structure, the grammar and lexis of different sections or chapters of
authentic theses, and how they are made cohesive and coherent through the use of
10
lexico-grammatical devices. The post-graduate candidates then produce their own
work and are encouraged to identify their own problems with language use, and find
solutions to those problems. To this end, they work on multiple drafts, which make
up their end-of-semester portfolio, until the end-product is adequate.
Although the participants are given guidance and support in terms of the moves
making up the generic structure of the thesis in accordance with the genre-based
approaches, the quality of most of their work reveals a gap between actual and target
performance levels in producing coherent text. The main problem hindering the
production of coherent and appropriate texts seems to be the participants’
insufficient knowledge of the lexico-grammatical resources necessary for meaning
creation. This problem possibly arises from insufficient exposure to, and lack of
awareness of collocations, and syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations that are of
major significance for creating meaning. This problem is consistent with the
findings in the literature. For example, Hunston cites Halliday and Martin (1993)
who emphasize that non-native writers use “fewer of the lengthy noun phrases that
are essential to formal, particularly academic, writing in English” due to the fact that
they do not use prepositions in a ‘native-like’ way (2002, p. 82).
Jordan (1997) also maintains that “written work has been referred to as being one of
the major causes of concern for students” (p. 46), and reports a study (Jordan 1981)
exploring the writing difficulties of overseas post-graduate students taking writing
classes in UK universities. The results showed that these students had the most
difficulty in vocabulary (62%), followed by style (53%), spelling (41%), grammar
(38%), punctuation (18%) and handwriting (12%) respectively. When asked what
caused the difficulty in vocabulary, the students stated ‘using a word correctly’
11
(21%), ‘own lack of vocabulary’ (15%), and ‘confusion caused by similar
sounding/looking words’ (12%). As regards the difficulties with grammar, the
students reported ‘verbs: tense formation and use; active / passive use’ and
‘agreement of verb and subject’ (Jordan, 1997, pp. 46-47). As can be observed from
the percentages, the greatest difficulty in text creation seems to be related to lexico-
grammar.
The problem that has led to the present study can therefore be summarized as
follows. Like all post-graduate students worldwide, the students pursuing a post-
graduate degree at EMU are expected to produce coherent and appropriate academic
texts, so that their work can be accepted in the global academic discourse
community, and so that they can disseminate their research internationally.
However, most of the work produced by the post-graduate candidates taking
ENGL501 reveals problems specifically at the lexico-grammatical level.
1.3 Purpose of the Study
This study employs a corpus-informed approach (McCarthy, 2001) whereby the
applied linguist can “mediate the corpus, design it from the very outset and build it
with applied linguistic questions in mind, ask of it the questions applied linguists
want answers to, and filter its output, use it as a guide or tool for what you, the
teacher, want to achieve” (p. 129). Extracting lexico-grammatical information from
a corpus applies this approach (McCarthy, 2001, p. 138).
The main aim of the study is to construct a pedagogic corpus for ENGL501 that
incorporates various corpus-informed components. The key component of the
pedagogic corpus is a bank of lexico-grammatical patterns to fulfill the generic
12
moves that constitute the overall generic structure of thesis abstracts. In the
pedagogic corpus, there are also tasks for teacher-directed data-driven in-class work,
and a complementary web-based interactive platform (Moodle) to provide access to
the authentic data, the corpora, and to promote learner-led exploratory work. The
complementary platform is a virtual classroom, with all the features of a traditional
classroom and more, which is expected to increase the post-graduate students’
exposure to the pedagogic corpus. Moreover, the increased interaction with the data,
the tasks, peers and the teacher is anticipated to maximize the participants’ learning
opportunities. It is envisaged that the construction of a comprehensive corpus-
informed advanced thesis writing course will assist the post-graduate students
involved in research and publication in creating coherent academic texts, and
therefore help to minimize the gap between the current and the target performance
levels. Through the authentic corpus data and the data-driven tasks, the students are
expected to observe the use of language themselves, and become language
researchers, or ‘language detectives’ (Johns, 1997).
The two corpora incorporated into the pedagogic corpus are constructed from thesis
abstracts. One of the reasons for this choice is that abstracts do not normally include
quotations and paraphrases, and the language is expected to be the writers’ own. The
second reason is that abstracts are miniature forms of research studies. The scientific
research article has a particular type of rhetorical pattern which is reflected through
the Introduction-Method-Results-Discussion (IMRD) format (Swales, 1990).
Although there may be variations across different disciplines, Wood (2001) holds
that these rhetorical conventions “are so accepted and so standard that they are often
given in journal guidelines to contributors” (p. 74). In the same vein, according to
Swales, the abstract, like other genres reporting research, also seems to have an
13
IMRD (Introduction-Method-Results-Discussion) structure (1990, p.181). This
structure reflects the main chapters of the thesis: Introduction, Methodology,
Analysis, and Conclusion. Therefore, it is anticipated that the analysis of abstracts in
this study will reveal language data that are relevant to the thesis as a whole.
For this study, two corpora are compiled: a learner corpus of abstracts of about 100
non-native participants as a representative sample of the whole ENGL501
population (LAC: Learner Abstract Corpus), and a specialized target corpus of
abstracts from universities in countries where English is the native language (TAC:
Target Abstract Corpus). The abstracts in the target corpus are also produced by
learners, not experts. Flowerdew (2000) draws attention to the importance of
providing good ‘apprentice’ models rather than ‘expert’ generic models as these are
difficult to replicate due to learners’ communicative and linguistic deficiencies.
Both corpora are analyzed through computer-based tools: RANGE
(http://www.vuw.ac.nz/lals/staff/paul-nation/nation.aspx) for range and frequency,
Concordance (http://www.concordancesoftware.co.uk/) and AntConc
(http://www.antlab.sci.waseda.ac.jp/software/README_antconc3.2.1.txt) to
explore the syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations of words. The learner abstract
corpus (LAC) is analyzed to identify the most common lexico-grammatical
problems in the academic work produced by the post-graduate candidates enrolled in
the advanced thesis writing course. Then the target abstract corpus (TAC) is
analyzed to extract the targeted lexico-grammar used for fulfilling the strategies and
moves within the generic structure of a thesis, and compose a bank of moves and
sub-moves. The data are integrated into the pedagogic corpus through both teacher-
directed data-driven and learner-led discovery work. Through various task-based
14
activities, the participants are provided with the opportunity to enrich their lexico-
grammatical knowledge, and produce coherent and appropriate academic text. The
study will seek answers to the following research questions:
1. What are the major lexico-grammatical patterns identified in the LAC?
2. What are the major lexico-structural patterns in the TAC?
3. How does the LAC relate to the TAC?
4. What does the cross-examination of the two corpora necessitate in terms of
the comprehensive pedagogic corpus design?
1.4 Significance of the Study
Post-graduate students pursuing Master’s and PhD degrees are required to follow the
latest international developments in their fields, get their research articles published
in international journals and present at conferences. Authenticity and high
performance standards of their academic work are of primary significance. Writing
even in the mother tongue is no easy task. In a foreign language, text creation
becomes a major challenge. Hence, in academic environments, EFL learners have to
compete with their native peers in the international arena not only in terms of the
quality and relevance of their research, but also in the coherent and appropriate
manifestation of their work. Due to the recent developments in computer technology
which have made possible the compilation of vast amounts of authentic data
electronically, more and more studies across the globe are making use of corpora not
only to provide better descriptions of languages, but also to offer a new, and a more
15
effective way of learning languages. However, most of these studies “have focused
on teaching a corpus approach per se rather than incorporating it into the writing
process” (Yoon, 2008, p. 31). The current study is significant, as corpus data is
integrated into the writing process, providing a data-rich environment where post-
graduate students are exposed to authentic language use, and engaged in a process of
discovery learning. Furthermore, this study is the first post-graduate study making
use of corpora in EMU.
This research is also significant in terms of the nature of the ENGL501 course. Most
universities have Academic Writing Centers, academic writing courses, and research
methods courses to assist their post-graduate students. There are not, however, many
universities that offer language support for thesis writing to their post-graduate
students. In fact, a search of all domains ending with '.edu.tr' using WebCorp
produced no reference to any blended advanced thesis writing course at any Turkish
University in Turkey or the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.
Another factor making this research significant is that this pedagogic study
incorporates the use of an e-learning platform, or a virtual learning environment,
which is widely used in the world, including the Open University in the UK
(http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/index.php), but quite innovative on the EMU campus.
This platform, Moodle (http://moodle.org/), which is based on strong underlying
pedagogical principles, provides an environment where new knowledge is created
through the individual’s interaction with the environment, as well as through
individuals constructing things for one another
(http://docs.moodle.org/en/Philosophy). The use of Moodle in this research has
16
increased the participants’ exposure to the target language, and the target genre
manifold.
The research is also noteworthy in that the researcher has continued to teach the
course throughout the research and thesis writing process. This made it possible for
the researcher to examine the difficulties of new groups of post-graduate students,
and continuously revise the pedagogic corpus. Furthermore, she could observe the
impact of the pedagogic corpus and its components on the course participants’
learning and performance.
1.5 Definition of Terms
Corpus:
Sinclair (1991, p. 171) provides the following definition for a corpus: “A corpus is a
collection of naturally-occurring language text, chosen to characterize a state or
variety of a language”. A similar definition is provided by Biber, Conrad, and
Reppen (1998): A corpus “is a large and principled collection of natural texts” (p.
12), which is analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively (p. 5). Hunston (2002)
also states that “a corpus is planned, …, and it is designed for some linguistic
purpose. The specific purpose of the design determines the selection of texts” (p. 2).
In this study, authentic abstracts from the World Wide Web, and from the thesis
writing course participants were compiled into two corpora based on the required
design principles and for a linguistic purpose, and analyzed both quantitatively and
qualitatively to address the identified language-related problem and work towards its
solution.
17
Learner Corpus:
A learner corpus is comprised of texts produced by learners of a language. A learner
corpus is used to “identify in what respects learners differ from each other and from
the language of native speakers ….” (Hunston, 2002, p. 15). The compilation of
learner corpora is very recent, it started only in the 1990s (Granger, 2003, p. 538).
O’Keeffe, McCarthy and Carter (2007) define the compilation of learner corpora as
a very important development, and acknowledge Granger as a ‘forerunner in the
area’ (p. 23). Granger (2003) refers to a learner corpus as “an electronic collection of
authentic texts produced by foreign or second language learners” (p. 538). The best
known learner corpus is the International Corpus of Learner English (ICLE)
(Granger, Dagneaux & Meunier, 2002). The present study utilized a learner corpus
of abstracts produced by EFL post-graduate students.
Specialised Corpus:
For this corpus, particular types of texts are chosen. Therefore, “it aims to be
representative of a given type of text. It is used to investigate a particular type of
language” (Hunston, 2002, p. 15). In this study, the Target Abstract Corpus (TAC) is
a specialized corpus as it is representative of post-graduate thesis abstracts, and is
used to explore the lexico-grammatical patterns fulfilling moves and sub-moves in
theses.
Pedagogic Corpus:
A pedagogic corpus “can consist of all the course books, readers, etc. a learner has
used, plus any tapes, etc. they have heard” (Hunston, 2002, p. 16). In short,
18
according to Hunston, this corpus is comprised of “all the language a learner has
been exposed to” (p. 16). Willis, on the other hand, provides a more comprehensive
definition, and points out that a pedagogic corpus involves the texts that the learners
have encountered, or will encounter (Willis, 2003, p. 165). He maintains that
“learners process a set of texts to enable them to develop their own vocabulary and
work out their own grammar of the language”, and this set of texts can be described
as a pedagogic corpus (Willis, 2003, p. 163). According to Willis (2003), tasks are
also components of a pedagogic corpus (p. 223). This study adopts Willis’ more
inclusive definition of the pedagogic corpus.
Genre:
A genre is “a class of communicative events, the members of which share some set
of communicative purposes” (Swales, 1990, p. 58). Stubbs (2002, p. 20) uses ‘genre’
and ‘text type’ interchangeably. However, according to Biber, “genre categories are
determined on the basis of external criteria relating to the speaker’s purpose and
topic; they are assigned on the basis of use rather than on the basis of form”,
whereas “text types represent groupings of texts that are similar in their linguistic
form, irrespective of genre” (1988, p. 170). Flowerdew and Peacock (2001) define
‘genre’ as “a particular type of communicative event which has a particular
communicative purpose recognized by its users, or discourse community” (p. 15).
This study adopts the definition of ‘genre’ by Swales (1990), Biber (1988) and
Flowerdew and Peacock (2001), and differentiates between ‘genre’ and ‘text type’.
In this study, the genres of post-graduate theses, and specifically thesis abstracts are
explored.
19
Virtual Learning Environment:
A virtual learning environment is “a collection of integrated tools enabling the
management of online learning, providing a delivery mechanism, student tracking,
assessment and access to resources” (http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/InfoKits/
effective-use-of-VLEs). Moodle, which is employed in this study, is an open-source,
free, and highly adaptable virtual learning environment offering a rich selection of
features (Robb, 2004, p. 1).
20
CHAPTER II
REVIEW OF LITERATURE
This chapter aims to present the conceptual framework of the study through a
comprehensive review of text and textuality, text creation and the importance of
lexico-grammar, the significance of the discourse community and the concept of
‘genre’, and the features of academic texts in general and thesis abstracts in specific.
After this exploration of ‘text as product’, writing pedagogy is reviewed as this
study is pedagogical in nature and it is, therefore, essential to explore how text
creation, i.e. writing in language teaching terms, is taught. Following an in-depth
discussion of corpora, their relevance to language teaching pedagogy is assessed.
The section on the use of corpora in language teaching incorporates a review of a
closely related issue, Data-driven Learning (DDL), and the need for a platform to
host and exploit corpora as well as DDL tasks. After the related research studies are
reviewed, and their relevance to the present study explored, the chapter concludes
with a summary of the literature review focusing on the implications for the present
study.
2.1 Texts
2.1.1 Text and textuality
The concept of text has been extensively defined by linguists. Halliday and Hasan
(1976) maintain that a text is not a collection of sentences, but realized through
sentences, and a text needs to form a ‘unified whole’ to be considered as text. They
21
note that most teachers are sometimes unsure about whether their students’
compositions can be regarded as texts or not, and stress the fact that “the distinction
between a text and a collection of unrelated sentences is … a matter of degree” (p. 1-
2).
What, then, is a text and what are the features and regularities through which
textuality is achieved? Stubbs (1996) defines text as “an instance of language in use,
either spoken or written: a piece of language behaviour which has occurred
naturally, without the intervention of the linguist” (p. 4). Halliday and Matthiessen,
on the other hand, consider “any instance of language, in any medium, that makes
sense to someone who knows the language” (2004, p. 3) as text. For Nunan, text is
“any written record of a communicative event” (1993, p. 6) and for Widdowson,
“the product of the process of discourse” where, in written language, the writer is
“part of the communication” (1996, p. 132). Halliday and Hasan provide the
following definition for text: “any instance of living language that is playing some
part in a context of situation” (1985, p. 10).
The common element in all these definitions is that text is an instance of language, a
record, or a product of language in use, making a distinction between ‘text’ and
‘discourse’, the process of language in use. According to Stubbs (Hoey et al., 2007),
text is a static, fixed product, and discourse is a dynamic, interactive process (p.
146). Likewise, Beaugrande and Dressler refer to ‘text’ as an ‘occurrence’, implying
some sort of completion. According to them, a text is a “communicative occurrence
which meets seven standards of textuality” (1981, p. 3). These seven standards are
“the constitutive principles of textual communication and they define and create the
22
form of behaviour identifiable as textual communicating” (Beaugrande and Dressler,
1981, p. 11).
The first standard of textuality is cohesion, “the way in which the components of the
surface text, i.e. the actual words we hear or see, are mutually connected within a
sequence” (Beaugrande and Dressler, 1981, p. 3). According to Halliday and Hasan,
“typically, in any text, every sentence except the first exhibits some form of
cohesion with a preceding sentence, usually with the one immediately preceding”.
That is, each sentence contains at least one anaphoric tie that links it with the
previous one or ones (1976, p. 293). Nunan has a word of caution about cohesion.
He holds that “the cohesive devices themselves do not create the relationships in the
text; what they do is to make the relationships explicit” (1993, p. 27). In a similar
vein, Beaugrande and Dressler emphasize that cohesion by itself is not sufficient,
and for efficient communication, there should be interaction with the other standards
of textuality (1981, p. 4). They point out that cohesion “is the function of syntax in
communication” (1981, p. 48) and it relies on grammatical dependencies which are
“major signals for sorting out meanings and uses” (1981, p. 3).
Coherence “concerns the ways in which the components of the textual world, i.e. the
configuration of concepts and relations which underlie the surface text, are mutually
accessible and relevant” (Beaugrande and Dressler, 1981, p. 4), and it is “the
outcome of cognitive processes among text users” (Beaugrande and Dressler, 1981,
p. 6). The foundation of coherence is the continuity of meaning among the
knowledge stimulated by the expressions of the text (1981, p. 84). Stubbs refers to
coherence as semantic unity or connectedness (1983, p. 9).
23
In addition to cohesion and coherence, which are text-centred notions, there are also
‘user-centred notions’ acting upon textual communication (Beaugrande and
Dressler, 1981, p. 7). Two of these are ‘intentionality’ and ‘acceptability’. The text
producer intends to produce a cohesive and coherent text in line with the objectives,
and the text receiver accepts the text as cohesive and coherent and relevant for the
objectives (Beaugrande and Dressler, 1981, p. 7). ‘Acceptability’ requires the text
receiver to maintain cohesion and coherence by providing material, and tolerating
disturbances as required (pp.7-8). Text receivers support coherence through
inferencing, and therefore contributing to the sense of the text (p. 8).
‘Informativity’ is the fifth standard and “concerns the extent to which the
occurrences of the presented text are expected vs. unexpected or known vs.
unknown / certain” (Beaugrande and Dressler, 1981, pp. 8-9). Low informativity
causes boredom, and even rejection of text. On the other hand, very high
informativity puts too much burden on the receivers’ processing and may endanger
communication (Beaugrande and Dressler, 1981, p. 9).
“The factors which make a text relevant to a situation of occurrence” are known as
‘situationality’. Through this standard, “the sense and use of the text are decided”
and the situation helps to make sense of the text (Beaugrande and Dressler, 1981, pp.
9-10). ‘Intertextuality’, the seventh standard, “concerns the factors which make the
utilization of one text dependent upon knowledge of one or more previously
encountered texts”, and it is “responsible for the evolution of text types as classes of
texts with typical patterns of characteristics” (Beaugrande and Dressler, 1981, p. 10).
Although there are certain features that are common to all texts to be considered as
24
texts, there are also texts that share some common characteristics that distinguish
them from other texts.
Beaugrande and Dressler consider these 7 standards of textuality to be concerned
with how occurrences are linked to others “via grammatical dependencies on the
surface (cohesion), via conceptual dependencies in the textual world (coherence);
via the attitudes of the participants towards the text (intentionality and acceptability);
via the incorporation of the new and unexpected into the known and expected
(informativity); via the setting (situationality); and via the mutual relevance of
separate texts (intertextuality)” (1981, p. 37).
In addition to these constitutive principles, there are also ‘regulative’ ones that
“control textual communication rather than define it” (Beaugrande and Dressler,
1981, p. 11). These are ‘efficiency’, ‘effectiveness’, and ‘appropriateness’ of a text.
Efficiency refers to the use of a text with minimum effort by the participants. The
effectiveness of a text is “its leaving a strong impression and creating favourable
conditions for attaining a goal”. “The agreement between its setting and the ways in
which the standards of textuality are upheld” is the appropriateness principle that
regulates and controls a text (Beaugrande and Dressler, 1981, p. 11). According to
Beaugrande and Dressler, “acceptability and appropriateness are more crucial
standards for texts rather than grammaticality and well-formedness” (1981, pp. XIV-
XV).
25
2.1.2 Text Creation
Nunan states that the creation of a written text is a complicated undertaking (1993,
p. 2). An understanding of how textuality is achieved, therefore, initially requires an
understanding of how language resources are used to create text, “the most extensive
unit of meaning” (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004, p. 566). Halliday and Hasan
regard text “as a semantic unit; a unit not of form but of meaning” (1976, p. 2).
Halliday and Matthiessen emphasize that it is important “to be able to think of text
dynamically, as an ongoing process of meaning” (2004, p. 524). Beaugrande and
Dressler maintain that “the text producer has the intention of pursuing some goal via
the text” and thus, text creation is a sub-goal towards the main goal (1981, p. 39).
Texts, then, are produced to achieve goals and to convey meanings, and the greatest
challenge is whether or not the intended messages are coherently and appropriately
communicated through the use of language since, as Beaugrande and Dressler point
out, “knowledge is not identical with language expressions that represent or convey
it” (1981, p. 85).
Having established that text creation is a means to an end, and the ultimate objective
is to communicate via the text, it is worth examining how meaning is encoded
through language. Widdowson proposes that “semantics is the complex interplay of
morphology, lexis, and syntax” (1996, p. 61). They interact with each other to create
meaning. Semantics is concerned with the meanings of words as lexical items
(lexis), the meanings of derivational and inflectional morphemes (morphology) and
how words are ordered (syntax) (Widdowson, 1996, p. 53). Morphology is
concerned with “how morphemes operate in the processes of derivation and
inflection” (Widdowson, 1996, p. 129). Derivation involves ‘lexical innovation’ or
26
‘formation’, i.e. the way words mean, and inflection is about ‘grammatical
adaptation’, i.e. the way words function (pp. 47-48). Therefore, morphology is
closely related to lexis and syntax. Widdowson concludes that although meaning is
communicated by “the morphological and syntactic processes of word adaptation
and assembly; … it is the words which provide the main semantic content” (1996, p.
54).
Morphological and syntactic processes together make up the study of grammar; how
words are combined in sentences, and how they are adapted (Widdowson, 1996, p.
48). As grammar is concerned with word combinations and adaptations, it is
impossible to think of lexis and grammar as two separate entities. McCarthy believes
that there is no major distinction between vocabulary and grammar and “… any
word in the language can be examined from the point of view of grammar, and, vice
versa, any word, even words like articles and prepositions, can be considered as
vocabulary items” (1990, p. 12).
Halliday and Matthiessen use the terms ‘lexicogrammar’ and ‘grammar’
interchangeably and argue that “grammar and vocabulary are not two separate
components of a language- they are just the two ends of a single continuum”, and
“the sound system and the writing system are the two modes of expression by which
the lexicogrammar of a language is presented, or realized” (2004, p. 7). In
lexicogrammar, according to Halliday and Hasan, there is “no hard-and-fast division
between vocabulary and grammar; the guiding principle in language is that the more
general meanings are expressed through the grammar, and the more specific
meanings through the vocabulary” (1976, p. 5). Grammar is the fundamental
processing unit of language (p. 21), and a resource for making meaning (Halliday
27
and Matthiessen, 2004, p. 31). Widdowson also considers grammar as a tool to
express meaning. Grammar, he says, is important because of its communicative
purpose. It serves to “adapt words morphologically and organize them syntactically
so that they are more capable of encoding the reality that people want to express”
(1996, p. 51).
Within lexicogrammar, system and structure are very important in the creation of
meaning. Structure is the “syntagmatic ordering in language patterns, or regularities,
in what goes together with what”. System, which is the paradigmatic ordering in
language, involves “patterns in what could go instead of what” (Halliday and
Matthiessen, 2004, p. 22). System and structure work together and “… each system-
each moment of choice- contributes to the formation of the structure” (Halliday and
Matthiessen, 2004, p. 23). Therefore, what goes together with what and what has the
potential to go instead of what are very important in text creation and “a text is the
product of ongoing selection in a very large network of systems- a system network”
(Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004, p. 23).
Widdowson states that language elements combining with others along a horizontal
dimension are in a syntagmatic relationship, and those that have the same potential
to vertically appear in the same environment are in paradigmatic relationship. The
horizontal elements exist in combination; sounds or letters combine to form words,
words combine to form phrases, phrases combine to form sentences. The vertical
elements, on the other hand, exist in association; “when different forms have the
same possibility of occurrence in a structure at a particular level, and are therefore
equivalent in function, they are paradigmatically associated as members of the same
class of items” (1996, p. 33-34). According to Widdowson, this two-dimensional
28
mode of organization allows the generation of infinite expressions from finite means
and “is the essential source of the creativity and flexibility …. of human language”
(1996, p. 34).
Halliday and Hasan argue that all components of the semantic system are realized
through the lexicogrammatical system” (1976, p. 6). Stubbs holds that “.. messages
are conveyed not only explicitly, by words themselves, but also implicitly, by lexical
and syntactic patterning” (1996, p. 10). Morphological and syntactic processes,
according to Widdowson, perform the function of extending word meanings, and so
“constitute a communicative resource” (1996, p. 52). Therefore, although
grammatical processes play a supportive role in organizing and adapting existing
units of lexical meaning to requirements, they do not initiate meaning but “act upon
meaning already lexically provided” (Widdowson, 1996, p. 55).
As lexis is the initiator of meaning and grammar organizes and changes lexical
meaning according to needs through syntax and morphology, it would be
meaningful to look at the major carrier of meaning in more detail. A lexeme or a
lexical item is a “separate unit of meaning, usually in the form of a word, but also as
a group of words” (Widdowson, 1996, p. 129). Sinclair holds that “lexical items are
not always words, and each word may enter into a variety of relationships with
others to realize lexical items” (2004, p. 161). Lexical words are the ‘content’ words
of the vocabulary of a language, and “they can be viewed in terms of the relations in
which they enter: paradigmatic relations (the options that are open to them) and
syntagmatic relations (the company they keep)” (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004, p.
38).
29
Ginzburg defines paradigmatic relations as those “that exist between individual
lexical items which make up one of the subgroups of vocabulary items, e.g. sets of
synonyms, lexico-semantic groups, etc.”, and holds, for example, that “the meaning
of the verb to get can be fully understood only in comparison with other items of the
synonymic set: get, obtain, receive, etc.” (1979, p. 46). Paradigmatically, words can
form lexical sets. “They function in sets having shared semantic features and
common patterns of collocation” and “typically, the semantic features that link the
members of a lexical set are those of synonymy or antonymy, hyponymy and
meronymy” (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004, p. 40). Antonymy is “the sense
relation of various kinds of opposing meaning between lexical items” (Widdowson,
1996, p. 125), and synonymy “the sense relation of equivalence of meaning between
lexical items” (Widdowson, 1996, p. 131). Cohyponyms are “words that are
subtypes of the same type” and comeronyms are words that are “part of the same
whole” (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004, p. 40). Hyponymy is characterized by
Widdowson as “the sense relation between terms in a hierarchy, where a more
particular term (the hyponym) is included in the more general one (the
superordinate)” (1996, p. 128).
According to Ginzburg, “syntagmatic relations define the meaning the word
possesses when it is used in combination with other words” (1979, p. 46).
Syntagmatically, lexical items can form collocations, “the co-occurrence of lexical
items in text” (Widdowson, 1996, p. 125) and “a tendency for words to occur
together” (Sinclair, 1991, p. 71). Approaches to the semantic analysis of natural
languages depend on the view that ‘lexical items are interrelatable’ (van Buren,
1975, p. 126). The probabilistic view, also known as the ‘collocational theory of
lexical meaning’, was supported by the British linguist J. R. Firth (van Buren, 1975,
30
p. 126). According to Firth, the word ‘night’ is more likely to collocate with the
word ‘dark’ than with ‘hippopotamus’, and this probability is part of the meaning of
the word ‘night’ (van Buren, 1975, p. 126-127). “These probabilistic lexical
relations cut across and therefore independent of grammatical structure” (van Buren,
1975, p. 127). According to the collocational theory, “lexical items are not co-
extensive with any grammatical unit” (van Buren, 1975, p. 127). A lexical item like
‘put up with’ should be considered as one lexical item if it significantly co-occurs
with ‘a unique cluster of other items’ (van Buren, 1975, p. 127).
Carter and McCarthy also refer to Firth as the father of collocation, stating that he
brought the term ‘collocation’ into prominence (1988, p. 32). According to this
Firthian view, collocation is one type of meaning and it is “an abstraction at the
syntagmatic level and is not directly concerned with the conceptual or idea approach
to the meaning of words” (Firth, 1951/1957, cited in Carter and McCarthy, 1988, p.
32). Although collocation is often referred to as a ‘Firthian’ term, Nation (2001)
notes that Palmer used it before Firth. Palmer’s idea of collocation was that each
“must or should be learnt, or is best or most conveniently learnt as an integral whole
or independent entity, rather than by the process of piecing together their component
parts” (Palmer, 1933, p. 4, cited in Nation, 2001, p. 317).
Halliday and Matthiessen consider collocation “an instance of lexical cohesion”
which depends on a tendency of items to co-occur (2004, p. 576-577). McCarthy
holds that the relationship of collocation is central to the study of vocabulary as it is
“an important organizing principle in the vocabulary of any language” (1990, p. 12).
He regards collocation as a “marriage contract between words”, some words being
“more firmly married to each other than others” and gives ‘blond hair’ as a strong
31
collocation as blond can refer to almost nothing else but hair (1990, p. 12).
McCarthy does not make a distinction between collocation and colligation, and
regards the co-occurrence of ‘the’ (a function word) with a noun (a content word) as
collocation (1990, p. 12). Hunston defines ‘colligation’ as “the collocation between
a lexical word and a grammatical one” but mostly refers to this co-occurrence as just
‘collocation’ (2002, p. 12-13). Nation also provides a ‘loose’ definition of
‘collocation’ as “any generally accepted grouping of words into phrases or clauses”
(2001, p. 317).
Syntagmatically, words may also appear together with other words forming phrasal
verbs, compound nouns, and formulaic phrases, “a (relatively) fixed collocation”
(Widdowson, 1996, p. 60). A lot of collocations, however, “are not fixed and can be
syntactically modified to a certain extent” (Widdowson, 1996, p. 60). Halliday and
Matthiessen point out that words sometimes come together and form “patterns
which lie somewhere between structures and collocations, having some sort of the
properties of both” and give ‘take + pride / pleasure / delight + in + -ing’ as an
example (2004, p. 45). It is clear from the example that lexical co-occurrences
(collocations) and co-occurrences of lexical and grammatical words (colligations)
may come together and form longer lexical phrases. Nation has the most global view
of collocations:
Collocations differ greatly in size (the number of words involved in the sequence), in type (function words collocating with content words (look with at), content words collocating with content words (united with states), in closeness of collocates (expressed their own honest opinion), and in the possible range of collocates (commit with murder, a crime, hara kiri, suicide…). (2001, p. 56)
32
Syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations of lexis play a significant role in text
production through forming ‘lexical relations’ (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004, p.
571). Therefore, lexical cohesion is achieved through lexical relations at the
syntagmatic (collocation) and paradigmatic level (synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy,
meronymy). Through the choice of lexical items, “a speaker or writer creates
cohesion in discourse” (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004, p. 570). According to Hoey
(1991), “lexical cohesion is the only type of cohesion that regularly forms multiple
relationships (though occasionally reference does so too). If this is taken into
account, lexical cohesion becomes the dominant mode of creating texture” (p. 10).
Halliday and Matthiessen believe that collocations have quite a cohesive effect. This
is so because they are “one of the factors on which we build our expectations of
what is to come next” (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004, p. 577). Nation draws
attention to the significant relationship between the size of word groupings such as
collocation, and the level of proficiency:
when language users segment language for reception or production or to hold it in memory, they typically work with meaningful groupings of items. The size of these groupings, called chunks, depends on the level of proficiency they have attained. At one level they are realized as collocations. (Nation, 2001, p. 317)
Grammar and lexis, therefore, “are the essential resources for meaning”, but “how
these resources have to be exploited for language users to achieve meaning”
(Widdowson, 1990, p. 117) is also very important. Therefore, in addition to the
semantic meaning created in language through lexico-grammatical processes, there
is another dimension in text creation: pragmatics, “what people mean by the
language they use” (Widdowson, 1996, p. 61). It is impossible to think of text
33
creation only in semantic terms as, through text, not only are meanings encoded, but
they are also appropriately communicated to the target reader through the context.
Communication “can only be achieved by relating language with context”
(Widdowson, 1990, p. 94).
Pragmatics is concerned with “what people mean in a particular context and how the
context influences what is said” (Yule, 1996, p. 3). It also involves “how people
conform to social conventions” as well as “how people assert themselves and
manipulate others” by taking individual initiative (Widdowson, 1990, p. 68).
Therefore, pragmatics “is concerned with how people negotiate meaning” and also
“how they negotiate social relations” (Widdowson, 1990, p. 68). Appropriateness of
the language to the social context is very important in conforming to social
conventions and building interpersonal relationships. Inappropriate use of language
does not simply mean “a violation of linguistic appropriateness norms”, but “may
lead to misunderstanding of intent” (Gumperz, 1982, p. 50). Pragmatics is about
how people actualize the meaning potential of language (Widdowson, 1996, p. 61).
It is “much concerned with written as with spoken uses of language” such that
“writers assume a degree of shared schematic knowledge, produce texts which are
cohesive and which conform to the conventions of a particular genre” (Widdowson,
1996, p. 68).
2.1.3 Intertextuality
“Every text is in some sense like other texts” (Halliday and Hasan, 1985, p. 42) and
texts, in general, share certain characteristics that help them to be recognized and
accepted as texts. Nonetheless, research has also shown that “texts vary according to
34
the nature of the contexts they are used in” (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004, p. 27).
Therefore, it may be concluded that some texts share more features than others
based on the purposes they serve and the contexts in which they are used.
“The production and reception of a given text depends upon the participants’
knowledge of other texts” (Beaugrande and Dressler, 1981, p. 182). Intertextuality,
according to Beaugrande and Dressler, plays such a central role in the science of
texts that “the whole notion of textuality may depend upon exploring the influence
of intertextuality as a procedural control upon communicative activities at large”
(Beaugrande and Dressler, 1981, p. 206). The role of intertextuality in text creation
is also emphasized by Swales who states that creating texts should not be considered
an “individually-oriented, inner directed cognitive process … but an acquired
response to the discourse conventions which arise from preferred ways of creating
and communicating knowledge within particular communities” (1990, p. 4). These
preferred ways make texts recognizable in their discourse communities. Discourse
communities “tend to separate people into occupational or speciality-interest
groups” (Swales, 1990, p. 24) and have “common goals, participatory mechanisms,
information exchange, community specific genres, a highly specialized terminology
and a high general level of expertise” (1990, p. 29). Swales (1990) suggests that
discourse communities use some specific lexis and also community-specific
abbreviations and acronyms (p. 26).
Beaugrande and Dressler (1981) consider the notion of discourse community to be
very important. They focus on the importance of what some scholars call ‘text types’
and state that “the scientists themselves cannot belong to a scientific community
until they have acquired its conventions of discourse and argumentation. Instruction,
35
description, explanation, examination, interviews, questionnaires, research reports-
all these commonplace uses of texts are as indispensable to science as the most
elaborate technological instruments” (1981, p. 212).
2.1.3.1 Genre and Text Type
In the literature, two different terms are used to refer to texts which share particular
characteristics. These terms are ‘genre’ and ‘text type’. Although some linguists and
researchers do not make a distinction between these two concepts and use them
interchangeably, others consider them as having distinct meanings. Beaugrande and
Dressler use the term ‘text type’ to mean “classes of texts expected to have certain
traits for certain purposes” (1981, p. 182). They say that texts can be assigned to a
text type according to their function in communication (Beaugrande and Dressler,
1981, p. 185), and give ‘descriptive’, ‘narrative’ and ‘argumentative’ texts as
examples of text types, and emphasize that many texts may include all these three
functions (1981, pp. 182-184). However, they also refer to telegrams and road signs
as text types (1981, p. 142), which could be considered genres by other scholars.
Nunan holds that “different types of communicative events result in different types
of discourse, and each of these will have its own distinctive characteristics” (1993,
p. 49), emphasizing ‘purpose’ of different genres. In fact, he stresses the fact that
“the overall structure, appearance and grammatical elements reflect the purposes for
which the texts were created” (Nunan, 1993, p. 53). Nunan refers to the structure of
a text as its ‘generic structure’ and argues that this structure is determined by the
communicative purposes of the text (1993, p. 58).
36
Biber makes a clear distinction between ‘genre’ and ‘text type’. He believes that
“genre categories are determined on the basis of external criteria relating to the
speaker’s purpose and topic; they are assigned on the basis of use rather than on the
basis of form”, whereas “text types represent groupings of texts that are similar in
their linguistic form, irrespective of genre” (1988, p. 170). Therefore, for example,
“particular texts from press reportage, biographies, and academic prose might be
very similar in having a narrative linguistic form, and they would thus be grouped
together as a single text type, even though they represent three different genres”
(Biber, 1988, p. 206). According to Widdowson, genre is “a type of discourse in
written or spoken mode with particular characteristics established by convention”
(1996, p. 127). That he refers to ‘a formal meeting’ (Widdowson, 1996, p. 67) as a
genre seems to indicate that his understanding of genre is similar to that of Biber’s.
Stubbs acknowledges that “some authors distinguish between text type and genre”
(1996, p. 11), but he does not. Therefore, he uses the two terms interchangeably and
cites Kress (1989) to define these terms as “conventional ways of expressing
meanings: purposeful, goal-directed language activities, socially recognized text
types, which form patterns of meaning in the social world” (Stubbs, 1996, p. 11). He
refers to jokes, sermons, chats, committee meetings, debates, signs, etc. as genres (or
text types) (1996, p. 11), and claims that we can gain an understanding of them
through identifying and comparing different genres (1996, p. 12).
In his seminal study “Genre Analysis’, Swales provides a comprehensive definition
of ‘genre’: “A genre comprises a class of communicative events, the members of
which share some set of communicative purposes” (1990, p. 58). He notes that these
communicative purposes form the rationale of the genre which “shapes the
37
schematic structure of the discourse and influences and constrains choice of content
and style” (Swales, 1990, p. 58). From the definition, we can infer that genres share
purposes, schematic structures, content and style.
2.1.3.2 Genre and Register
A discussion on genre necessitates some clarification as to what differentiates it
from the ‘well-established and central concept in linguistics’ (Swales, 1990, p. 41),
register. A register involves “the linguistic features which are typically associated
with a configuration of situational features” (Halliday and Hasan, 1976, p. 22), and
it refers to a language variety defined according to the characteristics of the situation
(McArthur, 1992, p. 839). Halliday and Matthiessen define register as “a functional
variety of language” (2004, p. 27). Halliday and Hasan hold that when a text is
coherent with respect to the situation, it is consistent in register (1976, p. 23).
Registers are sub-classified into field, tenor, and mode of discourse. “Field is
associated with the management of the ideas, tenor with the management of personal
relations, and mode with the management of discourse itself” (Swales, 1990, p. 40).
Couture (cited in Swales, 1990, p. 41) holds that registers enforce limitations on
syntax and vocabulary, whereas genres enforce them on discourse structures.
Additionally, unlike register, a genre can be realized in completed texts and specifies
conditions for beginning, continuing and ending a text. The two concepts are distinct
in that a genre (research report, business report) is a text with a structure, whereas a
register (language of newspaper reporting, bureaucratic language) represents more
generalizable stylistic choices. According to Swales, the study of genre is evolving,
38
it is essential to disconnect genres from registers or styles, and to recognize that
genres have schematic structures (1990, p. 42).
2.1.3.3 Genres, Generic Structure, and Moves
Paltridge defines genres as “ways in which people ‘get things done’ through their
use of language in particular contexts” (Johns et al., 2006, p. 2). According to
Hyland, genres are the socially recognized ways that writers use language “to
respond to and construct texts for recurring situations” (Johns et al., 2006, p. 3).
Tardy admits that genres are complex and provides an interesting definition for
genre, that it is “a kind of nexuses among the textual, social, and political
dimensions of writing” (Johns et al., 2006, p. 4). According to Coe, a genre is a
“culturally typical structure that embodies a socially appropriate strategy for
responding to varied situations” (Johns et al, 2006, p. 8). The common theme
emerging in all definitions of the concept of ‘genre’ is that a genre involves the
socially acceptable use of language in a situation or context to achieve a purpose.
Another common view involving genres is that they should not be seen as
‘permanent’ formulas, as they are living texts and they change according to the
needs of their users (Crossley, 2007, p. 15). Swales (2004) also admits that his 1990
definition of genre was ‘long and bold’, and that such definitions may not be
relevant to “all possible worlds and all possible times” (p. 61).
The overall structure of a genre represents its purpose. Nunan agrees that the
communicative purpose of a text determines its ‘generic structure’ (1993, p. 58). In
the literature, this overall structure of a text is referred to as ‘generic structure’
(Flowerdew, 2000; Halliday & Hasan, 1985; Henry, 2007; Nunan, 1993),
39
‘organizational structure’ (Flowerdew, 2000), ‘discourse structure’ (Swales, 1990),
‘generic move structure’ (Flowerdew, 2000), and ‘schematic structure’ (Swales,
1990). Genres are composed of units of purpose, called ‘moves’ (Swales, 1990) or
‘move structures’ (Flowerdew, 2000), some of which are compulsory and some
optional (Flowerdew, 2000; Hasan, 1985;). These constituent parts, or moves,
represent the writer’s communicative purpose (Flowerdew, 2000) and perform
specific functions (Bhatia, 1993 cited in Henry, 2007, p. 2).
Swales holds that a move is “a discoursal or rhetorical unit that performs a coherent
communicative function in a written or spoken discourse” (2004, p. 228). He
emphasizes that a move should be “seen as flexible in terms of its linguistic
realization”, although “it has sometimes been aligned with a grammatical unit such
as a sentence, utterance, or paragraph” (Swales, 2004, pp. 228-229). He emphasizes
that a move is a ‘functional, not a formal unit’, and can be fulfilled by a clause, or by
several sentences (2004, p. 229).
In addition to the discourse structure represented by the moves, the language used to
realize the moves is also extremely important. Henry emphasizes the significance of
the lexico-grammatical features commonly employed to fulfill moves (2007, p. 1-2),
Flowerdew draws attention to key lexical phrases ‘representative of the move
structures’ (2000, p. 374), and Tardy also emphasizes the lexico-grammatical
features in generic moves (Johns et al., 2006, p. 5). Moves can be realized in a
number of ways, each of which is called a ‘strategy’ (Henry, 2007, p. 3) or a ‘tactic’
(2007, p. 7). Bhatia defines ‘strategies’ as the tactical choices made by the writer to
fulfill his or her intention. He states that these strategies are generally used to make
the “writing more effective, keeping in mind any special reader requirements,
40
considerations arising from a different use of medium or prerequisites or constraints
imposed by organizational and other factors of this kind”. He emphasizes that
strategies do not generally change the fundamental communicative purpose of the
genre (1993, pp. 19-20). Henry highlights the fact that each strategy has its own
lexico-grammatical features that need to be identified (2007, p. 3).
These strategies are clearly identified by Bhatia. After emphasizing that a writer may
use different rhetorical strategies to realize a communicative intention at the level of
a move, he exemplifies this with the first move of research article introductions:
‘establishing the research territory’. According to Bhatia, this first move can be
realized through three strategies. These are a) asserting centrality of the topic, or b)
stating current knowledge, or c) ascribing key characteristics, and the choice
depends upon “the constraints like the nature of the topic / field, the background
knowledge of the intended readership, reader-writer relationship etc.” (1993, pp. 30-
31). It is obvious that the discourse structure of a genre fulfilled by moves, as well as
the lexico-grammatical patterns representative of the relevant moves, play
significant roles in genre studies, and specifically in academic discourse.
2.1.4 Academic Discourse
Jordan discusses the features of academic texts and highlights formality, avoidance
of contractions, colloquialisms and personal pronouns, and the need to use cautious
language while making claims (1997, pp. 240-244). This concept of cautious
language was first termed ‘hedging’ in 1972 and 1973 by George Lakoff (cited in
Jordan, 1997, p. 240) Selinker explains why hedging is important and states that in
scientific writing every attempt to explain a phenomenon in a certain way is open to
41
an alternative explanation (cited in Jordan, 1997, p. 240). Different ways of making
academic language vague are also mentioned by Hyland (cited in Jordan, 1997, p.
241) as the use of modal verbs (would, could), adverbs (probably, possibly),
adjectives (certain, probable), nouns (assumption, estimate) and some lexical verbs
(seem, appear, suggest).
Another feature of academic texts is formality. Formality involves not using
contractions, colloquialisms, many phrasal verbs and personal pronouns, although
‘I’ can sometimes be appropriate depending on the situation. The writer should use
an analytical, objective, intellectual and rational approach and employ a serious,
impersonal and formal tone. In academic texts, passive forms of verbs, complex
sentence structures and specialized vocabulary are frequently used (Jordan, 1997, p.
245).
Some academic discourse conventions, such as the need to be impersonal and
objective, have been changing and evolving. For example, Elbow questions the
language of academic texts which excludes the personal voice, and eliminates the
author from the text. He maintains that ‘a detached and impersonal stance’ is a
‘pretense’ since arguments and opinions cannot be treated separately from the
person who possesses them (cited in Zamel, 1993, p. 3). Hyland states that “over the
past decade or so, academic writing has gradually lost its traditional tag as an
objective, faceless and impersonal form of discourse and come to be seen as a
persuasive endeavour involving interaction between writers and readers” (2005, p.
173). The recent view is that academic discourse should not be considered as ‘a
uniform set of norms and conventions’, since this attitude would prevent the
experience of constructing knowledge in a community (Zamel, 1993, p. 3). She
42
claims that academic cultures, like all cultures, are constantly re-created by people
who enter as well as the languages they bring with them (1993, p. 7).
The focus in academic discourse nowadays seems to have shifted to knowledge
creation and ‘solidarity’ (Hyland, 2005) with the readers. Writers, Hyland argues,
“do not act in a social vacuum, and knowledge is not constructed outside particular
communities of practice” (2005, p. 191). He suggests that academics do not simply
produce texts, but also use language ‘to acknowledge, construct and negotiate social
relations’, and therefore a successful academic text “displays the writer’s awareness
of both its readers and its consequences” (Hyland, 2005, p. 174). Therefore,
nowadays extensive research is carried out on how writers in academia “use
language to express a stance and relate to their readers” (Hyland, 2005, p.174).
In an earlier article, Hyland again emphasizes the importance of the reader, and
focuses on ways of achieving a collegial stance towards them. He maintains that one
important consideration in academic discourse is how writers try to “modify the
assertions that they make, toning down uncertain or potentially risky claims,
emphasizing what they believe to be correct, and conveying appropriately collegial
attitudes to readers” (2000, p. 179). This stance, or position is achieved through
expressions of doubt and certainty, known as hedges and boosters (Hyland, 2000, p.
179). “Hedges such as might, probably and seem signal a tentative assessment of
referential information and convey collegial respect for the views of colleagues”.
Boosters, on the other hand, are expressions like clearly, obviously and of course,
and they help writers to express confidence and also their involvement and unity
with an audience (2000, p. 179). Hyland claims that conscious awareness of
‘pragmatic features’ such as hedges and boosters are very important in teaching
43
English for Academic Purposes (EAP) (2000, p. 180), since these tools help to get
the work of academics accepted “by balancing conviction with caution, and by
conveying an appropriate disciplinary persona of modesty and assertiveness”
(Hyland, 2000, p. 179).
It may be concluded that in academic discourse, the appropriate expression of ideas
has become as important as the accurate use of the linguistic resources. Pragmatic
features, such as the use of linguistic resources to express solidarity with colleagues,
to get one’s work considered seriously, and therefore to become a member of the
discourse community, are now equally essential. Thus, powerful personal expression
of ideas and arguments has gained major significance in academia.
2.1.4.1 Genres in Academia
Academic texts are of different genres. As stated by Swales, genres share some
common features in terms of purpose, target audience, structure, style, and content.
A genre comprises a class of communicative events, the members of which share some set of communicative purposes. These purposes are recognized by the expert members of the parent discourse community, and thereby constitute the rationale for the genre. This rationale shapes the schematic structure of the discourse and influences and constrains choice of content and style. ….In addition to purpose, exemplars of a genre exhibit various patterns of similarity in terms of structure, style, content and intended audience. (Swales, 1990, p. 58)
Jordan gives research articles, abstracts, theses, and textbooks as examples of genres
in academic written English (1997, p. 231). Swales regards research articles,
research presentations, grant proposals, theses and dissertations, reprint requests, and
abstracts as instances of academic genres (1990). Scholarly books and conference
44
presentations are also listed as academic genres by Bonn and Swales, although the
research article in a first-rank peer-reviewed journal is referred to as the ‘top’
academic genre as it provides the greatest reward for its writers (2007, p. 93-94).
2.1.4.1.1 An academic genre: The Abstract
Specific parts of a genre, such as abstract, introduction, discussion and literature
review sections of research articles and theses, are named part genres by some
scholars (Hyland, 2005; Flowerdew, 2000). Although abstracts are sometimes
considered as part genres (Bonn and Swales, 2007), they are generally treated as a
distinct genre as they are ‘independent discourses’ (van Dijk, 1980, cited in Swales,
1990, p. 179). They are independent, as not everyone who reads the abstract will
necessarily read the article itself (Swales, 1990, p. 179).
Morton also stresses the ‘independent’ quality of especially research article
abstracts, and defines an abstract as “a continuous piece of prose written in whole
sentences that can function as an independent discourse” (1999, p. 179). He also
emphasizes the necessity that the abstract “should reflect the structure of the article,
and follow its order exactly” (Morton, 1999, p. 179). He describes this structure as
the presentation of the state of previous research, or a description of the background,
followed by a description of the experiment or research conducted, a description of
the results, and finally a statement of the implications of these results (1999, p. 179).
Morton’s observation is confirmed by Swales, who stands at the forefront in the
field of genre studies. Swales holds that abstracts, like other genres reporting
research, can be said to have an IMRD (Introduction-Method-Results-Discussion)
structure (1990, p.181). What is significant is that these moves recur throughout
45
thesis and research writing in general. Therefore, abstracts act as a miniature of the
academic research genre as a whole, which makes them a powerful and useful
research and teaching device in general. However, Swales (1990) observes that
abstracts are a neglected genre which is quite unfortunate, as they are specifically
suitable for genre investigation (p. 181).
Chan and Foo hold that “the abstract is perceived as a rhetorical structure” (2001, p.
4). They also emphasize the information structure realized by moves. They maintain
that the abstract is genre specific, “governed by a consistent set of information
elements, organized in a specific structure, and expressed in a particular style”
(2001, p. 4). They also stress the fact that the cohesion of the abstract is sustained by
a move structure, and “follows a broad model of the research paper” (Chan & Foo,
2001, p. 4): an introduction, which includes the statement of purpose, followed by
the main method used, then the most significant result, and finally the conclusion or
recommendation statement (2001, p. 4).
The research article abstract “has emerged as a result of a well-defined and
mutually-understood communicative purpose that most abstracts fulfil, irrespective
of the subject-discipline they serve” (Bhatia, 1993, pp.77-78). Bhatia defines an
abstract as “a description or factual summary of the much longer report, … meant to
give the reader an exact and concise knowledge of the full article” (1993, p. 78).
Bhatia also identifies four moves in abstracts: Introducing purpose, describing
methodology, summarizing results, and presenting conclusions (1993, pp. 78-79).
Research results reveal that journal abstracts reflect the structure of the research
article, across different disciplines (Hyland, 2000 cited in Hyland, 2004, p. 203).
46
Again consistent with Swales’ IMRD moves and Bhatia’s four moves, the rhetorical
moves in article abstracts are given as: Introduction, Purpose, Method, Results,
Conclusion (Hyland, 2000 cited in Hyland, 2004, p. 204). Hyland also provides
information on the key features of journal abstracts revealed in the study (2004, p.
204). Firstly, while the present tense is used for the background introduction and
purpose, the past tense is common in reporting methods and results. Another finding
is that although writers sometimes refer to themselves using pronouns, the use of the
passive voice and inanimate subjects is also common. The verbs used in different
moves differ. For the ‘purpose’ move, presentation verbs like discuss, describe,
explore, and address are employed, while verbs such as show, demonstrate, find,
and establish are used in the ‘results’ move. Extensive use of noun groups, which
“allows the writers to package complex events and entities as single things”
(Hyland, 2004, pp. 204-205), is also observed. Hedges are common in an attempt to
avoid overstating findings. “This may be intended to state the writers’ confidence in
the findings precisely, to avoid criticism, or to show respect for the alternative views
of others” (Hyland, 2004, p. 205).
Hedges are used in abstracts written in other languages as well. According to the
findings of a small-scale study comparing Turkish-medium thesis abstracts with
those written in English, grammatical and lexical words are employed as hedges.
Further, while the tense in abstracts written in both languages is predominantly
present, their move structures also display considerable similarity (Hancioglu, 2002,
pp. 4-6). Cross-linguistic analysis of abstracts has attracted considerable attention in
the recent years. Bonn and Swales (2007) compared French and English academic
article abstracts from the language sciences, and found that in French article
abstracts longer sentences are used, and in English abstracts, more passives are
47
employed (p. 93). An interesting finding was that the abstracts written in English
attempt to situate their research within a wider academic context (p. 104). Bonn and
Swales (2007) state that this may be due to the wider size of the English discourse
community (p. 93).
2.2 Writing Pedagogy
So far, the product, i.e. the text, has been explored in depth. As this research is
pedagogical in nature, and since especially non-native writers from different fields
need guidance and instruction in becoming aware of, and meeting the requirements
of producing a coherent and appropriate text, writing pedagogy, with a special focus
on academic writing (EAP-English for Academic Purposes), also needs to be
investigated.
2.2.1 Approaches to Writing
Different approaches to teaching writing are characterized by their different focuses:
the form, the writer, the reader. Although these approaches have developed as a
reaction or as an attempt to improve the previous one, they all have a place in theory
and in practice today (Raimes, 1991, p. 408). The Product Approach emerged in the
late 1960’s, when the audio-lingual method was used in language instruction. Jordan
defines this approach as being concerned with ‘the finished product’ (1997, p. 164).
This approach, also known as text-based approach, considers writing “as mainly
concerned with knowledge about the structure of language”, and development in
writing is regarded as “the result of imitation of input in the form of texts” (Badger,
2002, p. 1). Pincas states that this approach considers writing “as primarily about
linguistic knowledge, with attention focused on the appropriate use of vocabulary,
48
syntax, and cohesive devices” (cited in Badger and White, 2000, p. 153). In this
approach, learning how to write has four stages: familiarization by analyzing the
target text, controlled writing, guided writing and free writing. Leki criticizes this
approach saying that what is called guided writing in this approach is in fact
‘disguised grammar exercises’ (1991, p. 8). The other main criticisms of this
approach are that skills, such as planning, play a minor role, that the learners’
knowledge is undervalued, and that the social context in which texts are produced is
not paid enough attention (Badger, 2002, p. 1). Another criticism is that presenting
the students with an ‘aimed-for model’ and expecting them to produce a parallel text
restricts them in what they can write and how they can write it (Jordan, 1997, p.
164).
The emergence of the communicative approach led to student-centred learning, and
therefore resulted in focus on the writer, rather than the finished text, the meaning
rather than the form, the process approach. One vital element of this approach is the
feedback from the teacher and peers to enable the writer to make improvements to
the writing produced. Keh points out that feedback in the form of comments,
suggestions and questions a reader provides for the writer serves as a good
opportunity for revision by offering a reader perspective (1990, p. 294). The process
approach mainly regards writing “as the exercise of linguistic skills and writing
development as acquisition which happens in situations where teachers facilitate the
exercise of writing skills” (Badger, 2002, p. 1). The writing skills mentioned here
are rehearsing or pre-writing, drafting, revising and editing. The focus in this
approach is not the product, but the process the students go through to create it. The
rationale is that “error-free writing without substance is not as good as substantive
writing even with errors” (Leki, 1991, p. 10), and “text evolves as a result of the
49
writer’s efforts to explore, formulate, and reformulate meaning through revision”
(Dheram, 1995, p. 160).
Jordan holds that to help students with the challenging process of expressing
themselves effectively in writing, the process approach, which “is concerned with
the processes of writing that enable the product to be achieved”, is used. Especially
lower level students are expected to benefit from this approach since “the processes
involved match the mental processes inherent in writing in the mother tongue,
namely, planning, drafting, rethinking, revising, etc.” (1997, p. 164). Leki believes
that when students are not focused on grammatical mistakes, and instead they write
freely to convey a message, they “develop confidence and a sense of power over the
language …” (1991, p. 8). With this approach, the students, liberated from an
approach emphasizing correct form and accuracy, can express themselves fluently.
They have “more opportunities for meaningful writing, are less dependent on the
teacher, and work collaboratively with other students” (Richards, 1990, p. 110).
There are, however, some critics of this approach as well. Badger summarizes these
criticisms as follows: These approaches “regard all writing as being produced by the
same set of processes”, do not pay a lot of attention to the kind of texts writers
produce, and may not “provide learners with sufficient input to carry out the writing
tasks successfully” (2002, p. 1). One other criticism is that since EAP writing is very
product-oriented and the conventions regarding the organization and expressions are
very tight, an approach that encourages meaning, individuality and fluency may not
be appropriate for it. Therefore, there is the need to familiarize students with these
conventions to help them operate within them (White, 1988 cited in Jordan, 1997, p.
168).
50
Hyland is also a strong critic of process approaches and he offers five limitations
related to this approach. Firstly, process writing “represents writing as a
decontextualised skill by foregrounding the writer as an isolated individual
struggling to express personal meanings” (2003, p. 18). Language use is the
outcome of ‘individual capacities’. Thus, while this “approach acknowledges the
cognitive dimensions of writing and sees the learner as the active processor of
information, it neglects the actual processes of language use” (Hyland, 2003, p. 19).
Secondly, these models “disempower teachers and cast them in the role of well-
meaning bystanders” (2003, p. 19). The feedback stage is the most important step in
this approach as explicit teaching of language is most likely to occur here. However,
as language and rhetorical organization are only dealt with in the final ‘editing’
stage, students are not offered an understanding of how different texts are
constructed in clear and recognizable ways in terms of their purpose, audience and
message. The third limitation of this approach is that what is to be learned is not
clear. Students are expected to discover appropriate forms as they are writing, aided
by the teacher’s feedback and samples of expert writing which are not analysed.
This attitude presupposes knowledge of target texts. L1 students may actually have
this knowledge. However, L2 learners “do not have access to this cultural resource
and so lack knowledge of the typical patterns and possibilities of variation within the
texts that possess cultural capital”. These L2 learners are then forced to utilize “the
discourse conventions of their own cultures and may fail to produce texts that are
either contextually adequate or educationally valued” (Hyland, 2003, p. 19).
A fourth limitation, according to Hyland, is the role of the hidden American values
in process methods. Principles such as personal voice, peer review, critical thinking
51
and textual ownership “incorporate an ideology of individualism which L2 learners
may have serious trouble accessing”. These norms of thought and expression may be
clear and familiar to American students, but for students whose cultures do not
involve the ideology of individualism, these norms may be difficult to recognize and
accept (Hyland, 2003, p. 20). The final limitation that Hyland mentions is the “lack
of engagement with the socio-political realities of students’ everyday lives and target
situations”. This approach caters for the individual needs and personalities of
learners and fails to offer them access to the resources to “participate in, understand,
or challenge valued discourses”, thus failing to present them with “the cultural and
linguistic resources necessary for them to engage critically with texts” (Hyland,
2003, p. 20).
After remaining the dominant pedagogical practice for more than 30 years, the
process approach started to be replaced by more socially-oriented views of writing,
which reject the liberal individualism (Hyland, 2003, p. 17). The genre-based
approach has been “a response to the occasional excesses of a process approach to
writing instruction. An emphasis on a process approach often disregards the
importance of written form and, in effect, takes power away from learners,
particularly those from different language and culture backgrounds” (Reppen, 2002,
p. 321). For these learners from different backgrounds, unless teachers bring the
forms and patterns of language use to conscious awareness, many writing
conventions will forever remain unlearned. Emphasizing the process at the expense
of the product ignores the need for direct instruction of features of text.
Nevertheless, students are still being assessed on features such as text organization
and sentence structure (Reppen, 2002, p. 321-322). The genre approach, on the other
52
hand, recognizes the vital role of language in written communication. Genre,
therefore, “is, in part, a social response to process” (Hyland, 2003, p. 9).
Genres have their own specific structures and own grammatical forms that reflect
their specific communicative purpose. Nunan notes that this communicative purpose
will determine the characteristics of the type of discourse (1999, p. 280). The goal of
genre pedagogies is to “explore ways of scaffolding students’ learning and using
knowledge of language to guide them towards a conscious understanding of target
genres and the ways language creates meanings in context” (Hyland, 2003, p. 20). A
genre-based approach to writing regards writing as “essentially concerned with
knowledge of language in context and the development of writing as a response to
input in the form of texts” (Badger, 2002, p. 1).
There are strong similarities between this relatively new approach and the product
approach and, in some ways, “genre approaches can be regarded as an extension of
product approaches”. Like the product approach, this approach “regards writing as
predominantly linguistic,” but unlike the product approach, it emphasizes that
“writing varies with the social context in which it is produced” (Badger and White,
2000, p. 155). The focus in this approach is on purpose. Different kinds of writing
fulfill different purposes. In addition to purpose, there are some other important
considerations such as the subject matter, the relationships between the writer and
the audience, and the pattern of organization. The theory of learning in this
approach, although not explicitly stated, is that “learning is partly a question of
imitation and partly a matter of understanding and consciously applying rules”
(Badger and White, 2000, p. 155). In this approach, after a sample text is introduced
53
and analysed, students manipulate the language elements and eventually produce the
target text (Badger, 2002, p. 1).
According to Hyland, “genre analysis can … provide the vocabulary and concepts to
explicitly teach the text structures we would like our students to produce. It places
language at the center of writing development by allowing shared understanding and
explicit guidance” (1992, p. 16). Genre theory suggests that explicit knowledge of
language is a very important aspect of effective communication and “seeks to
establish that it is the context-determined structure of a piece of writing in
combination with its propositional content that gives the text its meaning” (Hyland,
1992, p. 17).
The genre-based approach has however been criticized for underemphasizing the
skills needed to produce a text and causing the learners to be passive. The learners
may be able to deal with the types of texts they have studied in the classroom, but
not be able to tackle new forms of texts outside the classroom. Moreover, they are
not likely to use the language creatively (Badger, 2002, p. 1). The Process Genre
Approach emerged as a consequence of the dissatisfaction caused by the emphasis
on the product in the genre approach, where skills like drafting, revising and editing
are undervalued. The development of writing in this approach is regarded as
involving knowledge about language (product and genre approaches), knowledge of
the context in which writing takes place (genre approach) and the purpose for the
writing (genre approach). According to the process genre view, writing develops by
extracting the learner’s potential (process approach), and by providing input for the
learner to respond (product and genre approaches) (Badger and White, 2000, p.
158). In the genre approach, writing takes place in a social situation and aims to
54
achieve a specific purpose, which determines the subject matter, the writer/reader
relationship, and organization, channel, or mode. To enable learners to be able to do
so, the genre approach focuses on the language used in a particular text. In the
process genre approach, the writers’ processes in producing a text by reflecting such
elements as field (purpose of communication, the subject matter), tenor (who the
audience is/the social role relationships), and mode (channels of communication) are
included. After learners have identified the field, mode and tenor with the help of the
teacher, peers or sample texts, they use the skills appropriate to the genre, such as
redrafting and proofreading, and produce a text (Badger and White, 2000, p. 158).
A writing class employing a process genre approach starts with the situation that
leads to a specific genre of writing. Then students produce some writing “in line
with their own needs supported by the teacher, their peers and sample texts”
(Badger, 2002, p. 1). Therefore, where learners lack knowledge, there are three
potential sources: the teacher, other learners and examples of the target genre. The
most typical source of input on contextual and linguistic knowledge is language
awareness activities, based on a corpus of the relevant genre as there are similarities
between texts written for the same reason. These activities help learners to notice the
kind of sentence structure and vocabulary used in this genre (Badger and White,
2000, p. 159).
2.2.2 The Process Genre Approach in EAP
EAP (English for Academic Purposes) writing is currently dominated by genre-
based approaches as there is widespread belief that different communicative
purposes result in different genres, and it is more valuable to focus on the discourse
55
structure and linguistic features relevant to that genre, rather than the general
features of text in general. Henry believes that the aims of a genre approach in ESP
(English for Specific Purposes) are to focus on the organization of information in
genres through moves performing specific purposes, and to establish the obligatory
and optional moves and their order. This focus is claimed to have resulted in
students organizing their writing more effectively (Henry, 2007, p. 1).
Another very important aim in this approach to writing is to identify the linguistic
features employed to achieve the moves and present these in a meaningful context.
Yet, in this regard, Henry has a word of caution. He emphasizes the need to provide
learners with ‘a wide enough range of linguistic options’ to choose from to fulfill the
different generic functions, since otherwise there is the risk of learners perceiving
“the limited number of formulas as a template to be followed rather than as a
description of acceptable language conventions” (2007, pp. 1-3).
Genre-based models are based on explicit theory of “how language works or the
ways that social context affects linguistic outcomes” (Hyland, 2003, p. 20). In
academic contexts, the acceptability of texts is very important to be able to become a
member of the academic discourse community and in a genre-based approach,
“language is seen as embedded in (and constitutive of) social realities, since it is
through recurrent use of conventionalized forms that individuals develop
relationships, establish communities, and get things done” (Hyland, 2003, p. 21).
Considering this view, the Process Genre approach seems to be a valuable approach,
especially in the teaching of academic writing. The strength of product-based
approaches is that they set out principles for the selection of content, which is a
56
matter of syllabus design. Process-oriented approaches, on the other hand, have
implications towards classroom action, which are purely methodological concerns
(Bamforth, cited in Nunan, 1999, p. 287). Nunan points out that “any comprehensive
approach to pedagogy must incorporate syllabus design, methodology, and
assessment” (Nunan, 1999, p. 287).
As already stated, generic moves in different genres are realized by strategies, which
are in turn fulfilled through distinct lexico-grammatical structures. Flowerdew
maintains that key lexical phrases are “representative of the move structures” (2000,
p. 374). In this regard, the use of corpora, which will be discussed in detail in this
chapter, is a great means of extracting the lexico-grammar, as a corpus provides vast
amounts of data and corpus software allow quick and easy manipulation of the
language data. Beaugrande notes that “the advent of large corpus data with user-
friendly access marks a turning point in the evolution of descriptive linguistics”
(2002, p. 1), and concludes that “we should no longer displace real data with
invented data” (Beaugrande, 2002, p. 28).
2.3 Corpora and Applications
2.3.1 Corpora
A corpus may be defined as “a large collection of instances of spoken and written
texts” (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004, p. 29), as “a collection of naturally
occurring examples of language, consisting of anything from a few sentences to a set
of written texts or tape recordings, which have been collected for linguistic study”
(Hunston, 2002, p. 2), and more recently as “collections of texts (or parts of text)
that are stored and accessed electronically” (Hunston, 2002, p. 2). Sinclair adds a
57
new dimension to the definition by pointing out that “a corpus is a collection of
naturally-occuring language text, chosen to characterize a state or variety of a
language” (1991, p. 171).
Corpora, which were first constructed in computer-readable form in the 1960s and
1970s (Stubbs, 1996, p. xvii), have made the observation of language possible. In
the past, language description relied on introspection, which utilized intuitions, and
elicitation, which drew on the intuitions of other members of the community.
Although these two methods of linguistic data collection reveal information about
the formal properties and the typical functioning of language, they do not expose
data about actual language behaviour (Widdowson, 1996, pp. 72-73). Corpora make
the observation of language possible on a vast scale (Widdowson, 1996, p. 73) and
provide authentic data. Referring to this authenticity, Halliday and Matthiessen
maintain that “what people actually say is very different from what they think they
say; and even more different from what they think they ought to say” (2004, p. 34).
Sinclair calls this ‘objective evidence’ (1991, p. 1) and holds that supporting the idea
that “invented examples can actually represent the language better than real ones” is
‘absurd’ (1991, p. 5). Cook and Prodromou suggest that corpus data include all the
peculiarities of native speaker language and contain cultural elements, and therefore
material to be presented to the learner should be adapted according to the local
context. On the other hand, Carter, like Sinclair, advocates the use of genuine
language with learners, saying that otherwise the learner would always be an
average user of the language and would be deprived of the opportunity to use the
language at a native speaker level (cited in Deterding, 2005).
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A corpus gives information about what language is like, and it is more dependable
than native speaker intuition since although the native speaker has “experience of
very much more language than is contained in even the largest corpus, much of that
experience remains hidden from introspection” (Hunston, 2002, p. 20). Intuition is
not very helpful in four aspects of language: collocation, frequency, prosody and
phraseology. It is easy to intuit some common collocations, such as ‘play – game’,
while it is not for some others such as adverb-adjective combinations, such as
‘acutely aware’. Without corpus evidence, the native speaker may not be aware of
them (Hunston, 2002, p. 21). Similarly, without corpus data, being conscious of the
relative frequency of words, phrases and structures is difficult. For native speakers,
it is equally difficult to intuit many instances of pragmatic meaning, and also
unusual phraseology without corpus backup (Hunston, 2002, pp. 21-22). However,
intuition is very important in “extrapolating important generalizations from a mass
of specific information in a corpus” (p. 22). Hunston stresses the fact that “the
corpus simply offers the researcher plenty of examples, only intuition can interpret
them” (2002, p. 23).
Over the last few decades, “corpora, and the study of corpora, have revolutionized
the study of language and the applications of language” (Hunston, 2002, p. 1), as
computers became more accessible, and more technologically advanced, making it
possible to handle large amounts of data and allowing more corpus studies to be
conducted (Hunston 2002, Biber et al. 1998). Biber et al. also maintain that
empirical investigations of corpora “can shed new light on previously intractable
research questions in linguistics” (1998, p. ix), and the corpus-based approach “has
opened the way to a multitude of new investigations of language use” (1998, p. 3).
59
According to Biber et al. (1998), through the study of corpora, it is not possible to
determine what is possible in language, but how the language is actually used in
naturally occurring texts (p. 1). Therefore, a corpus-based approach involves the
study of language use, and analysts “attempt to uncover typical patterns rather than
making judgments of grammaticality” (Biber et al., 1998, p. 3). Hunston similarly
draws attention to the fact that a corpus does not give information about the
possibility of a language item. Instead, it will present data on its frequency.
Furthermore, she adds that a statement about evidence in a corpus will be relevant
for that particular corpus, and therefore “conclusions about language drawn from a
corpus have to be treated as deductions, not as facts” (2002, pp. 22-23).
The corpus-based approach is empirical, “analyzing the actual patterns of use in
natural texts”, and relies on quantitative as well as qualitative analytical techniques
(Biber et al., 1998, p. 4). Biber et al. point out one important consideration for
corpus-based approaches. The analyses should go beyond simple counts of linguistic
features, and include qualitative, functional interpretations of quantitative patterns
(1998, pp. 4-5). Hunston similarly maintains that a corpus provides evidence in the
form of many examples which can only be interpreted by intuition (2002, p. 23).
A corpus-based approach may study the language use patterns for a linguistic
structure, the language of a text or a group of speakers / writers, or the language of
different texts or groups of texts (Hunston, 2002, p. 2). The patterns of language use
in different texts provide information on language varieties, how different situations
require different language registers. Such studies attempt to describe the
characteristics of registers, in which grammatical and lexical choices play a major
role (Hunston, 2002, p. 2). McCarthy also emphasizes the ‘social’ dimension of
60
corpora and corpus linguistics. He states that “its method, gathering large amounts
of representative data, whether written or spoken, immerses it in the social, the
world of texts and users, of producers and consumers” (2001, p. 125).
There are different approaches to corpora (McCarthy, 2001). The ‘corpus-based’
approach is using corpora to demonstrate some known facts about the language. On
the other hand, through a ‘corpus-driven’ approach, one can “go with a completely
open mind to a corpus, willing to be guided, illuminated by it in ways one could not
dream of”. A third approach, which critics of corpus work like Widdowson fail to
explore according to McCarthy, is the ‘corpus-informed approach’. Widdowson
claims that ‘freezing language in a computer database’ decontextualizes language
and makes it impossible to use it as ‘real’ and ‘authentic’ in the language classroom
(cited in McCarthy, 2001, p. 128). However, McCarthy holds that with the corpus-
informed approach, the applied linguist can “mediate the corpus, design it from the
very outset and build it with applied linguistic questions in mind, ask of it the
questions applied linguists want answers to, and filter its output, use it as a guide or
tool for what you, the teacher, want to achieve” (2001, p. 129). Extracting lexico-
grammatical information from a corpus is an example for this approach (McCarthy,
2001, p. 138).
A corpus can do nothing at all by itself, but corpus access software re-arranges this
store of used language, allows observations of various kinds to be made and
provides a new perspective on language (Hunston, 2002, p. 3). Corpus analysis tools
manage data in three ways: to show frequency, phraseology, and collocation (2002,
p. 3), which will be explained in Chapter three in detail. Frequency counts are very
useful, since they give valuable information on the frequencies of lexical and
61
grammar words in different corpora (Hunston, 2002, p. 3), as well as frequencies of
categories of linguistic items (e.g. present and past tenses) across registers (2002, p.
8). Through phraseology, on the other hand, differences between easily confused
words can be easily observed from the concordance lines (Hunston, 2002, p. 12).
Through concordance lines, it is also possible to observe the ‘central and typical’,
meaning distinctions, meaning and pattern, and detail (Hunston, 2002, p. 42).
Although a corpus cannot be used to establish what is impossible or possible in a
language, it provides information about ‘central and typical usage’. Typicality
involves “the most frequent meanings or collocates or phraseology of an individual
word or phrase” (Hunston, 2002, p. 42). Centrality, on the other hand, “can be
applied to categories of things rather than to individual words” (2002, p. 43). For
example, although present progressive can be used for the present, the future, or no
specific time, the central use is for the present time. A corpus serves an important
purpose here as the prototypical (what is felt to be typical) may not be the most
frequent (Hunston, 2002, pp. 43-44). Exploring collocations in corpora is also very
valuable, as they “can indicate pairs of lexical items, … , or the association between
a lexical word and its frequent grammatical environment”, the latter frequently
called ‘colligation’ (Hunston, 2002, p. 12). Collocational information can be useful
in highlighting the different meanings of a word, therefore providing a semantic
profile of the word, and in obtaining a profile of the semantic field of a word
(Hunston, 2002, pp. 75-79).
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2.3.2 Types of Corpora
Corpora are designed for particular purposes, and the purpose determines the
corpora types. Sinclair broadly classifies corpora into two as ‘sample’ and ‘monitor’
corpora (1991, p. 23). In sample corpora, the most important consideration is ‘the
printed language as a whole’, and there is a ‘close to random selection of extracts
within genres’ (Sinclair, 1991, p. 23). The Brown Corpus and LOB (the Lancaster-
Oslo/Bergen Corpus) are sample corpora which consist of American English and
British English, respectively. The LOB corpus “is the British counterpart of the
Brown Corpus of American English”, and it is compiled from texts printed in the
same year as the Brown Corpus, in 1961, so that comparison between these two
varieties of English could be made
(http://www.essex.ac.uk/linguistics/clmt/w3c/corpus_ling/content/corpora/). The
second type, the ‘monitor’ corpora, holds a “’state of the language’ for research
purposes” (Sinclair, 1991, p. 26) as opposed to ‘sample’ corpora, which “have a
large and up-to-date selection of current English available” (1991, p. 25). Sinclair
suggests that the monitor corpus is now ‘a standard research tool’ (1991, p. 26).
Hunston, on the other hand, has a more specific classification regarding the types of
corpora, and lists the commonly used corpus types as ‘specialised corpus’, ‘general
corpus’, ‘comparable corpora’, ‘parallel corpora’, ‘learner corpus’, ‘pedagogic
corpus’, ‘historical or diachronic corpus’ and ‘monitor corpus’ (2002, pp. 14-16). A
specialized corpus aims to represent a specific text type, and researchers often
compile “their own specialized corpora to reflect the kind of language they want to
investigate” (Hunston, 2002, p. 14). A general corpus consists of texts of different
types, and it is not likely to represent any particular ‘whole’. This type is generally
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larger than a specialized corpus, and it is sometimes referred to as ‘reference corpus’
as “it is often used as a baseline in comparison with more specialized corpora”. LOB
and the Brown corpus are early examples of general corpora (Hunston, 2002, pp. 14-
15). This kind of corpus is called a ‘sample corpus’ by Sinclair (1991, p. 23).
Comparable corpora are two or more corpora which are used to compare different
languages or different varieties of a language. Parallel corpora, on the other hand,
contain texts “that have been translated from one language into the other” (Hunston,
2002, p. 15). A historical or diachronic corpus contains texts from different time
periods and it is “used to trace the developments of aspects of a language over time”
(Hunston, 2002, p. 16). A monitor corpus is “designed to track current changes in a
language”, so that a language can be compared yearly (2002, p. 16).
A learner corpus is composed of texts which are produced by learners of a language.
The compilation of learner corpora is a very recent development. Granger (2003)
emphasizes that “only in the early 1990’s did publishers and academics-
concurrently but independently- start collecting and analyzing learner data” (p. 538).
In this early period, two learner English corpora were developed: the Longman
Learners’ Corpus (Longman Corpus Network, 2003), and the International Corpus
of Learner English (ICLE, Granger, n.d) (Granger, 2003, p. 538). Learner corpora
aim to find out “in what respects learners differ from each other and from the
language of native speakers”. To fulfil the latter aim, a comparable corpus of native-
speaker texts is necessary (Hunston, 2002, p. 15).
The last type in Hunston’s categorization of corpora is the pedagogic corpus, which
consists of “all the language a learner has been exposed to” (Hunston, 2002, p. 16).
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Willis’s definition, however, is much more inclusive: A pedagogic corpus involves
the texts that the learners have encountered, or will encounter (Willis, 2003, p. 165).
According to Willis (2003), “learners process a set of texts to enable them to
develop their own vocabulary and work out their own grammar of the language”,
and this set of texts can be described as a pedagogic corpus (p. 163).
2.3.3 The Use of Corpora in Applied Linguistics
Corpora are currently used in various fields and for various purposes in Applied
Linguistics, ‘to solve real-world problems’ (Hunston, 2002, p. 136). By far the most
influential application of corpora has possibly been in the writing of dictionaries and
grammar books for learners in that “even people who have never heard of a corpus
are using the product of corpus investigation” (Hunston, 2002, p. 96). The effect of
corpus analysis has been that there is now more emphasis on frequency, collocation
and phraseology, variation, lexis in grammar, and authenticity in dictionaries and
reference books. As a result, reference books stress frequency and typicality, as well
as phraseology and the interaction between lexis and grammar more (Hunston, 2002,
pp. 108-109).
Another application of corpora has been in the study of ideology and culture, critical
linguists or critical discourse analysts studying “the role of language in forming and
transmitting assumptions about what the world is and should be like, and the role of
language in maintaining (or challenging) power relations” (Hunston, 2002, p. 109).
Hunston gives as an example a research study carried out by Fairclough who used
two corpora (New Labour and Old Labour Party documents) with the aim of
showing changes in the ideology of the party through its language (2002, p. 110).
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Corpus investigation is also increasingly used in translation, as for institutions such
as the European Union, improving and automating translation are very important
(Hunston, 2002, p. 123) and corpora offer evidence for “how words are used and
what translations for a given word or phrase are possible” (2002, p. 128).
Although dictionaries, grammars and translation aids may all help writers, current
work making use of corpora to offer support for writers appears to concentrate on
writers in specific areas, “who have fairly narrow identifiable needs” (Hunston,
2002, p. 135). Hunston highlights a very important point regarding this support,
stating that “for many writers who are expert in their own field, ……it is not the
technical terminology but what might be called the terminology of rhetoric that
causes problems” (2002, p. 135). Experts in academic disciplines trying to write
papers in a foreign language are confronted with this problem, ‘signals of
organization and purpose’ being more challenging to use for them than the technical
terminology. Corpus analysis of specific kinds of paper may be employed to isolate
words and phrases associated with specific moves and functions to provide the
writer with on-line support to use the most appropriate phraseology at different
points of the article (Hunston, 2002, p. 135). This last use of corpora naturally leads
to a review of the use of corpora in pedagogy.
2.3.4 The Use of Corpora in Language Teaching
Corpus analysis is being used progressively more in language teaching, and it has
had two significant effects on the language teacher’s professional life, in terms of
content and approach to syllabus design and methodology (Hunston, 2002, p. 137).
Corpora give rise to new descriptions of a language, causing a radical change in
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what the language teacher is teaching (Hunston, 2002, p. 137). O’Keeffe, McCarthy
and Carter agree that “the contribution of corpus linguistics, … , to the description
of the language we teach is difficult to dispute” (2007, p. 21). They state, therefore,
that “as well as providing an empirical basis for checking our intuitions about
language, corpora have also brought to light features about language which had
eluded our intuition” (O’Keeffe, McCarthy, & Carter, 2007, p. 21). They give the
frequency of ready-assembled chunks as an example for the above observation
(2007, p. 21).
In a similar vein, Sinclair (1991) states that the fact that words occur in ‘preferred
sequences’ has put phraseology at the heart of language description, leading to three
important consequences (cited in Hunston, 2002, p. 138). The first is that pattern and
meaning are closely related and when a word has more than one meaning, each
meaning requires its own pattern and therefore, the ‘word’ as the unit of vocabulary
teaching is replaced by the phraseology for each meaning of the word (Hunston,
2002, p. 139). That language is organized mainly according to ‘the idiom principle’
and, when this does not work, to ‘the open-choice principle’ is the second
consequence. The open-choice principle is a “way of seeing language text as the
result of a very large number of complex choices” and “at each point where a unit is
completed (a word or a phrase or a clause), a large range of choice opens up and the
only restraint is grammaticalness” (Sinclair, 1991, p. 109). This model is sometimes
called a ‘slot-and-filler’ model, visualizing texts “as a series of slots which have to
be filled from a lexicon which satisfies local restraints” (1991, p. 109). Sinclair
describes the ‘idiom principle’ as a large number of semi-constructed phrases
constituting single choices being available to the language user (1991, p. 110).
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Hunston further clarifies Sinclair’s principles by saying that “meaning is either made
by the phrase as a whole, in accordance with the conventional phraseology, or (less
often) it is made by the individual words, operating in accordance with grammatical
rules” (2002, p. 145). That “language as word list may be described in terms of
phraseology, and language as text may be accounted for in terms of the idiom
principle” (Hunston, 2002, p. 149) leads to the third consequence that there is no
distinction between lexis and grammar. Sinclair claims that “a model of language
which divides grammar and lexis, and which uses grammar to provide a string of
lexical choice points is a secondary model” (1991, p. 114). Hunston emphasizes
Sinclair’s claims that lexical (content) words and grammatical words (empty words)
are not essentially different and “the observed patternings of lexical items are
observations about both lexis and grammar” (2002, p. 149). The notions about
words that support a distinction between lexis and grammar are challenged by
corpus evidence. For example, the fact that not all grammatical words in a corpus
come before all the lexical words refutes the notion that grammatical words are more
frequent than lexical words (2002, p. 150).
The use of corpora to store vast amounts of data also resulted in the compilation of
wordlists, and made it possible to determine which words frequently occur in the
language, which words learners need to know primarily, which words to focus on at
different stages of learning, and thus provide appropriate support for language
learners. In other words, the use of corpora has also influenced syllabus design and
methodology. West’s General Service List (GSL) is a “classic list of high frequency
words which contains 2,000 word families” (Nation, 2001, p. 15), compiled in 1953
(2001, p. 11).
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After West’s GSL of 1953, wordlists attracted attention again years later when
computers became more advanced and more accessible, allowing vast amounts of
data to be processed with speed and efficiency. Ellis refers to this inactive period as
‘40 years of exile’ for frequency profiling (2002, p. 143). Michael West’s GSL was
developed from a corpus containing 5 million words, considering the needs of
EFL/ESL learners. The words in the list were selected by West in terms of certain
criteria: frequency, ease of learning, coverage of useful concepts, and stylistic level
(Coxhead, 2000, p. 213). Each of the 2,000 words is a headword embodying a word
family. It is argued that knowing the 2,000 word families in the GSL helps learners
to understand 80% of the words in written texts and thus instigates motivation
(Carter and McCarthy, 1988, p. 7). The GSL “greatly influenced the choice of
vocabulary for EFL course materials, graded readers, and dictionaries until the mid-
1970’s” (McArthur, 1992, p. 859), and it is still influential today as there has not
been a ‘comparable replacement’ so far (Coxhead, 2000, p. 214).
More recent attempts to provide learners with more specialized lists resulted in a
word list of academic words. The AWL (Academic Word List, Coxhead, 2000),
compiled from a corpus of 3.5 million running words of written academic text in
1998, contains 570 word families, about 10% of the total words in academic text.
The compilation was done according to the range and frequency of words in
academic text outside the GSL. Coxhead based the selection of the AWL on GSL
because as well as the academic words, the most commonly used 2,000 words are
necessary for the learner in an academic environment. Therefore, the word families
in the GSL and the AWL together constitute 86% of the academic corpus (Coxhead,
2000, p. 222). Coxhead holds that the AWL may be used in setting vocabulary
targets in EAP courses and designing relevant teaching materials to help students to
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focus on key vocabulary items. However, Billuroglu and Neufeld (2005), thinking
that the separation of the GSL and the AWL is not valid, as there are words in the
GSL which are very commonly used in the academic world, and words in the AWL
which can very comfortably be used outside the academic circles, compiled the BNL
(Billuroglu Neufeld List), which they claim to be more representative of any written
text. The rationale for the BNL is therefore that treating the GSL and the AWL
separately, and focusing solely on the AWL in academic writing classes, may cause
serious consequences and may deprive learners of valuable learning opportunities
(Hancioglu et al., 2008, p. 475). The BNL is based on “the identification of
contemporary words in common use, leading to the creation of a critical lexical mass
of 2,709 word families that consistently provides 90% to 95% coverage of the
tokens (not including proper nouns, acronyms or abbreviations) in academic
corpora” (Billuroglu & Neufeld, 2005, p. 1).
As mentioned earlier, the use of corpora has the potential to change, in addition to
the description of language and instructional content, the views on syllabus design,
methodology, the role of teacher, in fact education as a whole. McCarthy states that:
corpus linguistics probably also foreshadows even more profound technological shifts that will impinge upon our long-held notions of education, the roles of teachers, the cultural context of the delivery of educational services and the mediation of theory and technique as the twentieth century becomes history. (2001, p. 125)
Aston also adopts a similar viewpoint. He maintains that with cheap concordancing
software and the development of computer technology that allows storing of vast
amounts of language data, “teachers and learners seem set to have an enormous
quantity of material at their fingertips, with obvious implications (at least in theory)
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for greater democratization and autonomy of learning” (1995, p. 257). Data-driven
Learning (DDL) is how this democratization and autonomy is actualized. The use of
corpora in teaching and learning languages has become widespread through DDL,
which was initially developed for use with international students by Tim Johns, who
said “Research is too important to be left to the researchers” (1991, cited in Hunston,
2002, p. 170). The theory behind DDL is that students become ‘language detectives’
(Johns, 1997, p. 101), “discovering facts about the language they are learning for
themselves, from authentic examples” (Hunston, 2002, p. 170). Johns especially
takes into account the foreign language learner, and emphasizes that the learner’s
duty is to ‘discover’ the foreign language, and the language teacher is responsible
for providing “a context in which the learner can develop strategies for discovery –
strategies through which he or she can ‘learn how to learn’” (Johns, 1991, p. 3).
DDL is a methodology that makes use of computerized concordancing, and this has
made a great contribution to the development of CALL (Computer Assisted
Language Learning) (Levy, 1997, pp. 64-65). Hunston maintains that “DDL
involves setting up situations in which students can answer questions about language
themselves by studying corpus data in the form of concordance lines or sentences”
(2002, p. 170). In this case, students answer their own questions. As an alternative,
Hunston states, self-access materials can be prepared to give students the chance to
explore items that are considered either problematic or useful (Hunston, 2002, pp.
170-171). The advantage of the first kind of study is maximizing student motivation,
as the student is asking a question to which s/he requires an urgent answer, and
consults the corpus data to discover information. In the second kind of study, the
advantage is that the teacher has more control over the information. Yet, the
motivation of students is not as high as in the first type of study. The fact that
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dealing with problematic items is more motivating for students leads to the use of
learner corpora for designing appropriate DDL tasks. For instance, learner corpora
can be investigated to explore learners’ misuse, over- and underuse of language
items, and DDL exercises can be developed to raise learners’ awareness of the
problematic items (O’Keeffe et al., 2007, p. 23).
O’Keeffe et al. (2007) also emphasize CALL (Computer Assisted Language
Learning), where “learners get hands-on experience of using a corpus through
guided tasks or through materials based on corpus evidence” (p. 24). This inductive
approach involving the observation of patterns in the target language and forming
generalizations about language form and use is referred to as Data-driven Learning
(Johns 1986, cited in O’Keeffe et al., 2007, p. 24). Data-driven Learning often
makes use of concordance lines. According to Nation (2001), through examining
concordances, learners observe words in real contexts, and multiple contexts
provided through concordance lines offer rich information, such as collocates, and
grammatical patterns, about words (p. 111). Moreover, “the use of concordances
involves discovery learning, where the learners are being challenged to actively
construct generalizations and note patterns and exceptions” (Nation, 2001, p. 111).
Through this practice, learners “control their learning and learn investigative
strategies” (Nation, 2001, p. 111), and therefore become ‘language detectives’
(Johns, 1997).
Nation (2001) emphasizes that learners need training in reading concordance lines
(p. 111). Arkin (2003) similarly draws attention to the necessity of providing
“guidance, support and training for teachers in integrating computer technology
resources into language instruction” (p. 101). As mentioned earlier though, the use
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of corpora has transformed what teachers teach, as well as how they teach it, and
how learners learn it. As “the corpus revolution is here to stay” (McCarthy, 2008, p.
573), teachers and learners alike need to embrace these innovations, and adapt to
changes. One major change in this regard is the need for user-friendly platforms on
which corpora, concordances and DDL activities can be mounted. A number of such
applications are now widely used, including Moodle, which is a versatile,
interactive, virtual learning environment based on social constructivist principles,
and powerful enough both to host such data as well as generate relevant activity
types (Philosophy, 2008). The full scope and potential of Moodle in these respects is
explored in more detail in the methodology chapter.
2.4 Related Studies
The final section of the literature review is devoted to the discussion of similar
research projects that have been conducted in the field, so that the current research
can be considered in context.
Vocabulary has been found to be one of the problems students have with written
expression. In one study, Laufer (1998) looked at active vocabulary knowledge
which is an important factor in creating written texts. He describes quantitative
research investigating three types of English as a foreign language vocabulary
knowledge, passive, ‘controlled active’, and free active in one year of school
instruction. The study also explores how these types of vocabulary knowledge are
related to one another, and what changes take place in these relationships after one
year. The results of the research showed that passive vocabulary size progressed
very well, controlled active vocabulary also improved, albeit less than the passive.
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However, active vocabulary did not progress at all. Passive and controlled active
vocabulary size scores correlated well, but there was no correlation between the free
active vocabulary and the other two types, which means that gains in passive and
controlled active vocabulary were not reflected in the lexical profiles of free writing
(Laufer, 1998).
Not only vocabulary at word level, but also ‘phraseological competence’ is
identified to be an important factor in producing effective writing. The corpus-based
study by Howarth (1996) involved L2 writers, who were overseas post-graduate
students in university social science departments. The central hypothesis tested in
the research is that non-native speakers often lack phraseological competence, even
at a fairly high level of proficiency, and this aspect of linguistic competence is
frequently not well developed, obstructing easy comprehension, and reducing the
effectiveness of their writing. Howarth concludes that native speaker writers of
academic English depend as much on the stock of familiar and easily processed
'ready-mades' as language users in other registers. He further maintains that if the
lexicogrammatical form conforms to the norms of the register to the anticipated
degree, the reader's conscious attention is focused on meaning while the form is
processed subconsciously (Howarth, 1996).
Similar to Howarth (1996), Hyland (2008) focuses on the importance of ‘lexical
bundles’, “extended collocations which appear more frequently than expected by
chance, helping to shape meanings in specific contexts and contributing to our sense
of coherence in a text” (2008, p. 4), in language production, but also emphasizes
disciplinary variation. In the study, Hyland explores the forms, structures and
functions of 4-word bundles in a 3.5 million word corpus of research articles,
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doctoral dissertations, and Master’s theses in four disciplines to find out about their
frequencies and preferred uses. The study makes use of both quantitative and
qualitative procedures for data analysis. Hyland’s findings support studies that have
identified considerable variation in the frequency of forms, structures, and functions
across different types of academic writing. Hyland concludes that there should be
pedagogical focus on bundles in EAP courses, suggests that EAP course designers
take this fact into consideration, and start with the student’s specific target context.
He also maintains that corpus-informed lists and concordances can be used to
identify these frequently occurring bundles.
In another study, Hyland and Tse (2007) challenge the notion of a single core
vocabulary, and analyse the assumption that “students of EAP should study a core of
high frequency words because they are common in an English academic register” (p.
235). The study, which makes use of both quantitative and qualitative analyses,
employs Coxhead’s (2000) Academic Word List (AWL) to investigate the
distribution of the 570 word families in a corpus of 3.3 million words from a range
of eight academic disciplines and seven different genres. The results showed that
although the AWL offered good coverage of the corpus compiled for the study, it
was not evenly distributed. Hyland and Tse conclude that each subject discipline is
dependent on its own rhetorical practices, and that “teachers help students develop a
more restricted, discipline-based lexical repertoire” (2007, p. 235). Hyland and Tse
therefore propose that field and genre provide a more solid basis for corpus-
informed work than the concept of a “single academic literacy” (Hyland and Tse,
2007).
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Considering disciplinary variation, Mudraya (2006) also carried out a study with the
aim of establishing a frequency-based corpus of student engineering lexis. The
Student Engineering English Corpus (SEEC), which contained 2,000,000 running
words, was reduced to 1,200 word families and 9,000 word types. Based on the
research findings, Mudraya maintains that sub-technical vocabulary (lexical items
with technical and non-technical senses) as well as Academic English should be
emphasized more in the ESP classroom. Mudraya also argues that data-driven
instructional activities consistent with the lexical approach should be used “in order
to help students acquire the so-called language prefabs, or formulaic multi-word
units / collocations, for technical and non-technical uses” (2006, p. 235).
Quite a few studies emphasize the importance of rhetorical, or move structures for
the teaching of different academic genres. One study carried out by Flowerdew
(2000) proposes the use of a genre-based framework for the teaching of the
organizational structure of academic report writing. The study involved 15
mechanical engineering under-graduate project reports from a university in Hong
Kong, and an analysis of these reports revealed that there may be variations in terms
of the moves, the ordering of the moves as well as their linguistic realizations within
genres.
In another study, Anthony (1999) evaluates the standard model for describing the
structure of research article introductions, the CARS (Create a Research Space)
model (Swales, 1990), in terms of how it can be applied to twelve articles in the
field of software engineering. The results showed that although the model was very
successful in describing the main framework of introductions, problems emerged
when a more detailed description was necessary. Many steps in the model were
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redundant or rarely used because the model was developed based upon a wide
variety of disciplines. A more serious problem identified by Anthony was the
absence of a separate ‘evaluation of research’ step, which was shown to be a crucial
element in achieving the aims of the introduction in his research. Anthony (1999)
concludes that if the limitations of the CARS model are understood, it can be
effectively used as a pedagogic tool in the classroom.
Henry (2007) thinks that although a lot of research has been conducted on
identifying moves and their order in specific genres, rather less attention has been
paid to the presentation of key lexico-grammatical features of genres and moves.
The aim of Henry’s study is to determine the effectiveness of a website in presenting
computer-based, corpus analyses of sentence level genre features to language
learners in a meaningful way in an EAP/ESP teaching situation. When the job
application letters written by the learners before and after using the website were
compared, it was found out that the learners wrote more effective letters of
application, including more obligatory and optional moves, and making use of the
lexico-grammatical features associated with the genre. The learners also responded
positively to the use of a website and the self-study approach taken. One of the
suggestions Henry makes for future research is to investigate if this approach would
be effective with less formulaic genres, such as essays and dissertations.
Recently, a number of studies have focused on specifically post-graduate level
students. A pedagogic study particularly relevant to the current study explores the
effect of corpora on writing competence of post-graduate students. Yoon (2008)
investigates the changes in students’ writing process associated with corpus use over
an extended period of time through a qualitative study. The findings reveal that
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corpus use helps the students solve their immediate writing problems as well as
promote their perceptions of lexico-grammar and language awareness. With the
introduction of the corpus into the writing process, the students assumed more
responsibility for their writing, became more independent writers, and their
confidence in writing increased.
Studies have also been conducted on the difficulties faced by post-graduate students
in thesis writing. Paltridge (2002), through his study, aims to find out “the extent to
which published advice on the organisation and structure of theses and dissertations
concurs with what happens in actual practice” (p. 125). Paltridge maintains that
published advice on thesis writing is quite important, as there is very little research
carried out on the actual theses due to various reasons. The study examined guides
which focused on only thesis, and also handbooks which focused on the research
process in general, but also referred to thesis writing. According to the findings, the
published advice covered many important aspects of the research process, like
selecting a topic, and writing a research proposal. However, the majority of the
books emphasized thesis writing, rather than the content of the individual chapters.
In addition, none of the books described the complete range of thesis options
available to thesis writers. The study found a wider range of thesis types than
focused on in the guides and handbooks. Paltridge (2002) argues that teaching
materials should present students the range of thesis options, emphasize the kind of
variation that occurs in actual texts, and consider the rationale for these various
choices.
Thesis writing is even more challenging for post-graduate students who need to
report their research in a second or foreign language. Yet, research on non-native
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post-graduate students’ writing difficulties, and “how faculty assist these students in
their thesis/dissertation writing is sparse” (Dong, 1998, p. 370). Therefore, Dong
aimed to find out the difficulties especially the non-native post-graduate students
faced in writing their thesis, the discipline, genre, and audience specific knowledge
of these students about thesis writing in science, the quality and quantity of the
supervisor’s assistance in thesis writing, the helping networks available for these
students, and the impact of perceived language and cultural differences on thesis
writing. The research was carried out at two state research universities in the U.S,
with Master’s and PhD students in science and engineering departments, who had
passed their qualifying exams, and were in the process of doing their thesis research
and writing. 137 native and non-native students and 32 advisors were involved in the
research. The survey instruments included a thesis writing scale and a questionnaire,
and the data analysis involved both quantitative and qualitative procedures. The
results showed that the professors were more likely than students to perceive that
they had provided help with topic selection, idea development, drawing conclusions,
avoidance of plagiarism, paragraph organization, and logical presentation. Dong
(1998), based on the findings, concludes that knowledge transformation skills should
be taught in EAP classes, helping networks should be established to provide thesis
writing support, and there should be collaboration among disciplines on
audience/genre/discipline specific writing instruction.
Another very relevant study employs a corpus of theses written by native speakers,
and genre-based pedagogy to improve the writing skills of non-native post-graduate
students (Charles, 2007). In the pedagogic study, Charles explores how top-down
and bottom-up approaches can be reconciled in EAP writing materials through the
use of discourse analysis and corpus investigation. Charles defines ‘genre analysis’
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as a top-down approach, and corpus investigation as a bottom-up approach to EAP.
In the construction of EAP materials, emphasis is first on macro-textual features,
whereas in corpus linguistics, the analyst starts with the linguistic features and
subsequently attempts to connect them to wider discoursal concerns. In the small
pilot project described in the study, the materials in the study were used with 40
international post-graduate students. Based on the research findings, Charles
concludes that “it is the combination of the two approaches that provides the
enriched input necessary for students to make the connection between general
rhetorical purposes and specific lexico-grammatical choices” (2007, p. 289). She
further emphasizes that “in moving from discourse to corpus, the class moves from
studying what texts do, to investigating how they do it” (Charles, 2007, 300).
In what could be considered the most related study to the present research, Lee and
Swales (2006) present a discussion of an experimental course in corpus-informed
EAP for non-native doctoral students, the aim of which was to introduce students to
the corpus approach to language, “where the authority for language standards is
decentered, and where learners, given some guidance and structured help, can take a
more active role in their own learning” (p. 68). As part of this course, the
participants were given access to specialized academic corpora, instructed in the use
of web- and PC-based concordancers, and inducted into the skills needed to exploit
the data for both directed and self-learning. The induction involved such practices as
the analysis of language items and using the context to disambiguate near-
synonymous pairs of words through examining concordances, frequency patterns in
language usage and change through corpus frequencies, and understanding fixity and
flexibility in language through collocations and prefabricated expressions. Lee and
Swales report that at the end of the course, they had ‘an exceptional group of
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learners’ who could engage intelligently with ‘expert corpora’ of language, and
examine them for lexico-grammatical and discourse patterns. This afforded the
learners models against which they could compare their own performance. Lee and
Swales are positive with the findings, and maintain that this approach to language
learning would probably lead to assuming more control over one’s own learning.
2.5 Summary
As far as the present research is concerned, a number of key issues emerge from the
review of the literature to date. Most importantly, it should be acknowledged that
creating text is a complicated and challenging task requiring not only knowledge of
grammar and lexis, but a wide range of structural and lexico-grammatical nuances
that create both textual cohesion and coherence. Further, standards of textuality
require knowledge of textual features, namely intentionality, acceptability,
informativity, situationality and intertextuality. This sophisticated knowledge
contributes not only to the creation of text but to the creation of discourse
communities, and associated genres, which may have specialized ways of expressing
themselves, and lexico-grammatical features that represent them.
Genres themselves are very often constituted of moves, which may be compulsory
or optional. These moves are realized through strategies, or tactics, reflected through
lexico-grammatical elements, that allow for both paradigmatic and syntagmatic
choice. Although in theory this generates an infinite number of possibilities out of a
finite number of items, one problem learners face is that their paradigmatic and
syntagmatic knowledge is often highly restricted, particularly as far as such areas as
synonymy, and collocations are concerned. Genres are not necessarily subject field
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specific, and in fact may cut across multiple specialized fields and discourse
communities. Academic genres, regardless of subject specialization, seem to display
certain common features of different types that may need mastering. Some of these
features are degrees of formality, the need for hedging, avoidance of continuous
tenses, the use of passives or impersonal subjects, as well as generic organization.
Writing pedagogy has developed and tested different ways of instructing learners to
express intended meanings coherently and appropriately. There have been
approaches focusing on the product or the process, most of which have been
criticized for various reasons. Current thinking leans towards a more integrated
model, a process genre approach, which may be facilitated by technological
developments that allow the creation of and access to large language corpora that
can be analysed for lexico-grammatical content, word frequency, collocation and
phraseology through concordance lines. This empirical approach towards teaching
of text creation has the advantage of providing authentic data. What is more, such
information can also be accessed by learners if compiled and organized effectively,
therefore can be used not just as a basis for research, but also for teaching-learning.
Hence, the use of corpora has implications for both syllabus and methodology. DDL
(Data Driven Learning) methodology provides the opportunity for learners to act as
language researchers. They can find instant answers and solutions to their language
and language-related problems, discover regularities and commonalities in the
language, and thus become autonomous and self-directed learners. Furthermore,
nowadays, e-learning or virtual learning platforms like Moodle are very popular, as
they allow the learner to interact with the environment, the data, and other learners,
which are believed to be effective contributors to learning.
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In the light of the literature review, the main objective of the current research,
therefore, is to construct a pedagogic corpus and incorporate data-driven learning
tasks into the advanced academic writing course to develop the text creation skills of
post-graduate students involved in thesis writing. However, it should be borne in
mind that while dealing with texts, “we should work to discover regularities,
strategies, motivations, preferences, and defaults rather than rules and laws”
(Beaugrande & Dressler, 1981, p. xv).
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CHAPTER III
METHODOLOGY
In this chapter, first, the overall research design of the study is introduced, and the
research context and the participants are described. After the presentation of the
development and implementation of the data collection instruments, detailed
information pertaining to the data collection and data analysis instruments and
procedures is given. Then the virtual learning environment used in this study to host
the corpora and the DDL activities, Moodle, is described. The chapter concludes
with a discussion of the limitations and the delimitations of the study.
3.1 Overall Research Design
Educational research aims at continuous examination and improvement of the
educational context. This necessitates the identification of any existing or emerging
problems, seeking knowledge and ultimately taking required action to improve the
practices. This type of research is referred to as ‘Action-Oriented Problem-Solving
Research’ (Patton, 2002, p. 221). Cohen and Manion state that “the aim of action
research is to improve the current state of affairs within the educational context in
which the research is being carried out” (cited in Nunan, 1992, p. 18).
This study falls into the category of practical action research, “which takes a more
applied and contextualized approach to action research” (Mills, 2000, p. 21). Mills
defines the goals of action research as “gaining insight, developing reflective
practice, effecting positive changes ... on educational practices … and improving
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student outcomes and the lives of those involved” (Mills, 2000, p. 6). In action
research, teacher researchers choose their areas of study, decide on their data
collection techniques and develop action plans after analyzing and interpreting their
data (Mills, 2000, p. 9). Action research involves having a reflective and critical
stance towards educational practice, and possessing the willingness to improve or
enhance it. In the process, the researcher validates and challenges existing practices
while also taking risks (Mills, 2000, p. 11).
Hyland stresses the importance of research carried out by teachers themselves. He
argues that “a good teacher is a reflective teacher, and a reflective teacher is
someone who is familiar with the research, or carries out research” (2005, p. 58).
Advocating the same view, McCarthy calls teachers ‘action-oriented’ applied
linguists (2001, p. 124).
Mills states that action research is a four-step process involving identifying a focus
area, collecting data, analyzing and interpreting data, and developing an action plan
(2000, p. 6). The four-step cycle of action research was realized in this research in
the following way:
Step 1: Identifying an area of focus
Like all post-graduate learners worldwide, the graduate Master’s and PhD
candidates taking ENGL501, currently Advanced Thesis Writing at EMU, are
expected to carry out academic scientific research, report their research in their
thesis, and contribute to their research fields by getting their research articles
published, and be accepted in the global academic discourse community. To this
end, these non-native learners of the English language living and studying in a non-
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English speaking environment are required to possess adequate academic language
competence, and produce accurate and appropriate written work. However, these
post-graduate candidates’ written work revealed deficiencies at specifically the
lexico-grammatical level.
The problem was initially identified through:
observation of classroom performance / analysis of written assignments over
six academic semesters;
needs analysis questionnaires administered to the candidates at the beginning
of the semester;
end-of-semester feedback forms from the candidates.
Step 2: Seeking knowledge - collecting data
Interviews with teachers who have taught the course before
Observation of class performance, and written assignments
Compilation of the Learner Abstract Corpus (the LAC) including 100 learner
abstracts collected through six semesters
Compilation of the Target Abstract Corpus (the TAC) including 600 thesis
and dissertation abstracts from four domains (Architecture, Arts and
Humanities, Sciences, Social Sciences), and written by Master’s and PhD
students living and studying in English-speaking countries
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Step 3: Analyzing and interpreting data
The collected data were analyzed to provide answers to the following four research
questions which guided the research study:
1 What are the major lexico-grammatical patterns identified in the LAC?
2 What are the major lexico-structural patterns in the TAC?
3 How does the LAC relate to the TAC?
4 What does the cross-examination of the two corpora necessitate in terms of
the comprehensive pedagogic corpus design?
Step 4: Developing and implementing an action plan
The construction of a comprehensive pedagogic corpus with multiple components;
making the pedagogic corpus as well as all the data available on line, and
accompanied by data-driven exploratory tasks, with students learning and discussing
the complexities of academic text in a learning environment; creation of a corpus-
informed advanced thesis writing course for post-graduate candidates at the
institution.
Quantitative and qualitative research methods in education cannot be considered as
polar opposites. Patten points out that “some researchers conduct research that is a
blend of the two approaches” (2004, p. 21), and Reichardt and Cook state that
“researchers in no way follow the principles of a supposed paradigm without
simultaneously assuming methods and values of the alternative paradigms” (cited in
Nunan, 1992, p. 3). Fraenkel and Wallen hold that “much research in education is a
mixture of quantitative and qualitative approaches” (1993, p. 380), and Patton
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(2002) maintains that “research and evaluation studies employing multiple methods,
including combinations of qualitative and quantitative data, are common” (p. 5). In
Applied Linguistics as well, the trend is more towards qualitative research, as stated
by McCarthy “the emphasis on both sides of the Atlantic and internationally has
shifted away from purely quantitative notions of research in applied linguistics
towards qualitative research paradigms” (2001, p. 119).
This is a combined study that made use of both quantitative and qualitative methods.
The study initially envisaged applying qualitative methods, as it approached the
problem in question inductively, and the research study developed as the data
unfolded. The researcher identified a problem through observation over an extended
period, and also through semi-structured interviews and open-ended questionnaires.
Qualitative studies explore the quality of relationships, activities, situations or
materials (Fraenkel and Wallen, 1993, p. 380). Accordingly, the study sought to find
out how far the integration of corpus data-driven work into a thesis writing course
would contribute to the quality of participants’ written work.
The present study, however, also exploited quantitative research tools, as in corpus
studies, range and frequency calculation yields meaningful quantitative data.
Subsequently, an in-depth study of corpus data produced qualitative data. The
corpus-based approach is empirical, “analyzing the actual patterns of use in natural
texts”, and relies on quantitative as well as qualitative analytical techniques (Biber et
al., 1998, p. 4). Biber et al. emphasize that in research employing corpora, the
analyses should go beyond simple counts of linguistic features, and include
qualitative, functional interpretations of quantitative patterns (1998, pp. 4-5).
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Hunston similarly draws attention to the fact that a corpus provides evidence in the
form of many examples which can only be interpreted by intuition (2002, p. 23).
3.2 Research Questions
The major objective of the current research was to construct a pedagogic corpus
with multiple components, and incorporate corpus data as well as data-driven
learning activities into the advanced thesis writing course with the aim of improving
the text creation skills of non-native post-graduate students involved in thesis
writing. As can be seen in Figure 3.1, multiple data sources were utilized to ensure
triangulation.
Figure 3.1: Multiple data sources employed
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The following research questions steered the research:
1. What are the major lexico-grammatical patterns identified in the LAC?
2. What are the major lexico-structural patterns in the TAC?
3. How does the LAC relate to the TAC?
4. What does the cross-examination of the two corpora necessitate in terms of
the comprehensive pedagogic corpus design?
3.3 The Context
The Eastern Mediterranean University (EMU) is an English medium university in
Northern Cyprus providing higher education to 14.000 students of 68 different
nationalities. Seven faculties (Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Faculty of Architecture,
Faculty of Business and Economics, Faculty of Communication and Media Studies,
Faculty of Education, Faculty of Engineering and Faculty of Law) and three schools
(English Preparatory School, Tourism and Hospitality Management, Computing and
Technology) offer instruction at undergraduate level. The students, who are
generally non-native speakers of English, receive language support in the
preparatory and in the freshman year to enable them to cope with their academic
studies in the target language. The Institute of Graduate Studies and Research runs
Master’s and PhD programs at the institution
(http://www.emu.edu.tr/e/academic/instituteofgraduatestudies.htm). At graduate
level there was no language support until 2000, which led the Institute of Graduate
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Studies and Research to request the former School of Foreign Languages for a
language course that would help Master’s and PhD candidates with thesis writing.
Therefore, the former School of Foreign Languages designed a new course, EFL
501, Advanced Writing, and started to offer it as a non-credit course to graduate
students as of 2001. In the year 2002, the Academic Writing Unit was founded by
the researcher of this study with the primary aim of providing further individualized
or group assistance to final year undergraduate and graduate students in improving
their academic writing skills. The basis for foundation of the Academic Writing Unit
was that language support was not provided in the final years of undergraduate
studies. The Academic Writing Unit delivered educational services both through
one-to-one tutorials and group workshops. In the year 2003, having observed the
difficulties the graduate students were having with English, especially in terms of
the accurate and appropriate expression of ideas in writing, the researcher and an
associate, who was also a tutor at the Academic Writing Unit, proposed a
prerequisite course to the then existing EFL 501. This course would be EFL 501,
Advanced Writing 1 and would be offered as a non-credit elective course to
Master’s and PhD candidates who were still taking courses and who had not started
writing their thesis. The earlier EFL 501 therefore became EFL 502, and was offered
to graduate students who had entered the thesis writing stage.
This new EFL 501 (now ENGL501) course aimed at developing the academic
writing skills of graduate students, and was designed to provide opportunities for the
participants to analyze the structure and lexis of authentic academic texts. The
participants then produced their own work and were encouraged to recognize their
language problems, and find solutions to those problems. The syllabus (see
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Appendix A) covered the common functions in theses. Therefore, relevant input and
tasks were provided on such functions as introducing, comparing, interpreting data,
narrating/reporting, and classifying/categorising.
ENGL501 (now Advanced Thesis Writing) has been offered as a non-credit course
for almost five years now, and some departments (Departments of Civil
Engineering, Industrial Engineering), and the Faculty of Architecture have made the
course compulsory for their post-graduate students. Two other departments
(Departments of Banking and Finance, and Economics) have asked the researcher to
teach the course as a departmental course, and currently the advanced writing course
is also offered under the course names of ‘Seminar in Banking and Finance’ and
‘Seminar in Economics’, with course codes BANK 598 and ECON 598. These
developments seem to suggest that the post-graduate participants, as well as their
departments benefit from the course.
ENGL501 has been revised every semester since its inception, taking into account
the teacher researcher’s observations and experiences with the coursework, feedback
from the participants, and feedback from the departments. In the year 2005,
ENGL501 and ENGL 502 were merged upon the request of the Department of
Banking and Finance that felt that their post-graduate students needed both courses.
Therefore, the new course was completely redesigned, and was developed into an
advanced thesis writing course with a language focus, and with special emphasis on
academic writing conventions.
At present, the revised syllabus (Appendix B) is based on the five chapters in a
traditional thesis, the thesis proposal, and the abstract. Therefore, the participants
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have the opportunity to produce a miniature of their thesis during the course. The
instructional materials, which are obtained from the World Wide Web, are entirely
authentic, and are enhanced with tasks designed by the researcher to promote
awareness and critical analysis of the input. The approach is process-genre based.
The focus is on the different generic moves in theses, and how they are fulfilled
through language. For instance, the students are presented with alternative language
for opening up a research gap, which is a necessary move in thesis introductions. As
regards the process focus, drafting, revising, and editing are valued as fundamental
steps in the writing process, and the participants go through these stages when they
are producing their work. Academic writing conventions, and quoting, paraphrasing,
referencing, and summarizing skills receive maximum emphasis.
The feedback received from multiple sources as regards the ENGL501 course has
been very positive through the years. Yet, in education there is always room for
improvement, and there should always be the motivation and will to enhance the
learning outcomes. With the advanced computer tools, it is now possible for teacher
researchers to compile their own specialized corpus, and offer this comprehensive
authentic source to the service of their students. In the study, corpus work and DDL
(Data Driven Learning) activities were integrated into the course to provide more
learning opportunities for the candidates in developing their academic writing
performance. Furthermore, the virtual learning environment was incorporated into
the course to increase the amount of exposure to the data, and also enhance the
autonomous learning and self-study skills of the participants.
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3.4 Participants
This section presents a semester-based breakdown of the participants’ background in
terms of the degree pursued, subject field, and nationality. Table 3.1 presents
information on how the profiles changed through the three years in which the data
were collected.
Table 3.1
Profiles: Degrees pursued, subject fields, and nationalities (2004-2007)
Degreepursued
04-051
(30)04-052 (5)
05-061
(14)05-062
(19)06-071
(13)06-072
(19)Total(100)
Master’s 17 3 11 13 12 15 71PhD 13 2 3 6 1 4 29
Subject Field 04-051 04-052 05-061 05-062 06-071 06-072 TotalCom.& Med. 17 - - - 1 - 18Arch. 7 1 3 5 1 4 21B&E 3 1 1 3 6 7 21Educ. 2 1 1 - - - 4Engineering 1 1 9 11 5 8 35A&S - 1 - - - - 1
Nationality 04-051 04-052 05-061 05-062 06-071 06-072 Total
North Cyprus 14 2 2 7 - 6 31Turkey 7 - - 1 - 1 9Iran 6 2 7 6 10 9 40Indonesia 1 - - - - - 1Pakistan 1 - - - - - 1Eritrea 1 - - - - - 1Palestine - 1 1 2 - - 4Nigeria - - 1 - - 1 2Sudan - - 1 - - - 1Libya - - 2 1 - - 3Iraq - - - 1 - - 1Kosovo - - - 1 - - 1Zambia - - - - 1 - 1Malawi - - - - 1 - 1Albania - - - - 1 1 2Macedonia - - - - - 1 1
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It can be observed from the table that almost 30% of the total number of the
participants who took the course between 2004 and 2007 were pursuing a PhD
degree at the Eastern Mediterranean University. As regards subject fields, there was
an increase in the number of Engineering students taking the course in the 2005-
2006 Fall Semester, as the Department of Civil Engineering made EFL501 a
compulsory course for their post-graduate students. A similar increase can be
observed for the Faculty of Business and Economics in the 2006-2007 academic
year, as the Department of Banking and Finance made the course compulsory for the
post-graduate students, and the researcher started to offer the course as BANK598
for these students. In the 2006-2007 Spring semester, the Economics Department
also started to offer ENGL501 as a Seminar course. Therefore, although the course
offered was exactly the same, it was under three different course codes: ENGL501,
BANK598, and ECON598.
Finally, regarding the nationality of the participants, of the 100 participants who
took ENGL501 in these six academic semesters, 40 were Persian, 31 from North
Cyprus, 9 from Turkey, 4 from Palestine, 3 from Libya, 2 from Albania, 2 from
Nigeria, 1 from Malawi, 1 from Zambia, 1 from Pakistan, 1 from Indonesia, 1 from
Iraq, 1 from Macedonia, 1 from Kosovo, 1 from the Sudan, and 1 from Eritrea.
Therefore, 40% of the participants were of Turkish background, while 60% were
from a variety of different countries, had different mother tongues. Although during
these six semesters the ENGL501 course was offered to the participants from a
variety of national, first language, disciplinary and academic backgrounds, these
participants exhibited and reported very similar problems in terms of the accurate
and appropriate use of English in academic writing, specifically at the lexico-
structural level. The 100 international participants who took the course between
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2004 and 2007 were therefore regarded as a representative sample of the whole
ENGL501 population.
3.5 Data Collection Instruments
The current study employed multiple tools to collect abundant quantitative and
qualitative data for an in-depth examination of the problem identified. This section
presents the tools which were used in the research study for triangulated data
collection.
3.5.1 Interviews with course instructors
Two other instructors other than the researcher were previously involved in the
teaching of EFL501, Advanced Writing I (now ENGL501, Advanced Thesis
Writing). These two instructors were interviewed to explore their teaching
experiences with the participants, find out whether similar problems regarding the
participants’ written work were observed, and elicit the instructors’
recommendations on how to further enhance the participants’ learning experiences
through revisions to the course.
The advantage of interviews is that they are personalized, and “permit a level of in-
depth information gathering, free response, and flexibility that cannot be obtained by
other procedures” (Seliger and Shohamy, 1989, p. 166). Furthermore, the researcher
has the chance to gather unpredicted data by probing for information (Seliger and
Shohamy, 1989, p. 166). An interview guide listing the questions or issues to be
explored during the interviews was used (Patton, 2002, p. 343). The advantage of an
interview guide is ensuring that “the same basic lines of inquiry are pursued with
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each person interviewed” (Patton, 2002, p. 343), and providing “topics or subject
areas within which the interviewer is free to explore, probe, and ask questions that
will elucidate and illuminate that particular subject” (Patton, 2002, p. 343). This
gives the researcher the opportunity to have a conversation on a subject area, and
adopt a conversational style while focusing on a predetermined subject (Patton,
2002, p. 343). Yildirim and Simsek (1999) also list the advantages of employing an
interview guide as allowing the researcher the flexibility of changing the order of the
questions, going into more detail with some questions, omitting some questions that
have already been answered by the interviewee, and getting systematic and
comparable information from different interviewees (p. 95). Seliger and Shohamy
(1989) similarly state that in semi-structured interviews, specific questions are
prepared in advance, which provides a platform for the researcher to ‘branch off’
and “explore in-depth information, probing according to the way the interview
proceeds, and allowing elaboration, within limits” (p. 167). The interview guide
(Appendix C) in this research included twelve questions. If the interviewee had
already answered a question while commenting on other issues, the question was not
asked again.
3.5.2 Questionnaires administered to course participants
Each semester, two questionnaires were administered to the course participants. One
of these was completed by the participants at the beginning of the semester, and
aimed to determine needs, while the other was filled in at the end of the semester
and provided feedback on the course. Some parallel questions also helped to
compare the participants’ responses as regards the effectiveness of the course. As
most of the items in the questionnaires were unstructured in nature, and were
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therefore open-ended questions, the participants’ language use also provided data on
the level of the language both before and after taking the course. Best and Kahn
(1986) note the advantages of questionnaires as the researcher having the
opportunity to establish rapport, explaining the aim, and explaining the meaning of
possible unclear items (p. 166). The closed form, or restricted type questionnaires
necessitate short responses, they are easy to tabulate and analyse, and they are useful
for certain types of information (Best and Kahn, 1986, p. 167). The open-form, on
the other hand, “calls for a free response in the respondent’s own words” and
provides greater depth of response, encouraging the respondent to reveal the reasons
for their responses (Best and Kahn, 1986, pp. 167-8).
Many questionnaires, Best and Kahn state, include both open- and closed-type items
(1986, p. 168). In this research, the open type was used in both pre- and post-
questionnaires, with the exception of the last closed-type section in the two
questionnaires (Appendix D and Appendix E) that required the participants to mark
the relevant choices. Slavin (1984) holds that “open-form questions are difficult to
code and are disliked by many respondents as they take too much work” (p. 88).
Yet, in cases where it is desired that the respondents express complicated opinions,
closed-form questions are not suitable, and open-form questions become desirable
(Slavin, 1984, p. 88).
In second language acquisition research, questionnaires are generally used to gather
data on not so easily observable phenomena like attitudes, motivation, and self-
concepts, as well as to collect information on background information about the
research subjects (Seliger and Shohamy, 1989, p. 172). The questionnaires
administered at the beginning and end of every semester provided the researcher
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with valuable data about the course participants’ backgrounds, their needs and
levels, as well as their progress.
3.5.3 Compilation of the Learner Abstract Corpus
For this study, the abstracts for the Learner Abstract Corpus (LAC) were collated
over a period of three years (six academic semesters) from 100 non-native
ENGL501 participants, who took the course between the years 2004 and 2007. The
individual abstracts written by the participants were first saved as word files. After
the accumulation of 100 learner abstracts, the word files were converted into text
files and stored as a databank ready to be analyzed. The reason for the conversion of
the word files into text files was that some corpora analysis programs do not support
word files, and operate on text files.
The LAC was composed of 100 thesis abstracts. The reason for the choice of
abstracts is that they are short and independent texts, so they are easy to analyze, and
they contain all the information in a thesis in summary form. Abstracts, according to
Swales, like other genres reporting research, seem to have an IMRD (Introduction-
Method-Results-Discussion) structure (1990, p.181). Within this structure, almost all
abstracts appear to have common moves, which are the scope of research, problem
statement, aim of research, methodology, main results and conclusions. Thus,
abstracts are a sort of miniature of the research study and reflect the main sections of
the thesis: Scope of research-problem-aim-method-results-conclusions.
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3.5.4 Compilation of the Target Abstract Corpus
Initially, a smaller pilot corpus was compiled for purposes of experimentation, and
to get an insight into the applicability and practicality of the tools. This corpus was
made up of abstracts from five sub-fields, namely 36 communications abstracts from
Canadian universities, 32 archaeology abstracts from Australian universities, 40
psychology abstracts from New Zealand universities, 41 information technology
abstracts from the United Kingdom and 40 economics abstracts from America, a
total of 189 abstracts from countries where English is the mother tongue. The pilot
corpus was invaluable in terms of the familiarization and experimentation with the
corpus analysis tools.
In the process of the compilation of the target corpus, three important criteria in
corpus design were taken into consideration: size, content, and balance /
representativeness (Hunston, 2002). As computer technology is developing day by
day, it is now possible to store and manipulate very large amounts of language data.
At present, very large corpora are being used, such as the Bank of English which is
400 million words, and the British National Corpus which is 100 million words
(Hunston, 2002, p. 25). However, “the exact amount of language required, of course,
depends on the purpose and the use of the research” (Coxhead, 2000, p. 216).
Corpora of only a few thousand words are also used when they are designed for a
specific research study (Hunston, 2002, p. 26) and for a specific purpose. Kennedy
and Thorp (1999) report a research study concerning the compilation of a corpus of
answers to the Academic Writing Task 2 of the UCLES IELTS Examination, where
the aim is reported to be the investigation of the linguistic nature of the answers at
three levels. (8 - expert, 6 - competent and 4 - limited). The compiled corpus is
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referred to as a ‘large’ corpus of 130 scripts (36,000 words). This research study is
an example of how smaller corpora can serve a specific purpose.
The second criterion, content, is related to what will go in the corpus, and this is
determined by “what the corpus is going to be used for but also about what is
available” (Hunston, 2002, p. 26). When the purpose of corpus development is to
create representation of a particular type of language, representativeness and balance
are of utmost significance. This necessitates breaking up the representative whole
into component parts and seeking to incorporate equal amounts of data from each
part (Hunston, 2002, p. 28).
The present target corpus was compiled in an electronic format from the World
Wide Web and is approximately 174,000 words. In order to qualify for the corpus,
the abstracts primarily had to be from universities in countries where English is the
native language. Another important criterion was that the abstracts had to be thesis
and dissertation abstracts, since abstracts written for journal articles and conference
presentations tend to differ. Therefore, journal article and conference presentation
abstracts were disqualified and did not appear in the corpus so as not to distort
representativeness.
Yet another criterion was that the abstracts had to be written at Master’s and PhD
levels at educational institutions. This criterion naturally excluded abstracts written
at Bachelor’s level. One advantage of abstracts is that they do not exhibit significant
differences in terms of length. This property contributes to balance within the
corpus. To ensure representativeness of the corpus in accordance with the purpose of
the study and corpus design in general, the corpus covers four main disciplines: Arts
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and Humanities, Social Sciences, Sciences and Architecture/ Urban and Regional
Planning. Each discipline, making up a sub-corpus, includes 150 representative
texts, in this case abstracts.
In the Arts and Humanities sub-corpus, 5 abstracts come from Anthropology, 30
from Archaeology, 19 from Art History, 7 from History, 40 from Language /
Literature / Linguistics, 10 from Philosophy / Religion / Theology, 21 from
Psychology, 5 from Music and 13 from Sociology. Of the 150 abstracts in the Social
Sciences sub-corpus, 20 are from Business Administration, 17 from
Communications, 3 from Demography, 20 from Economics, 20 from Education, 5
from Geography, 38 from Information Technology, 12 from Accounting and 15
from Political Science. The Sciences sub-corpus is composed of 3 abstracts from
Algebra, 13 from Biological Sciences, 10 from Chemistry, 11 from Computer
Science, 92 from Engineering, 12 from Mathematics and 10 from Physics. The
Architecture sub-corpus includes abstracts from the fields of town and regional
planning, landscape architecture, interior architecture as well as architecture.
As the abstracts were taken from the World Wide Web, html entities distorted the
data, especially in subjects where symbols and equations are abundantly used. All
the abstracts had to be examined both manually and with the help of software to
discard the html entities before the corpus was put through any analysis. Also, there
is always the risk of the same abstract being used by multiple web sites. To avoid
this risk, all the abstract titles and the names of universities the abstracts came from
were recorded during the compilation of the target corpus (Appendix F).
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3.6 Data Collection Procedures
The proposal to carry out the present research was accepted by the EMU Institute of
Graduate Studies and Research (IGSR) in December 2004, and the data collection
process was initiated immediately. This process took longer than anticipated, and
lasted about three years in order to be able to gather sufficient data, in the form of
abstracts, for the compilation of the Learner Abstract Corpus. Therefore, the
collection process which began with the compilation of abstracts in February 2005
ended when 100 abstracts had been accumulated by June 2007. Accordingly, the
analysis of the LAC and the cross-reference of the LAC with the TAC was delayed
until August 2007 beyond the researcher’s control, as the number of the participants
taking the course each semester was unpredictable and irregular. As the LAC was
being gradually compiled into a databank, in the interim, the interviews were held
with the course instructors, and the pre- and post-course questionnaires were
designed and administered to the course participants.
After appointments were made with the instructors beyond working hours so that
they could freely answer the questions without time and work pressures, the
interviews were held through the Hotmail messenger chat program and in an
informal manner. This would provide the interviewees with the time they needed to
contemplate the question and express their opinions without the fear of being
misheard, misunderstood, or misinterpreted. Yildirim and Simsek (1999, p. 92) state
that a good interview should not have the mistakes such as not listening attentively,
and being biased that occur in everyday conversation. One of the reasons why a chat
program was used for the interviews was to avoid any misinterpretation of the data
as well as possible bias. Instead, the chat program ensured that the interviewees
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expressed their feelings and opinions themselves in print. Although there were
twelve questions in the interview guide so that the interviewer could focus on the
predetermined topics, there was no attempt to follow the exact order of the
questions.
The questionnaires were completed by the course participants, at the beginning of
every semester, mostly during the first class hour. The participants’ responses
provided the researcher with data on their backgrounds, and their needs as perceived
by themselves. This information about the participants enabled the researcher to
make revisions to the course based on the backgrounds, and needs of the new group
of participants. Additionally, at the end of each semester, generally during the last
class hour, the unstructured questionnaires including open-ended questions were
administered by the researcher to collect in-depth, qualitative feedback on various
aspects of the course. The two questionnaires administered at the beginning and the
end of the semester were designed in such a way as to enable the researcher to
compare and cross-examine their respective items.
As mentioned earlier, the compilation of the Learner Abstract Corpus took three
years. Some of these learner abstracts were handwritten, and therefore typing 100
abstracts up for corpus compilation also took time. The Target Abstract Corpus had
to be very carefully compiled due to considerations related to size, content, and
representativeness. A further issue was discarding the html entities in the data
collected from the World Wide Web. Once the data were collected from the
interviews and the questionnaires, and the corpora compiled, the analysis process
could be initiated.
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3.7 Methods for Data Analysis
“Action research studies provide teacher researchers with data that can be used
formatively and summatively. That is, much of the qualitative data collected during
the study can be used to positively affect teaching throughout the study” (Mills,
2000, p. 97). In this action research study, the results of the data analysis were
constantly employed in the development of the pedagogic corpus, and accordingly,
the components of the pedagogic corpus were simultaneously revised in line with
the findings.
Seliger and Shohamy define data analysis as “sifting, organizing, summarizing, and
synthesizing the data so as to arrive at the results and conclusions of the research”
(1989, p. 201). Hitchcock and Hughes describe it as “the ways in which the
researcher moves from a description of what is the case to an explanation of why
what is the case is the case” (1989, p. 295).
They hold that:
analysis involves discovering and deriving patterns in the data, looking for general orientations in the data and, in short, trying to sort out what the data are about, why and what kinds of things can be said about them. (Hitchcock and Hughes, 1989, p. 295)
Therefore, data analysis is of extreme significance as it “becomes the product of all
the considerations involved in the design and planning of the research” (Seliger and
Shohamy, 1989, p. 201). Yildirim and Simsek suggest that the process of data
analysis is not simple even for researchers with experience. The reason for this is
every research study is unique, and the methods of analysis in one cannot be
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precisely replicated in another study. Thus, each study requires new approaches to
the issue of data analysis. The researcher is expected to draw a plan for the unique
research study through the exploration of existing analysis methods, and determine
the ones relevant to the research design as well as to the nature of the collected data
(1999, p. 156).
In the same way as data collection, in data analysis too “alternatives can be mixed to
create eclectic designs, like customizing an architectural plan to tastefully integrate
modern, postmodern, and traditional elements, …” (Patton, 2002, p. 248). Seliger
and Shohamy share the same opinion on the issue. They emphasize that as with data
collection, a variety of techniques are possible for analyzing data. They further state
that “the selection of a data analysis technique will depend mainly on the nature of
the research problem, the design chosen to investigate it, and the type of data
collected” (1989, p. 201). Hence, the value of data analysis depends on the extent of
its valid relationship with the other components of the research (Seliger and
Shohamy, 1989, p. 201).
In this study, multiple data collection instruments produced diverse data. The
research problem, the research design and the collected data therefore necessitated
not only diverse data analysis instruments, but also corresponding varied procedures.
The following section therefore presents the analysis procedures for the interviews,
questionnaires, and the two corpora in three separate sections.
3.7.1 Analysis Procedure for Interviews
The interviews with the instructors who had previously taught ENGL501 were
conducted through MSN chat, due to the reasons stated earlier in this chapter.
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Therefore, there was no need to transcribe the interviews, as they were already in
print. During the interviews, the interview guide was used to elicit data on the
predetermined topics. As the two instructors were interviewed, the use of the guide
enabled the interview process and the revealed data to be ‘systematic and
comparable’ (Yildirim and Simsek, 1999, p. 95).
In qualitative data analysis, the most important considerations are describing the
data, and ensuring the emergence of themes (Yildirim and Simsek, 1999, p. 158).
The qualitative data collected through the interviews were analyzed by utilizing
‘content analysis’ to be able to categorize and thematize. The main aim of content
analysis, according to Yildirim and Simsek, is to access the relationships and themes
that can explain the collected data (1999, p. 162). Therefore, what is being done
through content analysis is to bring together similar data under certain concepts and
themes, and then organize and interpret the data in a manner the reader can
understand (Yildirim and Simsek, 1999, p. 162). Content analysis, Patton holds, “is
used to refer to any qualitative data reduction and sense-making effort that takes a
volume of qualitative material and attempts to identify core consistencies and
meanings” (2002, p. 453). In that sense, it requires inductive analysis which
“involves discovering patterns, themes, and categories in one’s data”, since
“findings emerge out of the data, through the analyst’s interactions with the data”
(Patton, 2002, p. 453).
The twelve questions in the interview guide (Appendix C) allowed for the two
interviewees to reflect on the experiences they had with the ENGL501 participants
during the time they taught the course. The abundant qualitative data collected
therefore required reduction and categorization. As Yildirim and Simsek recommend
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(1999, p. 163), first the researcher tried to identify the common patterns in the data
by recognizing key words. Then, the relationship among these common patterns was
explored, and these were classified under four major themes, namely ‘student
profiles’, ‘problems faced by the participants’, ‘the value and usefulness of the
existing course’, and ‘suggestions for the improvement of the course’.
3.7.2 Analysis Procedure for Questionnaires
As mentioned earlier, the questionnaires administered to the participants made use
of mostly open-type questions, with the exception of the last closed-type section in
the pre-course questionnaire which required the participants to mark the relevant
boxes (Appendix D). In the post-course questionnaire, most of the questions were
again open-type, with some closed-type questions that required quantitative analysis.
Therefore, on the whole, the questionnaires produced rich qualitative data, hence
necessitating the utilization of ‘content analysis’ to reduce the data to a manageable
size, identify patterns, and categorize them into meaningful themes.
The pre-course questionnaire included eight and the post-course questionnaire nine
open ended questions respectively. Parallel questions were included to enable
comparison. As the questionnaires were administered to 100 participants, the
qualitative data generated were very large. Therefore, the data were first tabulated,
and the common patterns identified. The categorization of these patterns produced
three themes that were also suitable for a comparison with the interview results. The
emerging themes were ‘the participants’ specific problems in producing written
work in English’, ‘the effectiveness of the course’, and ‘the participants’ suggestions
for the improvement of the course’. Yildirim and Simsek (1999, p. 176) note that
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quotations are used in describing, exemplifying, interpreting data in content
analysis. In this study, participants’ significant contributions were used as quotations
during the description, exemplification, interpretation of the data in the data analysis
chapter.
3.7.3 Corpus Analysis Methodology
Corpus analysis incorporates both quantitative and qualitative data analysis
techniques. The corpus-based approach is empirical, “analyzing the actual patterns
of use in natural texts”, and relies on quantitative as well as qualitative analytical
techniques (Biber et al., 1998, p. 4). Biber et al. point out that one important
consideration for corpus-based approaches is that the analyses should go beyond
simple counts of linguistic features, and include qualitative, functional
interpretations of quantitative patterns (Biber et al., 1998, pp. 4-5). Hunston
similarly draws attention to the fact that a corpus provides evidence in the form of
many examples which can only be interpreted by intuition (2002, p. 23). Intuition is
very important, according to Hunston (2002, p. 2), in “extrapolating important
generalizations from a mass of specific information in a corpus” (p. 22).
This study fits into the corpus-informed approach defined by McCarthy, as the
corpora were designed and built with applied linguistic questions in mind, their
output filtered and organized, and employed as a tool for what the teacher researcher
wanted to achieve. As an example to this third approach, he gives the example of
extracting lexico-grammatical information from a corpus (McCarthy, 2001, p. 138).
Accordingly, it is relevant to define this study as a ‘corpus-informed’ study, as the
research necessitated the identification of the lexico-grammatical patterns, used for
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fulfilling the sub-moves and moves in thesis writing, to be exploited in the
construction of a comprehensive pedagogic corpus.
Like all data sources, a corpus cannot accomplish anything unless it is analyzed.
Corpus access software can re-arrange corpora, it allows observations of various
kinds to be made and provides a new perspective on language (Hunston, 2002, p. 3).
Corpus access software packages, which are employed in corpus analysis, manage
data in three ways: in terms of frequency, phraseology, and collocation (Hunston,
2002, p. 3). It is possible to arrange words in a corpus in terms of their frequency,
and to compare different corpora regarding their frequency lists with the aim of
identifying their differences that can be later studied in greater detail (Hunston,
2002, pp. 3-5). This, according to Hunston, is especially valuable in the comparison
of specialized corpora, where generally a smaller, specialized corpus is compared
with a larger, more general one so that the keywords, “words which are significantly
more frequent in one corpus than another” are identified (Hunston, 2002, pp. 67-68).
One example given is a study by Sutarsyah et al. where a corpus of Economics texts
is compared with a corpus of general academic English to identify the keywords in
the Economics corpus. The study revealed that some words like price, cost, demand,
firm, supply, occurred more frequently in the Economics corpus (1994, cited in
Hunston, p. 68). Frequency counts can also give valuable information on the
frequencies of lexical and grammar words in different corpora (Hunston, 2002, p. 3)
as well as frequencies of categories of linguistic items (e.g. present and past tenses)
across registers (Hunston, 2002, p. 8).
Phraseology can be observed through concordance lines, which are lines that “bring
together many instances of use of a word or phrase, allowing the user to observe
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regularities in use that tend to remain unobserved when the same words or phrases
are met in their normal contexts” (Hunston, 2002, p. 9). Through phraseology,
differences between easily confused words can be observed through the wealth of
evidence provided by concordance lines (Hunston, 2002, p. 12). Concordance lines
can be presented alphabetically or in groups selected and arranged to show a
particular language behaviour (Hunston, 2002, p. 38). Therefore, it can be said that
concordance lines can be used to observe how words behave (Hunston, 2002, pp.
39-41).
Through concordance lines, it is possible to observe the ‘central and typical’,
meaning distinctions, meaning and pattern, and detail (Hunston, 2002, p. 42).
Although a corpus cannot be used to establish what is impossible or possible in a
language, it provides information about ‘central and typical usage’. Typicality
involves “the most frequent meanings or collocates or phraseology of an individual
word or phrase” (Hunston, 2002, p. 42). Centrality, on the other hand, “can be
applied to categories of things rather than to individual words” (p. 43). For example,
although present progressive can be used for the present, the future, or no specific
time, the central use is for the present time. A corpus serves an important purpose
here as the prototypical (what is felt to be typical) may not be the most frequent
(Hunston, 2002, pp. 43-44).
Corpus exploration, by allowing comparative analysis, makes it possible to observe
differences in meaning and use of near-synonyms, something which cannot be
achieved through dictionaries as they handle words separately (Hunston, 2002, p.
45). The meanings of words are closely related to their co-text and are
“distinguished by the patterns and phraseologies in which they typically occur”
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(Hunston, 2002, p. 46). Concordance lines can be divided into sets, each of which
exemplifies one meaning of a word. Hunston holds that “meaning and phraseology
are indistinguishable, and the concordance lines show both” (p. 47). One important
problem with concordance lines is that they present information, they do not
interpret it, and “interpretation requires the insight and intuition of the observer” (p.
65).
The data in corpora can also be managed through the calculation of collocation, “the
statistical tendency of words to co-occur” (Hunston, 2002, p. 12) or “the tendency of
one word to attract another” (Hunston, 2002, p. 68). According to Hunston,
collocation “can indicate pairs of lexical items, … or the association between a
lexical word and its frequent grammatical environment”, the latter frequently called
‘colligation’ (p. 12). Sinclair, on the other hand, defines collocation as “the
occurrence of two or more words within a short space of each other in a text”, and
describes the ‘short space’ as “a maximum of four words intervening” (1991, p.
170).
In a corpus, collocation is calculated by software through taking a node word, “the
selected word appearing in the centre of the screen’, and counting the words
occurring within a particular span of the node word (Hunston, 2002, p. 69). Similar
to Sinclair, Hunston also defines this span as four words to the left and four words to
the right of the node word (p. 69). Collocational information can be useful in
summarizing the information found in the concordance lines, in highlighting the
different meanings of a word, therefore providing a semantic profile of the word,
and in obtaining a profile of the semantic field of a word. An example to the latter
can be that words related to money, such as dollar, money, tax, pound, can be
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categorized as a semantic field (Hunston, 2002, pp. 75-79). What a simple list of
collocations cannot show, however, is the association between meaning and
phraseology, which can only be obtained through the concordance lines (Hunston,
2002, pp. 76-77). In this study, in line with Hunston’s (2002) observations with
corpus analysis, the corpus data are managed in all the three ways; in terms of
frequency, phraseology, and collocation.
3.7.3.1 Corpus Analysis Tools
A variety of tools were utilized for corpus analysis in this study. Some of these tools
are computer-based, while some are web-based. The aim of this section, therefore, is
to introduce all the tools employed in this study. These tools can be listed as follows:
RANGE, FREQUENCY, Concordance, AntConc, and the British National Corpus
interface designed by Mark Davies from Brigham Young University of Utah, the
United States.
RANGE and FREQUENCY are both computer-based text analysis tools. They were
programmed by Alex Heatley, and designed by Paul Nation and Averil Coxhead of
the School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, Victoria University, New
Zealand. RANGE is computer software used to compare the vocabulary of texts.
This software, which calculates the range of vocabulary in texts, provides a range or
distribution figure (how many texts the word occurs in), a headword frequency
figure (the total number of times the actual headword type appears in all the texts), a
family frequency figure (the total number of times the word and its family members
occur in all the texts), and a frequency figure for each of the texts the word occurs
in. It can be used to find the coverage of a text by certain word lists, create word
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lists based on frequency and range, and to discover shared and unique vocabulary in
several pieces of writing. The program is free for everyone to use and is
downloadable from http://www.vuw.ac.nz/lals/staff/paul-nation/nation.aspx) and it
can operate on 32 different texts simultaneously.
The program can be used for multiple purposes. Firstly, it can be used to calculate
the coverage of a text by using wordlists such as the GSL (The General Service List)
and the AWL (The Academic Word List). It can also be employed to create own
wordlists based on range and frequency. Most importantly, it can be utilized to find
out common and distinctive vocabulary items in several pieces of writing. The
program is accompanied by three ready-made base lists. The first (BASEWRD1.txt)
includes the most frequent 1000 words of English and the second (BASEWRD2.txt)
includes the 2nd 1000 most frequent words. The first 2000 words come from A
General Service List of English Words by Michael West (Longman, London 1953).
The third (BASEWRD3.txt) includes 570 word families from The Academic Word
List by Coxhead (2000). All of these base lists include the base forms of words and
their derived forms. For instance, the headword aid has the following family
members: aided, aiding, aids, and unaided
/tt/file_convert/552825f55503469a588b4662/document.doc). As mentioned earlier,
the program can be used to create own wordlists based on range and frequency.
Recently, Billuroglu and Neufeld (2005) have created their own BNL (Billuroglu-
Neufeld List) wordlist, which is also available as a word list of the 2,709 most
common words in English that can be used with RANGE.
FREQUENCY is another program that also runs on a text file (.txt) to make a
frequency list of all the words in a single text. Unlike RANGE, it can only run one
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text at a time. The output is an alphabetical list, or a frequency ordered list. It gives
the rank order of the words, their raw frequency and the cumulative percentage
frequency (/tt/file_convert/552825f55503469a588b4662/document.doc).
Concordance, designed by Rob Watt, University of Dundee, Scotland, is a
copyrighted computer-based program that can be used for evaluation purposes for
30 days. However, a registration fee is paid to the author for longer use. In this
program employed for the close study of texts, each word can be seen in its context
and also located in the source text. Since words are given in and with their contexts,
all the usages of any word in a text or body of writing can be compared, and insight
into meaning and usage gained. Using this program, wordlists and word frequency
lists can be created, full concordances can be created for texts of any size,
collocation counts for each word, up to four words left and right, can be observed,
concordance of each word in the source text can be seen by clicking on any word, a
wordlist can be lemmatised by grouping chosen words together, and web
concordances can be made and published on the web. A major advantage of web-
concordances is that they are available to many users at the same time, which make
them ideal for class-based activity and student-centred learning. Users can locate
every word in the source text and can see how it is used within its context.
(http://www.concordancesoftware.co.uk/)
AntConc 3.2.1 was developed in 2007 by Lawrence Anthony from the School of
Science and Engineering of Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan. The earlier
versions of this computer-based software started out as a simple concordancing
program, but slowly progressed to become a useful text analysis tool. The program
can run under any windows environment including Win 98/Me/2000/NT and XP,
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and also Macintosh OSX and Linux computers. The AntConc 3.2.1 includes
multiple text analysis tools, but only the ones utilized in this study are presented.
The tools of AntConc 3.2.1 used in this study are as follows: ‘Concordance’, ‘File
View’, ‘Clusters’, and ‘Collocates’. The Concordance tool generates concordance
lines (or KWIC: key word in context) lines from one or more target texts chosen by
the user. At any time, a target file can be viewed in its original form using the File
View tool. The Clusters tool is used to generate an ordered list of clusters that
appear around a search term in the target files listed in the left frame of the main
window. The clusters can be ordered either by frequency or the start or end of the
word. A user can also select the minimum and maximum length (number of words)
in each cluster, and the minimum frequency of clusters displayed. It is also possible
to select if the search term always appears on the left or right of the cluster.
The Collocates tool is used to generate an ordered list of collocates that appear near
a search term in the target files listed in the left frame of the main window. The
collocates can be ordered either by frequency, frequency on the left or right of the
search term, or the start or end of the word. A user can also select the span of words
to the left and right of the search term in which to find collocates, and the minimum
frequency of collocates displayed (http://www.antlab.sci.waseda.ac.jp/software/
READMEantconc3.2.1.txt).
The British National Corpus interface (http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc/) developed by
Mark Davies is a web-based tool that makes use of the 100-million-word BNC.
Words, phrases, lemmas (all forms of words, like sing or tall), wildcards (un*ly or r?
n*), and more complex searches such as un-X-ed adjectives or verb + any word + a
form of ground can be extracted from this tagged corpus. There are six macro
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registers on the interface, and the frequency of a word or phrase can be observed in
all registers. Collocates can also be obtained through the interface. In addition, the
use of a word can be compared across registers. For instance, it is possible to obtain
information on the words and phrases which occur much more frequently in one
register than another, such as -ness words in poetry, adjectives in tabloid
newspapers, nouns in advertisements, or verbs in the slot ‘we * that’ in academic
writing. Semantically-oriented searches can also be carried out. For instance, the
most frequent nouns used with ‘small’ and ‘little’ can be compared. A very useful
facility is finding the frequency and distribution of synonyms of a word, and
comparing the frequency of synonyms in different registers. For example, the
synonyms of ‘strong’ can be compared in the ‘academic’ and ‘news’ registers
(Davies, 2004).
3.7.3.2 Corpus Analysis Procedures
The compiled corpora were thoroughly analyzed by utilizing the diverse tools
presented in the previous section. First, the two corpora were separately put through
the Frequency program to explore the most frequent words, as well as the
cumulative percentage of individual words in the coverage of the corpora. Then, the
corpora were independently put through the Range program for three fundamental
reasons: firstly, to examine the range of occurrence of individual words in the four
sub-corpora in each corpus and explore the ones that were present in all the sub-
corpora; secondly, to determine whether the most frequent words in such academic
corpora actually came from the AWL, which claims to cover 85 % of any academic
text when used with the GSL; and finally, to test the validity of the claim made by
Billuroglu and Neufeld (2005), that separating the most frequent words as GSL and
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AWL is problematic, as words acquire different meanings and have different uses
based on their contexts. In the next stage, the two corpora were separately analyzed
for collocations and clusters through the simultaneous use of Concordance and
AntConc 3.2.1. At this stage, the aim was to explore the lexico-grammatical patterns
used in the two corpora.
When the data pertaining to the LAC and the TAC were compared in terms of
frequency, range, phraseology, and collocation, the anticipated deficiencies in the
LAC were further revealed. Therefore, through the use of Range and Frequency,
first the most frequent 165 word families were extracted from the TAC. These 165
word families later acted as key words for the qualitative analysis of the TAC, when
Concordance and AntConc 3.2.1 were used to extract the alternative lexico-
grammatical patterns employed in the fulfillment of sub-moves and moves in
specifically abstracts, and in theses in general. This exercise heavily relied on
intuition, and employed the functional dimension of linguistic features as a basis. It
also made use of the BNC interface to determine synonyms so that alternative
lexico-grammatical patterns to achieve the same functions, sub-moves, and moves
could be extracted from the corpus. Biber (1988) defines functions as
“communicative purposes served by particular linguistic features in texts” (1988, p.
25), and refers to corpus analysis of a range of texts in the following way:
Strong co-occurrence patterns of linguistic features mark underlying functional dimensions. Features do not randomly co-occur in texts. If certain features consistently co-occur, then it is reasonable to look for an underlying functional influence that encourages their use. (p. 13)
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3.8 Moodle - a Virtual Learning Environment
Corpora and data-driven learning tasks necessitate a platform on which they can be
placed. The current study used Moodle as a virtual learning, or e-learning platform.
A virtual learning environment (VLE) can be described as “a collection of integrated
tools enabling the management of online learning, providing a delivery mechanism,
student tracking, assessment and access to resources". It is sometimes also referred
to as a ‘Managed Learning Environment’ (MLE), a ‘Course Management System’
(CMS), or a ‘Learning Management System’ (LMS) (IADT, 2007). These
environments are conducive to turning teaching and learning into an active, real life-
like process.
Through VLEs, the opportunities for collaboration and communication between the
teacher and students, as well as among students are maximized, allowing them to
engage with the course more actively at their own convenient time and place (IADT,
2007). A VLE not only makes students active, but also ‘actors’, since they are
“members and contributors of the social and information place” (Dillenbourg et al.,
2002, p. 5). Probably the most important advantage of virtual learning environments
is that they can combine heterogeneous technologies and multiple pedagogical
approaches. A variety of tools are used to support functions such as information,
communication, collaboration, learning and management. Through the availability
of various tools, the teacher has the opportunity to decide which type of interaction
is suitable for which instructional and learning objective (Dillenbourg et al., 2002, p.
6).
Moodle is an open source, as opposed to commercial, VLE package developed by
Martin Dougiamas (Robb, 2004, p. 1). Moodle stands for Modular Object-Oriented
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Dynamic Learning Environment (Liao, 2007, p. 1), and it is based on strong
pedagogic principles, namely ‘constructionism’, ‘constructivism’, and ‘social
constructivism’ (Philosophy, 2008).
Constructionism means that learning becomes effective when people construct
something for others to experience, in other words, we have a better understanding
of things when we try to explain them to others. A constructivist view asserts that
people create new knowledge as they interact with their environments. Social
constructivism, on the other hand, “extends constructivism into social settings,
wherein groups construct knowledge for one another, collaboratively creating a
small culture of shared artifacts with shared meanings” (Philosophy, 2008).
In an online course, “the activities and texts produced within the group as a whole
will help shape how each person behaves within that group” (Philosophy, 2008). In
short, with Moodle, the job of the teacher can change from being ‘the source of
knowledge’ to being an influence and a role model for class culture. Moodle enables
the teacher to connect with students in a personal way, to address their learning
needs, and also to moderate discussions and activities in such a way as to lead
students towards the goals collectively (Philosophy, 2008).
Robb (2004) and Eldridge and Neufeld (2007) emphasize the variety of Moodle
modules. Robb states that “there are more features available than any one user is
likely to use” (2004, p. 1), and Eldridge and Neufeld (2007) stress the various
options and choices available with Moodle. The mode of input is only one of the
examples they give. They highlight the fact that input can be delivered in the form of
a ‘lesson’, or a ‘workshop’, through ‘locally designed materials’, or ‘links to the
World Wide Web’ (p. 21). Eldridge and Neufeld (2007), however, emphasize that
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the revolutionary nature of Moodle and other virtual learning environments depends
more on what teachers do with them using their creativity within solid pedagogical
principles, than the technologies themselves (p. 25).
3.9 Limitations and Delimitations of the Study
As in all research studies, certain factors posed as limitations in this study. The
compilation of the corpus may have been a limitation as there might be an element
of chance in text collection (Hunston, 2002, p. 2). Therefore, the nature of the
compiled corpora determined the lexis, patterns and structures extracted from the
corpora. Another limitation is related to the nature of corpus work in general.
Corpus work reveals data about frequency, not about possibility. Descriptions of
English are considered to be shifting towards the typical and away from ‘notions of
well-formedness’ (Sinclair and Biber cited in Hunston, 2002). The fact that
something is commonly used cannot be evidence that it is acceptable. Therefore, the
data obtained from the corpora can only be referred to as ‘typical’, but not
necessarily ‘well-formed’.
A further limitation is related to the pace of corpus studies. Corpus compilation and
specifically corpus analysis proceeds slowly. Hoey emphasizes that “corpus-based
work is slow and often painful … It can sometimes take half a day to complete an
analysis that will produce a single sentence or indeed a single cell in a table” (2005,
p. xii). Indeed, this study was limited by lack of uninterrupted time, and therefore,
the pace was relatively slow.
Corpus work is criticized for presenting “language out of its context” (Hunston,
2002, p. 23). To deal with this limitation, there is the “need for a corpus to be one
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tool among many in the study of language” (Hunston, 2002, p. 23). Mishan offers
another solution to the problem. She suggests that instead of looking to the
authenticity of the source text, i.e, corpus, the aim should be “its authentication by
the learner, which arises out of the involvement of the learner with the material, via
the task” (2004, p. 219). This study was also limited by the issue of de-
contextualized language, and hence used multiple tools for both data collection and
analysis, and also incorporated data-driven learning (DDL) activities to overcome
this limitation of corpus studies.
However, the study also has some delimitations. The study made use of two corpora
and the range of lexico-structural patterns extracted was wider. The use of
comprehensive data involving two corpora, and the analysis of these corpora using a
variety of computer-based and web-based tools had a positive impact on both the
findings and the outcomes. The use of abstracts in the compilation of the two
corpora is also a delimitation, as abstracts are short texts that can be used as whole
texts. The use of short and whole texts is an advantage in corpus design. If long texts
are used in a corpus, “the peculiarities of an individual style or topic may
occasionally show through into the generalities” (Sinclair, 1991, p. 19).
Another delimitation is the truly international participant population. Graduate
candidates involved in the study were of different nationalities and from different
backgrounds. Only about 40% of the participants were Turkish speaking, and the
remaining 60% were speakers of other languages. “Inclusion of texts written by a
variety of writers helps neutralize bias that may result from the idiosyncratic style of
one writer, and increases the number of lexical items in the corpus” (Atkins et al.,
Sinclair, Sutarsyah et al., cited in Coxhead, 2000, p. 215). It was assumed that the
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diverse participant population would contribute to the richness and breadth of the
pertinent data.
A further delimitation is the element of collaboration in the study. The participants
engaged in activities and corpus-informed tasks in a supportive atmosphere, both in
class and in the virtual learning environment, where they have time and space for
reflection, experimentation and discovery. Another delimitation is the researcher’s
status. During the process of providing the participants with more effective support
for thesis writing, the researcher was also writing a thesis, and therefore was able to
combine the insider-emic and the outsider-etic perspectives coined by Pike in 1954
(cited in Patton, 2002, p. 84) and incorporate these perspectives into the research
process. The researcher’s status had a two-fold positive impact on the research in
progress. Firstly, the researcher, going through the same process, could easily
empathize with the participants, and understand their problems better. Secondly, the
researcher had the chance to focus on additional problems she herself encountered
during all the different stages of doing research, and writing a thesis, and integrate
the experiences in the form of tasks into the pedagogic corpus.
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CHAPTER IV
DATA ANALYSIS
The present study collected abundant data in accordance with the research agenda.
The research questions that steered the research were addressed consecutively in this
chapter:
Research Question 1: What are the major lexico-structural patterns identified in the
Learner Abstract Corpus (LAC)?
This section presents sample work from the learner abstract corpus after the analysis
of the interviews with the previous course instructors, and the feedback received
from the post-graduate students through the needs analysis questionnaires and the
end-of-the-semester feedback reports. The first section focuses on the problem, as
perceived by the previous course instructors, the students themselves and the
researcher. In the second section, through the use of the computer software
introduced in chapter 3, the LAC is analyzed in terms of the lexico-structural
patterns, demonstrating the deficiencies in the Learner Abstract Corpus.
Research Question 2: What are the major lexico-structural patterns identified in the
Target Abstract Corpus (TAC)?
The TAC is closely examined in terms of the target lexico-structural patterns.
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Research Question 3: How does the LAC relate to the TAC?
The analysis of the two corpora provides significant insights into the deficiencies of
the post-graduate candidates’ written performance, and the target patterns required
in advanced post-graduate studies in fulfilling moves such as stating the aim, and
identifying the research gap.
Research Question 4: What does the cross-examination of the two corpora
necessitate in terms of the comprehensive pedagogic corpus design?
The formerly analyzed and interpreted data are exploited to improve the current
instructional materials and evolve a more comprehensive pedagogic corpus
incorporating corpus data and related on-line tasks, taking into account the ultimate
objective of action research, which is “effecting positive changes … on educational
practices … and improving student outcomes and the lives of those involved”
(Mills, 2000, p. 6).
4.1 Analysis of the preliminary data
The researcher has been teaching ENGL501 (presently Advanced Thesis Writing)
since the 2004-2005 academic year, and observing the language deficiencies of the
post-graduate candidates who are expected to report their research in coherent and
appropriate manner. Some pertinent background data were therefore collected from
the previous course instructors and the participants themselves to gain deeper insight
into the problem. An examination of a small sample of the participants’ writing was
also conducted by three experienced writing instructors and a qualified IELTS
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examiner to profile the students’ writing at both course entry and exit points using
the IELTS (International English Language Testing System) criteria
(http://www.ielts.org).
4.1.1 Interviews with EFL 501 (ENGL501) course instructors
The interviews (see Appendix G and Appendix H) with the two previous course
instructors, who were also involved in the design in the period of their instruction,
were held with the aim of eliciting their perceptions and observations regarding the
post-graduate candidates’ written performance. The interviews aimed at finding out
the two instructors’ views on the students’ common problems with the use of the
English language in an academic environment. The two instructors’ suggestions for
the revision of the course to provide better support for the course participants were
also elicited through the interview.
Four major themes emerged from the content analysis of the interviews with the
previous course instructors: Student profiles, the participants’ problems with the
language, the value and usefulness of the existing course, and suggestions for the
improvement of the course. As regards the first theme, student profiles, both
instructors reported that the student population was quite diverse not only in terms
of the nationalities and departmental backgrounds, but also the language levels. As
well as participants with very high, almost native-like language levels, there were
those at the pre-intermediate, and in some cases at the elementary level in the target
language. According to one of the respondents, some participants needed “some
very basic training in English”. With respect to nationalities, although most
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participants were reported to be Turkish-speaking, the rate of foreign students taking
the course was on the rise.
Both course instructors stated that they observed serious problems with the use of
English in an academic environment. One in fact expressed this opinion saying that
“a number do have serious academic writing problems for students at post-graduate
level”. Although both instructors taught two or more groups throughout the years,
they said they could safely generalize the problems, and reported areas of difficulty
related to vocabulary, coherence, grammar, organization, and elaboration of ideas.
One of the interviewees elaborated on these problems, saying that the most serious
problem is ‘lexis and language problems’, because “it is the most difficult problem
to solve in the short-term”. Expanding on the ‘lexis’ problem, the interviewee said:
The participants’ lexical range is not very high, which can lead their work to be quite repetitive, and their accuracy breaks down, because their knowledge of the grammar of individual items is weak, e.g. accompanying prepositions, and their sense of collocations is limited.
The respondent also emphasized that the participants’ sense of ‘synonymy’ and ‘the
need for variety in writing’ is quite limited. An important point regarding
‘insufficient lexical knowledge’ was also highlighted as follows:
this deficiency leads to a problem with nuances, e.g that 'claim' implies a somewhat critical view on the part of the writer, whereas 'As X states' tends to indicate support; this problem with nuance also leads to problems in such areas as hedging, making exaggerated claims for their own research.
With respect to the value and usefulness of the course, the interviewees stated that
the course was extremely useful and valuable, as the participants were given ‘real’
academic support. They also reported that the participants themselves were
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motivated, willing and highly appreciative of the course, as they were aware that
they needed help with their writing. They also emphasized that the feedback from
the departments as well as the participants themselves was proof that the course
definitely had a positive impact on the participants’ use of the academic language.
The previous course instructors felt that although the course was useful and
valuable, they would make some revisions to it if they taught it again. The first
interviewee stressed the need for presenting excerpts from authentic theses as
models. The second interviewee also commented on the need to provide more
exposure to ‘models’, as “good models provide the skeletons and building blocks of
good writing”. There should also be focus on a sense of genre, organization and
audience. In fact, one of the respondents said that there should be “prior focus on the
logical organization of ideas within the conventions of the given genre”. More use of
dictionaries, the introduction of thesaurus type work, and identification of
collocations and chunks as the key feature of fluent writing were also emphasized.
The course instructors also focused on the importance of presenting writing as a
process, and adopting a process approach to writing.
4.1.2 Needs Analysis Questionnaires and End-of-the-semester Feedback
Questionnaires administered to course participants
The needs analysis questionnaires were administered at the beginning of each
semester to raise the participants’ awareness of academic writing and the course, as
well as to elicit their self-perceived needs. A similar questionnaire was designed and
employed at the end of the semester, so that feedback on the course could be
collated and used to improve the course, as well as so that the participants’ responses
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before and after taking the course could be compared and contrasted. As some
questions were parallel in the two questionnaires to allow for comparison, they are
also analyzed together to ensure a comprehensive understanding of the profiles and
needs of the course participants before and after the course, as well as evaluate the
effectiveness of the course as perceived by the course participants.
ENGL501, as introduced earlier, was initially designed to provide general academic
language support for Master’s and PhD candidates and prepare them for ENGL502,
Thesis Writing course offered by a colleague. In time, acting upon the feedback
received from the departments and the participants themselves, the two courses were
merged to provide academic language support for specifically thesis writing. When
the participants were asked what kinds of writing they needed to do in English, they
singled out thesis and research paper writing followed by writing articles for
publication. This need was raised by such a vast majority of the participants through
four semesters that it led to the fusion of the two courses and the development of the
existing course, which has been on offer for the last four semesters as the Advanced
Thesis Writing course (ENGL501).
The three main themes that emerged from the content analysis of the questionnaires
administered at the beginning and the end of the semester can be categorized as the
participants’ specific problems in producing written work in English, the
effectiveness of the course, and the participants’ suggestions for the improvement of
the course. The first theme, the difficulties the participants felt they faced when
writing in English, deserved special attention as these difficulties were taken into
consideration in the revision of the course, and the construction of the
comprehensive pedagogic corpus. Before taking the course, the majority of the
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participants felt that poor vocabulary created the most serious difficulty in producing
their own texts. They emphasized not being able to use different words with similar
meanings, and therefore resorting to repeating the same words. A participant voiced
this as “Writing with a rich vocabulary. Using various similar meaning [sic] words. I
need to improve technical and academic vocabulary.”
Another almost equally important reported problem was concerned with grammar
and sentence structure, length, and complexity. This seems to be consistent with the
point that the most significant problem that needs to be dealt with is lexico-grammar
in meaning creation. A few participants also mentioned difficulties with developing
ideas, drafting, outlining, introducing, and concluding, but these macro-structure
problems were reported much less than those related to the ability of creating the
intended meaning. Upon the completion of the course, although much fewer people
expanded on their problems, 85% of the problems mentioned were either lexical or
grammatical in nature. One participant emphasized the widely-held belief that
“Writing is the most difficult human being`s [sic] activity. It will remain a difficult
task forever and for everyone.” Although at the beginning of the semester not even
one participant talked about concepts like collocations and appropriacy, as they were
obviously not familiar with such nuances, at the end of the semester quite a number
of the participants mentioned related problems. One of them said:
The difficulties that I still encounter in my written English are in terms of appropriacy of the vocabulary due to sometimes confusing the formal and the informal language. Also I need to know more synonyms and antonyms. Another difficulty in my written English is the misuse of collocations.
A very significant theme emerging from the analysis of the questionnaires is the
effectiveness of the course as perceived by the course participants. This theme is
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exemplified through the responses of the participants to different questions in the
questionnaires. The first of these questions was related to the language levels of the
participants as perceived by themselves before and after taking the course. The
respondents were asked to rate their English language skills (global, reading,
listening, writing, speaking) as excellent, good, fair or poor. Before taking the
course, the majority of the participants rated their overall language level, and their
reading, listening and speaking skills as good. The only skill that the majority rated
as fair was the writing skill. After taking the course, however, the respondents rated
all the language skills as good, and there was not a single person who thought their
writing skill was in the fair category. One respondent feels that the course
contributed to the improvement of his/her language skills and says “The course gave
me an opportunity to improve my English by enhancing my vocabulary to include
[sic] more academic words and phrases.” Another respondent refers specifically to
the contribution of the course to the writing skill by saying “It helped me to build
confidence and great interest in writing.”
Another question that provided data on the effectiveness of the course was when the
respondents were asked directly if they had benefited from the course. Of the 58
respondents who chose to respond to this question, 57 answered in the affirmative
and 1 in the negative. The respondent who said he did not benefit from the course
said there was ‘insufficient and unrelated homework’. The positive feedback
included such comments as: “The course has helped me tremendously in improving
my writing skills and taught me how to communicate more clearly”, “Now, I can
write my own sentences without plagiarism [sic]”, “Now after this course I have
self-confidence to start writing even by [sic] mistakes. Guidance of you [sic], read
the books [sic], search in the internet [sic] and the site (lexical) help me in the way
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[sic]”, “I can claim that this course has been the most beneficial course during my
graduate studies for academic writing purposes”.
Before taking the course, 45% of the respondents checked their written work by
giving it to a more competent reader in the English language, followed by 34% who
used Microsoft Word tools for spelling and grammar. 28% said they read their
written work over and over again and revised it, and 18% consulted reference books
and the Internet. 8% mentioned looking at well-written samples and benefiting from
them, and 1% paid someone to edit his work. One respondent gave this very
interesting answer: “I never trust whatever sentence I write that`s why I have always
tried to copy from other people`s work or use their structure [sic] that’s why now in
my thesis I have difficulty expressing my own ideas.”
Upon completion of the course, 28% referred to Word grammar and spell check,
22% said they used the Lexical Tutor website introduced during the course to check
their written work, 10% mentioned getting feedback from the instructor, 8% said
they used the course material, 7% said they gave their work to someone else to
check., and 4% said they used the Word Thesaurus to find synonyms. Some
responses were: “I am using ‘Academic Word List’ book and I use
http://132.208.224.131 (vocabulary profile) web site for checking my written work”,
“The first tool for checking written work is course lecture notes. The second tool is
some websites which were introduced by the instructor and the third and the most
important one is the teacher herself”, “Previously, I had just used MS Word editor
and Google to check my writing. Now I know how can [sic] I use lextutor website.
It`s more reliable than Google and other tools”, “I compare my notebook, lecture
notes and what the teacher says about my written work. Yes, this course gave me
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new technique, system and procedure for writing”. The responses appear to be
indicating that after taking the course, the respondents felt more confident about
their written work, used more varied resources to check their work, and relied less
on other people to check it for them.
The participants were also asked about what other contribution, if at all, the course
made. The majority mentioned language improvement, followed by benefits of the
classroom sessions (self-confidence, interaction with peers), and a deeper
understanding of what research/thesis writing involves. A few participants also
referred to the contribution of the course to their knowledge of writing conventions,
such as quoting, paraphrasing and referencing. One respondent expressed his ideas
in the following way: “The most important help of this course is; I can say that I
know how can [sic] I write my thesis. I didn`t know about writing skills, format of a
thesis. I can criticize a thesis. I can see what`s wrong with the thesis.”
To raise the participants’ awareness of some key concepts in writing, a list was
provided at the beginning of the semester and the participants were asked to mark
the concepts they were familiar with. The same list, with minor changes, was again
included in the questionnaire at the end of the semester to observe how effective the
course was in contributing to the participants’ awareness of these key concepts.
Table 4.1 below provides a comparison:
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Table 4.1
Comparison of responses regarding familiarity with important concepts in writing
TermsFrequency of positive responses:
Beginningof semester
Endof semester
Wordiness 5 11Cohesion 11 13Coherence 11 15Process writing 11 34Drafting 22 63Revising 18 61Editing 22 61Appropriacy of vocabulary 3 44Collocations (words that go together) 5 53Citing ( referencing ) sources 14 56Avoiding plagiarism 14 68Quoting, paraphrasing, summarizing 22 68Bibliographies 22 57Format of thesis 20 68Accuracy of language 17 56Punctuation 19 59Formal/Informal Language (not asked) 69
As can be observed from the table, almost all the concepts indicated a high level of
familiarity at the end of the semester when compared with the beginning of the
course. Especially noteworthy is the fact that the participants’ awareness of
plagiarism and of the ways of avoiding it through quotes, and paraphrases seemed to
have greatly increased after taking the course. Moreover, initially while only 5 of the
students had a conception of ‘collocations’, and 3 of ‘appropriacy of vocabulary’,
the number of the students with the awareness of these concepts increased to 53 and
44, respectively, at the end of the semester
When asked if they would advise a friend to take the course, 71 out of 72
participants responded in the affirmative. Some interesting answers included:
“Definitely yes, because most of the students have difficulty in writing thesis. Also
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most of them have problems in citing sources”, “Yes, it is a very useful course that
[sic] I can advise my friends and also my teachers as well”, “Definitely. Academic
writing without such course [sic] might be a nightmare”, “Definitely. Course
empowers one to write and use English appropriately”, and “Yes, for sure. To excel
his writing abilities as well as his English knowledge”.
The last theme emerging from the analysis of the questionnaires is the participants’
suggestions towards the improvement of the course. The majority of the respondents
said they were satisfied with all the aspects of the course, but there were also a few
suggestions. These included integrating more materials and more challenging
assignments into the course, compiling the materials into a textbook, making the
course compulsory to all post-graduate students, having smaller class sizes and
homogenous groups, providing more language work, setting stricter deadlines and
finally opening more courses like this one. The participants were asked if they
would suggest the addition or deletion of anything related to the course. Although
there were not many proposed changes, some respondents mentioned making the
course compulsory and credited, making attendance compulsory, increasing the
course hours, including more language work and more assignments with feedback,
and opening more specialized courses (IELTS and TOEFL preparation). A
respondent referred to the need for more specialized courses in the following way:
I think this course is well [sic] enough as a starting point for all university student [sic]. I suggest to continue [sic] this valuable work with more specialized topics such as writing scientific articles, conference and journal papers. (bolded by the researcher) Considering the effort needed to arrange these kind of activities and the number of people who may attend [sic]. It may be more applicable in form of workshops, short seminar, etc … However, I think such efforts are needed to improve and encourage research in our university.
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These three major themes that emerged from the analysis of the questionnaires are
noteworthy in that they reflect the participants’ voices. These voices are extremely
significant, and were taken into account in the construction of the pedagogic corpus,
and the revision of the course that employs a ‘corpus-informed approach’
(McCarthy, 2001).
4.1.3 A sample of participants’ writing profiles
In order to gain another perspective on the post-graduate students’ written
performance at both course entry and exit points, a representative sample of 19
pieces of writing were profiled by four independent writing instructors, one of
whom was a qualified IELTS examiner with 10 years of experience in examining.
The reason why IELTS was employed was that this exam is used world-wide for
evaluating academic performance, and set by numerous educational institutions as
an entrance requirement for undergraduate and post-graduate programs
(http://www.ielts.org).
The samples of writing were graded according to the IELTS writing band
descriptors on a nine-band scale. The participants pre-course texts revealed a wide
range of writing levels, from 3 at the bottom end to 8 at the top end, with an average
of approximately 5.5 – below the level normally required by universities as entrance
level for post-graduate study. These findings seem to corroborate the data gathered
through the questionnaires and interviews regarding the language level of the
participants. Towards the course completion, however, the post-graduate candidates’
texts exhibited an average of 6.1, ranging between 4 and 8. This is noteworthy as a
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shift of half an IELTS band over the duration of a 50-60 hour course would
generally be considered substantive.
4.1.4 Cross-reference of the Findings from the Interviews and the
Questionnaires
The findings from the interviews with the course instructors and those from the
questionnaires administered to the course participants were compared. Two common
themes emerged from the cross-reference. These were the difficulties faced by the
participants, and perceptions as regards the usefulness of the course.
The course instructors reported that the participants had the most serious difficulties
with vocabulary, grammar, coherence, organization, and the elaboration of ideas.
However, lexis was singled out as the most serious problem. Limited lexical range
resulting in the repetition of the same words, and insufficient knowledge of the
grammar of the individual words leading to the use of wrong collocates and
colligates were emphasized. Similarly, poor vocabulary and insufficient knowledge
of synonyms that caused the repetition of the same words were mentioned as the
highest ranking difficulties by the participants. Parallel to the instructors’
observations, the fact that the participants also emphasized grammar and
collocations as serious difficulties is interesting.
As regards the usefulness of the course, both the instructors and the participants held
that the course definitely provides academic support. One post-graduate student
expressed this quite strongly saying that thesis writing without such a course would
be a nightmare. The instructors believed that the course had a positive impact on the
academic writing skills of the participants. Likewise, the participants reported that
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they felt more confident about academic writing after taking the course. The
different contributing factors mentioned by the course participants were: awareness
of plagiarism and knowledge of the means of avoiding it, tools they could use to
improve their writing skills, lecture notes and class discussions, exposure to more
academic words and phrases, feedback from the instructor, and critical analysis of
authentic samples.
4.1.5 Sample work from the LAC and some preliminary assumptions
In this part, two abstracts from the LAC (1 from the Sciences, and 1 from the Social
Sciences sub-corpus) are presented so that some preliminary assumptions can be
made, and so that the problem that led the researcher to carry out this research can
be better observed.
Sample 1
Statistical process control, which is one of the quality control methods, have been used
since the World War 2. It takes an important place for manufacturers to deal with the
quality and the cost of their products. While manufacturing, it was a problem to find where
and how the mistakes occurs. By using SPC, it stops being a problem. In this thesis,
improving product quality in a pulp mill using statistical process control is issued. Critical
pulp quality parameters like freeness and brightness are chosen to apply SPC. Data are
collected by taking samples once in each hour and a software package is used to combine
data and have X and MR charts. Too many journals, papers and articles are examined.
After all these works, some ‘out-of-control’ points occurred, but the process was analyzed
and found to be in process control. On the other hand, some recommendations are made.
The company may improve its pulp mill by using more technological equipments. It may
require a high investment first, but by this way, the cost of production will be reduced.
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Sample 2
Media affects society in a wrong way. It has lots of benefits for society, such as, it
broadcasts news to inform people, it entertains people when they return their home from
workplace, it lets us to learn each other etc. However it also damages the society especially
the children. The paper tried to explain affects of mass medium on children in three
categories. The first is to document the power of mass medium (especially TV). It is the most
reliable source because of the visual images. So that everyone spend the time in front of the
television to entertain and to inform. Therefore children are affected about to watch it.
Hence they start to watch television every time. Second, television is not limited itself to
make profit. For that reason they give horror movies and sex movies. They only write that
children should not watch it but it is not enough. Third, television reshapes the identities.
Such as most of the children wants to be like Tarkan, Madonna or Julia Roberts, whose are
the famous people in the world. Finally, Media affects children but it is not absolute. Its
affect on the children cannot be generalized. But as I mentioned before, almost all over the
world is watched television, therefore their affects are very common.
It can be observed from these two samples that the participants in this study were
likely to have problems with grammar, vocabulary, cohesion and coherence, unity,
register, and so on. Although they had acceptable vocabulary knowledge, this was at
the individual word level, which led to problems in using vocabulary productively.
Lack of knowledge of collocations and colligations and insufficient practice in
lexico-grammar are bound to lead to problems which, in some cases, may cause total
communication breakdown.
An example sentence from sample 1 is as follows: “After all these works, some ‘out-
of-control’ points occurred, but the process was analyzed and found to be in process
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control.” In this sentence, the insufficient knowledge of the verb ‘occur’ has led the
student to use it with ‘points’. Can points occur? What are ‘out-of-control points’?
Another problem is to do with the word ‘work’. The writer of the abstract uses is in
the plural and says ‘after all these works’. Does the student mean ‘after these steps
are followed’? As can be observed, communication breaks down. It is very difficult
for the reader to make sense of what the writer is trying to convey.
An example sentence from sample 2 is: “Second, television is not limited itself to
make profit.” This writer is aware that ‘profit’ collocates with ‘make’. However, the
student either does not know the meaning of ‘limit oneself’ and has used it quite by
chance, or has learnt it wrongly. There is serious communication breakdown here as
only a reader with the same mother tongue as the writer can predict what the
message is. These examples will be expanded once the LAC is analyzed in detail.
4.2 Analysis of the Corpus Evidence
This section presents the analysis of the data from the two corpora compiled for this
research.
4.2.1 Analysis of the LAC
In this section, the major lexico-structural patterns in the learner abstract corpus
(LAC) are identified and examined in detail. The LAC was comprised of 100 learner
abstracts written by the ENGL501 participants over a period of 6 semesters and is
composed of 21,575 tokens and 3,453 types. Compared to the 174,093-word TAC,
the target abstract corpus compiled from the World Wide Web, the learner abstract
corpus is small, as the compilation relied solely on the number of the students taking
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the course and submitting an abstract each semester. The breakdown of the LAC
into its four sub-corpora is as follows:
Table 4.2
The breakdown of the LAC into its 4 sub-corpora
Sciences Social sciences ArchitectureArts &
HumanitiesTotal:
6,859 9,256 5,195 265 21,575
The LAC was first put through the ‘frequency’ program
(http://www.vuw.ac.nz/lals/staff/paul-nation/nation.aspx) to identify the frequencies
in the whole corpus. The ‘Frequency’ program does not reveal word families and
treats the data so as to create output based on individual words (tokens). Neither
does it provide the range of words in the 4 main domains. However, the output
offers cumulative percentages, which is very useful in determining which words
together make up what percentage of the whole corpus. The analysis showed that the
most common 50 words in the LAC make up 42.79% of the whole corpus (21,575
words in total). Of these 50, only 8 words are content words, which means that the
remaining 42 words are function words. The most frequent word is ‘the’ which
occurs 1,543 times and covers 7.15% of the LAC. The first six words that occur in
this corpus are ‘the, of, and, in, to, is’. This finding is consistent with that from the
1967 study of Kucera and Francis, who found that in written English, simple
grammatical morphemes, the, of, and, to, a/an, in, that, is, was, and he are the most
frequent words (cited in Hudson, 2000, p. 63).
According to Hatch and Brown (1995), nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are
considered content words as they carry content meanings, whereas function words
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are pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions and determiners which carry grammatical
meanings. Affixes can be added to content words and they can be modified.
However, function words are affixlike in function and affixes cannot be added to
them (p. 234). In the later stages of the present study, when collocations and
common phrases were examined, function words took back their place since,
without them, it would be impossible to express meanings appropriately. However,
at this stage, the analysis looked at the most common content words in the corpus.
Some critical decisions had to be made during the filtering of the function words.
As pronouns, prepositions, auxiliary verbs which belong to the closed category of
words are considered function words, at this stage they were filtered from the
corpus. Conjunctions are also treated as function words (Hatch and Brown, 1995, p.
234) although they certainly carry meaning, and are vital cohesive devices in a text.
At this stage, though, words like ‘as’, ‘thus’, and ‘although’ were filtered, since
there are some words like ‘since’ and ‘as’ which may be used either as connecting
devices or function as prepositions. Another problem was the case of ‘have’ and ‘do’
and their related word forms. These words are so common that they had to be treated
as function words. However, they re-emerged in later stages when lexico-
grammatical items were extracted from the corpus. Since the aim of the analysis was
not to produce a list of the most common words in academic abstracts, they were
excluded. However, the focus being on collocations, colligations, and lexico-
grammatical patterns, these words were initially considered grammatical words.
Another problematic case included such items as ‘which’, ‘where’, ‘these’, ‘both’,
‘such’ etc. Although these words refer to other words and therefore carry semantic
meaning in context, when not in context they had to be treated as function words.
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Proper nouns, acronyms, abbreviations, numbers, and chemical symbols were also
filtered.
As there are an enormous number of content words and a limited number of function
words in languages, not surprisingly, after the first fifty or so words, the filtering
process got very slow as most words were content words. There were some
problems though. For example, when the word ‘mark’ appeared, it could have been
a proper noun, or ‘mark’ as a verb or a noun, so it was included. Previously, it was
mentioned that conjunctions would not be treated as content words. However,
although ‘consequence’ is a noun and therefore a content word, and therefore
included, there is the possibility that in context it functions as part of the conjunction
‘as a consequence’.
Taking into account the belief that the most commonly used 2,000 words are
necessary for a learner in an academic environment and that the 2,000 word families
in the General Service List and the 570-word -Academic Word List together
constitute 86% of the academic corpus (Coxhead, 2000, p. 214), it was felt necessary
to explore the LAC in terms of wordlists. The analysis revealed that 67.24% of the
top 50 words (39 out of 58) in the LAC came from the GSL, and approximately 24%
from the AWL (14 out of 58). Abstracts are highly academic in nature, and for
pedagogic purposes, one might be inclined to focus on the AWL (Academic Word
List) entirely and take for granted that students are in control of the first 2,000
words. However, as exhibited by the data and the percentages, most GSL words
carry academic meanings when used together with other words in academic texts.
Relying solely on the AWL, and assuming that the students at any level have
mastered the GSL would deprive them of the opportunity to add these very frequent
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words to their academic vocabulary knowledge. The next 50 content words needed
to be analyzed to see if most of these words also came from the GSL, and then
compare the results with those from the TAC in the subsequent stages of the
analysis.
In the same way as the top 50 content words in the LAC, 65.79% (37 out of 58) of
the second 50 content words were from the GSL, followed by 25.86% from the
AWL. For example, a word which is in the top 100 content words in the LAC,
‘term’, is in the GSL list, and it is a commonly used word to refer to school
semesters; ‘summer term’ and ‘winter term’. However, in academic texts ‘term’ is
usually used to refer to an expression, or a phrase, and the collocations as well as the
use of the word in an academic context is different. Treating the GSL and the AWL
as distinct constructs and focusing on them separately and for different purposes
could lead to serious gaps in the learners’ knowledge of the most frequent words in
English. In order to explore the distribution of the GSL, the AWL, and the off-list
words in the LAC more clearly, it was necessary to consider the LAC as a whole:
Table 4.3
The distribution in the LAC in terms of the GSL and the AWL
WORD LIST TOKENS/% TYPES/% FAMILIESone (GSL1) 15489/71.79 1393/40.34 712two (GSL2) 1196/ 5.54 395/11.44 246three (AWL) 2793/12.95 750/21.72 388not in the lists (off-list) 2097/ 9.72 915/26.50 Not ApplicableTotal 21575 3453 1346
The table shows that the post-graduate students used quite a high percentage of word
types from the GSL1 (40.34%) When the token coverage is considered, this
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percentage is much higher (71.79%). This means that the students employed words
which are in the top 1,000 word list quite frequently. It was mentioned earlier that
most of the words in the GSL are very frequently used in academic writing, and
what makes a word academic is more to do with its collocates. The post-graduate
candidates’ use of words from the AWL was also quite high; 21.72% in terms of
type coverage and 12.95% as regards token coverage. Considering that the AWL
comprises 570 word families in total, the students’ use of 388 families from the
AWL is quite significant. However, caution needs to be exercised here. The
candidates used the 388 word families out of the 570 word families in the AWL, but
did they use them accurately? In the same vein, was their use of the GSL words
accurate and appropriate?
Billuroğlu and Neufeld (2005), thinking that the separation of the GSL and the AWL
is not valid, as there are words in the GSL which are very commonly used in the
academic world, and words in the AWL which can very comfortably be used outside
the academic circles, compiled the BNL (Billuroğlu Neufeld List), which they claim
to be more representative of any written text. They used the the GSL headwords and
word family members (Lextutor, 1,000 families; Lextutor, 2,000 families; Dickins,
Extended version of a general service list of English words), the AWL headwords
(Lextutor, AWL headwords) and most frequently occurring word family member
(Lextutor, AWL sublists), the first 2,000 words of the Brown corpus (Edict, The first
2000 most frequent words from the Brown Corpus), the first 5,000 words of the
British National Corpus (Kilgarriff, Lemmatized BNC frequency lists), the revised
version of the GSL (Bauman, About the GSL), the Longman Wordwise commonly
used words (Longman, 2003), and the Longman Defining Vocabulary (Kennaway,
The Longman defining vocabulary). Their list comprises 2,709 words and the words
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are classified into 6 bands (plus one band-0- for the function words) according to the
number of the lists in which they occur, with band ‘1’ comprising the most frequent
words. Their list, they claim, has a higher coverage of any given written text than the
GSL and the AWL used together. The LAC was also put through the BNL
vocabulary profiler to test this claim. Table 4.4 illustrates the distribution of the
words in the LAC using the BNL.
Table 4.4
The distribution in the LAC in terms of the BNL
WORD LIST TOKENS/% TYPES/% FAMILIESOne (function words) 9289/43.05 130/ 3.76 86
Two 5828/27.01 1073/31.07 519
Three 1462/ 6.78 458/13.26 238
Four 1176/ 5.45 316/ 9.15 172
Five 797/ 3.69 259/ 7.50 154
Six 968/ 4.49 313/ 9.06 159
Seven 289/ 1.34 102/ 2.95 68
not in the lists 1766/ 8.19 802/23.23 Not ApplicableTotal 21,575 3,453 1,396
As indeed can be seen from the table above, while the combined GSL and the AWL
token coverage of the LAC is about 90%, that of the BNL is around 92%. This may
not be a major difference. However, the significant issue is that treating GSL and
AWL separately, and focusing solely on the AWL in academic writing classes, may
cause serious consequences and may deprive learners of valuable learning
opportunities. The BNL does not make this distinction and treats all the most
frequent words in the same list. Therefore, considering lexis on the basis of word
families in all six BNL bands would ensure that the students get exposed to those
words which are very common, but acquire a different meaning in an academic
context.
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So far, the frequency and range of use of the GSL, the AWL, and the BNL words in
the LAC was investigated. However, the fact that a piece of writing reveals the use
of a high percentage of academic words, or less common words does not mean that
the writing produced can successfully convey the writer’s intended messages. The
use of a word does not necessarily mean the accurate and appropriate use of it. The
data from the LAC revealed that the post-graduate candidates’ use of the English
language in the academic context was not always coherent and appropriate,
especially at the lexico-structural level. It is very important, at this point, to
emphasize that “the learning of vocabulary, …, is not just a question of learning the
‘semantic properties’ of items, but also their ‘syntactic properties’” (Corder, 1973, p.
279-280). The post-graduate candidates’ problem with lexis and grammar was
reported as the top difficulty by the course instructors, as well as by the participants
themselves.
Identifying incorrect uses of language is an important pedagogic consideration, since
“whilst the nature and quality of mistakes a learner makes provide no direct measure
of his knowledge of the language, it is probably the most important source of
information about the nature of his knowledge” (Corder, 1973, p. 257). According to
Corder (1973), describing and classifying learners’ errors give us information about
what learners still need to learn, and which language features are causing them
problems (p. 257). The analysis of errors is the most useful for teachers, due to the
fact that errors provide them with data regarding the effectiveness of teaching
materials and teaching techniques, as well as which parts of the syllabus have been
insufficiently learnt, and need to be focused on further (Corder, 1973, p. 265).
Errors can be described once what the learner is trying to say can be interpreted. In
the case of a shared mother tongue, and if the learner is available, the teacher can
ask the learner to “express his intentions in his mother tongue, and then translate his
utterance into the target language”. This is known as ‘authoritative interpretation’, as
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the utterance is authoritatively reconstructed into an acceptable form, and “its
appropriateness is guaranteed by the translation” (Corder, 1973, p. 274). In
situations where the learner is absent, however, what he intended to say is inferred
“from his utterance, its context and whatever we know about him and his knowledge
of the world and the target language”. This is called a ‘plausible interpretation’ and
“the corresponding reconstruction only a plausible reconstruction”. However, there
are sometimes instances “when the utterance is so incoherent that no interpretation
of any sort can be achieved” (Corder, 1973, p. 274).
Errors can be described at the most superficial level “in terms of the physical
difference between the learner’s utterance and the reconstructed version”. Four
categories can be mentioned for differences of this kind: “omission of some required
element; addition of some unnecessary or incorrect element; selection of an
incorrect element; misordering of elements” (Corder, 1973, p. 277). A deeper
description can be achieved through “assigning the items involved to the different
linguistic levels: orthographic/phonological, syntactic, and lexico-semantic”
(Corder, 1973, p. 278). A learner may use a correct semantic item, but choose its
wrong grammatical form, or a correct semantic item used in its correct grammatical
form may be spelt wrongly.
Table 4.5
Matrix for the classification of errors
Phonological/orthographical
Grammatical Lexical
OmissionAdditionSelectionOrdering
(Corder, 1973, p. 278)
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The errors of the post-graduate candidates’ were analysed and described using
Corder’s (1973) matrix for the classification of errors. This description was of great
significance for the later stages of this research study, in the construction of the
pedagogic corpus and the design of relevant tasks. It should be emphasized here that
the LAC was very rich in errors, and thus only some of them are exemplified here.
The most frequent content word in the LAC, ‘study’, occurs 128 times. The
examples given include the use of the item ‘study’ both as a verb and a noun. As
Table 4.6 below shows, the majority of errors were of syntactic and lexico-semantic
nature, and some required elements were omitted, incorrect elements were selected,
some redundant elements were added, and some elements were misordered. It needs
to be strongly emphasized here that ‘study’ is a GSL1 word, in other words, one of
the most common 1000 words in English. One might assume that students at this
level would not be expected to make mistakes with a GSL1 word. However, as
mentioned earlier, the use of words in academia may be quite different from that in
spoken discourse, or fiction, and thus treating the GSL words as ‘given’, and
focusing on the AWL words exclusively may result in gaps in the students’
knowledge.
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Table 4.6
Description of errors- ‘study’
Data from the LACPlausible reconstruction
by the researcherDescription of the error
This study applied in North Cyprus and the results can be different in other countries.’
This study was conducted in North Cyprus, and the results can be different in other countries
-Omission of a required element / syntactic-Selection of an incorrect element / lexico-semantic
Elements are thought to be study individually, within application in a building and the influence through the neighborhood buildings
Elements are thought to be studied individually …..
-Syntactic / Inflectional affix
In this thesis, the aim of the study is to understand the meaning of buildings through their form, space and functional organizations and relationships in the Persepolis complex and the cultural values behind that.
This study aims to explore the …
-Addition of some unnecessary element / lexico-semantic-Selection of an incorrect element / lexico-semantic
This study is to examine the relationship between emotional problems, alcohol and drug consumption and academic performance among Eastern Mediterranean University’s students (EMU).
The objective of this study is to examine …
-Omission of a required element / lexico-semantic
A study of various cultures’ architecture and relation to the climate and principles of sustainability will be analyzed.
The architecture of various cultures in relation to the climate and the principles of sustainability will be examined.
-Selection of an incorrect element / Addition of some unnecessary element / lexico-semantic-Misordering of elements / syntactic
Through the reflection of study about marketing communication role on alcohol consumption offers different perspective about evaluation of its role and effects on alcohol consumption.
Plausible interpretation not possible.
-Misordering of elements / syntactic-Coherence problem
‘Research’ is the second most frequent content word in the LAC. There can be no
doubt that the post-graduate candidates, who are deeply involved in research, know
the meaning of ‘research’ very well. Yet, as can be seen in Table 4.7, they have not
mastered the lexico-structural use of the word in an academic context. It can be said
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that although they knew the word semantically, they seemed not to have learnt the
‘grammar’ of the word ‘research’.
Table 4.7
Description of errors - ‘research’
Data from the LACPlausible reconstruction
by the researcherDescription of the error
Secondly, the buildings which are restored contrary to the Venice charter articles will be the result of this research.
the buildings …… will be the main focus of this research / This research will focus on the buildings which …
-Selection of an incorrect element / lexico-semantic
A comparative research is prepared in order to achieving the background of house owners, searching the rules of housing sites, looking throw city life and comparing the life of housing site with comparing two different characteristics of two sites, which are existed already, in different time periods.
This comparative research study is conducted in order to …
-Selection of an incorrect element / lexico-semantic-Omission of a required element / lexico-semantic
The online survey and Internet research is going to use in order to examine role of marketing communication tools in three different countries such as America,..
Plausible interpretation not possible.
-Omission of a required element / syntactic -Selection of an incorrect element / lexico-semantic
Studying climatological factors which are affecting hydrologic cycle was the main concern of so many research and studies.
…….so many research studies / so much research.
-Selection of an incorrect element / lexico-semantic / syntactic-Addition of some redundant element / lexico-semantic (research and studies)
The analysis of the data from the interviews with the previous course instructors, the
pre- and post- questionnaires from the students, the profiles of the participants’
written work, the sample student work, and the LAC revealed that the post-graduate
candidates were facing difficulties especially in creating meanings in a language that
was not their own. Therefore, it seemed crucial to compile a parallel corpus of the
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work of post-graduate students in English-speaking countries as a next step, in order
to observe how they used lexico-grammatical patterns to fulfil moves such as
identifying the research gap required in abstracts and theses. Their written
performance in terms of fulfilling the required moves was then compared with that
of the non-native post-graduate students studying and living in a non-English
speaking environment.
4.2.2 Analysis of the Target Abstract Corpus (the TAC)
In this section, the major lexico-structural patterns in the TAC are identified and
examined in detail. The target corpus is referred to as the TAC (Target Abstract
Corpus), as it is composed of theses abstracts that were the source of the target
lexico-structural patterns in this research. The abstracts in the TAC, all published on
the World Wide Web, were also produced by students, not ‘experts’. Flowerdew
(2000) draws attention to the importance of providing good ‘apprentice’ models
rather than ‘expert’ generic models, since expert models are more difficult to
replicate due to the likely communicative and linguistic deficiencies of learners.
The TAC was compiled from 4 main domains, namely Sciences, Social Sciences,
Architecture and Arts and Humanities. Each domain included 150 thesis or
dissertation abstracts, a total of 600 abstracts altogether. The downloaded files had
to be filtered using ‘Concordance’ software to eliminate the html formatting of the
data as all abstracts were obtained from the World Wide Web. The breakdown of
tokens according to the 4 domains (sub-corpora) was as follows:
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Table 4.8
The breakdown of the TAC into its 4 sub-corpora
Sciences Social Sciences ArchitectureArts &
HumanitiesTotal:
42,113 43,073 39,994 48,913 174,093
The table indicates that although the corpus was balanced in terms of the number of
abstracts, the Arts and Humanities sub-corpus had by far the highest number of
words. As the disciplines in the Arts and Humanities sub-corpus (Anthropology, Art
History, History, Language, Literature, Linguistics, Philosophy, Religion, Theology,
Psychology, Music, and Sociology) are dependent on verbal expression by nature,
this seems to be expected.
In the same way as the LAC, the TAC was put through the ‘frequency’ program
(http://www.vuw.ac.nz/lals/staff/paul-nation/nation.aspx) to identify the frequencies
in the whole corpus. The number of total tokens (individual words) in the TAC is
174,093, and the number of total types 15,425. The most frequent word in the TAC
is ‘the’. It occurs 12,550 times and accounts for 7.21 % of the whole corpus.
The analysis of the TAC demonstrated that 39.5 %, of the whole corpus was made
up of a mere 50 words. Of these 50 words, only 12 were content (lexical) words and
the others were all ‘function’ words. Hunston (2002, p. 3) discusses word
frequencies in corpora in detail and compares the first 50 words from three different
corpora, a corpus of politics dissertations, a corpus of materials science dissertations
and the 1998 Bank of English corpus, and she concludes that in the first 50,
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grammar words are more frequent than lexical words. In all the three corpora
compared, the first 6 most frequent words are the, of, to, and, a, and in. The TAC
findings are consistent with Hunston’s findings in that the first 6 most frequent
words in the TAC are the, of, and, to, in, and a, respectively.
In parallel with the analysis of the LAC, the function words in the TAC were then
filtered to provide a basis of comparison in the later stages of the data analysis. Of
the top 50 content words in the TAC, 60% (30 out of 50) come from the GSL,
followed by 34% (17 out of 50) from the AWL. It should again be emphasized that
60% is quite a high percentage, and very strongly confirms that some GSL words
acquire a different meaning and a different use when used in an academic context.
Not surprisingly, in the TAC, the most frequent content word was ‘study’ (a GSL
word) (667 times, 0.39%), as the corpus is highly academic in nature. There were
some subject-specific words occurring in the top 50 content words list. Some of
these were: architecture, architectural, social, cultural, political, etc. At this point
there was no need to filter these words since later in the research a word qualified
for inclusion in the target bank of lexico-structural items to achieve moves not only
in terms of frequency, but also with respect to the range of occurrence in the four
sub-corpora.
One interesting finding was the emergence of the word ‘new’ as the third most
frequent content word, occurring 377 times and the adjective ‘different’ occuring
172 times, as academic research, by definition, is expected to offer something ‘new’
and ‘different’ to the field. The analysis of the most frequent 50 content words also
indicated a high number of synonymous words used. For example, the top word
‘study’ may be frequently used interchangeably with the 2nd word ‘research’, the 6th
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frequent word ‘thesis’, the 23rd most frequent word ‘dissertation’ and even the 11th
word ‘project’. Likewise, ‘analysis’, ‘data’, and ‘information’ are all useful content
words which may convey a similar message. As the analysis developed, these
relationships took better shape.
In the second top 50 list, 66.66% (34 out of 51) of the words were from the GSL,
and 29.41% (15 out of 51) from the AWL. Relations of synonymy can also be
observed in the second 50 list. When the British National Corpus
(http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc/) is consulted, for example, it can be seen that the words
‘significant’, ‘important’ and ‘major’, which all appeared on the second 50 list, can
be used as synonyms within an academic context. To get a better insight into the
first 100 list, it was felt necessary to categorise the words according to their parts of
speech.
Table 4.9
The most frequent 100 content words in the TAC, categorized in terms of their parts of speech
Nouns Verbs Adjectives AdverbsSTUDY / STUDIES STUDY / STUDIES NEW WELLRESEARCH RESEARCH ONLY ONLYDESIGN DESIGN CULTURALANALYSIS DIFFERENTTHESIS PUBLICUSE USE ECONOMIC
USED / USING ARCHITECTURALMODEL MODEL URBANDEVELOPMENT DEVELOPED POLITICALPROJECT / PROJECTS PROJECTS SIGNIFICANTDATA IMPORTANTSYSTEM / SYSTEMS SOCIALRESULTS RESULTS ARCHAEOLOGICALPROCESS / PROCESSES
PROCESS / PROCESSES
PARTICULAR
INFORMATION HIGH WORK WORK VARIOUS
BASED LOCALDISSERTATION HUMANARCHITECTURE HISTORICAL
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Nouns Verbs Adjectives AdverbsTIME TIME MAJORCONSTRUCTIONBUILDING BUILDING APPROACH APPROACHPUBLICTHEORYCASEWORLDSTUDENTSROLEENVIRONMENTCHANGE / CHANGES CHANGE / CHANGES HISTORYCHAPTER ORDER ORDER
PROVIDE / PROVIDESCONTEXTPEOPLEMANAGEMENTFRAMEWORKSTRUCTURE STRUCTUREFACTORS LANDSCAPE LANDSCAPETECHNOLOGY
FOUNDUNDERSTANDING UNDERSTANDINGSPACEFORM FORMGROUP GROUP NATURERELATIONSHIP
EXAMINESLEVEL LEVELPART PARTCULTUREYEARS CONTROL CONTROLGOVERNMENTEVIDENCEPOWER POWER
INCLUDINGPERFORMANCEISSUES ISSUES PERIODPRACTICES PRACTICES (US)METHODSSTATE STATE ART KNOWLEDGECOMMUNITYPROBLEMSITE SITEEDUCATIONLIFENUMBER NUMBERAREAS
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The table indicates that most of the frequent words appearing in the target corpus
were nouns, followed by verbs, adjectives and adverbs. This would seem to suggest
that in academic discourse most meaning is conveyed through nouns. At this stage,
it is not clear whether some of the words were used as nouns or verbs, and therefore
these words were categorised as both nouns and verbs. However, the concordancing
program revealed the parts of speech in the future stages of the research in the
analysis of collocations, colligations, and lexico-structural patterns.
In order to examine the distribution of the GSL, the AWL, and the off-list words
used in the target corpus more clearly, it was necessary to look at the whole TAC
using RANGE.
Table 4.10
The distribution of the words in the TAC in terms of the GSL and the AWL
WORD LIST TOKENS/% TYPES/% FAMILIESOne (GSL 1) 113985/65.4
72658/17.23 938
Two (GSL 2) 8835/ 5.07 1208/ 7.83 575Three (AWL) 25695/14.76 1992/12.91 564not in the lists 25578/14.69 9567/62.02 Not ApplicableTotal 174,093 15,425 2,077
As indicated in Table 4.10, the target corpus made up of 174,093 words showed
variations in terms of ‘types’ and ‘tokens’. While 65.47 % of the tokens came from
GSL 1, this was only 17.23% as regards types. This means that a low number of the
most frequent words were very commonly used. On the other hand, the words that
do not occur in any list made up 14.69% of the tokens but constituted 62.02 % of the
types. These words are less frequent words which do not occur among the 2,570
words covered by the GSL, and the AWL. 14.76% of the tokens came from the
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Academic Word List. This is quite a high percentage but as the corpus is academic
in nature, this is hardly surprising. In terms of types, these academic words
constituted 12.91% of the whole target corpus. It should be stressed here yet again
that some GSL words acquire an academic meaning when used with certain other
words in an academic context, the “linguistic environment”, and especially the co-
text, “the other words on either side” (Sinclair, 1991, pp. 171-172).
The GSL and the AWL, if and when they are used together, are claimed to cover 85
to 90% of words (tokens) in academic text. Billuroglu & Neufeld (2005), as
mentioned earlier, claim that their list, the BNL, (Billuroglu & Neufeld List), is more
comprehensive and representative of the commonly used words in English. The list
claims to comprise 90 to 95% of tokens (not including proper nouns, acronyms or
abbreviations) in academic corpora (http://www.lextutor.ca/vp/tr/
BNL_Rationale.doc ). When the BNL was applied to the TAC, the following output
was obtained:
Table 4.11
The distribution of words in the TAC in terms of the BNL
WORD LIST TOKENS/% TYPES/% FAMILIESBNL 1 (function words) 70794/40.66 163/ 1.06 91BNL 2 38871/22.33 2049/13.28 636
BNL 3 11459/ 6.58 1141/ 7.40 416BNL 4 10785/ 6.19 851/ 5.52 314BNL 5 6781/ 3.90 796/ 5.16 305BNL 6 9100/ 5.23 1004/ 6.51 281BNL 7 2426/ 1.39 340/ 2.20 136not in the lists 23877/13.72 9081/58.87 Not ApplicableTotal 174093 15425 2179
As can be seen from the figures above, the BNL coverage of the target academic
corpus was higher than the GSL and the AWL combined together. Whereas the
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latter covered 85.3 % of tokens and 37.98 % in terms of types, the BNL comprised
86.28 % of tokens and 41.13 % of word types. However, the percentage of off-list
types was still high (58.87 %). The coverage of text by the GSL and the AWL was
85 to 90 % of actual words (tokens) and that of the BNL was 90 to 95 %.
Considering that tokens are not equal to types and a word like ‘the’ is repeated
12,550 times, it is worth exploring the off-list word list. One of the off-list words
which occurred in all the 4 sub-corpora and repeated 43 times in the TAC is ‘novel’.
28 out of these 43 times, ‘novel’ was used as an adjective meaning ‘new’, and
mostly used together with the nouns ‘approach’, ‘technique’ and ‘application’. If we
relied solely on word lists such as the GSL, the AWL and the BNL, the students
might not be able to encounter ‘novel’ and use it as an alternative to ‘new and
original’ in their academic writing. A search of the BNC in fact revealed that ‘novel’
appears 1,349 times in the academic sub-corpus of the BNC, and used with nouns
such as ‘problems’, ‘definition’, and ‘way’.
Another example is the ‘interview’ family. Although it is in the BNL band 5, this
family does not merit a place in the AWL. However, in academic writing, and
especially thesis writing, where research is reported, it is an extremely important
family in terms of methodological procedures. In the TAC, the family occurred 89
times as shown below:
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Table 4.12
The frequency of occurrence of the ‘Interview’ family in the TAC
Off-list wordSub-
corporaTotal Freq.
Arch. Sub-
corpus
Arts & Humanities Sub-corpus
SciencesSub-
corpus
SocialSciences
Sub-corpus
INTERVIEW 3 14 3 8 0 3INTERVIEWED 4 10 2 6 1 1INTERVIEWEES 2 2 0 1 0 1INTERVIEWERS 1 1 0 1 0 0INTERVIEWS 4 62 8 19 9 26
89 13 35 10 31
The other off-list word families that occurred in all the four sub-corpora quite
frequently were ‘database’ (17 times), ‘era’ (17 times), ‘discourse’ (103 times), and
‘dissertation’ (204 times). Especially noteworthy were the last two families:
‘discourse’ and ‘dissertation’. As regards ‘dissertation’, it is interesting that such a
frequent word in the academic register could not qualify for the AWL, or the BNL.
Considering that this word can mostly be interchangeably used with ‘thesis’, it
would be unfair to deprive students writing their theses of a synonym. The
‘discourse’ family, on the other hand, exhibited meaningful data. Although the word
itself and the family members occurred in the Architecture, the Arts and Humanities,
and the Social Sciences sub-corpora, they did not occur in the Sciences sub-corpus
even once, possibly due to the non-verbal requirements of this domain.
The analysis so far seems to suggest very strongly that wordlists such as GSL,
AWL, and BNL have their pedagogic merits. Yet, caution needs to be exercised with
them, as there are also extremely significant off-list words employed by different
genres and sub-genres. Therefore, it can be said that while wordlists certainly
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facilitate learning of vocabulary through progressively focusing on the most
frequently used words, they need to be supplemented by genre-based specialized
vocabulary at especially higher levels.
In this section, some words from the TAC were analysed in terms of the lexico-
grammatical patterns. The same words chosen for the LAC were focused on here as
well, and the examples presented were selected on the basis of the deficient patterns
in the LAC. As Table 4.13 shows, the examples indicated that the writers of the texts
in the TAC used the analysed words accurately, appropriately, and in a variety of
ways. Furthermore, the occurrence of less frequent words is easily observable.
Table 4.13
Lexico-grammatical patterns in the TAC- ‘study’, and ‘research’
Data from the TAC CommentWhile such deviant trademarks do not seem more likely to be abandoned or cancelled or to expire, further study suggests that trademarks that adhere most strictly to design norms are more likely to survive in use over time.
Selection of a correct element / lexico-semantic
This study presents a systematic approach for doing the latter by identifying the ICTs, technologyapplications and key sectors that most impact the internal digital divide in developing countries.
Correct ordering of elements / syntactic Use of a correct element / syntactic /
subject-verb agreement
The research is based on a model of systems adoption as a continuous process, and with the choices and decisions taken at an early stage with regard to technology having significant effects on the adoption across time.
Selection of a correct element / lexico-semantic
Correct ordering of elements / syntactic Use of a correct element / syntactic /
subject-verb agreement
This research is conducted as an effort to demonstrate the usefulness of the system dynamics models on the construction industry.
Selection of a correct element / lexico-semantic
Use of a correct element / syntactic / subject-verb agreement
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The analysis so far provided an outline of the LAC and the TAC compiled for this
study, and a rough profile of the writers in the two corpora. More comprehensive
data regarding competences and deficiencies were revealed when the two corpora
were compared and contrasted with each other.
4.2.3 Comparison of the LAC with the TAC
This section compares and contrasts the LAC with the TAC in terms of word
frequency, range, collocations, colligations and lexico-structural patterns in general.
This section is therefore of major significance, as the outcome of the analysis
formed the basis of the pedagogic corpus and the revised course.
It can be observed from the table (see Appendix I) that while the first 50 words of
the TAC made up 39.50% of the whole corpus, the percentage was higher for the
LAC, the first 50 words making up 42.79% of the whole corpus. This appears to
indicate that the writers in the LAC made more use of the same words more
frequently. Graph 4.1 displays the distribution of all the words in the two corpora
more clearly.
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Graph 4.1: The LAC and the TAC – Cumulative Percentages
Graph 4.1 indicates a striking difference between the LAC and the TAC in terms of
coverage. As can be observed, the whole LAC is covered by approximately 3,400
different words. However, more than 15,000 different words make up the TAC,
making it clear that the range of vocabulary used by the writers of the TAC is almost
five times as wide as that of the post-graduate writers of the LAC. It should be
remembered at this stage, however, that the corpora are not of equal sizes, and more
meaningful data are revealed when an equal size sample of the TAC is compared
with the LAC in the later stages of the research.
The first ten words in both corpora were all function words, which is consistent with
the pertinent literature. The most frequently used content word in both corpora was
the same: ‘study’. This word was at number 17 in the LAC, and at number 20 in the
TAC. The second most frequent word in the two corpora was also the same,
‘research’, appearing at number 25 in the LAC and 32 in the TAC. There was no
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observable difference between the LAC and the TAC in terms of the first 100 words.
Thus, it would be useful to compare the top 50 content words and then the second
most frequent 50 content words in the two corpora for more relevant data.
Table 4.14
Comparison of the top 50 content words in the LAC and the TAC
The LAC (21,575 words) The TAC (174,093 words)
Content Word
Fre
quen
cy
GS
L1
GS
L2
AW
L
Off
-lis
t
Content Word
GS
L1
GS
L2
AW
L
Off
-lis
t
STUDY 128 * STUDY 667 *RESEARCH 79 * RESEARCH 405 *USED 71 * NEW 377 *DESIGN 70 * ANALYSIS 335 *DIFFERENT 70 * DESIGN 320 *PEOPLE 65 * THESIS 317 *QUALITY 64 * USE 289 *ANALYSIS 58 * MODEL 283 *BUILDINGS 44 * USED 282 *PROBLEMS 44 * DEVELOPMENT 278 *SYSTEM 43 * PROJECT 271 *IMPORTANT 41 * SOCIAL 262 *ARCHITECTURE 40 * DATA 256 *METHODS 40 * SYSTEM 251 *RESULTS 39 * RESULTS 243 *USE 38 * USING 236 *NEW 37 * PROCESS 235 *TIME 37 * INFORMATION 227 *DATA 36 * WORK 226 *ORDER 35 * SYSTEMS 222 *CONSTRUCTION 34 * BASED 220 *CONCRETE 33 * CULTURAL 212 *MEDIA 33 * DISSERTATION 205 *THESIS 33 * ARCHITECTURE 190 *WORLD 33 * STUDIES 189 *MODEL 32 * TIME 188 *BUILDING 31 * CONSTRUCTION 187 *USING 31 * BUILDING 174 *COUNTRIES 30 * DIFFERENT 172 *MANAGEMENT 30 * APPROACH 171 *PROJECT 30 * PUBLIC 158 *WATER 30 * ECONOMIC 156 *PRESENT 29 * THEORY 155 *VALUE 28 * ARCHITECTURAL 152 *INFORMATION 27 * URBAN 151 *STUDENTS 27 * CASE 150 *
164
The LAC (21,575 words) The TAC (174,093 words)
Content Word
Fre
quen
cy
GS
L1
GS
L2
AW
L
Off
-lis
t
Content Word
GS
L1
GS
L2
AW
L
Off
-lis
t
ALCOHOL 26 * DEVELOPED 148 *VERNACULAR 26 * WORLD 148 *FACTORS 25 * STUDENTS 147 *LIFE 25 * WELL 146 *METHOD 25 * ROLE 146 *WAY 25 * ENVIRONMENT 144 *BASED 24 * CHANGE 136 *STUDIES 24 * HISTORY 136 *NEEDS 23 * CHAPTER 135 *CLIENT 22 * ORDER 134 *COST 22 * PROVIDE 133 *PART 22 * CONTEXT 131 *SOCIETY 22 * PEOPLE 130 *AIM 21 * POLITICAL 129 *CITY 21 * PROJECTS 129 *
The data indicated that although the two lists included quite a number of common
words, 67.24% of the top 50 words in the LAC came from the GSL, and
approximately 24% from the AWL, whereas 60% of the top 50 content words in the
TAC came from the GSL, followed by 34% from the AWL. This means that the
post-graduate candidates taking ENGL501 made more use of the GSL and less of
the AWL. The data from the TAC, however, revealed that the writers of the TAC
made more use of academic words in their work, and used quite a number of
synonymous words evident in even the list of fifty words. ‘Study’, ‘research’,
‘thesis’, ‘dissertation’ and even ‘project’ can all be used to refer to some kind of
product in research. Two other synonymous threads that can be observed are
‘analysis / data / information’ and ‘model / design’. The use of synonymy occurred,
but at a lesser extent in the LAC. One noteworthy observation regarding the LAC is
that words like ‘process’, ‘theory’, ‘context’, and ‘framework’, which are very
165
important in describing the methodology in research, did not occur within the top 50
words.
Table 4.15
Comparison of the second top 50 content words in the LAC and the TAC
The LAC (21,575 words) The TAC (174,093 words)
Content Word
Fre
quen
cy
GS
L1
GS
L2
AW
L
Off
-lis
t
Content Word
GS
L1
GS
L2
AW
L
Off
-lis
t
CULTURE 20 * MANAGEMENT 128 *HIGH 20 * SIGNIFICANT 128 *MUSIC 20 * IMPORTANT 124 *PROCESS 20 * FRAMEWORK 124 *RESULT 20 * STRUCTURE 124 *STRUCTURES 20 * FACTORS 123 *TELEVISION 20 * LANDSCAPE 123 *BETTER 19 * TECHNOLOGY 122 *CULTURAL 19 * FOUND 121 *ELEMENTS 19 * CHANGES 119 *FIND 19 * UNDERSTANDING 119 *MAIN 19 * PROVIDES 118 *PAPER 19 * SPACE 118 *PROBLEM 19 * FORM 117 *SECTOR 19 * GROUP 117 *STRUCTURE 19 * NATURE 117 *CONTROL 18 * RELATIONSHIP 117 *EFFECTS 18 * EXAMINES 114 *FORM 18 * LEVEL 113 *GOVERNMENT 18 * PROCESSES 113 *RELATIONSHIP 18 * PART 112 *
SYSTEMS 18*
ARCHAEOLOGICAL 109
*
TECHNIQUES 18 * CULTURE 108 *APPLIED 17 * YEARS 107 *ARCHITECTURAL 17 * CONTROL 105 *CASE 17 * PARTICULAR 105 *CONSUMPTION 17 * GOVERNMENT 103 *COSTS 17 * EVIDENCE 103 *DEVELOPMENT 17 * POWER 102 *ECONOMY 17 * HIGH 100 *INTERNET 17 * INCLUDING 100 *MARKET 17 * VARIOUS 100 *SOLUTION 17 * PERFORMANCE 100 *WELL 17 * ISSUES 100 *ATTENTION 16 * PERIOD 100 *CARPET 16 * PRACTICES 98 *DUE 16 * METHODS 98 *
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The LAC (21,575 words) The TAC (174,093 words)
Content Word
Fre
quen
cy
GS
L1
GS
L2
AW
L
Off
-lis
t
Content Word
GS
L1
GS
L2
AW
L
Off
-lis
t
ENVIRONMENT 16 * STATE 97 *HAND 16 * ART 96 *HISTORY 16 * KNOWLEDGE 96 *LIKE 16 * LOCAL 95 *MARKETING 16 * COMMUNITY 95 *NUMBER 16 * PROBLEM 94 *PERFORMANCE 16 * SITE 94 *PERIOD 16 * EDUCATION 93 *PRINCIPLES 16 * HUMAN 92 *PROJECTS 16 * HISTORICAL 90 *TERMS 16 * LIFE 90 *TEXTBOOKS 16 * NUMBER 90 *TRADE 16 * AREAS 90 *
In the LAC, 65.79% of the second 50 content words were from the GSL, followed
by 25.86% from the AWL. In the TAC, 66.66% of these words were from the GSL,
and 29.41% from the AWL. Again the percentage of the use of academic words was
higher in the TAC than in the LAC. However, as previously stated, some GSL
words gain academic meanings when used with certain other words in an academic
context.
Relations of synonymy could also be observed in the second 50 list. For example,
the synonymous words ‘significant’, ‘important’ and ‘major’ appeared on the TAC
second 50 list. The LAC second 50 most frequently used words list included two
very common words (‘television’ and ‘internet’) which are off-list, as the GSL was
compiled in 1953. The Billuroglu-Neufeld List (BNL), however, attempted to reflect
the nature of English according to the second half of the 20 th century, through
eliminating words like ‘shilling’ which are no longer common, and including words
like ‘television’, ‘internet’ which are in frequent use in the modern era. Having
167
looked at the top 100 words in the two corpora, it was also worthwhile to consider
the two corpora as a whole. RANGE software was used to observe the comparative
distribution of the GSL, the AWL, and the off-list words used in the LAC and the
TAC.
Table 4.16
Comparison of the LAC and TAC distribution- the GSL and the AWL
The LAC The TAC
WORD LIST TOKENS/% TYPES/%FAMILIE
STOKENS/% TYPES/%
FAMILIES
one (GSL1)15489/71.79
1393/40.34 712 113985/65.47
2658/17.23
938
two (GSL2) 1196/ 5.54
395/11.44 246 8835/ 5.07
1208/ 7.83
575
three (AWL) 2793/12.95
750/21.72 388 25695/14.76
1992/12.91
564
not in the lists (off-list)
2097/ 9.72
915/26.50 *NA 25578/14.69
9567/62.02
*NA
Total 21575 3453 1346 174093 15425 2077
*NA: Not Applicable The RANGE program (http://www.vuw.ac.nz/lals/staff/paul-nation/nation.aspx) cannot calculate word families of off-list words as these words do not appear in any of the three lists. (General Service List 1, General Service List 2 and Academic Word List)
The table indicates that the post-graduate candidates used the most common 1000
words (GSL 1) more frequently both in terms of types and tokens. Similarly, the
percentage of the next most common 1,000 words (GSL 2) was higher in the LAC.
This means that in the LAC the most common 2,000 words are more often used.
However, the writers in the TAC made more use of the word families in the GSL.
One interesting finding indicated by the above profile is that the post-graduate
students taking ENGL501 used quite a high percentage of academic word types.
However, careful scrutiny of the data revealed that the use of the academic words in
the LAC was restricted to only 388 families, whereas the writers of the TAC
exploited 564 families from the academic word list. If we consider that the total
number of word families in the AWL is 570, this is quite significant.
168
The types of words which do not appear in any of the three lists (the off-list words)
are much more frequent in the TAC (62.02%), as opposed to 26.50% in the LAC.
This may indicate that the writers in the LAC tend to use the most common words
more frequently, while the writers in the TAC exploit a variety of words. The table
thus suggests that the post-graduate writers involved in research in English-speaking
countries did not solely rely on the most commonly used 2,570 word families, but
instead made use of more sophisticated words that were not on any of the lists. This
is demonstrated by the fact that 62.02% of the types of words used in the TAC did
not appear in either the GSL or the AWL. The LAC and the TAC also need to be
compared with respect to the BNL, which is argued to have a higher coverage of any
given written text than the GSL and the AWL used together.
Table 4.17
Comparison of the LAC and the TAC distribution according to the BNL
The LAC The TAC
WORD LIST TOKENS/% TYPES/%FAMILIE
STOKENS/% TYPES/%
FAMILIES
BNL 1** 9289/43.05 130/ 3.76 86 70794/40.66 163/ 1.06
91
BNL 2 5828/27.01 1073/31.07 519 38871/22.33 2049/13.28
636
BNL 3 1462/ 6.78 458/13.26 238 11459/ 6.58 1141/ 7.40
416
BNL 4 1176/ 5.45 316/ 9.15 172 10785/ 6.19 851/ 5.52
314
BNL 5 797/ 3.69 259/ 7.50 154 6781/ 3.90 796/ 5.16
305
BNL 6 968/ 4.49 313/ 9.06 159 9100/ 5.23 1004/ 6.51
281
BNL 7 289/ 1.34 102/ 2.95 68 2426/ 1.39 340/ 2.20
136
not in the lists (off-list)
1766/ 8.19 802/23.23 *NA 23877/13.72 9081/58.87
*NA
Total 21575 3453 1396 174093 15425 2179
*NA: The RANGE program (http://www.vuw.ac.nz/lals/staff/paul-nation/nation.aspx) cannot calculate word families of off-list words as these words do not appear in any of the three lists. (General Service List 1, General Service List 2 and Academic Word List) **BNL1 – function words.
Table 4.17 shows that more words from both the LAC and the TAC appeared in the
seven sub-lists of the BNL, which is consistent with the claim. The LAC population
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used 1,396 of the 2709 word families in the BNL as opposed to 2,179 word families
employed by the target population. The percentage of the off-list word types in the
TAC was still high when the BNL was used. It should be kept in mind that words
like ‘dissertation’, ‘discourse’, ‘encompass’, ‘interview’, ‘novel’, ‘manifest’ and
‘era’, which are abundant in the TAC, and which are commonly used in academic
texts, are all off-list words in the GSL and the AWL. Of these words, ‘interview’
and ‘novel’ are in the BNL, while ‘dissertation’, ‘discourse’, ‘encompass’,
‘manifest’ and ‘era’ are off-list. These words are quite important as ‘novel’ is a
synonym for ‘new, original’, ‘encompass’ for ‘include’, ‘manifest’ for ‘demonstrate,
show’ and ‘era’ for ‘period’. It should be noted here that of these frequently used
words, ‘discourse’ occurs only once in the LAC and ‘era’, ‘novel’, and ‘encompass’
none at all. It seems obvious that, unlike the writers in the LAC, the TAC writers’
use of the language goes beyond what is offered by wordlists. Insufficient lexico-
grammatical range resulting in difficulty for the post-graduate candidates in finding
synonyms when producing their own text was also confirmed by the data from the
student questionnaires, where the students complained that this deficiency caused
them to employ the same words repeatedly in their writing. Having identified that
the TAC writers’ lexico-structural range was beyond wordlists, it would be valuable
to see which of the most frequent off-list words in the TAC also occurred in the
LAC.
170
Table 4.18
Comparison of the off-list word families in the TAC and the LAC
Word Family(only the headwords presented)
FREQUENCY IN THE TAC FREQUENCY IN THE LAC
DISSERTATION 204 13OBJECTIVES 18 2
NOVEL 45 0COLLABORATE 44 2
CORRELATE 28 2DEMOGRAPHY 31 2ENTERPRISE 27 0
HYBRID 30 1LANDSCAPE 146 9LARGE-SCALE 23 0LONG-TERM 25 3MANIFEST 25 0MOBILE 49 0NEGOTIATE 40 0QUANTITATIVE 49 10QUESTIONNAIRE 28 13REFERENCE 44 1URBAN 151 5REFORM 48 0SPATIAL 67 1SYNTHESIS 38 0
The table very clearly shows that the majority of the off-list words exploited by the
target population were almost non-existent in the LAC. This picture seems to
suggest that word lists need to be supplemented by data and genre-based lists of
words and lexico-grammatical patterns to widen and enrich the post-graduate
candidates’ range of productive knowledge and thus, use of lexico-grammar. If the
same example ‘novel’ is considered again, the data confirmed that the post-graduate
students did not use this word even once. Yet, ‘novel’ is a useful word which can be
used synonymously with ‘new’ and ‘original’, and the post-graduate candidates
taking ENGL501 would benefit from using such words in their theses. To examine
the lexico-grammatical performance of the post-graduate writers in the LAC and the
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TAC, it is necessary to compare the two corpora in terms of collocations,
colligations, and lexico-grammatical patterns in general.
Table 4.19
Comparison of the TAC and the LAC – collocates of ‘study’ (one left, one right)
The TAC The LACAdjectives study (n) Verbs Adjectives study (n) VerbsarchaeologicalarchitecturalCaseCash-flowclosecomparativecomprehensivecorpus-basedcross-culturalcurrentdetaileddisciplinedempiricalethnoarchaeologicalethnographicexperimentalexploratoryFieldfurtherin-depthindependentintensiveinterdisciplinarylongitudinalmainoriginalpilotpreliminarypresentpreviousqualitativeresearchretrospectiveserioussocialspecial
addsaddressesaims/aimedanalyzes/analyzedappliesarguesarisesassessed/assessesassumesattemptsbeganbringsclaimsclarifiescombinescomparescomplementsconcludesconducted/conductsconsidered/considersconsisted/consistingconstitutescontributescorroboratescoversdemonstrate/demonstrated/demonstratesdescribesdeterminesdevelopsdiscerns discussesemphasizesemployedencompassenhancesestablish/establishedexamined/examinesexplores/exploredextendsfailedfeatured
casedescriptivedocumentsexperimentalfieldpresenttime
aimsappliedarguesattemptsbasedcan / couldconsistsdevelopsexaminesexploresfocusfoundhasindicate / indicatesinvestigatesis/was/are/wereofferspreferredprovidesresultstriesshowed/shownsuggestwill
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The TAC The LACAdjectives
study (n)Verbs Adjectives
study (n)Verbs
fillsfinds/foundfocuseshad/hasillustrateinclude/includesindicated/indicatesinitiatedinvestigated/investigatesinvolvinglastingmaymeasurednotedofferspickspositspresentsproducedprojectpropose/proposesprovide/provides/providingrecognizedredesignrefersregressedreliedrepresentsresulted/resultsrevealssampleseeksshouldshow/showed/showssoughtstartssuggest/suggestssupport/supportstakestechniquetendteststracesused/usesvalidateswas/were
The table clearly indicates the difference of the range of vocabulary as regards
adjectival and verbal collocates of only one word, ‘study’. Both in terms of
173
adjectives and verbs used with ‘study’, the TAC was very rich and varied, achieving
different functions and moves. The collocation ‘study employed’ is most probably
used to talk about the methodological procedures, while ‘study reveals’ was
employed to report findings. In the same vein, ‘original study’, ‘pilot study’, and
‘interdisciplinary study’ have their specific functions, uses, and therefore messages.
Compared to the TAC, the data showed that the adjectival and verbal collocates of
‘study’ in the LAC lacked variety, and sophistication. In contrast to the 36 adjectives
used in the TAC to modify ‘study’, in the LAC these modifiers were only 7. The
difference in the range of the verbs used with ‘study’ in the two corpora was much
greater as can be seen in table 4.20. As regards the collocates of ‘studied’ in pre-
position, a similar difference can again be observed between the TAC and the LAC.
Table 4.20
Comparison of the TAC and the LAC – collocates of ‘studied’ (pre-position)
The LAC The TAC
be/ been/ was/ ishasnot
is /was/be/were/are/beenhasnotalso
activelycarefully
commonlypreviously
wellwidely
studied
According to Table 4.20, the TAC again exhibited wider variety in terms of
collocates of ‘studied’ in the pre-position. One striking difference, as can be seen
from the data, was how adverbs were commonly used to modify the participle form
of the verb ‘studied’ by the writers in the TAC. In the LAC, however, the participle
174
form, ‘studied’ was not modified by an adverb at all in pre-position. Therefore, it is
clear that relevant input and practice needs to be an essential component of the
pedagogic corpus, the construction of which is the ultimate aim of this study.
So far, the differences between the TAC and the LAC were explored at individual
word level, and in terms of the collocates of words. The following table compares
the lexical item ‘result’ in the TAC with the LAC at the lexico-grammatical level.
Table 4.21
Comparison of the TAC and the LAC – Lexico-grammatical patterns (result)
The LAC The TACRESULT
the result will be …… As a result, (linking device)as a result of ……. as a result of both …….the result expected from …. can result in the …….will be the result of this… were not only the result of … but also almost
certainly a consequence of ….*if no result … can result from a ………the result of the study will …… is often the most favorable result of ……..*no special result could … as the unexpected result of ………..*leads to very helpful result The result is a description of …….*The result shown that … The principal result is that ……..*to show the result of thedissertation.
is not so much a result of ….. as ……..
*were listed according to result of the questionnaire.
A major result of this studyshows that ……
*According to question 7 result, participants agreed that …
One important result is the lack of ……….
As a result, … This last result has implications for …..ingThis result is surprising because the common perception in the literature is that …….This finding contradicts the expected result, which is that …….A 'case result format' presents the results of the …..There is a dual result.Another result is the proposal for ………This result is due mainly tothe ……, as opposed to …..Conclusions result from published studies in ….; from research conducted in the 1980s concerning …….; and from experience in ……. that has been in continual operation online since …….…. and often result in ……The result is a multiplicity of different and in some cases contradictory….. approaches.
175
The LAC The TAC
RESULT one interesting empirical result of the research was that ………..This result has broad implications for … research.
Table 4.21 needed to be analysed in detail, so that a clearer and more comprehensive
picture could be offered on the differences between the LAC and the TAC as regards
lexico-grammatical patterns employed by their corresponding populations. As the
data show, the writers of the LAC used the item ‘result’ in 13 different lexico-
grammatical patterns. Of these, 7 were used inaccurately. These inaccurate
realisations of the item were dealt with individually. The first pattern, ‘if no result’,
seemed to have no agent, and therefore did not convey the intended message. The
second pattern, ‘no special result could …’, was problematic as ‘special’ and ‘result’
are not good collocates, and this collocation does not occur even once in either the
1,007,000 word British National Corpus (BNC Written)
(http://www.lextutor.ca/concordancers/wwwassocwords.pl), or the 1,000,000 Brown
Corpus (http://www.lextutor.ca/concordancers/www assocwords.pl). The third
pattern, ‘leads to very helpful result’, was problematic in two ways. Firstly, the item
‘result’ either needs to have the determiner ‘a’, or needs to be plural ‘results’. The
second problem is that ‘helpful’ is not a common collocate of ‘result’. According to
the BNC Written, some of the collocates of ‘result’ in the pre-position are ‘main’,
‘major’, ‘inevitable’, ‘overall’, ‘probable’, ‘important’, ‘significant’, ‘powerful’,
‘direct’, ‘useful’, and ‘expected’ (http://www.lextutor.ca/concordancers
/wwwassocwords.pl).
Another inaccurate lexico-grammatical pattern was ‘The result shown that …’. In
spite of the fact that the GSL 1 word ‘show’ is very commonly used, and
encountered during the initial stages of language learning, the past tense of the verb
176
was inaccurately formed. ‘To show the result of the dissertation’ sounds odd, as
generally researchers discuss the result of the research or the study, but not of the
dissertation, or the thesis. Although it does not lead to the breakdown of
communication, another flawed lexico-grammatical structure was ‘were listed
according to result of the questionnaire’. A determiner (the), and the plural form of
‘result’ are necessary to make the message more comprehensible. The last pattern
that sounds unnatural was ‘according to question 7 result, participants agreed
that…’. The problem is related to the formation of the noun phrase ‘the results of
question 7’, or at least ‘question 7 results’. In some languages, including Turkish,
which is the mother tongue of 40% of the participants, noun phrases are formed by
putting the head noun after the modifying noun. Thus, this inaccurate use may be
due to the first language influence for some post-graduate candidates.
When the lexico-grammatical patterns used by the writers of the TAC were
analysed, however, it could be observed that the target population used ‘result’ in a
range of structures, and as different parts of speech. The most striking difference
was that in the TAC, ‘result’ was used abundantly as a verb to show causal
relationships, ‘result in’ to refer to an effect, and ‘result from’ to indicate a cause.
This use was non-existent in the LAC. Another major dissimilarity was the use of
‘result’ in accurate and appropriate lexico-grammatical patterns in the TAC. One of
these was ‘a result having implications’, another was ‘a finding contradicting an
expected result’. The adjectives ‘favorable’, ‘principal’ and ‘unexpected’ were
accurately and appropriately used to modify ‘result’. Furthermore, in the TAC, the
word ‘result’ was employed with more complex structures such as ‘were not only
the result of … but also almost certainly a consequence of …. ‘, ‘The principal result
is that ……..’ and ‘This result is due mainly to the ……, as opposed to …..’.
177
The findings revealed by the analysis of the abundant data unquestionably point to
the fact that the abstracts in the LAC exhibit a more limited range of vocabulary, and an
apparently more limited productive knowledge of the collocations and colligations of
even relatively common items, resulting in difficulty for the writers in coherent and
appropriate academic text. Therefore, the last section of this chapter describes the
construction of the pedagogic corpus, and the integration of the corpus-informed
data and tasks focusing on the lexico-structural patterns required to achieve, with
accuracy and appropriacy, specific moves in abstracts, and in thesis writing in
general. The pedagogic corpus and its components are envisaged to enhance the
learning outcomes, and to assist the non-native post-graduate candidates living in a
non-English speaking environment in producing coherent and appropriate academic
text.
4.2.3.1 Comparison of the LAC with an equal-sized TAC
The data analysis demonstrated that the post-graduate students’ written work
compiled in the LAC exhibited a more limited range of vocabulary, and an
apparently more limited productive knowledge of lexico-grammatical patterns
commonly used in thesis writing. Yet, one factor affecting the data might be that the
two corpora were not of equal size, 100 abstracts in the LAC as opposed to 600 in
the TAC. The rationale for having a larger TAC was to be able to derive as many
alternative lexico-grammatical patterns as possible for the fulfilment of sub-moves
and moves required in abstract writing, and thesis writing in general. It seemed
imperative, at this point, however, to reduce the TAC to the size of the LAC by
taking a random 25 abstracts from each sub-corpus in the TAC, making the two
corpora precisely equal in size (both comprising 100 abstracts). The objective is to
178
compare the lexical range of the two writer categories more objectively, and to
further substantiate the finding that there is in fact a gap between what the post-
graduate students can actually produce, and what they are expected to produce.
Graph 4.2 below compares the two parallel corpora composed of the work of post-
graduate EFL students writing theses in a non English-speaking country, and those
students writing them in English-speaking countries.
Graph 4.2: Comparison of the LAC with a relative sample of the TAC
As can be observed, the graph clarifies the difference between the LAC and the
TAC, and further strengthens the existence of the already identified gap. The post-
graduate writers of the TAC used 5,206 different words in producing their abstracts,
in contrast to the 3,392 different words used by the post-graduate students studying
at the Eastern Mediterranean University. Considering that the two corpora were
179
exactly equal in size, in terms of the number of abstracts, these figures point to a
difference of 1,814 more words used in the TAC, which is a substantial disparity.
The examination of these two equal-sized corpora, in terms of the number of
abstracts, yielded information not only on the extent of the gap, but also the
composition of the gap. Graph 4.2 also shows the text coverage in the two corpora.
According to the graph, 95% of all the text produced in the LAC was covered by
2,311 words. In contrast, in the TAC, 3,798 different words made up 95% of the
text. More strikingly, in the LAC, a mere 500 different words were used to produce
72.24% of the text. If this figure is compared with the TAC, it is observed that 500
words made up 63.87% of the text. All the data seem to substantiate the fact that the
non-native post-graduate students at EMU used the most common words of English
very frequently in writing their theses, and that their lexical range was quite limited,
compared with post-graduate students writing their theses in English-speaking
countries.
As for the word families used in the equal-sized corpora, a variation can yet again be
observed. It should be remembered at this point that the six content word bands of
the BNL are ordered according to the frequency of occurrence of word families,
band 1 including the most common ones. When the BNL word families were used
to compare the two corpora, it was clear that the writers in the TAC made more use
of the six content word families. The bar graph below provides comprehensive data
regarding this observation.
180
Graph 4.3: Comparison of the LAC and the TAC in terms of BNL2709 word
families
According to Graph 4.3, the function words of English (BNL, Band 1) were used
equally in the two corpora. Similarly, the word families in Band 2 (the first band of
content words), which are the most frequently used word families in English, were
almost equal. After Band 3 (the second band of content words), however, the content
family words used in the LAC were consistently lower than those in the TAC.
Finally, when the totals are analyzed, it can be seen that the post-graduate students at
EMU used 200 fewer word families of the BNL. It is important to emphasize that
this difference was not in terms of word tokens, or word types, but word families.
Just to give an example, the family members, or the word types of the headword
‘amend’ in the sixth band are ‘amended’, ‘amending’, ‘amendment’, ‘amendments’,
and ‘amends’. The data can be analyzed even further to observe the difference in
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terms of the word types in these families. The bar graph below shows the broad
dissimilarity:
Graph 4.4: Comparison of the LAC and the TAC in terms of BNL2709 word
types
Graph 4.4 indicates that the disparity in terms of word types is even more
significant. From the first band of the BNL, 1,306 word types were used in the TAC,
as opposed to 1,124 word types in the LAC. The figures were all lower for the LAC
in all the six bands, and the gap gets wider, in each band considering that the number
of word types decreases as the bands go up. For instance, compared to the 504 word
families in Band 2, the number of families in Band 5 is 392, and in Band 6, 186. The
case of off-list words was also quite striking. The TAC included 1,843 off-list word
types, while in the LAC, the number of off-list word types was 697. This means that
the TAC includes more than twice as many word types as the LAC. Considering that
off-list words are less frequent and more specialized words, it can safely be
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concluded that the post-graduate students studying in English speaking countries
have a wider productive knowledge of less frequent, and more specialized words.
Graph 4.4 therefore confirms that the LAC is quite poor in terms of the types of
words employed, 3,453 word types in contrast to the 5,346 different types of words
in the TAC. The data from the two graphs (4.3 and 4.4) seem to suggest that the
problem of the post-graduate students studying at EMU stems from the insufficient
productive knowledge of the word types belonging to different families, and the
resulting inability to exploit these different types. This can be more clearly observed
in Table 4.22 below:
Table 4.22
Comparison of the LAC and the TAC in terms of BNL2709 bands and word types
Types TAC LAC
one 134 133
two 1306 1124
three 583 464
four 462 349
five 406 274
six 477 317
seven 135 95
not in the lists 1843 697
Total 5346 3453
As stated earlier, the use of different function words (Band 1) in the two corpora is
almost exactly the same. The discrepancy is observed in all the content word bands,
and the gap gets larger as the bands go up. If Band five is considered, for instance,
the figures show that 406 different words from this band are used in the TAC,
compared to 274 in the LAC. The analysis of the word types and the word families
provides in-depth data on the words exploited in the TAC as opposed to the LAC. A
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very good example is the case of the head word ‘constitute’. In the whole LAC, this
word is used only as ‘constituent’, whereas in the TAC, the following three types of
the word are utilized: ‘constituents’, ‘constitutes’, and ‘constitutive’. A list of all the
family headwords used in both corpora, together with the word types employed in
each corpus is provided in Appendix J.
The analysis of the equal-sized LAC and the TAC further substantiated the existence
of the gap. The post-graduate students’ written work compiled in the LAC exhibited
a more limited range of vocabulary, and a more limited productive knowledge of
lexico-grammatical patterns commonly used in thesis writing. The comparison of
the two corpora of equal size added further insights into the depth and composition
of the gap. One major finding was that the problem seemed to stem significantly
from the fact that the post-graduate students studying at EMU had insufficient
knowledge of the different types of words in each word family, or their knowledge
of these words did not extend to the productive level. The next section focuses on
the construction of a pedagogic corpus, which comprises various corpus-informed
components, that is envisaged to provide a lexico-grammatical roadmap and assist
the post-graduate students studying at EMU in thesis writing.
4.3 Constructing a Pedagogic Corpus for Thesis Writing
This section focuses on what the cross-examination of the two corpora necessitates
in terms of the comprehensive pedagogic corpus design. Therefore, this part
concentrates on the contribution of this research study to the research field.
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4.3.1 The development of the TAC (Target Abstract Corpus) Wordlist
The data from the LAC and the TAC, as well as the comparison of the LAC and the
TAC, reveal that the post-graduate writers of the LAC exploited a restricted range of
vocabulary in writing their thesis. In addition, although they generally know words
in isolation, they have problems using them together with other words accurately
and appropriately. In other words, they seem to be lacking lexico-structural
competence. The assumption is, therefore, that students at this level have prior
knowledge and should know the most common words in English, although
sometimes they are still not able to use some of these words accurately or
appropriately. This may be due to the fact that the use of quite a large number of
very commonly used words (e.g ‘study’, a GSL1 word) necessitates the company of
different words when used in academic texts. Taking this into account, some actions
were taken.
Firstly, one of the major differences between the TAC and the LAC was a quite
wide range of expression in the TAC as opposed to the restricted range in the LAC
as exhibited by the output of the quantitative as well as the qualitative analysis.
Thus, the pedagogic corpus needed to provide a variety of patterns to enable the
post-graduate students to express similar concepts in a variety of ways. At the same
time, the pedagogic corpus had to be fairly restricted and economical, as the
teaching-learning process is bound by space and time and the objective is to fulfill a
set of pre-defined learning objectives in a limited time frame. In addition, it needed
to be constructed on the basis of the most frequently communicated meanings in the
TAC. Teubert (2005) emphasizes the fact that corpus linguistics focuses on meaning
and adds that “meaning is what is being verbally communicated between the
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members of a discourse community” (p. 2). Moreover, the patterns also needed to be
selected on the basis that they were fundamental to the realization of specific
strategies, tactics or sub-moves that make up the required academic moves in
abstract writing in specific, and thesis writing in general.
As mentioned in the earlier sections of this study, abstracts, like other genres
reporting research, have an IMRD (Introduction-Method-Results-Discussion)
structure (Swales, 1990, p.181). What is significant is that these moves recur
throughout thesis and research writing in general. Therefore, abstracts act as a
miniature of the academic research genre as a whole, which makes them a powerful
and useful research and teaching device in general. A close look at thesis abstracts
reveals that the IMRD pattern in abstracts seems to have the following 4 moves and
some corresponding sub-moves to achieve the required moves:
Introduction: An overview of the field/The establishment of a research gap
that justifies the need for the research to be conducted and its likely value
and significance to the field in general/A statement of aims and objectives;
Method: The research methodology, data collection techniques, and
references to data;
Results: The analysis of the results;
Discussion: Conclusions, evaluation, implications, recommendations.
As stated, it was fundamental to the design of the AAC (Academic Abstract Corpus)
Bank of Moves that a limited bank of lexico-structural patterns was created that
would enable the post-graduate students to accomplish these moves in abstracts, and
in the reporting of research in general, coherently and appropriately. It was
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significant to ensure that the use of this limited bank of patterns would assist
students at the post-graduate level with thesis writing specifically, and academic
writing in general.
Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used for the analysis of the data in
the construction of the AAC Bank. For range and frequency, the RANGE software
(http://www.vuw.ac.nz/lals/staff/paul-nation/nation.aspx) was used. To analyze
collocations and colligations, word clusters, and lexico-structural patterns in general,
Concordance software (http://www.concordancesoftware.co.uk/) and AntConc
(http://www.antlab.sci.waseda.ac.jp/software.html) were utilized. Additionally,
some decisions based on insights from the BNC (the British National Corpus),
(http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc) were made in the selection and categorization of the
data, which would eventually form the basis of the AAC Bank, the core of the
pedagogic corpus. Thus, the selection and the categorization of the data were carried
out fairly qualitatively. It should again be pointed out that one important
consideration for corpus-based approaches is that the analyses should go beyond
simple counts of linguistic features, and include qualitative, functional
interpretations of quantitative patterns (Biber et al., 1998, pp. 4-5). The construction
of the AAC Bank is described below step by step.
After the target corpus was quantitatively analyzed for frequency and range, a
number of filtering devices were employed to reduce the corpus to a manageable
size. Some of this work, such as the elimination of all function words, was carried
out automatically. Items also had to appear in all four sub-corpora to qualify for
inclusion, unless there was a valid reason to include them. Then, more qualitative
decisions had to be made regarding the membership of the words in the 4 major
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moves in the IMRD pattern. Keeping in mind that the ultimate aim was constructing
a pedagogic corpus as opposed to a research corpus whose reliability depends on the
wealth of data, the selection of words for the AAC Bank was made in the most
economical way possible. Therefore, the first step involved the identification of a
highly restricted but key set of individual word families used in abstract writing. The
behavior of these items then had to be examined in terms of collocations and
colligations to identify a key set of lexico-structural patterns used in abstract and
thesis writing. These patterns then had to be related to the moves involved in the
structure of abstracts, and the thesis as a whole. The final product had to be further
developed through comparison with the LAC, so that the final version would be
attending to the identified needs of the post-graduate candidates to the greatest
possible extent.
The selection of the most frequent words could have been easily carried out on the
basis of the word frequencies in the TAC. However, this would mean that the data
would be deprived of word family frequencies. The use of wordlists, on the other
hand, enables the observation of family frequencies in corpora. Furthermore, as
previously mentioned, some GSL words are very commonly used in academic texts,
and the separation of the most frequent words as GSL and AWL, despite its
convenience, may be problematic in the long run. Gilguin, Granger and Paquot
(2007, p. 324) point out that “Coxhead’s (2000) Academic Word List does not
include the 2,000 most common English words, with which non-native writers may
still have considerable difficulties, especially in cases where their use in academic
writing differs from their habitual use”. Paquot (2007) also challenges “the widely
used criterion of non-appearance in the GSL for the selection of EAP vocabulary”.
The selection, therefore, was based on the GSL and the AWL, so that data could be
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obtained on which GSL word families were used abundantly in academic texts, and
how.
The GSL 1 comprises the most frequent 1,000 words accounting for some 70%
(http://www.lextutor.ca/research) of all running text in English, and is composed of
the lexical items that appear in most genres of language use, and are most likely to
be known by an advanced group of students. GSL 1 and GSL 2 words are the ones
that advanced post-graduate students are most likely to have encountered, learned
and used. It is awareness of and exposure to less frequent words that is called for. In
academic environments, complex ideas are expressed in similarly rich and complex
language. Bearing this fact in mind, GSL I words could be eliminated automatically,
unless they were clearly fundamental to academic writing. It was also kept in mind
that subsequent analysis of colligations and collocations would bring back key
members of the family into the final output. Furthermore, once the basic keyword
list was established and organized according to a semantic basis dependent upon the
IMRD pattern in abstracts and theses in general, it would be necessary to review all
the lists once more to locate those items that performed a more or less synonymous
function.
The aim of constructing a pedagogic corpus is to provide advanced students with
authentic material that depends on semantic frequency, and that will offer them a
variety of alternative sophisticated patterns required in academic writing. Therefore,
categorization is necessary not in terms of frequency, but in terms of functions
realized by language in thesis writing. Nevertheless, as stated earlier, there are some
very common GSL 1 content words used in academic texts, and the ones that
occurred in the data frequently had to be included in the analysis.
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As the pedagogic corpus needed to be restricted and economical by nature to cater
for the needs of the students realistically, there had to be a cut-off point in the
selection of word families that would be the basis of the AAC Bank of moves.
Therefore, the GSL 1 word families that occurred in each of the four sub-corpora of
the TAC at least twenty times, and at least one hundred and fifty times in total
qualified for inclusion. Out of the 419 content word families in the GSL 1 list, this
procedure produced 46 (about 11 %) word families in the GSL 1 that survived the
filtering, and therefore formed a list of the 46 word families from the GSL I
fundamental to the construction of key moves in abstracts (Appendix K).
The GSL 2 words, the second 1,000 most common set of words in English, form a
considerably smaller proportion of running text in English. Therefore, the criteria for
inclusion were set at a lower level as these words occur at a generally lower level of
frequency in any text. The same procedure was followed and all those word families
that occurred at least fifty times in the TAC as a whole, and at least ten times in each
sub-corpus were included for further analysis. 13 word families emerged (Appendix
K).
The corpus which the AWL is based on extends beyond the boundaries of abstracts,
and comprises academic textbooks and research articles. The Academic Word List
was therefore expected to generate more keywords for inclusion than the GSL 2.
Setting up the selection criteria for the AWL at exactly the same level as for the
GSL 2 (at least fifty times in the corpus as a whole and at least ten times in each sub-
corpus) indeed produced a more extended list of academic word families. The only
exception was the word family ‘objective’. This family occurred 40 times in the
data. However, during the analysis of the off-list words, it was observed that
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‘objectives’ was listed as an off-list word. This word was therefore included as
‘objectives’ occurred 18 times in the data, and together they occurred 58 times.
Consequently, 85 academic word families were drawn from the AWL (Appendix
K).
Off-list words are words that do not appear in any of the frequency lists, and
therefore are less common in any text by definition. However, the fact that they are
less common should not mean that they are to be ignored or deleted. Prior analysis
of the two corpora revealed that some off-list words could occur in thesis abstracts
and theses in general quite frequently. The filtering was thus carried out on a more
generous basis. A word could be included on condition that it occurred at least 30
times in total with at least 5 occurrences in each sub-corpus, or a word merited entry
if there were at least 20 occurrences as a family, and at least one member of the
family occurred in all the 4 sub-corpora. As off-list words do not occur in families,
this procedure was carried out manually. There were some unexpected findings.
Firstly, ‘organizational’ and ‘organizers’ occurred as off-list, although ‘organize’ is
a GSL 1 word. In the same way, although ‘objective’ is an AWL word, ‘objectives’
appears off-list. The word ‘usage’ appears off-list, and not together with ‘use’ and
the word ‘technologies’ does not appear together with ‘technology’. It can be
speculated that in the past ‘technology’ was uncountable as you could follow the
breakthroughs more easily, but today because of all the innovations in each and
every branch of technology almost every day, the word has started to be used in the
plural. Once these words were identified, they were put in their respective families
in the GSL or the AWL in the lemmatiser for further analysis manually. One
exception is ‘large-scale’. Although it occurs 23 times, it was included as it was
perceived as a common and useful word in academic writing. 21 families of off-list
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words were included for further analysis, making the number of total word families
165 (Appendix K).
This analysis very broadly attempted to identify a set of word families that are
assumed to have a key role in the fulfillment of moves and sub-moves in thesis
abstracts. The outcome was a word family list comprising 165 items found most
frequently in thesis abstracts. At this stage, a broad classification of these items into
possible strategies, tactics, or sub-moves was necessary. However, before attempting
any classification, it would be useful to consider a randomly extracted abstract from
the TAC to observe how the IMRD pattern is actualized.
Table 4.23
The IMRD pattern in a randomly extracted abstract from the TAC
Title An Archaeological Analysis of Gender Roles in Ancient Non-Literate Cultures of Eurasia
Country Australia
Introduction
Ascription of sex to inhumed remains on the principle basis of grave-goods, as distinct from anthropometric data, can be a vague process due to incipient gender bias in interpretation. Cross-matching of anthropometrics with grave goods can sometimes generate results that appear ambiguous or paradoxical as they may not accord with preconceived relationships between gender roles and sex. This reduces confidence in the demography of various archaeologically-revealed cultures, especially those of Iron Age Europe, which were erected on the basis of what we may now see as potentially flawed analysis.
Method
Comparative and contrasting analyses are made of contemporary and related cultures to investigate gender role assumptions on a wide basis. Regarding non-literate cultures, archaeologists have limited means to interpret the relationships between sex and gender-roles, and these methods are explored. The traditional outlook is assessed for functional bias in light of its origins and perpetuation, and a new synthesis is proposed for ongoing analysis. This synthesis includes strict application of refined anthropometric methodology and the resolution of paradox by adoption of a revised underlying hypothesis
Results
Discussion
A correlation is observed between use of the horse and a significant blurring of gender role stereotypes, occurring in nomadic cultures whose legacy persists to the present day. This is examined in light of the proposed new synthesis for a consequential or coincidental relationship, the former being apparent. It is found that gender role bias has played an uncomfortably large part in Iron Age scholarship, and that outdated sociocultural assumptions continue to foster an unstoppable view of elements of world history.
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Table 4.23 demonstrates that the IMRD moves are present in the randomly chosen
abstract. It is also worth examining the same abstract to observe which sub-moves
help to realize the four moves, although it is very difficult to draw a line between
them as there seem to be overlaps:
Table 4.24
The sub-moves of the IMRD pattern in a randomly extracted abstract (TAC)
IntroductionSetting the context / background
Ascription of sex to inhumed remains on the principle basis of grave-goods, as distinct from anthropometric data, can be a vague process due to incipient gender bias in interpretation.
Stating the problem / opening a research gap
Cross-matching of anthropometrics with grave goods can sometimes generate results that appear ambiguous or paradoxical as they may not accord with preconceived relationships between gender roles and sex. This reduces confidence in the demography of various archaeologically-revealed cultures, especially those of Iron Age Europe, which were erected on the basis of what we may now see as potentially flawed analysis.
Statement of the aim
Comparative and contrasting analyses are made of contemporary and related cultures to investigate gender role assumptions on a wide basis. Regarding non-literate cultures, archaeologists have limited means to interpret the relationships between sex and gender-roles, and these methods are explored.
MethodMethodology used
Hypothesis
The traditional outlook is assessed for functional bias in light of its origins and perpetuation, and a new synthesis is proposed for ongoing analysis. This synthesis includes strict application of refined anthropometric methodology and the resolution of paradox by adoption of a revised underlying hypothesis.
ResultsData analysis
Results
A correlation is observed between use of the horse and a significant blurring of gender role stereotypes, occurring in nomadic cultures whose legacy persists to the present day.
Significant findings
This is examined in light of the proposed new synthesis for a consequential or coincidental relationship, the former being apparent.
DiscussionFilling the research gap by generalizing the findings
It is found that gender role bias has played an uncomfortably large part in Iron Age scholarship, and that outdated sociocultural assumptions continue to foster an unstoppable view of elements of world history.
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The TAC offers plenty of data with which to analyze thesis abstracts in all the four
sub-corpora according both to moves and sub-moves. Randomly chosen abstracts
from the TAC were therefore analyzed with the following results:
Table 4.25
The moves, sub-moves, and examples from random abstracts (TAC)
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MOVEFUNCTIONS/ SUB-
MOVESEXAMPLES
Introduction
Introducing the Field
-U.S. fisheries legislation requires National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to attend to the critical social and economic issues surrounding the definition and identification of fishing communities, and to the effects that changes to the physical environment and regulatory decisions can have on such communities.
Referring to previous work in the field
-Some researchers have found that the influence of flowers promotes people positive emotions.
Opening up a Research Gap
-This thesis posits the need to integrate the design of landscape with the design of architecture.
Stressing the value of and need for the Study
-The question of how to define Falun Gong is not just an academic issue; the use of the cult label has been used to justify the persecution of practitioners in China.
Stressing the challenge of the study
-The solution of linear systems is an ancient and inexhaustible problem.
Opening up new links and relationships
-This thesis explores the integration, through ideas of reciprocity, of landscape and architecture.
Giving an overview of the thesis
-This dissertation is concerned with C*-algebras associated with boundary actions obtained from graphs of groups...
Specifying the objectives and aims of the thesis
-The intention is to demonstrate the usefulness of a pragmatic approach to applied ethics
Methodology of the Study
Giving information about research methods
-Through research, analysis, design experimentation and application, this thesis demonstrates an integrated design strategy...
Giving information about the research site
-Research sites included Tampa, Washington D.C., and cyberspace…- The site is an abandoned rail yard
Justifying choice of material and data
- The site and project were selected because they offered a good opportunity to explore the issues of designing...
Results
Stressing the novelty of the findings (filling the research gap)
-My findings are contrary to the allegations made by the Chinese Government and Western anti-cultists in many ways.
Stressing the - One important result is the lack of
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MOVEFUNCTIONS/ SUB-
MOVESEXAMPLES
significant resultspersistent similarities or differences between register domains.
Categorizing the results
- Our major results can be grouped into two categories: recognition of links between substitution method calculations and well-known results in other areas of mathematics, and the development of novel algorithms to exploit special structure.
Discussion
Implications
- The results provide valuable insights for landscape designers seeking to evoke particular emotions or designing therapeutic environments for particular patient groups.
Conclusion/Suggestions
- The thesis closes with an explanation as to why progressive dispensationalism is more compatible with amillennialism than with premillennialism.
Implications for further study
-The results suggest that multi-dimensional analysis of stance is effective, and that further study of individual registers and dialects would be fruitful. Application to other functional areas is suggested.
It would be possible to conduct this process in even greater detail. For research
purposes, however, it is sufficient to note that a thesis abstract contains a number of
moves some of which seem to be more or less obligatory, and some more or less
optional depending on the specific field and institutional requirements. Each move
can be realized in a number of ways, and through a number of discourse functions,
or sub-moves. While certain lexico-structural patterns are more likely to appear
within certain moves, and beyond that within certain sub-moves, some others appear
in different places as integral parts of quite different moves and sub-moves. This is
one obvious reason why a wordlist cannot be used as a detached mechanism with
which to teach academic writing. What is essential, then, is to analyze and describe
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how key lexical items act in combination (i.e lexico-structurally) to perform certain
sub-moves, strategies or tactics which are the foundation of the specified moves.
The list which will be henceforward referred to as ‘the Target Abstract Corpus
(TAC) Wordlist’ (Appendix K) formed the basis of the AAC Bank (Academic
Abstract Corpus Bank) of lexico-structural items used to actualize sub-moves and
moves. The list, the bank, the two corpora, the in-class and online course materials
and accompanying tasks became the major components of the pedagogic corpus, in
line with the main aim of the study, which was to construct a pedagogic corpus
through incorporating corpus work into the advanced thesis writing course to assist
the post-graduate students involved in research and publication.
As revealed through the analysis of the data, the post-graduate students are restricted
by their range of vocabulary, and their productive knowledge of collocates and
lexico-grammatical patterns. Therefore, the syntagmatic and paradigmatic levels in
the construction of moves are analyzed, and a comprehensive bank of lexico-
structural patterns to achieve moves in abstracts, and thesis writing in general is
formed. Henry (2007) maintains that although a lot of research has been conducted
on identifying moves and their order in specific genres, rather less attention has been
paid to the presentation of key lexico-grammatical features of genres and moves.
Henry believes in the value of presenting computer-based, corpus analyses of
sentence level genre features to language learners, incorporating all the important
syntactic patterns with all possible paradigmatic and syntagmatic variations and
collocations found in each of the moves and strategies in a given genre. According
to the results of his corpus study (Henry, 2007), the students exposed to the sentence
level genre features were able to produce more effective samples of the genre in
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question. At this point, it is also worth recalling that according to Widdowson, the
syntagmatic and the paradigmatic mode of organization allows the generation of
infinite expressions from finite means and “is the essential source of the creativity
and flexibility …. of human language” (1996, p. 34).
As a first step, the TAC Wordlist (Appendix K) of 165 word families identified as
key in abstract writing in particular, and thesis writing in general were tentatively
put in different move categories. Some words such as thesis, data, structure, and
system were felt to be applicable to all moves, and were therefore classified as a
separate ‘All moves’ category. This tentative list proved to be very useful in the
construction of the AAC Bank, as words from the list were checked against the 100-
million-word BNC (British National Corpus, (http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc) for
synonyms in the academic register. Subsequent analysis of the TAC data was
therefore based upon a sound and solid foundation.
4.3.2 The development of the AAC (Academic Abstract Corpus) Bank of
Moves and Sub-moves
The AAC Bank of moves and sub-moves (see Appendix L) that was developed as
the central part of the pedagogic corpus was based on the four main moves in
abstracts, and in the reporting of research in general. These four moves, known as
the IMRD (Introduction-Methodology-Results-Discussion) moves (Swales, 1990,
p.181), help to organize the required information in a structured and meaningful
way. The discourse structure of an academic genre such as an abstract is
undoubtedly very important. Yet, it is language that is essential in realizing the
moves. Many researchers and scholars draw attention to the key role played by
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‘lexico-grammar’ in fulfilling generic moves (Flowerdew, 2000; Henry, 2007; Johns
et al., 2006), and sub-moves, also referred to as ‘strategies’ (Henry, 2007, p. 3) or
‘tactics’ (Henry, 2007, p. 7).
The main aim of developing the AAC Bank in this research was to provide a wealth
of lexico-structural patterns for the post-graduate students to coherently and
appropriately fulfill the moves that are called for in abstracts, and in their theses.
This study is pedagogic in nature, and the aim of the AAC Bank is to offer a
roadmap for the students. As the participants have access to the corpora (both the
TAC and the LAC) compiled by the researcher as well as larger corpora such as the
BNC (British National Corpus), they have the tools and the opportunity to apply the
Data-driven Learning principles and methodology, and go beyond what is offered to
them.
Earlier in this chapter, the methodology for the compilation of the TAC Wordlist
was described in detail, and the resulting 165 word families were tentatively
categorized into moves. This list, together with the synonym facility used for finding
semantically related words in the BNC (in this case, the academic sub-corpus of the
BNC) (http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc), was indeed very helpful in deciding which key
words to seek in the TAC. As expected, some words like ‘economy’ and
‘technology’, which are more common in some disciplines than others, did not occur
within the lexico-grammatical patterns reflecting the moves, although they occurred
frequently enough in the TAC to deserve a place in the TAC Wordlist itself. These
words and other words like these are emphasized in different ways in the materials.
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The AAC Bank of moves was developed by picking up the key words, accessing all
the semantically related words using the BNC, and searching the TAC for all the
lexico-grammatical realizations functioning in the construction of a particular move.
Therefore, frequencies were not a major consideration here, as the aim in the
building of the bank itself was to offer the post-graduate candidates enough varied
data to ensure more variety and flexibility in the creation of their texts, the lack of
which was the problem observed by the researcher and reported by the previous
course instructors as well as the participants themselves. Hence, high frequencies,
though not essential in the achievement of the major aim, are indicated in moves 2
and 3 for purposes of illustration, but are not emphasized in the other moves of the
AAC Bank, except for very significant ones.
Once these semantically related words, within their lexico-grammatical patterns,
were categorized into different moves and sub-moves, the data were organized in
tables. However, it is important to emphasize here that these tables are not
traditional substitution tables, but instead maps that are semantically organized
according to the move to be achieved. The post-graduate candidates, with the help of
relevant tasks, are directed and guided in using the AAC Bank, and accurately and
appropriately construct the required moves through using the lexico-grammatical
patterns compiled in the Bank.
The AAC Bank is composed of four sections representing the four moves in abstract
writing, and research writing in general. Each move in the AAC Bank is further
represented by its relevant sub-moves, some of which are necessary and some
optional. The nature of the research itself, together with the specific departmental
and institutional requirements, determines the inclusion and the ordering of these
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sub-moves in the abstract. However, considering that the abstract is a miniaturized
version of the thesis, it would not be wrong to say that all these sub-moves occur in
the actual thesis. In fact, referring to a research abstract, Bhatia (1993) states that “an
abstract, …, is a description or factual summary of the much longer report, and is
meant to give the reader an exact and concise knowledge of the full article” (p. 78).
In a similar vein, Salager-Mayer (1990) argues that in the abstract, the structuring of
the full paper should be reproduced, and the moves fundamental and obligatory ‘in
the process of scientific inquiry and patterns of thought’ reflected (cited in Hyland,
2004a, p. 64).
Bhatia (1993) holds that “in order to realize a particular communicative intention at
the level of a move, an individual writer may use different rhetorical strategies” (p.
30). These strategies, also referred to as ‘tactics’, ‘sub-moves’, or ‘steps’ (Hyland,
2004a, p. 47) therefore help the writer to fulfill a required move. Bhatia (1993)
describes the four moves in abstracts in the following way:
Introducing Purpose: This move gives a precise indication of the author’s intention, thesis or hypothesis which forms the basis of the research being reported. It may also include the goals or objectives of research or the problem that the author wishes to tackle.
Describing Methodology: In this move the author gives a good indication of the experimental design, including information of the data, procedures or method(s) used and, if necessary, the scope of the research being reported.
Summarizing Results: This is an important aspect of abstracts where the author mentions his observations and findings and also suggests solutions to the problem, if any, posed in the first move.
Presenting Conclusions: This move is meant to interpret results and draw inferences. It typically includes some indication of the implications and applications of the present findings. (pp. 78-79)
It should be emphasized that most of the abstracts establish the field, or set the
background as the initial sub-move. As this sub-move is particularly subject-specific
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by nature, this is the only sub-move that is not represented in the AAC Bank of
Moves and Sub-moves.
4.3.2.1 Description of the AAC (Academic Abstract Corpus) Bank of Moves
and Sub-moves based on IMRD
It was emphasized in various sections of this study that a genre is made up of a
series of moves, each of which “is a distinctive communicative act designed to
achieve one main communicative function” (Hyland, 2004a, p. 47). Moves are
fulfilled through sub-moves, also referred to as ‘strategies’ (Bhatia, 1993), or ‘steps’
(Hyland, 2004a; Swales, 1990). According to Hyland, “both moves and steps may
be optional, embedded in others, repeated, and have constraints on the sequence in
which they generally occur” (2004a, p. 47). It can be understood from Hyland’s
statement that overlaps between sub-moves should not be unexpected.
Move 1: Introduction
Sub-move 1: Defining the Scope of the Study
The wealth of language derived from the TAC in the form of lexico-grammatical
patterns for only one sub-move, ‘scope’, is exceptionally rich, offering a wide range
of alternatives both syntagmatically and paradigmatically. The scope of the research
tells the reader what the area of focus is, and thus it is important to reflect on all the
aspects of the area the research is going to concentrate on, and the perspectives that
are going to be considered. Thus, the scope of the research defines the boundaries of
the study, and what the research has set out to do. It is important to note that some of
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the lexico-grammatical patterns used for defining ‘the scope of the research’ may
also be relevant to stating ‘the aim of the research’.
According to the data, at the paradigmatic level, the scope is defined by the
‘product’, such as ‘thesis’, ‘dissertation’ ‘project’, etc., followed by a verb which
draws the boundaries of the research, and describes what the research has set out to
do. Some of these verbs are ‘provides’, ‘explores’, ‘examines’ ‘outlines’, and it can
be observed that the present tense is used. At the syntagmatic level, according to the
data, various lexico-grammatical patterns are used in the TAC to define the scope. If
the verb ‘demonstrates’ is taken as an example, it can be observed that the verb is
used in three different ways in the TAC; it can be followed by a noun clause
including a wh- word like ‘how’, by a noun clause introducing a statement, or a
noun phrase. These examples are presented in full to provide a clearer understanding
of the scope of the research:
This study demonstrates how successive military leaders bolstered their position in the capital by proactively assimilating and adopting established symbols of traditional authority.
This research demonstrates that all stone raw materials in Sydney archaeological assemblages are available in the Sydney region, mainly from Tertiary and Quaternary gravel beds, and that these are widely scattered.
This research demonstrates the feasibility of mass production of integrated optical and potentiometric sensors with CMOS circuitry on the same chip.
The first example informs the reader that the area of focus in the research is the
method used by military leaders to strengthen their position in the capital city of a
specific country. The scope gives enough information about the area of research. In
this case, a political or a sociological perspective is communicated to the reader. In
the second example, the study is of archaeological nature, and the focus is the sites
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where the raw materials of the Sydney archaeological sites are found. The third
example clearly comes from a study on computer engineering or a mechanical
engineering, and the scope of the study is whether it is possible to mass produce
integrated optical and potentiometric sensors with CMOS circuitry on the same chip.
These examples demonstrate that different lexico-structural patterns are available to
writers in communicating, in this case, the scope of their research study.
Sub-move 2: Identifying a Research Gap
This sub-move is an attempt of the researcher or the writer to “establish a niche for
about-to-be-presented research” (Swales, 1990, p. 154). It is possible to initiate this
step with ‘an adversative sentence connector’, like ‘however’, ‘nevertheless’, ‘yet’,
‘unfortunately’, and ‘but’, and these are used to ‘indicate a gap’ (Swales, 1990, p.
154). Swales argues that in indicating a research gap which the writer is intending to
fill through his/her research study, “the author does not counter-claim that the
previous work is hopelessly misguided, but rather ‘suffers from some limitations’”
(1990, p. 154). Linguistically, this sub-move may be realized through ‘negative or
quasi-negative quantifiers’, like ‘no’, ‘little’, ‘none’, ‘few’, or ‘lexical negation’,
through the use of such words as ‘fail’, ‘lack’, ‘overlook’, ‘misleading’, ‘limited’,
and ‘failure’ (Swales, 1990, pp. 154-155). A niche can also be established through a
‘direct or indirect question’, ‘expressed needs, desires, interests’, ‘logical
conclusions’, ‘contrastive comments’, or ‘problem-raising’ (Swales, 1990, p. 156).
The data extracted from the TAC reveal that, the most distinguishing characteristic
of this sub-move is indeed the use of negative and quasi-negative quantifiers such as
‘no’, ‘little’, ‘few’, lexical negation like ‘unclear’, ‘inadequacies’, and adversative
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sentence connectors, ‘however’, ‘although’ and ‘unfortunately’ being three cases in
point. When this language is accurately and appropriately exploited in lexico-
structural patterns as exemplified in Appendix L, a research gap is indicated, and a
niche, or a research gap (Swales, 1990), is created for the writer.
Sub-move 3: Filling the Research Gap
This sub-move serves a very important purpose, since it connects the present
research to the gap, thereby creating a conducive research space for the researcher.
This sub-move is typified by adjectives like ‘new’ and ‘first’, verbs like ‘extend’,
‘clarify’, ‘further’, ‘advance’, and nouns like ‘milestone’, and it usually follows the
‘gap’, thereby making the research as a whole necessary, meaningful and
worthwhile. As this sub-move is very closely linked to the previous sub-move
‘Identifying a research gap’, there may be overlaps between them in terms of the
language employed. Some examples where there are overlaps are:
Unlike previous studies that examine only …, this study also focuses on …
This thesis presents results for a broader … range than previously published materials.
As can be seen from the first example, the first part focuses on the ‘research gap’
through the use of ‘unlike’, and ‘only’, while the second part informs the reader that
the research gap is to be filled through an additional aspect, or perspective (this
study also focuses on …). The second example makes use of lexical choices to
indicate the research gap as well as how the gap is to be filled (results for a broader
… range than previously published materials).
Sub-move 4: Stating the ‘aim’ or ‘purpose’ of the study
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This sub-move is most probably the most significant one in an abstract, and indeed
in the whole thesis, since the research gap, the methodology, the findings, the
conclusions, and the implications are all dependent on the main aim of the study.
This sub-move is the same as the third move of introductions, which Swales refers
to as ‘occupying the niche’ (1990, p. 159). The function is to turn the already
established ‘niche’ into a research space that rationalizes the present research. The
writer may indicate their main purpose or purposes, or describe what they regard as
the main aspects of their research (Swales, 1990, p. 159).
Four patterns for stating the aim emerged from the data, which would enable the
post-graduate writers to utilize alternative lexico-structural patterns for the aim in
different parts of the thesis. As noted earlier, some of the patterns in the ‘scope’ sub-
move are also relevant to the statement of the aim. The first pattern directly
announces to the reader that the ‘purpose’, ‘aim’, ‘objective’, ‘goal’, ‘intention’,
‘object’ or ‘intent’ of the thesis, or study is to be stated, and therefore the statement
begins with one of these words. The other three patterns initially foreground the
product of the research (thesis, dissertation, work, study, etc.), followed by a verb
denoting what the study set out to achieve (expand, explain, develop, address,
propose, investigate, etc.).
Move 2: Methodology
Perhaps the move which has the highest potential to include the most details is the
second move, ‘Methodology’. This move in the thesis abstract, and the
corresponding chapter in the actual thesis, incorporate information on the approach
and specific methods used together with the rationale, the research context, the
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participants or subjects, and the data collection and analysis tools. The purpose of
this move is to inform the reader about how the research was done, and why it was
done that way. Therefore, it “covers not only the methods used to collect and
analyze data, but also the theoretical framework that informs both the choice of
methods and the approach to interpreting the data, and relates all of these explicitly
to the research question(s) addressed in the thesis”
(http://www.monash.edu.au/lls/hdr/write/5.6.html). The initial analysis of this move
with the aim of forming a lexico-grammatical bank for sub-moves generated such
abundant data that they had to be trimmed and edited to a manageable size.
Sub-move 1: Presenting the methodology employed
The data from the TAC revealed that the most common three verbs to talk about the
methodology of the study are ‘use’, ‘utilize’, and ‘employ’. Both present and past
tenses are used in the active, although in the actual thesis, there seems to be more
past than present tenses to refer to the methodological procedures. Alternatively, the
passive may be employed to talk about the methodology adopted in the study.
According to the data, the researcher may also describe or justify the methodology
adopted, or may also choose to go into a lot of detail regarding the methodology
employed in the study.
Sub-move 2: Justifying the methodology employed
It is also important that the methodology adopted in the study is relevant to the
resolution of the problem that has led the researcher to conduct the current research.
Accordingly, some researchers may want to discuss the methodology in relation to
the problem, and present the theoretical framework justifying the choice of the
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approach and the methods used. As this sub-move is closely related to the previous
sub-move, ‘presenting the methodology’, there may be overlaps between these two
sub-moves.
The analysis revealed that the primary aim of an appropriate methodology in a
research study is to collect sufficient data. The word ‘data’ occurs in the TAC 268
times, which is a very high frequency. This should not be surprising, as the
significance of the research depends on its findings from data analysis and
interpretation. It would be therefore be valuable to consider the lexico-grammatical
realizations of this very common and important word in detail.
Table 4.26
Lexico-structural patterns of ‘data’
DATA
collected from / in …
DATA
is/ are analyzed for …was analyzed for …was analyzed using …
gathered from … is censored …stored in … are identified …obtained from … is examined …used … is incorporated into …produced by … is passed onto …relating to … were sorted …assessed by the … that conform to …derived from … to analyze income …generated by / from …
to contribute to …
required to … to deviate from …relevant to … to help build …
measuring …to simultaneously capture …to test …
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Table 4.26 shows that although ‘data’ is a plural word, with ‘datum’ as the singular
form, the writers in the TAC used ‘data’ both in the singular and the plural. As can
be seen, ‘data’ is abundantly modified through relative clauses.
Sub-move 3: Describing the context
It is essential that sufficient information is offered to readers on the context, so that
they can clearly understand the setting, the conditions and circumstances that led to
the problem, and most importantly the problem itself. The researcher’s awareness of
the setting plays a vital role in designing the research, since what is relevant to one
context may not be so in another. This awareness can easily be observed from the
data (see Appendix L), as most of the examples for the pattern include ‘examining a
problem within the context of …’, or ‘within a wider context’.
An interesting finding is that while in the TAC, the ‘context’ family occurs 204
times and ‘context’ itself 139 times, the whole family appears only 3 times in the
LAC. For this reason, in addition to the lexico-grammatical patterns derived from
the TAC to describe the context, it is worthwhile to extract the common verbs to talk
about the lexical item itself, independent of the sub-move.
Table 4.27
Verbs used to talk about the ‘context’
creating a/an … context …suit Thebuild a newdescribe Thelay out The
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form Theidentify Therepresent Thecomplement Thehighlight the importance of Theconstruct a model within Thedraw on examples from Theconsidered in Theinterpreted in a /anapplied in Thediscussed in Theinfluenced by The
Optional sub-move: Describing the variables
It should be emphasized that ‘describing the variables’ is an optional sub-move, as
variables are used in experimental studies in the Sciences. The data from the TAC
revealed that, ‘variables’ are mostly ‘analyzed’, ‘investigated’ or ‘tested’. The most
frequently used collocates of ‘variables’ in the pre-position are ‘dependent’ and
‘independent’. In qualitative studies, variables are not part of the research design,
and therefore this sub-move is not included in such studies.
Move 3: Results
In the ‘Results’ section, the research reports back the data analyzed and highlights
and summarizes the significant findings. Therefore, this section may be said to be
composed of ‘what the data / analyses / results / findings show’ and ‘what the data /
analyses / results / findings mean’. It should be taken into account that there may be
overlaps in the use of language in moves 3 (results) and 4 (discussion), as in the
discussion / conclusion part as well, the writer may refer to the research findings,
results, or the data.
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In scientific writing, when reporting what the results show, mean and how they can
be interpreted, in other words, in both Move 3 and Move 4, ‘hedges’ and ‘boosters’
are used. Hyland explains the reasons for the need to use these expressions of
‘doubt’ and ‘certainty’ in the following way:
One of the most important features of academic discourse is the way that writers seek to modify the assertions that they make, toning down uncertain and potentially risky claims, emphasizing what they believe to be correct, and conveying appropriately collegial attitudes to readers. (2000, p. 179)
The examples he gives for ‘hedges’ are ‘might’, ‘probably’ and ‘seem’, and for
‘boosters’ ‘clearly’, obviously’ (Hyland, 2000) and ‘demonstrate’ (Hyland, 2005, p.
179). Hyland is of the opinion that these devices aid the work of academic people to
be accepted ‘by balancing conviction with caution’ (2000, p. 179). In another article,
Hyland further emphasizes the significance of these devices:
Both boosters and hedges represent a writer’s response to the potential viewpoints of readers and an acknowledgement of disciplinary norms of appropriate argument. They balance objective information, subjective evaluation and inter-personal negotiation, and this can be a powerful factor in gaining acceptance for claims. (2005, p. 180)
Sub-moves 1 and 2: ‘What the data show’ and ‘What the data mean’
The findings of this research are consistent with the literature, as it was observed
that the writers of the TAC made abundant use of hedges and boosters. The two very
important sub-moves fulfilling this move are ‘what the data show’, and ‘what the
data mean’. Instead of separating these two sub-moves, it would be more convenient
to focus on the key words and the lexico-grammatical patterns used to fulfill them.
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The first key word is ‘data’, and whether the data ‘show’ or ‘mean’ depends on the
verb used with it. For example, ‘showed that’ and ‘demonstrate’ fulfill the first sub-
move, whereas ‘implies’ and ‘suggests’ belong to the second sub-move. On the
other hand, ‘demonstrate’ is a ‘booster’, while ‘imply’ and ‘suggest’ are hedges.
Move 4: Discussion
In the ‘discussion’ move, and more generally speaking, in the last chapter of the
thesis ‘Conclusion’, the researcher summarizes the key findings, reports the
conclusions and discusses the contribution of the research to the field, considers the
implications of the study, and makes recommendations as suggested by the findings
of the research. The writer may also mention how the current research relates to the
existing research, and how it opens up gaps for further research.
In this move as well, ‘hedges’ such as ‘imply’ (13 times), ‘suggest’ (168 times),
‘tend’ (35 times), ‘seem’ (24 times), ‘appear’ (54 times), and modal verbs like
‘could’ (77 times) and ‘may’ (128 times), were used abundantly by the TAC writers.
Mostly the present tense is used, as can be observed from the data (Appendix L),
since there is the need to emphasize the current relevance of the research.
An interesting finding relating to especially Move 4 is the case of ‘suggest’. This
verb is widely used in this section as a hedging device, while at the same time it is
employed in making recommendations based on findings. It is therefore crucial that
post-graduate students are provided with exposure and practice regarding the use of
this verb in the research context.
Sub-move 1: Describing the ‘key findings’
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This sub-move appears to be fulfilled mostly through such key words as ‘imply’,
‘suggest’, ‘seem’, ‘appear’, ‘tend’ and ‘tendency’, all of which can be described as
‘hedges’. The researcher, in general, should be extremely cautious when describing
the key findings, and the use of these key words seems to protect the researcher from
making risky claims.
Sub-move 2: Relating the findings of the study to the existing research
This sub-move can be optional, as some researchers choose not to compare their
findings with those of previous research. However, this sub-move is quite
significant, as it signals that the researcher is well-read and well-informed about the
research field. The key words and phrases that are used to fulfill this sub-move are
‘consistent with / in agreement with previous research’, and ‘unlike / contrary to
previous research’, as can be observed from the data (See Appendix L).
Sub-move 3: Describing the ‘conclusions’
According to the data (see Appendix L), the most common key words that are used
to describe the conclusions are ‘conclude’ and ‘conclusions’. This sub-move can be
said to be almost typified by the use of the simple present tense, most probably due
to the need to focus on the current relevance of the research. While in ‘describing
the findings’ hedges are used abundantly, in ‘describing the conclusions’, the writer
seems more comfortable.
Sub-move 4: Discussing the contributions of the study to the research field
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The ‘contribution’ family, is used 127 times in the TAC to refer to the contributions
of the research. Every piece of research ideally should contribute to the field of
research by extending it, clarifying it, or by filling a gap. As the data indicate (see
Appendix L), the family members of ‘contribution’ fulfill this sub-move through
three patterns. The first is when ‘contribution’ is used as the subject (e.g. The key
contribution of this research is the use of …), as the object (e.g. The thesis makes a
theoretical contribution to the growing field of …), and as a verb ‘contribute’ (e.g.
Our findings contribute not only to … but also to …).
However, the ‘contribution’ family is not the sole means of talking about
contributions of the research. The data (see Appendix L) show how other verbs used
with ‘study’, ‘findings’, and ‘results’ are employed to denote ‘contribution’. Some
of these verbs are ‘provide’, ‘promote’, ‘validate’, ‘reinforce’, and ‘inconclusively
prove’. A very interesting finding related to this sub-move is the high frequency of
the use of the words ‘understanding’, ‘insight’, and ‘knowledge’, when talking about
the contribution of the study. Therefore, it would be useful to present a few
examples regarding the lexico-grammatical realizations of these words (see
Appendix L). These realizations, however, are quite varied, and the post-graduate
students should be encouraged to explore the TAC for further examples.
Sub-move 5: Making recommendations / suggestions based on the research
findings
It is quite conventional to propose changes to the existing state of affairs based on
the findings of the research. In fact, in some cases these suggestions can be
important contributors to the field. The data (see Appendix L) show that three
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lexical verbs (recommend, suggest, propose) are extensively utilized for this
purpose. However, apart from these lexical verbs, two modal verbs, ‘should’, and
‘must’ are widely employed for the same purpose. The fact that ‘ought to’, which is
a commonly used modal that can be used interchangeably with ‘should’ in everyday
language, occurs only once in the TAC is quite interesting.
Sub-move 6: Discussing the Implications of the research
Implications are important as they confirm that the researcher is aware of how the
current research findings can or will impact the existing practice, or theory. Still, the
writer may sometimes discuss the implications of the study for further research. In
that case, there may be overlaps between this sub-move and the next one
‘suggestions for further research’.
This sub-move makes use of the lexical item ‘implication’ (see Appendix L). The
word is used as the ‘subject’ (implications regarding … are discussed), as well as the
‘object’ (this research has important implications for …). The most common
collocates of the word are ‘broad’, ‘important’, ‘practical’, ‘theoretical’, and
‘empirically grounded’.
Sub-move 7: Opening up new areas of research
Researchers have to draw boundaries for themselves so as to be able to exploit the
tools, and the data effectively, and to present meaningful findings. During the
research process, and especially at the data analysis stage, the researcher will
observe that other avenues of research emerge. Being aware of these and opening up
research gaps for fellow researchers will benefit the field of study as a whole. The
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TAC data (see Appendix L) indicate that the central lexical items for opening up
new areas of research are ‘future’, ‘further’, ‘recommendation’, and ‘suggestion’.
4.3.2.2 Significance of the AAC Bank of Moves and Sub-moves
The AAC Bank of moves and sub-moves extracted the most commonly used lexico-
structural patterns in the TAC to fulfill the moves and sub-moves in specifically
abstract, and thesis writing in general. This bank is envisaged to perform as a road
map for the non-native post-graduate candidates, and assist them in creating
meanings and conveying their intended messages coherently, and appropriately.
The AAC Bank is presented to the students in a table format in the Moodle glossary.
Moreover, accompanying tasks, both in-class and online, based on the lexico-
structural patterns in the AAC Bank of moves and sub-moves can help the students
acquire these structures, and employ them in their own texts.
The data, as already mentioned, are presented to the students in the e-learning
platform, Moodle, in tables. Yet, it is also possible to present the data in visual
format as a ‘word cloud’, which gives “greater prominence to words that appear
more frequently in the source text” (http://wordle.net/). The advantages of visual
representation are that, it is conspicuous, and the most frequent words are the most
prominent, and therefore easily detected. In addition, the lexico-grammatical
patterns can also be represented in a wordle. The wordle for the sub-move ‘scope of
the research’ is provided in figure 4.1 as a sample.
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Figure 4.1: Wordle of the AAC Bank, Move 1, sub-move: defining the scope
4.3.3 The Pedagogic Corpus
At this stage, it would be useful to recall how Hunston (2002) defines a pedagogic
corpus:
A corpus consisting of all the language a learner has been exposed to. For most learners, their pedagogic corpus does not exist in physical form. If a teacher or researcher does decide to collect a pedagogic corpus, it can consist of all the course books, readers etc a learner has used, plus any tapes etc they have heard. The term ‘pedagogic corpus’ is used by D. Willis (1993). A pedagogic corpus can be used to collect together for the learner all instances of a word or phrase they have come across in different contexts, for the purpose of raising awareness. (2002, p. 16)
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An important aspect of this definition is that the pedagogic corpus involves all the
materials the learners have already been exposed to, and with the advanced students
in this study, this is impossible, as the post-graduate candidates are from totally
different backgrounds, and have not studied English in the same way using the same
materials. Willis provides a more comprehensive definition, and points out that a
pedagogic corpus involves the texts that the learners have encountered, or will
encounter (Willis, 2003, p. 165). He further states that “learners process a set of
texts to enable them to develop their own vocabulary and work out their own
grammar of the language”, and this set of texts can be described as a pedagogic
corpus (Willis, 2003, p. 163). He emphasizes that it is one of the roles of the teacher
or the course designer to “highlight important features of the pedagogic corpus and
to help learners familiarize themselves with it” (p. 163). Willis further refers to tasks
as components of a pedagogic corpus (2003, p. 223).
In this study, the pedagogic corpus is constructed from:
access to the two corpora (the LAC and the TAC);
the web concordances of the two corpora available on Moodle;
the in-class materials integrating corpus-informed data and tasks;
various advanced academic writing resources, as well as larger corpora such
as the BNC;
the online corpus-informed tasks that are designed to encourage students to
discover regular patterns in language themselves, and learn in a collaborative
manner on an e-learning platform founded on social constructivist principles;
the TAC Wordlist of 165 key words;
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a glossary of the AAC Bank of moves and sub-moves, offering alternative
lexico-grammatical patterns for fulfilling the required moves and sub-moves
in abstract, and thesis writing.
Willis (2003) considers the pedagogic corpus ‘as a valuable body of language’ and
emphasizes its value in the following way:
If we see the pedagogic corpus as central to syllabus and materials design, we can go beyond the view of language learning as the accumulation of a series of language forms. We can see learning as the learner’s growing familiarity with a valuable body of language. This in turn encourages the learner to take a positive view of learning. Learning is contextualized by the communicative framework, it is communicative activity in the classroom which enables learners to develop their own spontaneous communicative repertoire, but the catalyst for this development is the exploration of text. The learning processes of recognition and system building are important in that they facilitate exploration and communication, but, important though they are, they are simply facilitating processes, paving the way for real language use. (p. 225)
The pedagogic corpus was constructed in this research study upon identifying that
“learners deviate from native speaker norms” (Keck, 2004, p. 98). Thus, the
constructed pedagogic corpus, with its multiple components, is anticipated to
minimize the gap between the identified and the desired performance levels, through
the exploitation of authentic texts, and corpus-informed tasks. Data-driven tasks
ensure maximum exposure to the authentic data and enable the students to observe
the use of language themselves, and become language researchers, or 'language
detectives' (Johns, 1997).
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4.3.3.1 Task Framework and Taxonomy
This section briefly outlines how the pedagogic corpus is used as a basis for the
teaching and learning of advanced academic thesis writing skills, most particularly
in terms of task design and taxonomy.
The students engaged in the advanced academic study of the type described in this
research have much in common in terms of the aims and discourse of the academic
community, and in terms of the moves and the language they require to be
successfully involved in that community. In fact, the pedagogic corpus, to a large
degree, resulted from identifying what students have in common in terms of what
they will need to write at an acceptable level, and the types of typical problems that
they encounter before they have reached that level. Despite these commonalities,
however, it is equally important to emphasize that these students are engaged in the
writing of their own theses, and therefore involved in a process that is individualized
and unique. As a result, there are some factors that need to be taken into
consideration in designing a task framework to provide a rationale for task design:
Students’ general and academic English language proficiency level can vary
quite markedly. Groups of students at this level are usually heterogeneous.
Students’ disciplinary areas and thesis topics may vary considerably, even
within the same discipline. To illustrate, within Civil Engineering, there are
different branches such as “Construction Materials, Geotechnical
Engineering, Hydraulic Engineering, Transportation
Engineering and Structural Engineering”
(http://civil.emu.edu.tr/).
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Students may be at different stages of writing their theses. In terms of the
present course, for instance, some of the students have well advanced in their
research writing, while in other cases topic selection has not been finalized.
Students’ aspirations for the future can vary. For some, the master’s thesis is
basically the peak of their academic career, and their main aim is to complete
their thesis, get their degree, and leave the university to find a good job.
However, for others who are pursuing a degree with the aim of finding a
place in the academic world, the thesis is a critical milestone in their
academic career, and mastery of advanced academic English is a crucial long
term skill that needs to be developed.
Swales (2004) refers to the aspirations of the majority of master’s students in the
following way, although he admits that there are exceptions:
For a majority of master’s students, the dissertation/thesis is the most sustained and complex piece of academic writing (in any language) they will undertake. As often as not, such students are uninterested in going on to write for publication but rather are looking forward, once having completed their fifty-to one-hundred-page documents, to entering or returning to a professional career in teaching, nursing, business, and so on. (p. 99)
Thus, these individual differences suggest that some students may require formal
teaching - learning processes so that they can develop and acquire the language and
skills that will help them write a thesis at a later point, whereas others may require a
more resource-driven environment where they can easily access and acquire
language that will be of immediate help to them in the writing process.
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This heterogeneous group of students from different backgrounds, with different
aspirations, at differing language levels and at differing points of progression in their
theses cannot be expected to benefit from a systemized approach where everyone
does the same thing at the same time. The purpose of not only the formal instruction,
but also the introduction of a web-based interactive tool, Moodle, to a larger extent,
was not only to ‘teach’ academic writing skills per se, but also to ‘develop’ in
students academic writing awareness, provide them with a roadmap, through
exemplification and practice in the necessary skills, and thereby increase their self
confidence. It needs to be emphasized that high levels of discipline, autonomy, and
self-study are key in bringing such an individualized piece of work as a thesis to a
successful completion.
The limited hours of instruction (only 3 hours a week), combined with the post-
graduate candidates’ individual differences make it unrealistic and impractical to
deal with specific language problems. The task design, therefore, should be flexible,
and the tasks varied enough to cater for the needs, levels, aspirations of such a
heterogeneous group, so that the participants have the choice and the means to focus
on their individual and specific needs through different kinds of tasks in their own
time.
Taking all these factors into consideration, the tasks were designed to promote
awareness of the resources available, and to familiarize the students with the skills
and knowledge required to exploit these resources, so that they can build enough
confidence to work individually on their theses. The approach to task design is data-
driven and exploratory, rather than didactic. The pedagogic corpus thus functions as
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an open resource that students can exploit whenever, and however they like or need.
This golden opportunity is offered to the students through Moodle.
Moodle was first introduced to the course in the 2007-2008 Academic Year (see
Appendix M for screenshots of Moodle). The purpose of integrating Moodle into the
ENGL501 course was not only to provide a ‘host’ for the corpora, but also to
mediate between the individualized nature of thesis work, and collective learning
and psychological support work in a collaborative environment. Furthermore, a web-
based platform would offer the opportunity for the students to work at their own
pace, on activities of their own choice, and in their own time and place.
Before describing and exemplifying the tasks designed, the components of the
pedagogic corpus need to be recalled. The two corpora (the LAC and the TAC)
together with their web concordances, the in-class materials integrating corpus-
informed data and tasks, various advanced academic writing resources, as well as
access to larger corpora such as the BNC, the TAC Wordlist of 165 key words
extracted from the TAC, the AAC Bank of moves and sub-moves, and the online
corpus-informed tasks constitute the pedagogic corpus. Considering the wealth of
authentic data derived from the LAC and the TAC in hand, there should be tasks that
ensure their utilization to the fullest extent.
The LAC is also extensively exploited in task design, although the use of incorrect
forms for pedagogic purposes has a lot of critics. The opponents of using ‘incorrect
forms’ maintain that the learner might learn these forms. (Corder, 1973, p. 294).
Corder (1973), however, is one of the supporters of the use of learner errors. He
believes that “there is a strong argument in favour of the controlled use of examples
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of incorrect forms so long as these are correctly labeled as such” (Corder, 1973, pp.
293-294), and justifies his opinion in the following way:
Language learning is not parrot learning: we do not ‘learn’ or ‘practise’ examples. They are the data from which we induce the systems of the language. Skill in correction of errors lies in the direction of exploiting the incorrect forms produced by the learner in a controlled fashion. (p. 294)
The tasks designed for this course are essentially genre-based, data-driven, and
‘cyclical’ in nature. They are genre-based, since focus on generic moves and sub-
moves is an integral part of the course. Besides being genre-based, they are data-
driven, as they require the students to consult the data. The tasks are also cyclical, as
all parts of language are interrelated, and learning a new item requires relearning all
the other language items studied already (Corder, 1973, p. 265). With such a
heterogeneous group of students, at different language levels and with different
needs, it is inevitable to include tasks dealing with more basic elements of language,
as well as those that require higher level language competence. Lexis, collocations,
and lexico-grammar are particularly emphasized in tasks.
To ensure that the students can get maximum benefit from the abundant data,
‘corpus-based learning tasks’ (Keck, 2004, p. 93) are designed. These tasks can be
broadly grouped into two categories: teacher directed data-driven and student led
discovery learning tasks. The theory behind DDL is that students become ‘language
detectives’ (Johns, 1997, p. 101), “discovering facts about the language they are
learning for themselves, from authentic examples” (Hunston, 2002, p. 170). Teacher
directed data-driven tasks are therefore the ones that engage “learners in the analysis
of concordance lines that have been selected, arranged, and possibly edited by the
teacher in order to draw learners’ attention to patterns of language use” (Keck, 2004,
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p. 94). In this study, these tasks are designed by the teacher to draw attention, but as
the students are advanced, the data are not manipulated by the teacher.
In student led discovery learning tasks, on the other hand, students might “generate
their own concordance data, thus engaging in autonomous discovery learning”
(Keck, 2004, p. 94). Some of the advantages of student-led corpus analysis are that
“learners are in charge of their own learning, and thus motivation is increased”
(Aston, 2001, cited in Keck, 2004, p. 94), and “learners make ‘serendipitous’
discoveries about language use that, without the use of corpora, would not have been
possible” (Bernardini, 2001, cited in Keck, 2004, p. 94). The teacher directed data-
driven and student led discovery learning tasks designed for this course are
envisaged to help the students to acquire awareness of, or recognize language
patterns, be ‘language detectives’ (Johns, 1997, p. 101), explore the data, and make
their own discoveries, and eventually produce their own texts. The tasks which play
an indispensable role in the exploitation of the data are exemplified and described in
detail.
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Figure 4.2: A student-led discovery task (individual)
This task was designed upon identifying that the word ‘data’ was used by the
majority of the students frequently incorrectly. The aim is to get the students to
explore the use of the word ‘data’ in the BNC corpus. The students generate their
own concordance lines themselves and find the collocates of ‘data’. This task
requires them to explore the word in detail, as they are expected to find out whether
‘data’ is a singular or a plural word. They are also expected to pick, from the corpus,
three sentences that they think clearly expresses the meaning of the word. This task
is in the Moodle assignment module, which means that the students complete it
individually and submit it online. A sample student assignment is in Appendix N.
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Figure 4.3: A student-led discovery task (collaborative)
Task 2 was designed after a classroom session when it became clear that the post-
graduate students were not only overusing the linker ‘On the other hand’, but also
using it incorrectly, most of the time to mean ‘However’. This is again a student led
discovery learning task which requires the students to go to the BNC-Written
corpus, find some examples with both sentence connectors, and comment on why
one, and not the other is used in each situation. Unlike the first task, however, this
task is designed as a WIKI, which means that the students work collaboratively, and
edit each other’s work. The post-graduate students’ collaborative work can be
accessed at http://gemoodle.emu.edu.tr/mod/wiki/view.php?id=11061.
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Figure 4.4: A teacher directed data-driven task
At the beginning of the semester, during the initial classroom sessions, it became
clear that the post-graduate students learned English at an individual word level, and
had no conception of collocations, colligations, and lexico-grammatical patterns.
This task was thus designed to raise the students’ awareness of the need to know
collocations, colligations, and lexico-grammatical patterns to be able to produce a
word in writing. This is a teacher directed data-driven task, as the data (an abstract)
are provided and arranged by the teacher. The abstract is a PhD abstract from
Virginia Commonwealth University, and the sentences in the abstract are divided
into separate lexico-grammatical patterns. The students are expected to solve the
puzzle individually, and put the abstract back together by naturally considering the
meaning, but more importantly, by deciding what the next word can be. As can be
seen in the picture, option C is ‘to be largely stemmed’. The students will not be able
to decide on the next pattern unless they know that ‘stemmed’ is followed by ‘from’.
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Figure 4.5: An individual student-led discovery task
This task is an individual student-led discovery task. After the post-graduate
students analyze authentic thesis proposals both in class and on Moodle for two
weeks, they are expected to produce their first draft proposals. They submit this
online, and also get feedback online. They have the opportunity to submit their
proposals three times, for all of which they get feedback. The students have access
to the TAC, the TAC wordlist, the AAC Bank, larger corpora, and authentic
proposal samples, and they are encouraged to explore all these different resources in
the process of producing their proposal.
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Figure 4.6: A collaborative teacher directed data-driven task
This task is based on the LAC, and the data is purposefully selected and arranged by
the teacher. The students are encouraged to use the TAC, or the other corpora to
determine the source of the problem, and correct the incorrect statements one by
one. For example, the second statement is “Risk analysis never mentions what
exactly will happen in the future”. At a glance, this seems to be a perfectly formed
sentence, with a singular noun used with a singular verb. Furthermore, the noun
clause is accurately inserted into the sentence. However, the problem here is one of
‘appropriacy’, and an inanimate subject cannot possibly do something animate;
‘mention’. The task is designed as a discussion, and therefore requires collaboration.
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Figure 4.7: An individual teacher directed data-driven task
The data for this task also come from the LAC. The teacher, upon identifying
instances of the incorrect uses of ‘study’ in the LAC, arranged the data by providing
a correct alternative to accompany the incorrect uses. The students in this task are
provided with one correct and three incorrect uses of the word ‘study’, and the
incorrect use identified in the LAC is one of the alternatives. The students are
expected to choose the correct use, and consider why the other options are incorrect.
The task is designed as a ‘hot potato quiz’, which means that after the students
complete the quiz, they get immediate feedback and a score. The score is then
recorded on Moodle for the teacher’s reference.
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HOW MANY MAIN MOVES ARE THERE IN AN INTRODUCTION? The following task may help you to answer this question.
Task 4: Name the moves and underline the important language the writer uses to achieve the moves in the following introduction.
The introduction does not end here. However, the rest of the introduction belongs to the 3rd move. Have you now decided what the moves are?
Move 1:
Move 2:
Move 3:
Task 8: Match the following moves with the relevant language.
Move
_____
However, little information/attention/work/data/research ....
However, few studies/investigations/researchers/attempts ....
The research has tended to focus on ..., rather than on ....
These studies have emphasised ..., as opposed to ....
Although considerable research has been devoted to ... , rather less attention has been paid to ....
The previous research ... has concentrated on ....
So far, investigations have been confined to ...Move
_____
The increasing interest in ... has heightened the need for ....
Of particular interest and complexity are ....
Recently, there has been growing interest in ....
The development of ... has led to the hope that....
The .. has become a favourite topic for analysis ....
The study of ... has become an important aspect of ....
A central issue in ... is ....
The ... has been extensively studied in recent years.
Many recent studies have focused on ....Move
_____
The purpose of this paper is to ...
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The purpose of this investigation is to ...
The aim of this paper is to ...
This paper reports on the results obtained ....
This study was designed to ...
In this paper, we give results of ...
In this paper, we argue that ....
This paper argues that ....
We have organized the rest of this paper in the following way ....
This paper is structured as follows ....
The remainder of this paper is divided into five sections ....
Figure 4.8: An in-class teacher led data-driven task
In this task, the data and the tasks are provided by the teacher to be used in the
classroom. The focus is the generic moves in thesis introductions, and thus an
authentic thesis introduction is used, and accompanying tasks designed. The task
requires the students to read the introduction individually, decide on the three
moves, discuss their decisions with their classmates, and come to an agreement.
Then they are required to match the alternative lexico-grammatical patterns provided
with the relevant moves.
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Figure 4.9 below shows the number of times the individual data-driven learning
tasks in the Hot Potatoes module were attempted by the post-graduate students in the
2007-2008 Academic year, Spring semester.
Figure 4.9: Reports of hot potato quizzes
The post-graduate students who took ENGL501 in the 2007-2008 Spring term
reported that they found these tasks very beneficial, as they needed guidance on how
to use the corpora. It is interesting to note that the post-graduate students, who all
received their undergraduate degrees, and are architects, mechanical engineers, civil
engineers, economists, finance experts, became language detectives through
exposure to corpora, and data-driven learning activities.
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4.3.3.2 The Pilot Implementation and Evaluation of the course- 2007-2008 Fall
Semester
The corpus-informed Advanced Thesis Writing course began to take shape in the
2007-2008 Fall semester, when the online component was gradually developed and
incorporated into the course, creating a virtual classroom for more interaction and
sharing beyond the 3 hours a week in class. This incorporation provided the
opportunity and the platform to introduce participants to the concepts of corpora,
genres, moves, as well as the philosophy behind e-learning platforms, that
knowledge is created collaboratively. Although the course in Fall 2007 was not a
pilot implementation, it was still evaluated, as some key concepts were introduced to
the participants for the first time. A total of 23 participants completed and submitted
an evaluation questionnaire online. The major findings are presented below.
Moodle incorporates a questionnaire module, which collates and tabulates the
questionnaire entries automatically. According to the analysis of the data, the course
was most useful in terms of developing academic study skills and knowledge of
academic conventions (4.7 on a 5 point scale), followed by developing knowledge of
thesis structure and format, improving academic writing skills and knowledge,
developing skills and knowledge of textual dynamics, developing academic
vocabulary knowledge and skills, developing awareness of the need and benefit of
producing multiple drafts in academic writing, and developing skills in exploiting
computers as a study resource. When the participants were asked about the
contribution of the course to their writing skills, 12 out of 23 (52%) said their
writing skills were much improved, 9 out of 23 (39%) somewhat improved, and 2
out of 23 (9%) a little improved.
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The questionnaire also inquired what the participants still found difficult about
writing in English. A participant, unknowingly, stated the aim and the research
agenda:
I think that although the course was very useful, it was about academic writing in general and not specialized in my feild of study- as it is supposed to be, because it is not possible to have different courses for different thesis subjects of students. The thing that I need to do now is focussing on writing in my feild of study by reading relevant subjects, learning specialized vocabulary, and trying to write similar to them, by the aid of the knowledge I have earned in this course.
The newly introduced on-line learning platform was also part of the evaluation. The
participants were asked about courses offered through Moodle. 91% of the
respondents stated that they would like to have more courses supported by Moodle
at the post-graduate level. The respondents reported that they benefited from Moodle
most in terms of being able to see what the teacher was asking them to do each week
(4.4 on a scale of 5), followed by learning independently, writing more in English,
feeling more confident about using computers, and seeing what their friends were
doing and saying and learning from their ideas. The fact that the participants ranked
collaboration among classmates the lowest may be due to the fact that this was the
first time they took an online platform supported course, and they were hesitant and
uncomfortable about sharing ideas.
The participants also commented on the course in terms of content, teaching
materials, instructional methods, focus, and instructor. Most respondents reported
that, in general, they found the course satisfactory. One participant said “Best lecture
i had this semester”. The necessity of allocating more hours to the course and having
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the course for two semesters was mentioned. One respondent had a very idealistic
suggestion:
To establish a collaborated work between the student, instructor, and the supervisor. To customize the lecture through high interaction between the student, instructor, and of course the supervisor to provide not only a guide and feedback for writing (instructor) but also specialized advice on the topic (supervisor).
The same respondent found this suggestion unrealistic later and said:
However, sounds challenging and even impossible, given the number of applicants, it would bring about significant changes and a solid support to the thesis in terms of both academic writing structure and specialized field supervision. Hence, a superior work and higher motivation for publication. (Thank you).
4.3.3.3 The Pilot Implementation and Evaluation of the course- 2007-2008
Spring Semester
The course was therefore first piloted as a corpus-informed genre-based course in
the 2007-2008 Academic Year, Spring Semester. The TAC (Target Abstract Corpus)
was put online in the form of web concordances, providing the opportunity for
participants to explore a word in the corpus to find out about its use and its lexico-
structural properties. The participants were also introduced to larger corpora and
vocabulary profiling and concordancing tools (www.lextutor.com) to raise
awareness of the importance of genre and register variation, as well as the value of
observing and exploring the context of a word for its accurate and appropriate use.
In addition, corpus-informed tasks and materials were developed and incorporated
into both the in-class materials and the on-line component of the course. These tasks
were designed to encourage the participants to explore the TAC and the other larger
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corpora made available, and focus on lexico-structural patterns rather than isolated
vocabulary items. Due to the fact that corpora are stored on computers, most of the
newly designed tasks were put online to facilitate the exploration of these valuable
databanks.
In the 2007-2008 Academic year, Spring semester, 32 participants, all of whom
were doing their Master’s, took the course. Of these 12 were from Architecture, 7
from Banking and Finance, 3 from Industrial Engineering, 3 from Economics, and 3
from Communication and Media Studies, 2 from International Relations, 1 from
Civil Engineering, and 1 from Mechanical Engineering. As for nationalities, this
group was even more international than the previous groups, 14 from Iran, 7 from
Cyprus, 2 from Iraq, and 1 person each from Cameroon, Nigeria, Albania, Kosovo,
China, Russia, Syria, and Jordan.
As in the previous years, pre- and post- questionnaires were administered at the
beginning and end of the course, so as to evaluate the participants’ perception of the
impact of the course on their progress. The online pre-course questionnaire included
17 and the online post-course questionnaire 31 questions on various aspects of the
course. The pre-course questionnaire was completed by thirty, and the post-course
questionnaire by twenty-five of the total thirty-two participants. These
questionnaires were analyzed together.
Seven themes emerged from the content analysis of the data; these are ‘perceptions
of the importance of English in an English-medium university, especially for post-
graduate students’, ‘perceptions of the significance of the writing skill’, ‘methods of
checking / improving written work’, ‘the major difficulties in producing own texts’,
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‘familiarity with the important concepts in writing’, ‘course-related opinions’, and
‘Moodle-related opinions’. The data analysis revealed that, at the end of the
semester, there was a significant increase in the respondents’ perceptions of the
importance of English, as can be seen from Table 4.28.
Table 4.28
Perceptions of the importance of English
To pursue a post-graduate degree in an English-medium University, one needs to have:
Pre-course Questionnaire (30 respondents)
Post-course Questionnaire(25 respondents)
a high level of English 9 (30%) 9 (36%)a satisfactory level of English
21 (70%) 16 (64%)
a low level of English 0 0The more challenging task in a post-graduate program in an English-medium
University is:Pre-course Questionnaire (30 respondents)
Post-course Questionnaire(25 respondents)
dealing with the subject matter (Architecture, Business, etc.)
12 (40%) 8 (32%)
dealing with the expression of ideas in English
18 (60%) 17 (68%)
The first question on this theme was related to the level of English required to
pursue a post-graduate degree in an English-medium university. As opposed to the
30% of respondents who thought that a high level of English was required at the
beginning of the semester, the percentage rose to 36% in the post-course
questionnaire responses. The findings regarding the second question on this theme
were extremely significant. While 60% of the respondents thought dealing with the
expression of ideas in English was more challenging than dealing with the subject
matter before taking the course, this percentage rose to 68% at the end of the
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semester. This may mean that the course raised the participants’ awareness of the
importance of coherent, and appropriate expression of ideas, and contributed to the
understanding that no matter how well one knows about the subject matter in hand,
the more demanding task is to convey this knowledge to the reader effectively.
The second theme that emerged is the perceptions of the respondents regarding the
importance of the writing skill in post-graduate programs. To this end, the
respondents were asked to rank ‘reading, writing, speaking, listening, vocabulary,
grammar’ in the order of importance. Before taking this course, the order of ranking
was ‘reading-writing-vocabulary / grammar-speaking-listening’. However, at the
end of the semester, the ‘writing’ skill ranked first, followed by ‘reading-
vocabulary-grammar-listening / speaking’. The findings appear to suggest that
dealing with advanced thesis writing for a semester raised the participants’
awareness of the importance of the writing skill, and of the fact that there are a lot of
factors contributing to coherent and appropriate writing.
The course provides tools and resources to check and improve written work, so that
the participants can become their own editor. Before taking the course, using Word
tools, and self-checking by reading the produced text ranked top, both referred to
eleven times. Ten respondents said they asked a friend, or a teacher to check their
work. After taking the course, however, the respondents mentioned a wider variety
of tools and resources. Ten respondents reported that in addition to the Word tools,
they benefited from corpus concordancers, the vocabulary profiler, and the TAC
(Target Abstract Corpus) in checking and improving their work. Five people
mentioned focusing on collocations, and three people on synonyms to improve their
work. One respondent said:
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gemoodle is the best thing that help [sic] me to improve my written skill. when i stuck [sic] i can check the corpus concordancer. i can search the examples which relates [sic] chapter that im [sic] using in [sic] that moment. it is the best thing in my master education that i met [sic] up to now
The respondents reported that after taking the course, they started using different
tools and resources to check and improve their work, and that they felt more
confident about writing. This confidence was expressed by a respondent so well:
i [sic] trust my self now, i believe that i can write and complete my thesis because all my questions has [sic] answered. its not a big deal to complete the thesis, but it was before. its aid [sic] to me, especially Moodle! its my supervisor :)
The fourth theme that emerged was the participants’ major difficulties with writing
in English. As in the previous semesters, and as reported by the previous course
instructors in the interviews, the most common difficulty was related to
‘vocabulary’, both at the beginning and at the end of the semester. One respondent
expressed this difficulty in the following manner: “The most difficulty [sic] about
writing is vocabulary. Sometimes we know about our feeling, but because of the
lack of vocabulary, we cannot explain it to others”. The other difficulties mentioned
are shown in Table 4.29.
Table 4.29
The major difficulties in writing
Area of difficulty Pre-course Q.
What do you find most difficult about writing in English? Please give details.
Post-course Q.
What do you still find most difficult about writing in English? Please give details and
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reasons.
Vocabulary 19 times 8 timesGrammar 12 times 4 timesAcademic / formal language
5 times -
Quoting / paraphrasing - 4 times
As can be seen from the table, vocabulary and grammar posed as the greatest
difficulties in writing. As regards vocabulary, finding alternative words, and
accurate collocations were mentioned as being problematic, while using the passive
was singled out as a problem. Interestingly, the two very important skills in
reporting research, ‘quoting’, and ‘paraphrasing’ which were not mentioned at all at
the beginning of the semester were reported to be difficult at the end of the semester.
This may stem from the fact that some of the participants had no awareness of the
need to quote and paraphrase ethically to avoid plagiarism. In fact, it would not be
wrong to say that there were participants who found out about the meaning of
plagiarism when they took the course. For this reason, in the course syllabus, the
first two weeks are allocated to ‘academic ethics’, ‘avoiding plagiarism’, and
‘quoting, paraphrasing, referencing’.
Familiarity with some important concepts with writing was another theme that
emerged. At the beginning of the semester, the participants were given a list of
important concepts in writing, to which they were going to be exposed during the
course, and were asked to choose the ones they were already familiar with. The
same list, with only one concept added, was included in the post-course
questionnaire. The rationale for presenting these was that familiarity and awareness
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can be contributing factors to the skilful manipulation of these concepts in writing.
Table 4.30 demonstrates the results:
Table 4.30
Familiarity with some important concepts in writing
Concept Pre-course Post-courseCohesion 23% 36%coherence 33% 52%process writing 33% 44%drafting 63% 72%revising 50% 48%editing 43% 52%academic vocabulary 43% 80%collocations 13% 76%avoiding plagiarism 60% 88%quoting 67% 92%paraphrasing 67% 92%bibliographies/references 57% 84%formal / informal language 60% 88%hedging 3% 52%moves not included 72%
The data indicate that the most dramatic increase occurred in the familiarity with the
concept of ‘collocations’, followed by ‘hedging’. The former concept plays a major
role in both speech and writing, while the latter is particularly important in academic
texts. The most familiar concepts in the pre-course questionnaire were ‘quoting,
paraphrasing, summarizing’ with 67%. It can be said that, on the whole, the course
succeeded in raising participants’ awareness of important concepts in writing. The
‘generic moves’ concept, which was not included in the pre-course questionnaire,
was reported to be a familiar concept by 72% of the respondents. This is quite a
satisfactory result considering that the course adopts a genre-based approach to
instruction. To sum up, it can be said that the participants’ awareness of some
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important concepts in writing, especially of academic vocabulary, collocations, and
hedging, improved significantly.
Another theme that emerged was the participants’ course-related opinions. The
respondents reported that the major contribution of the course was in terms of
‘improving academic writing skills and knowledge’, followed by ‘developing
knowledge of thesis structure and format’, ‘developing academic study skills and
knowledge of academic conventions’, ‘developing academic vocabulary knowledge
and skills’, ‘developing skills and knowledge of creation of text’, and ‘developing
awareness of the need and benefit of producing multiple drafts in writing’. Forty-
four percent of the respondents stated that upon completion of the course, their
writing skills were ‘much improved’, followed by forty percent who felt these skills
were ‘somewhat improved’. Therefore, it can be safely concluded that the majority
of the participants felt their writing skills benefited from the course.
The last theme that emerged from the pre- and post-course questionnaires was the
participants’ opinions regarding the e-learning platform, Moodle. At the beginning
of the semester, the participants talked about their first impressions of Moodle by
describing it as ‘excellent’, ‘interesting’, ‘exciting’, ‘very good’, and ‘great’. Some
respondents considered it from the ‘learning’ and ‘educational’ point of view, and
mentioned improvement in the quality of education, facilitating learning, and
focusing on the learners’ needs and expectations, which is in line with the
philosophy behind Moodle. One respondent simply said: “Very impressive. I wish
our faculty had such a tool”. At the end of the semester, the participants thought that
‘class materials, tasks and activities’ were the most useful part of Moodle, followed
by ‘tools like TAC, Concordance, Vocabulary Profiler’, ‘outside resources and
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materials’ and ‘on-line assignments’, and ‘quizzes’ and ‘discussion forums’. Sixty
percent of the respondents stated that they would like to have more courses
supported by Moodle at the post-graduate level. One respondent, talking about why
more courses should be supported by Moodle said: “we had too many courses at
postgraduate [sic] level but none of it [sic] were helpfull for our thesis. Moodle is
the only one course which is usefull for writing, improving and developing our
English in academic way [sic]”, and another commented “i [sic] think moodle is a
contemporary medium of academic communication and distribution of course
material”. Based on the comments of the course participants on various components
of the course as well as the findings from the questionnaire, it can be concluded that
the course was a fruitful learning experience for the majority of the participants.
4.4 Summary
This chapter presented the results of the data analysis in accordance with the
research design introduced in Chapter 3, Methodology. The abundant data which
were thoroughly analyzed led to significant findings, the broader implications and
applications of which are presented and discussed from a range of perspectives in
the final chapter.
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CHAPTER V
CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS
This study was motivated by the recognition of the language barriers facing non-
native post-graduate EFL students doing research, and writing their theses in an
English-medium university, in a non-English speaking country. The non-native post-
graduate students, who aspire to disseminate their research internationally, and get
accepted in the global academic discourse community, encounter problems in
producing coherent and appropriate academic texts. The findings suggest that the
problem stems from the considerable gap between the actual and the required
performance levels, especially in terms of the exploitation of different types of
words and lexico-grammatical patterns, as well as from the inability to develop
language competence from the receptive to the productive level.
5.1 Discussion
This problem is not unique to the Eastern Mediterranean University in Northern
Cyprus. The use of English as the language of instruction is widespread, and not
only in countries where English is the first language. The perceived importance of
English as a global language has led to many English medium universities being
established worldwide, it has enabled such universities to promote themselves as
international, and to compete with the English speaking countries in attracting
students. This trend, however, raises issues concerning language standards.
Difficulties with English can be particularly marked at the post-graduate level,
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where students may be involved in significant, and in some cases original research,
only to find themselves hindered by the difficulties they face in organizing and
expressing their ideas. This problem relates not only to the completion of their
coursework and theses, but also to the subsequent publication in the international
arena, where again English will often tend to be the required language. Additional
pressure is often exerted through “the increasing requirement imposed by many
university administrations around the world-and across many fields-for publications
to appear in major Anglophone peer-reviewed journals as prerequisites for faculty
recognition, advancement, and promotion,…” (Swales, 2004, p. 38). Mirahayuni
(2002) in her doctoral dissertation motivated by the scarcity of research activities by
Indonesian researchers explores the same issue:
For researchers to gain recognition in the wider research community, it is necessary for them to be able to communicate in language(s) that reaches a global readership. International dissemination of knowledge has become a necessary part of communication among researchers and this has become possible with the role of English as the most widely used international language. (p. 313)
The current study has thus explored a problem that is not only common, but also
extremely critical to so many non-native writers around the world, and the
awareness of the significance of this problem has led to a growing body of research
in this area. However, until recently, most of these research studies focused on the
genre of research articles, and not as much on thesis writing. This study attempted to
contribute to the filling of this research gap, and add to the growing body of research
and knowledge, through constructing a pedagogic corpus with multiple components,
that would form the basis for a genre-based corpus-informed approach to academic
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writing pedagogy, and assist the non-native post-graduate students in reporting their
research.
This final chapter is thus organized as follows. After the aims, methods and the
major findings are briefly discussed, conclusions are drawn based on the research
findings, and in line with the relevant literature. Then, the implications and
applications of the conclusions are explored from various perspectives. The chapter
concludes with suggestions for further research in the field.
5.1.1 Aims and methods
The research study described set out to construct a pedagogic corpus incorporating a
range of corpus-informed components, and teacher-led data driven and learner-led
discovery tasks, to assist the non-native post-graduate students in producing
coherent and appropriate representation of their research. To this end, two corpora
were compiled and lexico-structurally analyzed: A target academic abstract corpus
(TAC) composed of thesis and dissertation abstracts from English medium
universities in English speaking countries, and a learner corpus of academic
abstracts (LAC) written by the post-graduate students studying at EMU. The
research sought answers to the following questions:
What are the major lexico-structural patterns in the Learner Abstract Corpus
(LAC)?
What are the major lexico-structural patterns in the Target Abstract Corpus
(TAC)?
How does the LAC relate to the TAC?
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What does the cross-examination of the two corpora necessitate in terms of
the comprehensive pedagogic corpus design?
The LAC comprised four sub-corpora consisting of a total of 100 abstracts produced
by the students who took the Advanced Thesis Writing course at the Eastern
Mediterranean University over a six-semester period. These abstracts were in the
process of being developed by the post-graduate students. The TAC was also
comprised of the same four sub-corpora (Architecture, Social sciences, Sciences,
and Arts and Humanities), each sub-corpus consisting of 150, a total of 600
abstracts. All the abstracts had been published on the World Wide Web, and were
completed at universities in English speaking countries, namely the UK, the USA,
Australia, New Zealand and Canada. The corpus was therefore constructed from the
completed work in a variety of countries, subject areas, and by a variety of post-
graduate students, most of whom are assumed to be native speakers of English. The
models that emerge from the target corpus, therefore, are not the 'expert' models of
experienced, native-speaker academics, but 'peer' models, models to which the post-
graduate students in this research, for example, might reasonably be expected to
aspire.
The rationale for compiling the corpora from thesis and dissertation abstracts was
not simply to improve understanding of the genre of abstract, but to exploit the
abstract as a kind of microcosm of the thesis itself, since the fundamental moves of
an abstract are more or less parallel to the chapters of the full thesis, with the
exception of the literature review. Thus, the abstract has the potential to provide an
extremely economical means of finding out a great deal about the whole thesis. A
secondary reason for the use of the genre of ‘abstracts’ was that abstracts do not
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generally include quotes and paraphrases, and therefore reveal the writer’s own
language. The reason for having two corpora, on the other hand, was to enable the
researcher to compare and identify the lexico-structural issues that needed
addressing, and provide the post-graduate students at EMU with an acceptable
standard of academic writing as that produced by post-graduate students in
universities in English-speaking countries.
The corpora were not of equal sizes. There were one hundred abstracts in the LAC
as opposed to the six hundred abstracts in the TAC. The size of the LAC was
beyond the researcher’s control, as it took her six semesters to compile the LAC.
However, the TAC was intentionally larger. The rationale for having a larger TAC
was to be able to extract sufficient data to compile a bank of lexico-structural
patterns that would provide comprehensive coverage of the relevant sub-moves and
moves. However, as the aim of the research was pedagogic, economy was also an
important consideration, since at a later point students would be using the corpus as
a learning resource. In the event, six hundred abstracts proved to be sufficient and
yield extensive data, and yet allow manageability. The compiled corpora were then
analyzed through a range of computer-based and web-based tools presented in the
third chapter, leading to the findings discussed in the following section.
5.1.2 Major findings
The post-graduate students studying at the Eastern Mediterranean University were
aware of the difficulties they faced with academic writing. What was even more
interesting, however, was the fact that in many cases, they independently identified
poor vocabulary as the major problem, echoing the insights of those instructors who
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had previously taught the course. This was further confirmed by the results of the
learner corpus analysis (LAC). The work compiled in the LAC exhibited extensive
use of higher frequency vocabulary, an obvious tendency for repetition of similar
items, and recurrent failure to use appropriate collocations and lexico-grammatical
patterns. Furthermore, the findings from the LAC pointed to a significantly
restricted range of not only individual words, but also frequently their lexico-
structural realizations. The TAC, on the other hand, revealed the use of a wide range
of lower frequency words, as well as extensive and varied lexico-grammatical
utilization of these items. Another finding was that in the TAC, around sixty percent
of the word types used were off-list words, which suggests that infrequent and more
sophisticated words were widely used.
The cross-reference of the two corpora produced significant results. The analysis of
LAC uncovered quite weak vocabulary, in comparison with the more sophisticated
language of the authors of the TAC. The abstracts in the TAC exhibited a much
wider active range of vocabulary than those written by the post-graduate candidates
at EMU. The weakness seemed to arise from the fact that the writers of the LAC
could not develop their receptive vocabulary knowledge to the productive level.
Compared with the post-graduate students in English-speaking countries who used
more infrequent items extensively, the post-graduate students in the institution
showed a marked preference for extremely frequent vocabulary items, and their
insufficient knowledge of collocates and lexico-grammatical patterns led to serious
errors, and consequently to incoherent written communication. To confirm that this
wide gap did not simply result from the unequal sizes of the two corpora, a random
twenty-five abstracts from each sub-corpus of the TAC were used to obtain a TAC
of equal size to the LAC. The findings from this analysis revealed the gap between
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the LAC and the TAC more conspicuously. In terms of the range of different words
used, the figures pointed to a difference of 1,814 more words used in the TAC, a
substantial difference, considering that both corpora were composed of exactly the
same number of abstracts. In addition to the extent, the composition of this
considerable gap was examined, and it was revealed that as opposed to the 3,798
different words making up 95% of the text in the TAC, only 2,311 words were used
to compose the same amount of text in the LAC. The figures and the percentages
provided further proof that the non-native post-graduate students at EMU used a
more limited range of words, compared with the post-graduate candidates writing
their theses in English-speaking countries. Therefore, the analysis of the equal-sized
corpora further substantiated the existence of the gap.
This gap can be typified by a more limited range of vocabulary, a more limited
productive knowledge of lexico-grammatical patterns commonly used in thesis
writing, inaccurate use of collocations and lexico-structural patterns, insufficient
knowledge of the different types of words in word families, and the inadequate
ability to extend the knowledge of these words to the productive level. Thus, the
cross-reference of the two corpora identified, and exemplified the deviation of the
actual from the desired output. This deviation, at times, led to communication
breakdowns. This finding is consistent with the literature. Howarth (1996) maintains
that if the lexico-grammatical form conforms to the norms of the register to the
anticipated degree, the reader's conscious attention is focused on meaning while the
form is processed subconsciously. “Phraseologically deviant forms disrupt such
processing, forcing the reader to analyse form and synthesise meaning from scratch”
(Howarth, 1996, p. 10).
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These findings necessitated immediate action in accordance with the research
agenda. It was of utmost necessity to categorize the data, and then make it accessible
in a form in which it could be exploited for teaching and learning purposes.
Therefore, the identified discrepancy between the actual and the desired output
initially led to the identification of the 165 word families that were of particular
significance in thesis writing. However, in addition to isolating the most frequent
content-based items used in the target corpus, it was essential to move beyond the
individual word or word family, focus on the syntactic properties of these significant
vocabulary items, and reveal how exactly these words were used in academic
writing. Corder (1973) emphasizes that learning vocabulary is not learning only the
semantic properties of items, but also their syntactic properties (pp. 279-280). The
need to focus on syntactic properties resulted in the qualitative analysis, and
subsequent categorization of the significant words within their lexico-grammatical
realizations. This further led to the classification of these patterns according to the
IMRD (Introduction-Methodology-Results-Discussion) moves (Swales, 1990), and
even more subtle sub-moves, the product of which was named the AAC Bank of
moves and sub-moves.
The AAC Bank was only one component of the comprehensive pedagogic corpus
constructed in accordance with the research agenda. A virtual learning environment,
Moodle, was integrated into the course, and online materials and tasks were created
to accompany the in-class materials and tasks. A taxonomy for tasks was generated,
and teacher-led data-driven tasks and student-led discovery tasks were produced.
The web concordances of the two corpora were also mounted on the ‘host’
environment, Moodle. Two glossaries were created for the TAC Wordlist, and the
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AAC Bank of Moves and Sub-moves. Hence, the construction of the comprehensive
pedagogic corpus was completed.
The newly designed course incorporating the pedagogic corpus was evaluated
through questionnaires in the 2007-2008 Academic year, Spring semester. In their
questionnaire reports, the course participants expressed very positive perceptions
about the TAC, the tasks, the materials, and the use of Moodle, in other words, the
components of the pedagogic corpus. A participant felt that he benefited so much
from the components of the pedagogic corpus, and the virtual learning environment
that he called Moodle his supervisor. Meanwhile, the course continues to be offered,
and the rich corpus data dictate the continuous production of new tasks.
5.2 Conclusions
In the light of the major findings of the research, it is possible to draw major
conclusions regarding wordlists, lexico-grammatical patterns and banks, semantic
frequency, the significance of generic information, a genre-based corpus-informed
data-driven approach to writing, the use of virtual learning environments, and most
significantly, the use of corpora.
5.2.1 Wordlists
The findings revealed that the majority of the most common words used in academic
abstracts do not come from the AWL, and that the use of GSL words as well as off-
list words is significantly high. A further finding was that the most frequent content
words in the two corpora were in fact the GSL words, which acquired a different
meaning and use in the academic text. Based on the findings, it can be concluded
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that the recent trend to base EAP classes and programs exclusively on the words in
the AWL can prove counter-productive, as such applications are bound to
disadvantage the learners through denying them the opportunity to encounter and
practice the GSL words which are frequently used in academic texts. The results of
this study, therefore, strongly support the research by Billuroglu and Neufeld (2005),
who argue that there is little convincing rationale for the division between the GSL
and the AWL in the first place. The results also suggest that the BNL (Billuroglu-
Neufeld List), with its unified perspective on commonly used words, would provide a
more meaningful approach to managing graded vocabulary development for receptive
purposes. The results of the current research also suggest that the designation of any
vocabulary item as ‘academic’ may be misleading, as a word’s connotation, or
‘semantic prosody’ is determined largely by its co-text, or surrounding environment
(Sinclair, 1991, p. 112; Stubbs, 1996, p. 173).
The discussion of wordlists leads to another conclusion that is drawn from this
research. As much as wordlists are useful for receptive vocabulary teaching-learning
purposes, they are not sufficient for productive vocabulary teaching-learning
purposes, unless supplemented, for the following reasons: The first reason is that
wordlists present the word families of each word in such a way that all the words in
a particular family are assumed to express the same meaning, display the same
features of use, and occur in the same contexts. However, just because words are in
the same family does not mean that they share the same use and meaning. Sinclair
(1991) disagrees with the grouping of words together based on the single criterion
that they are the different forms of the same word. He maintains that:
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It is now possible to compare the usage patterns of, for example, all the forms of a verb, and from this to conclude that they are often very different from one another. There is a good case for arguing that each distinct form is potentially a distinct lexical unit, and that forms should only be conflated into lemmas when their environments show a certain amount and type of similarity. (Sinclair, 1991, pp. 7-8)
Referring to the same potential problem with word families, Hyland and Tse (2007)
maintain that “a vocabulary list must either avoid items with clearly different
meanings and dissimilar co-occurrence patterns, or these items must be taught
separately rather than as parts of families” (p. 243). They further cite Oakey (2003),
emphasizing that caution should be exercised regarding the issue, as in some
families, meanings and collocational environments change across each inflected and
derived word form (p. 243).
The fact that 62.02% of all the word types used in the TAC are off-list words is the
second reason why vocabulary teaching-learning for productive purposes cannot be
based entirely on wordlists. The frequent words offered by wordlists are the ones
that learners are most likely to encounter, learn and use. Especially in academic
environments where complex ideas are expressed in similarly complex and rich
language, the use of less frequent, more specialized words is called for. According to
Clanchy and Ballard (1992), “the academic writer makes frequent use of passive
forms of the verb, impersonal pronouns and phrases, qualifying words and phrases,
complex sentence structures, specialised vocabulary” (cited in Jordan, 1997, p. 244).
Further, “vocabulary choice is a strong indicator of whether the writer has adopted
the conventions of the relevant discourse community” (Nation, 2001, p. 178).
Therefore, wordlists are useful for understanding, or recognizing, but not producing
language, and total reliance on them would lead to the production of simple, and
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repetitive language. Hyland and Tse (2007), referring to the use of academic
vocabulary lists, emphasize that teaching such a vocabulary “… ignores important
differences in the collocational and semantic behaviour of words, and does not
correspond with the ways language is actually used in academic writing” (p. 237).
In line with Hyland and Tse’s (2007) opinion above, the finding that the writers in
the LAC exhibited the greatest difficulty with collocations, and lexico-grammatical
patterns leads to the third, and the most important reason why wordlists should be
treated with caution when language production is concerned. Hyland and Tse (2007)
maintain that “… vocabulary is more than individual words acting separately in a
discourse” (p. 251). Paquot (2007) also points out that the AWL may be of greater
value as a resource for receptive rather than productive teaching purposes, and
argues for a more phraseological approach to productive teaching. Wordlists treat
words as isolated items, and thus ignore the co-text.
This weakness is expressed by Carter and McCarthy (1988) as “the absence of
information on collocations and collocational frequencies” (p. 9). Knowing a word
means knowing a lot of other words that collocate with it. Especially for skills that
require production, this knowledge is essential to achieve fluency. Fluency in the
language will be promoted if, in addition to individual words, learners have a
knowledge of lexical chunks. Furthermore, focusing on the co-occuring words
contributes to the use of syntactic structures. Willis (2000) holds that “lexical
phrases fill the gap between grammar, on the one hand, and vocabulary on the other”
and adds that “they play a vital part in both speech and writing, contributing to the
ease, fluency and appropriacy with which someone speaks or writes” (p. 2).
According to Nattinger and DeCarrico (1992), this lexico-grammatical view presents
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a new potential in language teaching. These ‘strings of words’ are stored together in
our minds and are retrieved and used as a ‘pre-fabricated chunk’ either in exactly the
same way or with slight changes (cited in Willis, 2000, p.1). Hill (1999) also
considers the present view of language as being comprised, to a large extent, of
‘prefabricated chunks of lexis’ (p. 3).
5.2.2 Lexico-grammatical patterns and banks
Hill’s (1999) view of language paves the way to a major conclusion of this study.
The findings showed that one of the most serious difficulties of the post-graduate
students at EMU is the insufficient knowledge of, or the inability to accurately
employ collocations, and lexico-grammatical patterns in their writing. Lexis and
grammar are inseparable. The international conference exploring the theme of
''Exploring the Lexis-Grammar Interface'' organized by the English Department of
University of Hanover, Germany in 2006 invited proposals through the following
introduction:
Over the last two or three decades, research in corpus linguistics has shown that lexis and grammar are closely interdependent. The conference aims to bring together scholars with a common interest in aspects of lexis-grammar co-selection in the English language. We aim to discuss empirical evidence on the inseparability of lexis and grammar, and explore in what respects these two parts that are often treated separately in linguistic description form an organic whole. (Schulze & Römer, 2006)
Considering that it is extremely difficult for any lexis in isolation to be termed
specifically 'academic', that advanced language learners involved in the reporting of
research seem to be having the most difficulty with collocations and lexico-
grammatical patterns, and that lexis and grammar are inseparable, the conclusion
emerging from this research is pointing towards lexico-grammar. If researchers and
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practitioners wish to teach the nuances of academic prose, and assist learners in the
production of coherent and appropriate work, they need to identify the lexico-
structural patterns that are utilized in specific moves in different genres, and offer
this valuable resource to the service of their students. Hyland and Tse (2007) also
emphasize ‘concordances’ in addition to corpus-informed ‘lists’. They maintain that
“… corpus-informed lists and concordances can be used to help establish vocabulary
learning goals for EAP courses, design relevant teaching materials, and generally
target instruction more carefully” (p. 251). Based on the findings of a study
exploring the effect of corpora on writing competence, Yoon (2008) concludes that
focus on lexical and grammatical aspects is essential in L2 writing pedagogy.
5.2.3 Semantic frequency: Moves and Sub-moves
The conclusion regarding the need for focusing on lexico-grammatical patterns for
productive skills leads to a further conclusion: that the categorization of lexico-
grammatical patterns should be based on purpose, in other words, moves and sub-
moves. It is semantic frequency that is called for, since in all genres, there are
certain functions to fulfill, certain messages to convey, and “meaning is what is
being verbally communicated between the members of a discourse community”
(Teubert, 2005, p. 2). Categorization, therefore, needs to be based on the analysis of
how words can be used together, as well as which words can be used instead of each
other, in order to achieve the specified moves for the required purposes. Such work is
painstaking, and whatever is produced is bound to be necessarily incomplete given
the almost infinite variations of language. However, it is inevitable that such
semantic categorization will assist writers in the production of coherent and
appropriate text to some degree. This study concludes that lexico-grammatical banks
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of language organized according to the generic moves provide a very rich resource
for student writers in deciding what vocabulary to use, how to use it (through lexico-
structural patterns), when to use it, and also for what purpose (through moves, and
specifically sub-moves).
5.2.4 Generic versus discipline-specific lexico-grammatical patterns
Emphasizing the importance of disciplinary variation, Hyland and Tse (2007)
recommend that in EAP classes, “teachers help students develop a more restricted,
discipline-based lexical repertoire” (p. 235). “As teachers”, they say, “we have to
recognize that students in different fields will require different ways of using
language and so we cannot depend on a list of academic vocabulary” (Hyland and
Tse, 2007, p. 249). The conclusions drawn from the current study are not consistent
with the claims made by Hyland and Tse (2007). Academic texts from different
fields certainly exhibit linguistic variation, but on the other hand, genres cut across
subject fields, and moves and many of their lexico-structural realizations are defined
not only by the specific subject matter (e.g. architecture), but by the conventions of
the given genre (e.g. abstracts). Furthermore, in many institutions, advanced
academic writing is taught in cross-disciplinary classes, and it is of utmost necessity
to establish, especially for pedagogic purposes, the nature of cross-field generalities
in academic writing. The analysis of the sub-corpora shows that the cross-
disciplinary nature of moves and functions leads to the use of lexico-structural
patterns that are extremely similar in widely different fields. McCarthy and O’Dell
(2008) advise students that:
specialist terms are often relatively easy to master – they will be explained and taught as you study the subject… However, it is the more general words
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used for discussing ideas and research and for talking and writing about academic work that you need to be fully familiar with in order to feel comfortable in an academic environment. (p. 6)
Hunston also points out that “for many writers who are expert in their own field, …
it is not the technical terminology, but what might be called the terminology of
rhetoric that causes problems” (2002, p. 135). Another factor that should be kept in
mind before attempting to base EAP programs on discipline-specific vocabulary is
learner and learning variation. Differences in entry levels of students can be very
marked, and it is likely that learners who have not mastered the general lexico-
structural building blocks of the language will struggle with both general and
specific academic English courses. Therefore, this study concludes that EAP
practitioners dealing with classes of students from different academic fields would
benefit more from lists and banks that identify generic lexico-structural
commonalities, rather than from those that emphasize disciplinary variation.
Eldridge (2008) does not disregard the validity and use of more specialized lists, but
emphasizes that general academic lists are necessary for the subsequent production
of more specialized lists (p. 112). He points out the important fact that the
discipline-specific language is already emphasized by the subject specialist, and thus
“the EAP specialist might therefore still be used in helping with the scaffolding”
(2008, p. 112). A post-graduate student expresses the need for this ‘scaffolding’ very
well:
I think that although the course was very useful, it was about academic writing in general and not specialized in my field [sic] of study- as it is supposed to be, because it is not possible to have different courses for different thesis subjects of students. The thing that I need to do now is focusing [sic] on writing in my field [sic] of study by reading relevant
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subjects, learning specialized vocabulary, and trying to write similar to them, by the aid of the knowledge I have earned in this course.
5.2.5 A genre-based corpus-informed data-driven lexico-grammatical
approach to thesis writing
Although the original Advanced Thesis Writing course always emphasized the
isolation, identification and use of key lexico-structural patterns, it was neither based
on corpus data, nor did it make use of data-driven learning activities. The
compilation and the analysis of the two corpora, as well as the use of concordancing
tools, enabled the researcher to ensure the exploitation of the authentic data, through
designing data-driven learning (DDL) tasks at different levels, with various aims,
and in differing modes (individual or collaborative).
The generic move structure, IMRD, representative of abstracts and other genres
reporting research (Swales, 1990), on the other hand, made it possible to categorize
the data according to the basic moves in theses abstracts, which are parallel, at least
to some extent, with the chapters and sections of a thesis. Therefore, the lexico-
structural patterns used to fulfill the important moves and sub-moves were
identified, offering the post-graduate students not only guidance in terms of the
structuring of information (generic moves), but also as regards the relevant language
to accomplish the moves (lexico-structural patterns). For students at higher levels,
and for those learning a language for specific purposes, the knowledge of genres is
as necessary as text creation skills, as each genre has its own discourse structure,
style, content and linguistic patterns (Swales, 1990, p. 58). The conclusion of this
study is therefore that corpus-informed, data-driven, genre-based approaches to
writing with a lexico-grammatical focus offer a comprehensive methodology in
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assisting writers in the organization of information in a text, as well as the coherent
and appropriate expression of ideas (see Appendix O for Teachers’ Notes).
This conclusion is consistent with the literature. Flowerdew (2000), based on her
research findings, concludes that providing exercises to familiarize students with the
key organizational aspects of the genre is “the starting point for helping students to
acquire competence in a particular genre” and this product-based knowledge should
be accompanied by a process approach to writing (2000, p. 375). Recent research by
Charles (2007) also supports the conclusion of the present research. Having
reconciled corpus investigation with genre-based pedagogy, Charles concludes that
“it is the combination of the two approaches that provides the enriched input
necessary for students to make the connection between general rhetorical purposes
and specific lexico-grammatical choices” (2007, p. 289). She further emphasizes
that “in moving from discourse to corpus, the class moves from studying what texts
do, to investigating how they do it” (Charles, 2007, 300).
5.2.6 Virtual learning environments
It is a significant conclusion of this research that virtual learning environments like
Moodle empower learners and promote exploratory learning and autonomy.
Computer Mediated Communication, according to Zane and Collins (1995),
“promotes a type of interaction that is often lacking in the traditional teacher-based
classroom. It allows learners the freedom to explore alternative pathways - to find
and develop their own style of learning” (p. 3). Realistically, language classes
include a wide range of students from different backgrounds, at different levels, and
with different needs. Moodle is a community building platform (Philosophy, 2008),
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and offers far more through its underlying constructivist and social constructivist
principles. It helps the teacher to:
focus on the experiences that would be best for learning from the learner's point of view, rather than just publishing and assessing the information you think they need to know. It can also help you realise how each participant in a course can be a teacher as well as a learner. Your job as a 'teacher' can change from being 'the source of knowledge' to being an influencer and role model of class culture, connecting with students in a personal way that addresses their own learning needs, and moderating discussions and activities in a way that collectively leads students towards the learning goals of the class. (Philosophy, 2008)
The virtual learning platform, Moodle, integrated into the Thesis Writing Course in
this study, is the host to the pedagogic corpus, with its multiple components. The
corpus-informed tasks are of different types, with different aims, and at different
levels. Students have the opportunity to determine what they need, and choose to
engage in individual or collaborative tasks. This collaborative environment offered
by Moodle also facilitates the construction of knowledge. Before the introduction of
Moodle into the course, the participants inquired whether the teacher would support
them with their writing-related problems after they finished the course. After the
introduction of Moodle, the only concern the participants have is whether they will
be able to access Moodle after they have completed the course. It is observable that
the lack of self-confidence the participants have in their writing abilities when they
first take the course gradually decreases towards the end of the semester. Echoing
one of the course participants, Moodle becomes their ‘supervisor’, and they feel safe
with its existence.
Provided that the course design is based on sound pedagogic aims, the virtual
learning environment provided by Moodle promotes the pedagogical principles
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embodied in the European Language Portfolio (ELP), mainly in terms of learner-
centered classroom practices (p. 6), self-directed collaborative learning (p. 5),
learner autonomy (p. 5), communicative intercultural competence (p. 9),
differentiated learning (Kohonen, 2000, p. 10), the importance of input that is
‘functional’, “containing information that the learner would like to know”, and
‘realistic’, “the sort of language utterances that the learner is likely to encounter later
in real-life situations” (Westhoff, 1999, p. 41). All of these principles, as discussed
in chapter 4, are integrated into the pedagogic corpus through the virtual learning
platform. There can be no doubt, therefore, that virtual learning environments with
so much focus on and consideration of learners and learning, are bound to make a
positive impact on the learning experiences and outcomes.
5.2.7 The use of Corpora
The most major conclusions that can be drawn from this research are related to the
use of corpora. The use of corpora started to be popular in the 1990s. Keck (2004)
states that “since the early 1990s, researchers have become increasingly interested in
applying the findings of corpus studies to language teaching” (p. 84). The
conventional practice has been researchers compiling and analysing corpora, and
integrating the resulting data into teaching materials, regardless of what the
practitioner thinks in terms of their usefulness (McCarthy, 2008, p. 565). Gabrielatos
(2005) also thinks that although “electronic language corpora, and their attendant
computer software, are proving increasingly influential in language teaching as
sources of language descriptions and pedagogical materials, … few teachers are
clear about their nature or their relevance to language teaching” (p. 1). Nowadays,
thanks to technological developments, the use, as well as the compilation and
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analysis of corpora, is not in the monopoly of researchers who may not be
practitioners.
McCarthy (2008) holds that “teachers should be central stakeholders in the corpus
revolution” (p. 565). This study is an example of how a teacher can be a central
stakeholder in the corpus revolution, compiling and analyzing corpora, integrating
findings into the materials, as well as observing the impact of materials and tasks on
learning. More importantly, this study is an example of how learners can also be
central stakeholders in the corpus revolution. Gabrielatos (2005) maintains that
learners should also be involved in language investigations with the assistance and
guidance of the teachers. It is noteworthy that the post-graduate students in this
study are able to carry out their investigations through the use of not only the TAC,
but also larger corpora like the BNC, and the Brown Corpus.
This research exploited both learner and target corpora to construct a pedagogic
corpus with multiple components, which formed the basis for a genre-based corpus-
informed approach to academic writing pedagogy. It would have been possible to
make use of only a target corpus and design a teaching / learning program based on
it. However, the use of learner corpora provides concrete evidence on learners’
language problems. The use of learner corpora has become widespread in EAP in
recent years. Gilguin et al. (2007, p. 323) are strong supporters of the use of learner
corpora in EAP research, and criticize the fact that “the overwhelming majority of
corpus-based EAP studies are exclusively based on native corpora”. Milton and
Tsang (1991) also advocate the use of learner corpora as they provide evidence that
quantifies students’ problems in written expression (cited in Gilguin et al., 2007, p.
322). Flowerdew (2001), meanwhile, emphasizes that “insights gleaned from learner
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corpora need to be employed to complement those from expert corpora for syllabus
and materials design” (cited in Gilguin et al., 2007, p. 322).
This study has concluded that learner corpora are extremely valuable in that they not
only provide teachers with information about the language level and problems of
their students, but also learners themselves with data about what they lack, and
therefore what they need, in order to compete in the academic world. The basic
principles of such an approach do not only apply to post-graduate students involved
in reporting their research, but can potentially be exploited in any language
teaching-learning situation. The comparison of any specified learner corpora with
any type of specified target corpora could provide the simple equation that ‘what
one needs to know’ minus ‘what one already knows’ equals ‘what one needs to
learn’. Corder (1973) maintains that describing and classifying learners’ errors give
us information about what learners still need to learn (p. 257).
This study also concluded that quantitative and qualitative analysis should
complement each other in corpus analysis to accomplish especially pedagogic goals.
Without qualitative analysis, the results of this study would have been figures,
percentages, and tables. It is questionable whether, or to what extent, such data
would be of any use to post-graduate students involved in writing their theses. In
corpus analysis, Hunston (2002) holds, there is “the need to move between
quantitative information, which can alert the user to potential points of interest, and
qualitative information, which is needed to provide explanation of those points” (p.
212). Similarly, Biber et al. (1998) maintain that corpus analyses should go beyond
simple counts of linguistic features, and include qualitative, functional
interpretations of quantitative patterns (pp. 4-5). A study like Hyland’s (2000)
267
analyzing hedges and boosters in academic texts would have been impossible to
conduct without qualitative analysis of corpora.
A further conclusion of this study in terms of the use of corpora is that, although it
may sometimes be perceived as a limitation, small corpora are valuable for
pedagogic purposes, as they are easier to analyse, exploit, and base materials and
tasks on. Small specialized corpora are useful when they are designed for specific
groups of learners, and specific domains. Mudraya (2006) advocates the use of
small corpora for language learning and teaching. She states that such corpora “…
can be more useful as they are designed to represent the specific part of the language
under investigation and are tailored to address the aspects of the language relevant to
the needs of the learner” (p. 237). Hunston (2002), similarly, states that “relatively
small but highly specialized corpora can be used in certain situations, for example in
describing the language of specific discourse communities or in comparing native-
speaker and non-native-speaker usage” (p. 212). Corpora designed for pedagogic
purposes “unlike corpora designed for research purposes, … , while useful for
language description, are also intended to inform language teaching in specific
instructional settings. The corpus, then, is carefully designed to represent the
domains of use most relevant to the learner population” (Keck, 2004, p. 90).
A final conclusion that can be drawn from the use of corpora in this dissertation is
that it decreases reliance on native speaker intuition, empowers both the teacher and
the learner, promotes the self-confidence of both, and as mentioned earlier, reduces
the dependence of the learner on the teacher, provided that learners are trained in
how and when to use corpora. Corpora can potentially become learners’ best
companion. The availability of corpora increases their confidence, and decreases
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their reliance on ‘more proficient’ others. Lee and Swales (2006) hold that with a
corpus approach to language, the authority for language standards is ‘decentered’, as
this approach allows non-native speakers “a chance to make their own discoveries
about what is ‘done’ in the language, instead of relying on native-speaker intuitions
or grammar/style books” (p. 69).
In a similar vein, Gabrielatos (2005) maintains that:
The use of corpora in language teaching has helped redefine learner and teacher roles. It has reinforced learner-centred methodologies, and facilitated a further step away from the conception of teachers as sources of knowledge and providers of input, towards one of teachers as guides and facilitators, or even co-researchers. Corpus use has also introduced the need for learners and teachers to acquire new skills, and has placed increased emphasis on the necessity for teachers to develop their awareness of the language they teach. Finally, corpus-based research and teaching has the potential to empower non-native teachers and researchers, since native speaker introspection is no longer considered the one infallible source of insights into language structure and use. (p. 27)
In her article titled “Will Corpus linguistics revolutionize grammar teaching in the
21st century?”, Conrad (2000) claims that corpus-based studies have the potential to
revolutionize grammar teaching through providing register-specific descriptions of
English grammar, shifting the emphasis from structural accuracy to appropriate use
of structures, and most importantly, incorporating grammar teaching with
vocabulary teaching (p. 549). The use of corpora seems to have great potential to
revolutionize many more aspects of teaching, and other language-related domains.
This great potential is likely to be highly influential for a long period of time. As
McCarthy (2008) says, “The corpus revolution is here to stay” (p. 573).
269
5.3 Implications
5.3.1 Teachers and Teacher Education
For practitioners wishing to make use of this work, a few words of caution may be
required. The learner corpus was deliberately limited to the work of students taking
the researcher's own thesis writing course, and the composition of the sub-corpora in
the LAC was dictated accordingly. Obviously, a replication of this procedure with a
different group of learners, even in the same institution, would produce different
results. However, given the widespread and global nature of English medium
education and the production of theses and publications written in English by
researchers for whom English is not the first language, it is also suggested that a
replication of this procedure with many groups of learners would be likely to lead to
results which are at least markedly similar in many ways, and which support this
undertaking. The research has yielded a bank of genre-based lexico-structural items
that are of general utility to EAP teachers, and particularly those working at the
postgraduate level. For those practitioners who feel that their circumstances are
somewhat more rarified, or indeed dissimilar to those faced by the researcher, what
is made available here is an innovative method that enables analysis and
categorization for practical and pedagogic purposes.
With the developments in computer technology, it is now possible for teachers to
conduct their own corpus-based research. Even the use of corpora, let alone the
compilation and analysis of it, requires certain skills to be acquired. However, “to
date, relatively little attention has been given in teacher education programmes to
the growing influence of corpora and the skills of evaluating and using corpora”
270
(McCarthy, 2008, p. 563). With the use of corpora getting more and more
widespread, teacher education programs should integrate modules with special focus
on how teachers can compile, analyze, and exploit corpora. As already stated,
McCarthy (2008) claims that the corpus revolution is “here to stay, and teacher
education cannot afford to sideline it” (p. 573).
5.3.2 Students
No individual student embarks on a course of study at exactly the same level as any
other student, and the distance and route to be traveled between the ‘actual level’
and the ‘required level’ is in each case unique. Each individual thesis is also unique
in that the post-graduate student is struggling to produce an original piece of work.
Additionally, students are from different subject areas and disciplines. Hence, the
pedagogic materials and tasks need to be flexible. It seems essential therefore that
the lexico-structural bank of moves and sub-moves created in this research is used as
an open-ended resource bank, and not as an imposition on groups of students from
different subject areas. In fact, probably just as important as the categorized lexico-
structural patterns, is the use of corpora in raising students’ language awareness and
promoting independent learning. It is hoped, therefore, that the corpora are not only
used as tools for teaching and learning, but also as resources that can be used in the
writing process itself, in the same way that a student might make use of a dictionary
or thesaurus.
5.3.3 Software Applications and Virtual Learning Environments
As the pedagogic corpus evolved, progressively greater use was made of the fast-
developing Moodle software application. The General Education department where
271
the researcher works is the pioneering department at EMU integrating Moodle into
its language instruction. The introduction of the software at the institution is recent,
and not all the facilities it offers have been fully exploited to date. However time has
been sufficient to make substantial developments in this regard, as well as gain an
appreciation of what else it can offer.
As an interactive (or Web 2.0) based course design application based on social
constructivist principles, Moodle offers a number of features of relevance to this
project. Firstly, it enables a course to be fully designed and implemented through the
Web, making it possible for students to use as a resource for both individual and
collective study. It can also be used and shaped as required by individual teachers as
both a pedagogic resource and as a means of communication with learners, both
individually and collectively.
Furthermore, Moodle is able to serve as a basic resource centre. In this study, both
the TAC and the LAC can be accessed through Moodle, allowing the post-graduate
students privileged access into the web concordances of the two corpora, and the
concordances it generates, using the Concordance software package (Watt, 2004).
This enables the students to check the use, the frequency and full contexts of all the
items in the corpora. Once the students have acquired an understanding of the major
moves and functions in thesis and academic writing, they have a powerful tool on
their desktop that they can exploit according to their individual needs. Moodle also
has a powerful glossary feature that enables key items to be highlighted wherever
and whenever they appear on the site and then linked into the glossary itself. The
glossary can be exploited to provide a summary of details of key vocabulary in
addition to lexico-structural patterns. Other features that can be used through or with
272
Moodle include gap-filling and matching software such as HOT POTATOES and
collaborative editing software like WIKI. The facility for online submission and
return of assignments also offers significant pedagogic benefits.
To conclude, this research has generically categorized the language used in thesis
writing for pedagogic purposes. However, what Moodle does is to enable these
categories to be organized and presented to both teachers and learners in an
accessible style. This is extremely significant considering the size of the data.
It should be emphasized, however, that Moodle is only a software application, “Like
all technology, the Moodle, in itself, is not that revolutionary. What teachers do with
it, given the autonomy to let them follow their creativity within solid pedagogical
principles, can be” (Eldridge and Neufeld, 2007, p. 25). Yet, at present, using
technology has become so widespread that Dudeney (2008) claims that “'technology
will not replace teachers, but teachers who use technology will replace those who
don’t”.
5.3.4 The Use of Vocabulary Profiling Software
It should also be emphasized that the vocabulary profiling software both initiated
and made a critical contribution to this study. This study was initially motivated by
the compilation of the AWL, and the free vocabulary profiling tools made available
on Tom Cobb’s Compleat Lexical Tutor website. Both RANGE and the Vocabulary
Profilers (VP) have been integral to the implementation of this project. Therefore,
the use of vocabulary profiling tools as a standard day-to-day practice for both
teachers and students is recommended. As part of a related study, Hancioglu and
Eldridge (2007) attempted to show how VP tools may be used by teachers to analyse
273
texts and make reliable decisions on which vocabulary to teach at what point in the
teaching-learning process. It may also be added that vocabulary profiling tools
enable the analysis not only of the authentic academic text, but of student work in
either 'complete' or draft form. The basic VP tools offer a quick and economical way
of analyzing and comparing the vocabulary profiles of any text. Besides, they are
very easy to operate. The use of these tools is strongly recommended not only for
teachers, but also for students in the process of constructing texts.
5.4 Implications for further research
As in all research, this study has also been restricted largely by issues of practicality,
economy, and, as traditional, time. Considering the scope of the current study as
well as the limitations, a number of suggestions can be made as to how future
research can fruitfully build on the insights gained from the conclusions, and the
implications of this research.
The research project has been limited to some extent by the selected sub-corpora, as
they were of unequal sizes beyond the researcher’s control. Therefore, researchers
and practitioners making use of the data, and the discussion need to be aware that
the data from the learner corpus is not based on equally-distributed sub-corpora.
Since the basic structure of the abstract, as well as the emerging lexico-structural
patterns cut across fields, it is unlikely that this omission is of major significance,
although wider and equal coverage would have been preferable. Hence, practitioners
who are involved in the teaching of academic English in specific subject areas could
conduct follow-up research by compiling corpora from their specific fields. The
274
growing collection of learner corpora available for academic use can also be
exploited in this respect.
The use of abstracts as the basis for the study has produced detailed insights into the
functioning of the thesis as a whole. Compilation and analysis of much larger and
more extensive corpora of Master’s and Doctoral theses is a valuable route that can
be followed in future research.
A further approach that would certainly be of significance would be to construct
sub-corpora of individual moves, and analyze these corpora separately to extract the
lexico-grammatical patterns representative of each move and sub-move. This would
undoubtedly be a time-consuming exercise, as not only moves often overlap at the
phrasal and sentential levels, but also some lexico-grammatical patterns are multi-
functional. Nevertheless, such an approach would certainly constitute an ideal
follow-up to the work described here, and is highly recommended for future
researchers, particularly those with access to the technology that can facilitate the
process of tagging the moves.
This study focused on identifying the lexis and lexico-grammatical patterns used for
fulfilling thesis moves and functions that cut across different disciplines. An
alternative approach to analysis could certainly be to focus on deriving wordlists and
lexico-structural banks from specific fields, and sub-fields, as recommended by
researchers such as Hyland and Tse (2007).
The learner population of the learner corpus in this research is of different linguistic
backgrounds. A follow-up study could comfortably aim at separating the corpus into
275
sub-corpora based on linguistic backgrounds, and using error analysis to analyze and
determine the cross-linguistic differences.
An obvious route that could be taken as a follow-up to this research would be to
carry out a longitudinal study to determine the impact of the pedagogic corpus on
the participants’ text creation skills over time. However, as the present ENGL501
Thesis Writing Course is a semester-based course, issues of time and feasibility
could pose as serious limitations to such a research study.
As with all work of this nature, there have certainly been limitations, errors and
omissions of various types in this research. Yet, it is hoped and indeed believed that
the work described here may be of substantial assistance to those engaged in the
teaching and learning of thesis writing in particular, and academic writing in
general.
5.5 The Final Word
This study has most importantly demonstrated how corpora can be exploited by
practitioners for pedagogic purposes. Painstaking as corpora analysis may be, the
data provided and the opportunities offered are so great that the hard work becomes
worthwhile. This research has also indicated that wordlists with a unified
perspective, such as the BNL, can comfortably be used for setting targets for
students, and for determining their receptive level, ‘the extent to which students
understand language’ (Kohonen, 2000, p. 10). However, for students to ‘make
themselves understood’ (Kohonen, 2000, p. 10), in other words, for production
purposes, wordlists need to be supplemented. At especially post-graduate levels,
where students are expected to be aware of generic features, the study has concluded
276
that lexico-structural banks of moves and sub-moves can help students in producing
coherent and appropriate text. This study has also shown how available software and
technologies may be harnessed in helping learners use data-driven learning
techniques as a fundamental method of improving the level of their academic
writing skills. Another important conclusion of this study is that virtual learning
environments provide extensive learning opportunities and experiences for their
users.
This research was motivated by the difficulties that the post-graduate students at the
Eastern Mediterranean University in Northern Cyprus faced in writing their theses,
and therefore the final voice should be theirs:
Before the class, my idea was no matter how hard I try, I can not write well because good writing only belongs to native speakers, but now, I feel that I only need sufficient work and practice in order to write well.
277
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APPENDICES
APPENDIX A:
EFL 501 Course Description
EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN UNIVERSITYSCHOOL OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES
ACADEMIC YEAR 2004-2005SPRING SEMESTER
Course Code and Title: EFL 501 Advanced Writing I
Instructor: Extension: Office: E-mail:Nilgun HANCIOGLU 1070 SFLA 313
Class Hours: Can be arranged by negotiation with the participants (any day between 14.30-17.30 or 15.30-18.30)
Office Hours: To be announced in class by the instructor
Course Description:EFL 501, offered by the SFL, is a non-credit course aimed at developing the academic and professional writing skills of MA/MS candidates. During the course, participants will have the chance to analyze the grammar and lexis of authentic academic texts. Participants will then be invited to produce their own work and will be encouraged to recognize their own problems with the use of the language and find solutions to those problems. At the same time, attention will be paid to devices that make a piece of writing coherent and cohesive. The emphasis will be on trying to produce texts where ideas are unified through certain cohesive devices and sound reasoning.
Participants who would like to take this course should not have entered the thesis writing stage yet. Those MA/MS candidates who have already started their thesis are advised to enroll on EFL 502.
It is essential that participants to these courses have at least a good intermediate level of English.
Course Assessment Procedures:
This is a non-credit course. However, participants should expect to submit for formal assessment a portfolio of their own written work. Some of this work will be
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done in class, and some will be done outside class. The exact content of these submissions will be discussed during the course. The portfolio will be made up of a number of short pieces of work. In order to achieve a satisfactory grade, candidates will be expected to attend classes, and complete written tasks as required.
Plagiarism:This is intentionally failing to give credit to sources used in writing, regardless of whether they are published or unpublished. Plagiarism is a disciplinary issue and will be dealt with accordingly.
Weeks Date Classwork1 1-5 March Introduction/Overview of the Course/Lexical Tutor
Unit 1: Introducing2 8-12
March Unit 2: Narrating and Reporting
3 15-19 March
Unit 2: Narrating and Reporting (cont.)
4 22-26 March
Unit 3: Paraphrasing, Summarising, Quoting and Synthesising
5 29 March – 2 April
Unit 4: Describing Processes and Developments
6 5-9 April Unit 5: Giving Examples7 12-16
April Unit 6: Generalizing
8 19-23 April23 April National Holiday
Mid-term Exam Week
9 26-30 April
Unit 7: Classifying and Categorising
10 3-7 May Unit 7: Classifying and Categorising (cont.)11 10-14 May Unit 8: Cause and Effect12 17-21 May
19 May National Holiday
Unit 8: Cause and Effect (cont.)
13 24-28 May Unit 9: Comparing and Contrasting14 31 May – 4
June Unit 10: Defining
15 7-8 June Unit 11: Interpreting Data (Tables, Graphs, Charts)16 11-18 June Final Exam Week17 21-26 June Final Exam Week
This is a tentative course outline, subject to revision or adjustment as and if required.
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APPENDIX B:
ENGL501 Course Description
EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN UNIVERSITYCOURSE OUTLINE
COURSE CODE ENGL501 COURSE LEVEL Post-graduateCOURSE TITLE Advanced Thesis WritingCOURSE TYPE Post-graduate electiveLECTURER(S) Nilgun HanciogluCREDIT VALUE Non-credit ECTS VALUE 6PREREQUISITES NoneCOREQUISITES NoneDURATION OF COURSE One SemesterWEB LINK http://gemoodle.emu.edu.tr/CATALOGUE DESCRIPTIONENGL501 is a post-graduate academic English course. The purpose of this course is to develop the academic writing skills of MA/MS and Ph.D. candidates. The prime focus will be on examining authentic academic texts, and analysing such elements as structure, lexis, and style in theses and dissertations. Participants will then be invited to exploit this detailed understanding of textual dynamics in their own writing and helped to produce work that is accurate, concise, and appropriate.
AIMS & OBJECTIVESThe aims of ENGL501 are:
o To improve and develop academic writing skills and knowledge.o To improve and develop academic study skills and knowledge of academic conventions. o To improve and develop knowledge of thesis structure and format. o To develop skills and knowledge of textual dynamics.o To systematically develop academic vocabulary knowledge and skills.o To develop awareness of potential problems in academic writing.o To furnish with knowledge and strategies for dealing with problems in academic writingo To develop awareness of the need and benefit of producing multiple drafts in academic
writing with the aim of improving the structure, lexis and style of own text and bringing it to a satisfactory level which would be accepted by the academic discourse community.
o To develop skills in exploiting computers both as a study resource and as a tool for producing professionally presented work.
GENERAL LEARNING OUTCOMES (COMPETENCES)On successful completion of this course, all students will have developed knowledge and understanding of:
o Thesis structure and format.o Discourse and style of academic writing.o Organizational structure of theses.o English grammatical structure, functions and discourse patterns.o Accurate and appropriate use of academic vocabulary.o The importance and value of drafting, revising and editing written work.
On successful completion of this course, all students will have developed their skills in:o Planning the steps of research.o Placing research data in different sections of a thesis.o Planning, drafting and writing a thesis proposal, introduction, literature review,
methodology and abstract in the appropriate format, organizational structure and style.o Conforming to academic conventions in writing their thesis.
On successful completion of this course, all students will have developed their appreciation of and respect for values and attitudes regarding the issues of:
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o Academic honesty and the issue of plagiarism.
LEARNING / TEACHING METHODThere are three class hours per week. Lessons are not lecture-based, although obviously there is some formal teacher input. For the most part though, participants should be expected to take active part in class discussions related to and dependent upon examining authentic academic texts, and analysing such elements as structure, lexis, and style, especially in theses and dissertations. Participants are then invited to exploit this detailed understanding of textual dynamics in their own writing and helped to produce work that is accurate, concise, and appropriate.In addition to the three class hours per week, there is also a complementary web-based interactive e-learning platform, Moodle, which provides the participants with maximum exposure to more tasks, materials, and interaction with peers. In addition, this platform enables constant communication between the participants and the instructor. Students are also expected to make use of the instructor’s office hours. Since this course is aimed at improving academic writing skills, participants should expect to spend a lot of time outside the classroom, writing and bringing their written work to a satisfactory level.
ASSIGNMENTSo Participants are expected to work on parts of their thesis, which they can later expand.
ATTENDANCE Though this is a non-credit course, attendance is compulsory as the completion of the
assignments is closely linked to the input provided in class and class discussions. A student not attending 50% of the classes and not submitting the required assignments in a portfolio on time will receive an Unsatisfactory grade.
MATERIALS/TOOLSMaterials and tasks designed / compiled by the course instructor.Interactive e-learning platform
INDICATIVE BASIC READING LISTNoneEXTENDED READING LISTAcademic texts (theses, research articles)SEMESTER OFFEREDFall and Spring Semester
CONTENT & SCHEDULETime of classes for 2008-2009 Fall Semester.Group 1: Thursday 13.30-16.30Group 2: Tuesday 13.30-16.30
The following is a tentative course schedule, and it may be subject to change if and when required.
WEEK DATE TOPICS1 6-10 Oct. Introduction to the Course and Requirements
2 13-17 Oct Introduction to the Course and RequirementsIntroduction to Moodle-Interactive e-learning platformStudent Profiles Diagnostic Writing Exercise (CELF / IELTS criteria)Discussions on writing
3 20-24 Oct Lab session Thesis structure Microsoft word tools Moodle
4 27 Oct-31 Oct(29th Oct. Holiday)
Avoiding Plagiarism Quoting/paraphrasing/bibliographies
5 3-7 Nov Quoting/paraphrasing/bibliographies (contd)
6 10-14 Nov Writing Research (Thesis) Proposals
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7 17-21 Nov Writing Research (Thesis) Proposals (contd)
8 24-27 Nov Writing Introductions 1
9 Nov 28- Dec 6
MIDTERM EXAMS
10 8-12 Dec RELIGIOUS HOLIDAY
11 15-19 Dec Writing Introductions II
12 22-26 Dec Literature review chapter
13 29 Dec-3 Jan(1st Jan. holiday)
Methodology Chapter
14 5-9 Jan Data Analysis and Conclusion Chapters
15 12-16 Jan Abstracts
16 19-22 Jan End-of-semester evaluation End-of-semester in-class writing
17 26 Jan-10 Feb
FINAL EXAMS
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APPENDIX C:
Interview Guide
1. Do you think that EFL 501 is a necessary course for post-graduate students? Why/Why not?
2. How long have you taught this course?
3. Could you please describe your experiences?
4. Could you please talk a little bit about the student profiles?
5. Can you talk a little bit about these students’ problems?
6. Were the problems specific to one group only?
7. What were the most common problems faced by these students?
8. What do you think could be done to reduce the problems these students face?
9. Do you think the EFL 501 course you were teaching suited the needs of these students?
10. Did you observe any concrete developments in these students’ use of the language at the end of the course? If so, mostly in terms of what?
11. Would you teach this course in the same way and using the same approach and materials if you taught it again? If not, what changes/additions/deletions would you make?
12. Some faculties have made this course a compulsory course for their post- graduate students? How do you feel about this?
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APPENDIX D:
Needs Analysis Questionnaire
EFL 501-Advanced Writing 1 2004-2005 Academic Year
STUDENT PROFILE QUESTIONNAIRE
Name:Student number:Department:Stage in post-graduate study:e-mail: How would you rate your English as a whole, in terms of knowledge of the language, vocabulary, reading, writing, speaking and listening? Excellent? Good? Fair? Poor?
What kinds of writing do you need to do in English?
How would you rate your writing in English? Excellent? Good? Fair? Poor?
What do you find most difficult about writing in English? Please give details.
How do you check your written work?
What have you done up to now to improve your writing skills? What has helped you most?How?
Do you use any resources to help you with your writing (the internet, self-study books, dictionaries, etc,..)? Which ones?
Do you write in hand or do you word-process your documents (including your first drafts)? Which one is more practical, time-saving and useful for you and why?
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How familiar are you with the following terms in writing? Put a tick next to the ones you are very familiar with and a cross next to the ones you have never heard of.
WordinessCohesionCoherenceProcess writingDraftingRevisingEditingAppropriacy of lexisCollocationsRhetorical stylesGenresRegisterCiting sourcesAvoiding plagiarismQuoting, paraphrasing, summarizingBibliographiesFormatAccuracy of languagePunctuation
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APPENDIX E:
Course Evaluation Questionnaire
EFL 501-Advanced Writing 1 2004-2005 Academic Year/Spring SemesterEND-OF-SEMESTER FEEDBACK FORM
Name:Student number:Department:Stage in post-graduate study:
How would you now rate your English as a whole, in terms of knowledge of the language, vocabulary, reading, grammar? Excellent? Good? Fair? Poor? Has the course benefited you in this respect? If so, how?
How would you now rate your writing in English? Excellent? Good? Fair? Poor? Has the course benefited you in this respect? If so, how?
What do you still find most difficult about writing in English? Please give details and, if possible, reasons.
How do you now check your written work? Do you use any tools? Has the course benefited you in this respect? If so, how? Give details, please.
Do you now use any resources to help you with your writing (the internet, self-study books, dictionaries, etc,..)? Has the course benefited you in this respect? If so, how? Give details please.
In what other ways, if any, has the course benefited you?
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Do you have any other comments about the course in terms of content, teaching materials, instructional methods, focus, etc?
Would you advise a friend to take this course? Why/Why not?
What changes/additions/deletions would you suggest and why?
How familiar are you now with the following terms in writing? Put a tick next to the ones you are very familiar with and a cross next to the ones you have not heard of. WordinessCohesionCoherenceProcess writingDraftingRevisingEditingAppropriacy of lexisCollocations (words that go together)Citing sourcesAvoiding plagiarismQuoting, paraphrasing, summarizingBibliographiesFormatAccuracy of languagePunctuationFormal/informal language
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APPENDIX F:
List of Abstracts
Algebra1. C(star)-algebras for boundary actions of Abelian-by-cyclic groupsARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 20052) The X-Legion: A compiler-approach to exploit locality and portability of divide-and-
conquer algorithmsUNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE/ PhD, 20053) Cohomological methods for determining numerical invariants of algebras and modulesRUTGERS THE STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW JERSEY - NEW BRUNSWICK/ PhD, 2005Accounting1. Economic liberalization and its impact on civil war, 1870—2000
STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK AT BINGHAMTON/ PhD, 20052. The influence of leadership on the motivation of virtual teams
NORTHCENTRAL UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 20053. The influence of evaluative reactions to attribute frames and accounting data on capital budgeting decisions
VIRGINIA POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE AND STATE UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 20054. The economic, financial accounting and governance determinants of synthetic lease financing
THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 20055. On labor force participation of married women: The case of the United States since 1959
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA/ PhD, 20056. An integrated systems approach to macroeconomic modeling: Stock-flow consistent accounting
and the dynamics of interaction between the real and financial economyNEW SCHOOL UNIVERSITY, PhD, 2005
7. Implications of alternative emission trading plansMCMASTER UNIVERSITY (CANADA)/ PhD, 2005
8. The restructuring and fragility of the Mexican financial systemNEW SCHOOL UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
9. Does the extent of compliance with international accounting standards affect information asymmetry?
OKLAHOMA STATE UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 200510. Convertible debt proceeds: Allocation methods and evidence of market valuation
MISSISSIPPI STATE UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 200511. Pension accounting and the public interest
UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY (CANADA)/ PhD, 200512. Introducing an ethical dimension into the earnings management decision
VIRGINIA COMMONWEALTH UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005Anthropology1) Fishing-Dependent Communities on the Gulf Coast of Florida: Their Identification, Recent
Decline and Present Resilience/ University of South Florida - Tampa, FL, MA, 20032) Falun Gong in the United States: An Ethnographic Study/ University of South Florida -
Tampa, FL, MA, 2003 3) Dostoevsky's Conception of Man: Its Impact on Philosophical Anthropology/ The
Pennsylvania State University, PhD, 19974) Impurity and Death: A Japanese Perspective/ San Francisco State University - San Francisco
USA, MA, 20025) Osteometric Assessment of 20th Century Skeletons from Thailand and Hong Kong/ Florida
Atlantic University, MA, 1997 Archaeology1) An Archaeological Analysis of Gender Roles in Ancient Non-Literate Cultures of Eurasia/
Flinders University, Australia, MA, 2004
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2) Bioarchaeology of the St. Mary's Free Ground Burials: Reconstruction of Colonial South Australian Lifeways/ University of Adelaide, Adelaide, PhD, 2004
3) The Blokemuseum: Motor Museums and Their Visitors/ Flinders University, PhD, 20044) Place as Occupational Histories: Towards an Understanding of Deflated Surface Artefact
Distributions in the West Darling, New South Wales, Australia/ University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand, PhD, 2004
5) Investigations Towards a Late Holocene Archaeology of Aboriginal Lifeways on the Southern Curtis Coast, Australia/ University of Queensland, PhD, 2004
6) Site Unseen: Archaeology, Cultural Resource Management, Planning and Predictive Modelling in the Melbourne Metropolitan Area/ La Trobe University, Australia, PhD, 2003
7) "Of More Than Usual Interest": A Bioarchaeological Analysis of Ancient Aboriginal Skeletal Material from Southeastern South Australia/ Flinders University, Adelaide, PhD, 2003
8) Numerous Indications: The Archaeology of Regional Aboriginal Behaviour in Northwest Central Queensland/ University of New England, Austr. PhD, 2003
9) Knowledge, Power and Voice: An Investigation of Indigenous South Australian Perspectives of Archaeology/ Flinders University, PhD, 2003
10) Agate and Carnelian Beads and the Dynamics of Social Complexity in Iron Age Mainland Southeast Asia/ University of New England, Armidale, PhD, 2003
11) The Archaeology and Socioeconomy of the Gunditjmara: A Landscape Analysis from Southwest Victoria, Australia/ Flinders University, PhD, 2002
12) Beyond the Divide: A New Geo-Archaeology of Aboriginal Stone Artefact Scatters in Western NSW, Australia/ Macquarie University, PhD, 2002
13) Ngarranggani, Ngamungamu, Jalanijarra: 'Lost Places', Recursiveness and Hybridity at Old Lamboo Pastoral Station, Southeast Kimberley, WA/ University of Western Australia, PhD, 2002
14) Inland Pilbara Archaeology: A Study of Variation in Aboriginal Occupation Over Time and Space on the Hamersley Plateau/ University of Western Australia, MA, 2002
15) A Space of Their Own: Nineteenth Century Lunatic Asylums in Britain, South Australia and Tasmania/ Flinders University, PhD, 2002
16) Deep Structures: An Examination of Deliberate Watercraft Abandonment in Australia Flinders University, PhD, 2002
17) Late Holocene Indigenous Economies of the Tropical Australian Coast: An Archaeological Study of the Darwin Region/ Northern Territory University, PhD, 2001
18) Database Design, Archaeological Classification and Geographic Information Systems: A Case Study from Southeast Queensland/ University of Queensland, PhD, 2001
19) Continuity and Change: A Late Holocene and Post Contact History of Aboriginal Environmental Interaction and Vegetation Process from the Keep River Region, Northern Territory, University of Wollongong, PhD, 2000
20) Palaeo-Environmental Change and the Persistence of Human Occupation in South-Western Australian Forests/ University Western Australia, PhD, 2000
21) The Archaeology of Body Modification: Identifying Symbolic Behaviour Through Usewear and Residues on Flaked Stone Tools/ University of Queensland, PhD, 2000
22) Station Camps: The Ethnoarchaeology of Cultural Change in the Post-Contact Period in the South-East Kimberley Region of Western Australia/ Flinders University, PhD, 2000
23) Squatting Landscapes in South-Eastern Australia (1820-1895)/ University of Sydney, PhD, 2000
24) Here and There: Links Between Stone Sources and Aboriginal Archaeological Sites in Sydney, Australia/ University of Sydney, MA, 1999
25) Past Aboriginal Hunter-Gatherer Economy and Territorial Organisation in Coastal Districts of Western Australia's Lower South-West/ University of Western Australia, PhD, 1999
26) 'Intended Solely for their Greater Comfort and Happiness': Historical Archaeology, Paternalism and the Peel Island Lazaret/ University of Queensland, PhD, 1999
27) Dependent Colonies: The Importation of Material Culture and the Establishment of a Consumer Society in Australia Before 1850/ Flinders University, PhD, 1999
28) Microdebitage and the Archaeology of Rock Art: An Experimental Approach/ University of Sydney, MSc, 1999
29) Wangala Time, Wangala Law: Hunter-Gatherer Settlement Patterns in a Sub-Humid to Semi-Arid Environment/ La Trobe University, Austr., PhD, 1997
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30) The Importance of Quartz in Stone Artefact Assemblages: A Technological Analysis of Five Aboriginal Sites of the Coonabarabran/Warrumbungle Region/ University of New England, Armidale, MA, 1996
31) SS Xantho: Towards a New Perspective. An Integrated Approach to the Maritime Archaeology and Conservation of an Iron Steamship Wreck/ James Cook University of North Queensland, PhD, 1996
32) Accommodating the Destitute: An Historical and Archaeological Consideration of the Destitute Asylum of Adelaide/ Flinders University of South Australia, MA, 1996
33) Situating Style: An Ethnoarchaeological Study of Social and Material Context in an Australian Aboriginal Artistic System/ University of New England, Austr.,PhD, 1994
Architecture/ Urban-regional planning/ Landscape Architecture1) Reciprocity and Mutualism: The Integration of Landscape and Architecture in the
Reclamation of the Former Cornfields Rail Yard. California State Polytechnic University. 2) The Creativity Experience: Examining the Design Process in Landscape Architecture .
California State Polytechnic University.3) Emotional Responses to Flowering Landscapes. California State Polytechnic
University. 4) Tree Ordinances: Public Opinion Survey Examining Issues of Functionality and 5) Aesthetics in Del Mar, California. California State Polytechnic University.
Increasing the Acceptability of Urban Nature Through Effective Cues to Care: A Study of the Lower Arroyo Seco Natural Park, Pasadena, California. California State Polytechnic University.
6) Anxiety and Situational Stress in Medical Oncology Patients: An Environmental Study of Landscape Views in Treatment Room Settings. California State Polytechnic University.
7) Communicating the Value of Landscape Architecture. California State Polytechnic University.
8) Unnatural Nature: Eight Artists Look at Southern California. California State Polytechnic University.
9) Landscape Water Conservation: Toward a Community Education Strategy for the Helix Water District. California State Polytechnic University.
10) Environmental Innovation in Residential Subdivision Design: An Investigation in Orange County, California. California State Polytechnic University.
11) A Study of Human Factors Related to Food Production in Regenerative Agriculture: A Design of a Preliminary Labor Model at the Institute for Regenerative Studies. California State Polytechnic University.
12) Rainforest Conservation and Agricultural Development: Conflict and Compatibility in Baja Talamanca, Costa Rica. California State Polytechnic University.
13) Ecosystematic Stormwater and Flood Management Practices for Southern California. California State Polytechnic University.
14) Guidelines for Water Conservation, Including Integrated Computer Systems for Measuring, Designing and Managing Water Use in the Landscape. California State Polytechnic University
15) The Community for Regenerative Studies: An Investigation into the Human Role in the Environment. California State Polytechnic University.
16) Renewable Energy Systems: An Integrated Approach to Environmental Design. California State Polytechnic University
17) The Value of Complexity in Environmental Design. California State Polytechnic University. 18) Reclamation Techniques for Western Surface Coal Mining. California State Polytechnic
University. 19) The Gardens of Edward Huntsman-Trout. California State Polytechnic University. 20) Shopping Centers: Behavioral Archetypes and Design Synthesis. California State
Polytechnic University. 21) Providing Landscape Architect Design Services for the Average Homeowner. California
State Polytechnic University22) Comparative River Basin Planning: A Historiographical Method for the Analysis of
Regional Planning in America and China. California State Polytechnic University.23) Power, Identity, and the Rise of Modern Architecture from Siam to Thailand- University of
Colorado - Denver, CO, USA 24) The First World War, Britain, and modern design: The social use of architecture in inter-war
Birmingham (England) AUBURN UNIVERSITY
303
25) Automatic building extraction for three-dimensional terrain reconstruction using image interpretation techniques UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES (AUSTRALIA)
26) Shaping sacred space: Toward an evangelical theology of church architecture TRINITY EVANGELICAL DIVINITY SCHOOL
27) Becoming indigenous: A mosaic of house and home UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY28) Boston's 'three-decker menace': The buildings, the builders and the dwellers, 1870s--1930
(Massachusetts) BOSTON UNIVERSITY29) Hybrid sketching: A new middle ground between 2- and 3-D, PhD, MIT, 200530) Building negotiation: Architecture and sociopolitical transformation at Chau Hiix, Lamanai,
and Altun Ha, Belize/ Indiana University, 200531) Reading in three dimensions: Architectural biography from Harriet Beecher Stowe to Edith
Wharton (Henry James, William Dean Howells), Boston University, 200532) Do the original elements by Kevin Lynch on community design apply today with New
Urbanism? (Alabama)/ Mississipi State University, 200533) Participatory virtual preservation: A human-centered digital media procedure for
architectural history inquiry/ Harvard University, 200534) Architecture that embodies the symbolic nature of good leadership and promotes productive
collaboration between women's international organizations. WILL: Women's International Leadership League/ UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, COLLEGE PARK, MArch 2005
35) Music on the edge: An addition to the music conservatory of Tolima, Colombia/ MArch, UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, COLLEGE PARK, 2005
36) The sustainable development of urban 'scrap sites'/ MArch, CARLETON UNIVERSITY (CANADA), 2005
37) View out of a window: Visual preferences of dually diagnosed adolescents residing in group homes/ OKLAHOMA STATE UNIVERSITY, MS, 2005
38) 'Fairy habitations of the mimic city': Sacred Victorian cottages at Chester Heights Camp Meeting/ UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE (WINTERTHUR PROGRAM), MA, 2005
39) 'The real idealism of history': Historical consciousness, commemoration, and Johannes Brahms's 'years of study' (Germany)/ COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, PhD, 2005
40) The politics of architecture: Suor Domenica da Paradiso and her convent of la Crocetta in post-Savonarolan Florence (Italy)/ RUTGERS THE STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW JERSEY - NEW BRUNSWICK, PhD, 2005
41) Transforming Early Gothic form: The Cistercian church of Pontigny, Saint-Martin at Chablis, and northern Burgundian architecture (France)/ UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA BARBARA, PhD, 2005
42) Physical-social capital: Towards a critical design praxis for communities of place (Texas) / UNIVERSITY OF GUELPH (CANADA), PhD, 2005
43) Simplified building energy analysis tool for architects/ ILLINOIS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, PhD, 2005
44) Relevant attributes in assessment for design features of indoor games halls: The application of importance-performance analysis/ INDIANA UNIVERSITY, 2005
45) The life story of the Cemberlitas Hamam: From bath to tourist attraction (Turkey)/ UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA, PhD, 2005
46) An archaeology of the fragment: The transition from the antique fragment to the historical fragment in French architecture between 1750 and 1850/ UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, PhD, 2005
47) An architectural history of grand opera houses: Constructing cultural identity in urban America from 1850 to the Great Depression/ RUTGERS THE STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW JERSEY - NEW BRUNSWICK, PhD, 2005
48) Formalizing the informal city: Designing for development in a Peruvian shantytown/ UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, COLLEGE PARK, MArch, 2005
49) The politics of style: Building, builders, and the creation of federal Boston (Massachusetts, Charles Bullfinch)/ UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST, PhD, 2005
50) Re-weaving the urban fabric: A new midtown residential neighborhood in Newport News, Virginia/ UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, COLLEGE PARK MArch, 2005
51) Constructing process models from distributed design activity/ CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY, PhD, 2005
52) Re-constructing the Counter Reformation: Women architectural patrons in Rome and the case of Camilla Peretti (Italy)/ THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL HILL, PhD, 2005
304
53) The Romanesque Cathedral of Saint Mary at Lincoln and the image of reform (England)/ COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, PhD, 2005
54) A culinary school in San Mateo, California/ UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, COLLEGE PARK, MArch, 2005
55) The architecture of Maxentius: A study in architectural design and urban planning in early fourth-century Rome (Marcus Aurelius Valerius Maxentius, Emperor of Rome, Roman Empire)/ UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, PhD, 2005
56) Squaring the circle: The regulating lines of Claude Bragdon's Theosophic architecture/ VIRGINIA POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE AND STATE UNIVERSITY, PhD, 2005
57) Homeowning: An exploration of the possession and personalization of the American Dream/ RICE UNIVERSITY, MArch, 2005
58) Home as investment: Housing markets and cultures of urban change in Houston (Texas)/ RICE UNIVERSITY, PhD, 2005
59) Imaginary figures of death and life in the architecture of Grandjean de Montigny (Auguste Henri Victor Grandjean de Montigny, France, Brazil)/ UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, PhD, 2005
60) Professional sacrifice: Architects, ethics and advertising/ OPEN UNIVERSITY (UNITED KINGDOM), PhD, 2005
61) Shifting archi(text)ure: Notes on a discourse/ RICE UNIVERSITY, MArch, 200562) Dovetail Ranch at Ajo Valley/ RICE UNIVERSITY, MArch, 200563) Balancing on transit: Redevelopment of the Southern Pacific Railyards Sacramento,
California/ UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, COLLEGE PARK, MArch, 200564) A new deal for progress: The 1933 Chicago World's Fair (Illinois)/ UNIVERSITY OF
ILLINOIS AT CHICAGO, PhD, 200565) Entertainment of the most beautiful kind: The house of William and Harriet Aiken, 1833—
1860/ UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE (WINTERTHUR PROGRAM), MA, 200566) Architecture as a catalyst for organizational change: Facilitating a person-centered approach
to care in an adult/dementia day center/ THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN – MILWAUKEE, PhD, 2005
67) Master planning the State University of New York for real estate development: A case study/ MS, 2005, STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK COL. OF ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & FORESTRY
68) The effect of the interaction of architecture, culture, and nature on well-being and spirituality/ UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY (CANADA), PhD, 2005
69) Cultivat(ing) modernities: The Society for National Heritage, political propaganda, and public architecture in twentieth-century Iran/ MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, PhD, 2005
70) Architecture and social complexity in the Late Ubaid Period: A study of the built environment of Degirmentepe in East Anatolia (Turkey)/ UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES, PhD, 2005
71) Leberecht Migge (1881--1935) and the modern garden in Germany/ UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, PhD, 2005
72) Spatial narratives, commemorative practices and the building project: New urban foundations in Upper Syro-Mesopotamia during the Early Iron Age/ UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, PhD, 2005
73) BIOcity/ RICE UNIVERSITY, MArch, 200574) Architecture, ritual and identity in the cathedral of Saint-Etienne and the abbey of Saint-
Germain in Auxerre, France/ BROWN UNIVERSITY, PhD, 200575) Constructions of public space, Singapore/ HARVARD UNIVERSITY, 200576) Regionalism and universality on the Big Muddy: A trail of pavilions along the Mississippi
River/ UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, COLLEGE PARK, MArch, 200577) Weaving place and object: A new Martin Luther King community library (Washington,
D.C.)/ UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, COLLEGE PARK, MArch, 200578) Felt PET: A material research project/ RICE UNIVERSITY, MArch, 200579) Dislocations and relocations: The built environments of Japanese American internment/
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA BARBARA, PhD, 200580) Operative topography: An agent for place-making in the age of globalization/
UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA, PhD, 200581) Public spaces, public transit and accessibility for the blind: What Portland, Oregon has to
teach us/ MORGAN STATE UNIVERSITY, MLA, 2005
305
82) Rivalry and representation: Regionalist architecture and the road to the 1937 Paris Exposition (France)/ UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA, PhD, 2005
83) Open space for the underclass: New York's small parks (1880--1915)/ UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, PhD, 2005
84) An XML initiative of transferring architectural information to the construction site based on the BIM object concept/ ILLINOIS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, PhD, 2005
85) Leopold Eidlitz: Becoming an American architect/ UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, PhD, 2005
86) Building in the air: Aspects of the aerial imagination in modern Italian architecture (Franco Albini, Edoardo Persico, Alberto Sartoris)/ UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, PhD, 2005
87) Art, architecture and politics in Mewar, 1628--1710 (India)/ UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA, PhD, 2005
88) The effects of sculpture in a university public space: An empirical study of user behavior/ MISSISSIPPI STATE UNIVERSITY, MLA, 2005
89) Healing the circulatory wound/ RICE UNIVERSITY, MArch, 200590) Fear as a cultural phenomenon in Thailand with special reference to the spatial relations of
domestic architecture/ OPEN UNIVERSITY (UNITED KINGDOM), PhD, 200591) Systems aesthetics: Architectural theory at the University of Cambridge, 1960--1975
(Massachusetts, Peter Eisenman, Lionel March, Leslie Martin, Christopher Alexander)/ HARVARD UNIVERSITY, PhD, 2005
92) Exploring the effects of local development regulations on ecological landscape structure/ TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY, PhD, 2005
93) Requirements management interface to building product models/ STANFORD UNIVERSITY, PhD, 2005
94) Towards a draped architecture: An examination of theatricality, virtuosity, and ambiguity in the recent works of Frank O. Gehry, and others/ UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, PhD, 2005
95) Historic building documentation in the United States, 1933--2000. The Historic American Buildings Survey: A case study/ TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY, PhD, 2005
96) A meta-language for systems architecting/ MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, PhD, 2005
97) Regio: Leon Battista Alberti and the theory of region in architecture (Italy)/ UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, PhD, 2005
98) Eco-metropolis: Tourism of the urban ecology/ RICE UNIVERSITY, MArch, 200599) Tower typewriter and trademark: Architects, designers and the corporate utopia, 1956--1964
(Gordon Bunshaft, Eero Saarinen, Henry Dreyfuss, Florence Knoll, Eliot Noyes)/ NEW YORK UNIVERSITY, PhD, 2005
100) The snake that swallowed an egg: A network of parks for Houston's wasted spaces (Texas)/ RICE UNIVERSITY, MArch, 2005
101) Grand Theater Square - Shanghai (China)/ UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, COLLEGE PARK, MArch, 2005
102) PHARM_STAD: Fieldworks for Somkhele (South Africa)/ RICE UNIVERSITY, MArch, 2005
103) Border crossings/ RICE UNIVERSITY, MArch, 2005 104) Personalization and its place in the New Urbanism/UNIVERSITY OF LOUISVILLE,
PhD, 2005105) The veneration of St. Benedict in medieval Rome: Parish architecture, monumental
imagery, and local devotion (Italy)/ UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, PhD, 2005106) Functionalism with ornament: Modernist architectural discourse in Hermann Broch's 'Die
Schlafwandler'/ WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY, PhD, 2005107) The power of fame: Stowe and its uses (England, Alexander Pope, Samuel Richardson,
Earl Temple, George Grenville, William Pitt)/ WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY, PhD, 2005108) Modernity and memory: The politics of architecture in Hungary and East Germany after
the Second World War/ PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, PhD, 2005109) Assessing mold risks in buildings under uncertainty/ GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF
TECHNOLOGY, PhD, 2005110) Alfred Muller and Galveston's late nineteenth-century architectural style (Texas)/
UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON-CLEAR LAKE, MA, 2005111) Park space (Texas)/ RICE UNIVERSITY, MArch, 2005
306
112) Like and like/ RICE UNIVERSITY, Houston, MArch, 2005113) Building stories: Literature and architecture in early modern England (Anne Clifford,
Countess of Pembroke, Sir Henry Wotton, Ben Jonson, John Stow, George Herbert)/ UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES., PhD, 2005
114) The Alhambra in comparative perspective: Towards a definition of palace-cities (Spain, Palestine, France)/ BOSTON UNIVERSITY, PhD, 2005
115) Architecture in mind: Hegel's history of architecture and its place in the 'Philosophy of Fine Art' (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel)/ UNIVERSITY OF ESSEX (UNITED KINGDOM), PhD, 2005
116) Technically symbolic: The significance of schema and Claude Bragdon's Sinbad drawings in 'The Frozen Fountain'/ UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, PhD, 2005
117) Green fabric: An urban center for Virginia's wine culture (Virginia)/ UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, COLLEGE PARK, MArch, 2005
118) Decision-making framework for the selection and design of shading devices/ VIRGINIA POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE AND STATE UNIVERSITY, PhD, 2005
119) Permeable walls and place recognition in Henry Klumb's architecture of social concern (Puerto Rico)/ UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, PhD, 2005
120) A quantification of proportionality aesthetics in morphological design/ UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, PhD, 2005
121) Tall building form generation by parametric design process/ ILLINOIS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, PhD, 2005
122) Conceptual design tools for architects/ HARVARD UNIVERSITY 2005123) Maximizing the benefits of courtroom POEs in design decision support and academic
inquiry through a unified conceptual model/ GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, PhD, 2005
124) The side stage: A critical cultural awareness forum in Washington, D.C./ UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, COLLEGE PARK, MArch, 2005
125) The essence of architecture: August Schmarsow's theory of space/ UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, PhD, 2005
126) The First World War, Britain, and modern design: The social use of architecture in inter-war Birmingham (England)/ AUBURN UNIVERSITY, PhD, 2005
127) Niche life/ RICE UNIVERSITY, MArch, 2005128) An investigation of methods for reducing the use of non-renewable energy resources for
housing in Thailand/ TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY, PhD, 2005129) The comfort consciousness/ RICE UNIVERSITY, MArch, 2005130) A case study of cost overruns in a Thai condominium project/ TEXAS A&M
UNIVERSITY, PhD, 2005131) Technik und Kultur: The German architectural discourse on iron, 1890—1918/ NEW
YORK UNIVERSITY, PhD, 2005132) At home in postwar France: The design and construction of domestic space, 1945—1975/
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY, PhD, 2005133) Italian modern architecture and the vernacular tradition: The aesthetics of morality/
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO (CANADA), PhD, 2005134) Extreme spatial experience apparatus altering the perception of space through computer-
mediated movement/ UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES, PhD, 2005135) Technology and elderly people: Design methodology for interactive communication in
later life/ CARLETON UNIVERSITY (CANADA), MArch, 2005136) Hybrid housing/ RICE UNIVERSITY, MArch 2005137) An analysis of the American outdoor sport facility: Developing an ideal type on the
evolution of professional baseball and football structures/ THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY, PhD, 2005
138) Albert Mayer, architect and town planner: The case for a total professional/ NEW YORK UNIVERSITY, PhD, 2005
139) Fat City (a post-movement manifesto)/ RICE UNIVERSITY, MArch 2005140) Ventilation drying and the performance of the exterior membrane in building enclosure
systems/ THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY, PhD, 2005141) Urban metamorphosis and change in central Asian cities after the Arab invasions/
GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, PhD, 2005
307
142) Facade-poche: The performative representation of thickened window-walls in the works of Marcel Breuer, Richard Neutra, and Jose Luis Sert/ UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, PhD, 2005
143) Reading Ashikaga history in the urban landscape: Kyoto in the early Muromachi period, 1336--1467 (Japan)/ PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, PhD, 2005
144) Johannes Baader and the demise of Wilhelmine culture: Architecture, Dada, and social critique, 1875—1920/ NEW YORK UNIVERSITY, PhD, 2005
145) Study of natural ventilation design by integrating the multi-zone model with CFD simulation/ MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, PhD, 2005
146) 'I am not a decorator': Florence Knoll, the Knoll Planning Unit, and the making of the modern office/ UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE (WINTERTHUR PROGRAM), MA, 2005
147) Art and the conventual life in Renaissance Venice: The Monastery Church of Santa Caterina de' Sacchi (Italy)/ PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, PhD, 2005
148) Architecture in the manner of Giovanni Battista Piranesi: Ornamental excess and the apotropaic function of grotesque representations (Italy)/ UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, PhD, 2005
149) Technology as 'praxis of inquiry' in architectural design: Adaptability/modulation/emergence/ CARLETON UNIVERSITY (CANADA), MArch 2005
150) Spaces of illusion, artifice and play: From the nineteenth century to the themed environment/ UNIVERSITY OF ESSEX (UNITED KINGDOM), PhD, 2005
Art History1) Architecture and Ideology: The National Gallery of Canada (A Reading of the Architecture
Using Feminist and Postmodernist Theory) Joan Acland 1989, Canada2) Closed Systems: Alexandra Luke, Hortense Gordon and the Canadian Art History Canon,
Janice Anderson, 19953) H. Mabel May (1877-1971) - The Montreal Years: 1909-1938, Karen Antaki, 19924) The Sculpture of Anne Kahane, Sylvia A. Antoniou, 19925) The Beaver Hall Group and its Place in the Montreal Art Milieu and the Nationalist
Network, Susan Avon, 19946) The Stained Glass War Memorial Windows of Charles William Kelsey, Shirley May Baird7) Furs in Fashion as Illustrated in the Photo-Portraiture of William Notman in the 1860s, Jana
Bara, 19868) William Notman's Portraits of Children, Katharine J. Borcoman, 19919) William Brymner ( 1855 - 1925 ) The Artist in Retrospect, Janet Grace Mills Braide, 197910) Photography, Immigration, and Canadianism: 1896-1921, Anna Maria Carlevaris, 199211) William H. Eagar: "Sensibilities of No Common Order" Alexandra E. Carter, 197912) Case Study: Michel Foucault, Critical Modernism, and Writing on the Visual Arts in English
Canada, Timothy D. Clark, 199113) Jock Macdonald: The Search for the Universal Truth in Nature, Allison J. Colborne, 199214) The Church of St. Andrew and St. Paul, Montreal: An Architectural History 1805-1932, and
Catalogue of Memorials, Sandra M. Coley, 199315) Janvier and Morrisseau: Transcending a Canadian Discourse, Curtis J. Collins, 199416) Modernism meets the farm: Precisionist paintings and photographs of vernacular
architecture, 1915--1940 (Charles Sheeler, Georgia O'Keeffe), CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK, 2005
17) Clothing the corps: How the avant-garde and the Ballets Russes fashioned the modern body, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, 2005
18) 'Against an epoch': Boston moderns, 1880--1905 (Massachusetts, F. Holland Day, Louise Imogen Guiney, Ralph Adams), BOSTON COLLEGE, 2005
19) Perceptions of Native American art: American sculpture and earthworks (Isamu Noguchi, James Pierce, Michael Heizer, Michelle Stuart), RUTGERS THE STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW JERSEY - NEW BRUNSWICK, 2005
Biological Sciences1) Pragmatism and Human Genetic Engineering/ Vanderbilt University - Nashville, Tennessee
– USA, PhD, 19942) Ecological Study of the Role of Highly Processed Milk, Meat and Vegetable Oil in Prostate
Cancer Causation/ Clayton College of Natural Health, Birmingham, USA, 2005
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3) Population genetics and evolutionary history of some deep-sea demersal fishes from the Azores-North Atlantic (Helicolenus dactylopterus, Beryx splendens)/ UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON (UNITED KINGDOM)/ PhD, 2005
4) Monolayer protected gold clusters: Application to biology/ STANFORD UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
5) Factors underlying the interactions between people and wildlife in the Argentine Chaco/ THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA/ PhD, 2005
6) Flexibility in the light reactions of photosynthesis/ WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
7) Mapping protein functional epitopes using phage display: Applications for streptavidin, HIV-1 Vif, and a terpene cyclase/ UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE/ PhD, 2005
8) DNA hybridization: Fundamental studies and applications in directed assembly/ MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY/ PhD, 2005
9) A systems biology approach to understanding cellular dynamics during HIV-1 infection and progression to AIDS/ UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN/ PhD, 2005
10) Chemical and cell biological approaches to study ER stress-induced apoptosis/ HARVARD UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
11) Breeding biology and ecology of Great Tinamous: Female joint-nesting, extra-pair paternity and natural history/ CORNELL UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
12) Systematics of the megadiverse superfamily Gelechioidea (Insecta: Lepidoptera)/ THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
13) Molecular markers of outcome in prostate cancer/ UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES (AUSTRALIA)/ PhD, 2005
Business Administration1) Improved Forecast Accuracy in Airline Revenue Management by Unconstraining Demand
Estimates from Censored Data/ Rutgers University, Newark, NJ USA, PhD, 20012) Towards Improved Project Management Practice: Uncovering the evidence for effective
practices through empirical research/ Leeds Metropolitan University, UK, PhD, 2000 3) Electronic Marketing: Advantages and Disadvantages/ Saint Regis University - Wilmington,
USA, PhD, 2004 4) Model for the Evaluation of Project Funding in Emerging Markets/ Columbia Pacific
University, PhD, 20005) Is Total Quality Management Enough For Competitive Advantage? Realities in
Organizations Implementing Change Initiatives: with Examples from the United States and the Developing World/ University of Hull, United Kingdom, MBA, 1999
6) Publicly Funded School Voucher Programs: A Policy Analysis/ DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois, USA, MS, 2001
7) Violence in the Workplace: Preparation, Prevention and Response/ Columbia Southern University, MS, 2002
8) Inside Chinese Organizations: An Empirical Study of Business Practices in China/ Oxford University, Said Business School, PhD, 1998
9) An empirical study on the state of the purchasing function within small and medium-sized business enterprises/ THE GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
10) Does insider trading predict the future stock return?/ CORNELL UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 200511) A decision model for technology assessment to reduce the internal digital divide in emerging
economies (Case: Costa Rica)/ PORTLAND STATE UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 200512) Higher education and entrepreneurship: The relation between college educational
background and all business success in Texas/ UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS/ PhD, 2005
13) Relationship-specific motives and cultural values in the crossborder franchisor-franchisee relationship from the Puerto Rican franchisee's perspective/ THE GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
14) Essays on the spatial distribution of population and employment/ THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO/ PhD, 2005
15) Consumer expectations of quality in Master of Business Administration programs: A comparison between face-to-face learning and Web-delivered distance learning in schools of business/ ALLIANT INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY, SAN DIEGO/ 2005
16) Psychological ownership in complex technology/ BENEDICTINE UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
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17) Corporate governance and financial reporting credibility/ NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
18) Product capital model: Modeling the value of design to corporate performance/ STANFORD UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
19) Regulations, foreign presence, and efficiency of local firms: A multiple country study in commercial banking/ UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA/ PhD, 2005
20) Catalog creative design and consumer demand: A spatial distance-metric approach/ THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO/ PhD, 2005
Chemistry1) Multiply aromatic clusters via ab initio genetic algorithm/ UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY/
PhD,- 20052) Sol-gel zirconia- and titania-based surface-bonded hybrid organic-inorganic coatings for
sample preconcentration and analysis via capillary microextraction in hyphenation with gas chromatography (CME-GC)/ UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA/ PhD, 2005
3) Reaction mechanisms for catalytic partial oxidation systems: Application to ethylene epoxidation/ MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY/ PhD, 2005
4) Ionic liquids: Synthesis, solvation interactions, chromatographic characteristics, and micelle formation/ IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
5) Chemistry of beta-ester radicals: Evidence supporting ion pair processes/ UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT CHICAGO/ PhD, 2005
6) Electromagnetic excitation of high frequency acoustic shear waves for the study of interfacial biochemical phenomena/ UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO (CANADA)/ PhD, 2005
7) Using the metal-ligand interaction to construct complex supramolecular polymer architectures/ CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
8) Evolution of chemical composition along river drainage networks (Puerto Rico, Nepal)/ UNIVERSITY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE/ PhD, 2005
9) Characterization and mechanistic study of oxygen-iron intermediates in mononuclear nonheme model systems/ UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA/ PhD, 2005
10) Chemistry of tetradecacarbonyltetraosmium/ SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY (CANADA)/ PhD, 2005
Communications1) On the Interactions of News Media, Interpersonal Communication, Opinion Formation, and
Participation: Deliberative Democracy and the Public Sphere/ University of Pennsylvania, PhD, 1997
2) Cross-Cultural Content Analysis of Advertising from the United States and India/ University of Southern Mississippi, U.S., PhD, 1996
3) Getting By: Race and Parasocial Interaction in a Television Situation Comedy/ University of Kentucky, U.S.A., PhD, 1994
4) An Examination of the Theory of the Commodity and its Application to Critical Media Studies/ Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, MA, 1996
5) The Invisible Farm: The worldwide decline of farm news and agricultural journalism training/ Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, MA, 1996
6) Student Perceptions of Rules for Classroom Interaction/ Louisiana State U, MA, 1992 7) The Questioning Behavior of Males And Females in an Undergraduate Language Class/
Indiana University of Pennsylvania, USA, PhD, 1997 8) Cultural Democracy: The Way Festivals Affect Society/ Queen Margaret University
College, Edinburgh, United Kingdom, MSc, 20029) On-line Virtual Museums: An Application of an On-line VR Museum for the Parthenon
Marbles: Internet: A Means of Cultural Repatriation/ University of York, United Kingdom, MSc, 2002
10) Copyright, A Property of Communication, A Link Between Creativity and Control/ School of Communication, Simon Fraser University Can. 2004
11) Acting in the Name of Culture? The Participation of Organized Labour in the Canadian Broadcasting Policy Process/ Communication and Culture, Ryerson University, Can. 2005
12) There I Was, 250 Miles Away From My Groom: A Genealogy of Media Weddings/ Université de Montréal, 2005
310
13) The popular reception of new information and communication technologies in Niger/ SOUTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY AT CARBONDALE/ PhD, 2005
14) From the serialized story to the reality show: A theoretical approach to models of reading and consuming about fiction and reality (Spanish text)/ THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA/ PhD, 2005
15) African-American women's reception, influence and utility of television content: An exploratory qualitative analysis/ LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY AND AGRICULTURAL & MECHANICAL COLLEGE/ PhD, 2005
16) The cultural politics of housing in a capitalist society: Representations of homelessness in contemporary American newspapers/ INDIANA UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
17) Crime content and media economics: Gendered practices and sensational stories, 1950—2000/ UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO (CANADA)/ PhD, 2005
Computer Science1) The ALISA Shape Module: Adaptive Shape Recognition using a Radial Feature Token/
George Washington University, Washington DC, USA, PhD, 20022) R² - Heaps with Suspended Relaxation for Manipulating Priority Queues and a New
Algorithm for Reweighting Graphs/ University of Colorado Boulder, Colorado, USA, PhD, 1995
3) Beautiful Mates: Applying Principles of Beauty to Computer Chess Heuristics/ University of Sussex, MSc, 1997
4) Distributed Programming in Ada with Protected Objects/ University of Alabama in Huntsville, MS, 1998
5) Success Factors Among Community College Students in an Online Learning Environment/ Nova Southeastern University, U.S.A., PhD, 2000
6) A Spare Capacity Planning Methodology for Wide Area Survivable Networks/ University of Pittsburgh, PhD, 1999
7) A Reactive Approach to Comprehensive Global Garbage Detection/ University of Dublin, Trinity College, Ireland, PhD, 1998
8) Experience-Based Language Acquisition: A Computational Model of Human Language Acquisition/ Louisiana State University, PhD, 2002
9) Application of Scheduling Theory to Spacecraft Constellations/ Florida Institute of Technology, Melbourne, Florida U.S., MS, 2000
10) Context Mediation among Knowledge Discovery Components/ University of Ulster – UK, PhD, 2004
11) A Machine Translation Approach to Cross Language Text Retrieval/ University of Glasgow, Glasgow, United Kingdom, MSc, 1997
Demography1) Population dynamics, health, and labor migration in Micronesia during the Japanese occupation, 1919—1945/ PRINCETON UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 20052) Essays in economics of the family: Incorporating cohabitation/ UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON/ PhD, 20053) Women's lives through women's wills in the Spanish and Mexican borderlands, 1750--1846 (Texas, New Mexico)/ SOUTHERN METHODIST UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
Economics1) Essays on Genetic Evolution and Economics/ Harvard University - Cambridge MA, USA,
PhD, 19972) Pricing, Demand Analysis and Simulation: An Application to a Water Utility/ University of
Sydney, Australia, PhD, 19983) The Role Of Multinational Companies In The Middle East: The Case Of Saudi Arabia/
University of Westminster, London, United Kingdom, PhD, 20024) Power and Control in Chinese Private Enterprises: Organizational Design in the Taiwanese
Media Industry/ London School of Economics and Political Science, MSc, 1995 5) Role of the Auditor General in Public Accountability - Some Issues/ University of New
England, MSc, 19916) The Impact of Japanese Investment on the New Town of Milton Keynes/ Leeds University
Business School, MA, 19967) Two Essays in Finance: Market Response to Catastrophic Losses on the Insurance Industry
and Return on Investment of the University of Illinois to the State of Illinois Treasury/ University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, PhD, 1996
311
8) The limits of equality: An economic analysis of the Israeli Kibbutz/ NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
9) Essays on market design and strategic interaction/ CORNELL UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 200510) Essays in environmental economics/ HARVARD UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 200511) Long-run effects of E.P.A. designations of Superfund sites on housing values in Houston
(Texas) UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON/ PhD, 200512) Three essays on the economics of natural disasters (Ontario)/ UNIVERSITY OF GUELPH
(CANADA)/ PhD, 200513) Electronic commerce in business-to-business procurement: The effects on organizations/
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN/PhD, 200514) Two essays on selection models and one essay on income inequality in rural China/
BOSTON COLLEGE/ PhD, 200515) Essays on development and finance/ MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF
TECHNOLOGY/ PhD, 200516) Applied papers in public policy (New York)/ THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA/ PhD,
200517) Essays on the behavioral effects of tax policy/ THE UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE/ PhD,
200518) Growth and distributional effects of trade liberalization and alternative free trade
agreements: A macro-micro analysis with an application to Egypt/ THE GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
19) Essays on corporate governance/ UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA/ PhD, 200520) Implications of expanding bank powers into securities activities: Section 20 subsidiaries/
TEMPLE UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005Education
1) Differential Effects of a Multiple Intelligences Curriculum on Student Performance/ Harvard University - Cambridge MA, USA., 2000
2) Cracking the Glass Ceiling: Factors Influencing Women's Attainment of Senior Executive Positions/ Colorado State University, PhD, 1994
3) Online Distance Education:Historical Perspective and Practical Application/ American Coastline University, PhD, 1997
4) Hong, Luoluo, Redefining Babes, Booze and Brawls: Men Against Violence -- Towards A New Masculinity/ Louisiana State University, PhD, 1998
5) The Impact of Adventure-Based Training on Team Cohesion and Psychological Skills Development in Elite Sporting Teams/ University of Wollongong - Wollongong, Australia, PhD, 2002
6) Elemental Movement: A Somatic Approach to Movement Education/ Lesley University; Cambridge, Massachusetts USA, MS, 2001
7) Alcohol and the Chosen Few: Organizational Reproduction in an Addictive System/ Indiana University, PhD, 1995
8) Primary Education in Ecuador's Chota Valley: Reflections on Education and Social Reproduction in the Development Era/ University of Denver, U.S.A., MA, 2000
9) An Ethnographic Study of a Special Education School: The Harris-Hillman Story/ Vanderbilt U, PhD, 1996
10) Instructional Technology, Motivation, Attitudes and Behaviors:An Investigation of At-Risk Learners in the Middle School General Music Classroom/ Nova Southeastern University - Fort Lauderdale, Florida, PhD, 2003
11) The Voices of Amerasians: Ethnicity, Identity, and Empowerment in Interracial Japanese Americans/ Harvard University - Cambridge MA, USA, 1986
12) Cameroonian teachers' perceptions of culture, education, and mathematics/ The University of Oklahoma, PhD, 2005
13) Buddhism and education in Burma: Varying conditions for a social ethos in the path to 'nibbana'/ PRINCETON UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
14) Recasting Alaska Native students: Success, failure and identity/ STANFORD UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
15) Strong to serve: The Alliance High School of Kikuyu, Kenya/ YALE UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
16) The figured worlds of Mexican teens in Kentucky: Identity and educational decision making/ UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY/ PhD, 2005
312
17) 'It just opens your eyes up': The impact of African American Studies courses on students in a university setting/ TEMPLE UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
18) The effects of intercollegiate athletics success on private giving to athletic and academic programs at National Collegiate Athletic Association institutions/ UNIVERSITY OF OREGON/ PhD, 2005
19) Bayesian expert systems and multi-agent modeling for learner-centric Web-based education/ MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY/ PhD, 2005
20) ProgrammingLand: An automated system for computer science education/ NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
Engineering1) Use of Activity-Based Costing in The Public Sector- MIT2) Enabling Organizational Strategy through Effective Capital Programming-MIT3) Financial Engineering For BOT Infrastructure Projects-MIT4) Globalization of Construction and Real Estate Companines through Mergers and
Acquisitions-MIT 5) Capital Budgeting for Tren Urbano Extensions-MIT6) Neurocontrol of a Cantilever Beam-MIT7) Financing and Ownership Structures in International Project Finance-MIT8) Stadium Financing a Case Study of the Stade de France-MIT9) Effective Use of Integration Mechanisms for Complex Projects: An Empirical Analysis of
Building Projects-MIT10) Risk Management in Toll Road Concessions-MIT11) Real Option Approach to Investments in Electricity Generating Capacity-MIT12) Collaborative Negotiation Methodology for an Innovative Procured, Multi-Cultural and
Multi-Phase Projects-MIT13) Effective Partnering in an Innovative Procurred, Multi-Cultural Project-MIT14) Portfolio Management and Deferred Maintenance at Universities-MIT15) Risk Management in BOT Project-MIT16) Bot In China: Opportunities And Challenges For Foreign Firms-MIT17) Structural Assessment of Pile Supported Piers-MIT18) Design Strategies for New and Renovation Construction that Increase the Capacity of
Buildings to Accommodate Change-MIT19) System Dynamic Models for Construction Projects-MIT20) The Climate Change Debate and Its Implications for Megacities-MIT21) A Robust Planing and Control Methodology for Design-Build Fast-Track Civil Engineering
and Architectural Projects-MIT22) Project Delivery and Planning Strategies for Public Owners-MIT23) Risk in Global Infrastructure Project Financing-MIT24) Framework to Assess a Facility's Capability to Accommodate Change: Application to
Renovated Buildings-MIT25) Strategic Visitor & Ferry Management Plan: Boston Harbor Islands National Park Area-MIT26) Simulation to Assess Plumbing and Fire Protection Systems-MIT27) Adaptively Prestressed Concrete Structures-MIT28) Management Systems for Infrastructure-MIT29) Valuing Project Risk and Flexibity in Mining Resource Development-MIT30) Innovative Design Approaches For Adaptable Multi-Unit Housing-MIT31) Robust Control of Cost Impact on Fast-Tracking Building Construction Projects-MIT32) Opportunities Created by Information Technology for the Executive in the Engineering and
Construction Industry-MIT33) Multi-Organizational Project Teams and Construction Innovation: The Role of the General
Contractor and Construction Manager-MIT34) Inter-Firm Collaboration in The Implementation of Structural Innovations in Building
Construction-MIT35) The Entrepreneurial Process in Construction and Real Estate Ventures-MIT36) Operational, Aesthetic, and Construction Process Performance for Innovative Passive and
Active Solar Building Components for Residential Building-MIT37) Environment and Infrastructure Development in Mega-Cities: The Case of Shanghai, China-
MIT38) State of the Art Review of Methodologies for Dispute Avoidance and Resolution in Large
Scale Engineering Systems-MIT
313
39) AFramework For Strategic Thinking In The Global Market For Large-Scale Japanese Construction Firms-MIT
40) Effect of Delivery Systems on Collaborative Negotiations for Large Scale Infrastructure Projects-MIT
41) Taiwan's Industrial Structural Change and Its Implication on Energy Intensity-MIT42) Infrastructure Management for Tren Urbano-MIT43) Transport Development: Impact Study of the London-Stockholm Corridor-MIT44) Controlling Interfaces: A Key to Project Success-MIT45) Dynamic Planning and Control Methodology for Large-Scale Concurrent Construction
Projects-MIT46) Stages in Project Financing: A Comparative Analysis of Independent Power Projects in
Three Developing Countries India, Indonesia, and Peru-MIT47) Three-Tiered Procurement Framework for U.S. Navy Waterfront Facilities-MIT48) Technology and Policy for Removal of Sulfur from Fuel-MIT49) Integrated Approach for the Analysis and Management of Urban Relocation and
Infrastructure Development Projects: The Case of Southwestern Suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon-MIT
50) Managing the Development of the Real Estate Portfolios of State Transportation Authorities in the Boston Area-MIT
51) Study of Firm's Behavior in the B2B E-Business Regime-MIT52) Economic Modeling of Urban Pollution and Climate Policy Interactions-MIT53) The future of the Port Of Beirut-MIT54) Environmental Liability, Policy and Technology in Real Estate Development-MIT55) Private Risk-MIT56) Agent-Based Techniques For National Infrastructure Simulation-MIT57) Transit Oriented Development Strategy: Guangzhou Case Study-MIT58) Improved Capital Programming Powered By GASB 34 Compliance: A Case Study From
Winchester, MA-MIT59) Green Development: Creating Incentives for Developers-MIT60) Strategy for Penetrating Engineering & Construction Markets In Southeast Asia for
Singapore through BOT Contract-MIT61) Methodology for Achieving GASB 34 Modified Approach Compliance Using U.S. Navy
"Smart Base" Facility Management Practices-MIT62) Fundamental Analysis and Conceptual Model for Corporate Strategy in Global Engineering
and Construction Markets-MIT63) Comparative Analysis of Energy Consumption Trends in Cohousing and Alternate Housing
Arrangements-MIT64) Outsourcing Transportation Infrastructure Maintenance: a theoretical approach with
application to JR East-MIT65) Overseas Projects Financed by International Institutions for Japanese Construction Firms-
MIT66) Lean Enterprise in the Construction Industry-MIT67) The Valuation of Construction Companies-MIT68) A Study of the Naval Construction Force Project Material Supply Chain-MIT69) Application of Lean Enterprise Concept to Construction Firms in Japan-MIT70) Validation of the Project Definition Rating Index (PDRI) for MIT Building Projects-MIT71) High fidelity miniaturized antennas and filters for wireless applications- The University of
Michigan72) An algorithm for selection of power supply systems for mems devices- The University of
Michigan73) Microthermoelectric cooler- The University of Michigan74) Remotely-powered wireless monitoring systems- The University of Michigan75) Mixed-signal circuit design issues in nanoscale PD-SOI- The University of Michigan76) A wireless microsystem for neural stimulating microprobes- The University of Michigan77) The integration of potentiometric and optical chemical sensor arrays- The University of
Michigan78) Low-voltage and low-power, deep-submicron analog circuits for single-chip, mixed-signal
microinstrumentation systems- The University of Michigan79) CMOS-integrated liquid chemical microdetection systems- The University of Michigan
314
80) Monolithic and top-down clock synthesis wıth micromachined radio frequency reference- The University of Michigan
81) Microfluidic biochemical analysis system with electro-osmotic pump and thermally responsive polymer valve- The University of Michigan
82) MEMS angular rate and angular acceleration sensors with CMOS switched capacitor signal conditioning- The University of Michigan
83) Silicon recording arrays with integrated circuitry for in-vivo neural data compression- The University of Michigan
84) Digital circuit design techniques for low-leakage silicon-on-insulator (SOI) CMOS technologies- The University of Michigan
85) Thin-film technologies for hermetic and vacuum packaging of MEMS- The University of Michigan
86) Microfabricated voltammetric neuro-arrays for use in-vitro- The University of Michigan87) Investigations of brain-machine interface system-control exploiting local field potential
oscillations in motor cortex- The University of Michigan88) Techniques for thermal and pneumatic programming of column selectivity and methods for
reducing the impact of extra-column band broadening on system performance- The University of Michigan
89) A wireless microsystem for multichannel neural recording microprobes- The University of Michigan
90) Control of Sensory Perception for Discrete Event Systems- Australian National University 91) Terrain Aided Localisation of Autonomous Vehicles in Unstructured Environments- The
University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia92) A Preliminary Study of the Structural Dynamic Behavior of the NASA Manned Spacecraft
Center (MSC) Centrifuge- Madison University - Madison, USAGeography
1) Modeling Carbon Fluxes, Net Primary Production, and Light Utilization in Boreal Forest Stands, PhD, University of Maryland, 1996
2) Dendroarchaeological and contextual investigations of remote log structures in Jasper, Banff, and Kootenay National Parks, Canada (Alberta, British Columbia),UNIVERSITY OF VICTORIA (CANADA), 2004, MSc
3) Walden: A sacred geography (Massachusetts, Henry David Thoreau)/ ANTIOCH NEW ENGLAND GRADUATE SCHOOL/ PhD, 2005
4) Urban-regional clusters and the mutual fund industry in the United States/ STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK AT BUFFALO/ PhD, 2005
5) The Tunica miracle, sin and savior in America's Ethiopia: A poverty and social impact analysis of casino gaming in Tunica, Mississippi/ THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
History1) 'Men and Women of Their Own Kind': Historians and Antebellum Reform/ George Mason
University - Fairfax, Virginia, USA, MA, 20012) The Nature of Resistance in South Carolina's Works Progress Administration Ex-Slave
Narratives/ University of Toledo - Ohio – USA, MA, 19903) Chemawa Indian Boarding School: The First One Hundred Years, 1880 to 1980/ Dartmouth
College, MA, 1997 4) 'The Atlas of Independency': The ideas of John Owen (1616--1683) in the North Atlantic
Christian world/ KANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 20055) 'With eyes before and behind': Time, rhetoric, and the vision of medieval history (England,
William of Newburgh, Henry of Huntingdon, Matthew Paris, Geoffrey of Monmouth)/ THE GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
6) 'Almighty God created the races': Theologies of marriage and race in anti-miscegenation cases, 1865—1967/ THE CLAREMONT GRADUATE UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
7) 'An American type': The Kikuchi diaries, a cultural biography (1941--1947) (Charles Kikuchi)/ HARVARD UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
Information Technology/ Information Systems1) Communication of Information Technology Project Sponsors and Managers in Buyer-Seller
Relationships/ Brunel University - Uxbridge, UK, PhD, 20032) A full-scale semantic content-based model for interactive multimedia information systems/
LSE (London School of Economics), PhD, 1997
315
3) Making Sense of Mobile ICT-Enabled Trading in Fast Moving Financial Markets as Volatility-Control Ambivalence: Case Study on the Organisation of Off-Premises Foreign Exchange at a Middle-East Bank/ LSE, 2005
4) Supporting Design Understanding in Evolutionary Prototyping: An Application of Change Theory and Semiotics/ LSE, 1997
5) Global Practices and Local Interests: Implementing Information Technology-Based Change in a Developing Country Context/ LSE, 2000
6) Risk Perception, Trust and Credibility: A Case in Internet Banking / LSE, 20007) The Role of Information Systems Evaluation across an Extended System Life Cycle/ LSE,
19968) Formality and Informality in Internal Control Systems: A Comparative Study of Control in
Different Social and Cultural Environments in a Global Bank/ LSE, 20029) Information Systems and Organisational Change: The Case of Flexible Specialisation in
Cyprus/ LSE, 199910) The Challenges in Assimilating E-business in Large Established Organizations: A
Structurational Examination of the E-Business Development at an American Auto Manufacturer/ LSE, 2004
11) Making Sense of Emergent Properties in IT Enabled Call Centre Operations: An Interpretive Systems Analysis Approach/LSE, 2003
12) Using Precedents to Identify Top Management Fraud: the Study of a Case-Based Learning and Reasoning Model/ LSE, 1996
13) Integrating On-line Learning Technologies into Higher Education: A Case Study of Two UK Universities/ LSE, 2004
14) Interpreting the Management of Information Systems Security / LSE, 199515) Interpreting The Implementation Of Integrated Packaged Software: The Case Of Enterprise
Resource Planning/ LSE, 200516) Signs and Signals: The Conception of Communication in U.S. Telecommunications
Rhetoric/ LSE, 200117) The Interplay of Institutional Forces behind Higher ICT Education in India / LSE, 200518) Evaluating Organsational Privacy Policy Implementation / LSE, 200419) Making Sense of Knowledge Creation Processes: The Case of a Greek Petrochemical
Company/ LSE, 200520) The Strategic Dimensions of Information Systems Capability: Case Studies in a Developing
Country Context/ LSE, 199621) Computers and the Family: A Study of Technology in the Domestic Sphere / LSE, 200022) Learning Technology in Higher Education: A Structurational Perspective on Technology
Mediated Learning Practices/ LSE, 200523) The Role of Information Systems in Islamic Banking: An Ethnographic Study/ LSE, 200524) India’s Information Technology Industry: Adapting to Globalisation and Policy Change in
the 1990s/ LSE, 199725) The Impact of Using DSS for National Debt Management/ LSE, 199826) Explanation in Information Systems: A Design Rationale Approach / LSE, 200227) Regulating the Technological Actor: How Governments Tried to Transform the Technology
and the Market for Cryptography and the Implications for the Regulation of Information and Communications Technologies/ LSE, 2003
28) Group Interaction and the Learning Process through Computer Conferencing / LSE, 200229) The Social Epistemology of Open Source Software Development: The Linux Case Study /
LSE30) Information Technology as Ontology: a Phenomenological Investigation into Information
Technology and Strategy In-the-World/ LSE, 200231) Transaction Cost Applications in Information Systems: Explicating Institutions' Influences
on Governance/ LSE, 200032) Knowledge, Development and Technology: Internet Use among Voluntary-sector AIDS
Organisations in KwaZulu-Natal/ LSE, 200533) Emerging Work Practices of ICT-Enabled Mobile Professionals / LSE, 200334) Banking and Innovation: The Case of Payment Systems Modernisation in Thailand/ LSE,
199935) Telehealth And Information Society: A Critical Study of Emerging Concepts in Policy and
Practice/ LSE, 200136) The Transformation of IT Governance: A Neo-Institutional Interpretation/ LSE, 2005
316
37) Temporal Implications of Information Systems in Organisational Work: An Exploratory Study/ LSE, 1997
38) Initiating System Innovation: a Technological Frames Analysis of the Origins of Groupware Projects/ LSE, 2000
Language/ Literature/ Linguistics1) The Publishing History of Aubrey Beardsley's Compositions for Oscar Wilde's Salomé/
Marquette University - Milwaukee, Wisconsin – USA, PhD, 19952) Diary as Fiction:Dostoevskyís Notes from Underground and Turgenevís Diary of a
Superfluous Man/ Boston College, U.S., MA, 20003) A Computational Phonology of Russian/ University of Oxford – UK, PhD, 20004) The Publishing History of Aubrey Beardsley's Compositions for Oscar Wilde's Salomé/
Marquette University - Milwaukee, Wisconsin – USA, PhD, 19955) La Novela de las Transnacionales: Hacia Una Nueva Clasificación/ The University of
Alabama Tuscaloosa, USA, PhD, 20016) Yasukuni Shrine and the Constraints on the Discourses of Nationalism in Twentieth-Century
Japan/ U of Kansas, MA, 19967) J. Henry Shorthouse, "The Author of John Inglesant" (with reference to T. S. Eliot and C. G.
Jung)/ University of London, England, PhD, 19958) Cinematic Techniques in the Prose Fiction of Beatriz Guido/ Michigan State University,
USA, PhD, 19749) Fictionality and Reality in Narrative Discourse: A Reading of Four Contemporary
Taiwanese Writers/ University of Washington, Seattle, U.S., PhD, 199010) The Plays of Christopher Marlowe and George Peele: Rhetoric and Renaissance Sensibility/
University of Aberdeen, Scotland, PhD, 199911) Master Players in a Fixed Game: An Extra-Literary History of Twentieth Century African-
American Authors/ University of Michigan, PhD, 2001 12) Hawthorne's The Marble Faun: A Re-appraisal/ California State University, San Diego, MA,
1972 13) Julien Gracq and the art of anachronism: Thematic, intertextual and aesthetic parallels with
the fin de siecle (France)/ Columbia University, PhD, 2005 14) American modernism and Depression documentary/ University of Pennsylvania, PhD, 200515) American regionalist modernism: Willa Cather, William Faulkner, Oscar Zeta Acosta, and
Sandra Cisneros/ New York University, PhD, 200516) The aesthetics of resistance: Modernism and antifascism/ Indiana University, PhD, 200517) 'Far out past': Hemingway, manhood, and modernism (Ernest Hemingway)/ The College of
William and Mary, PhD, 200518) The poetics of Terayama Shuji (Japan)/ Yale University, PhD, 200519) Can Anyone Say What is Reasonable?": Promoting, accommodating to, and resisting elite
rhetorical inquiry in a high-school classroom/ Georgetown University, 199820)A Coherence-Based Approach to the Interpretation of Non-Sentential Utterances in
Dialogue/ University of Edinburgh21)A Comparative Analysis of Thai and English Contrastive Discourse Markers: With a
discussion of the pedagogical implications/ Boston University, 199922)A Contrastive Study of Syntactic Relations, Cohesion, and Punctuation as Markers of
Rhetorical Organization in Arabic and English Narrative Texts, University of Exeter, 1993
23)A Corpus Linguistic Analysis of Phraseology and Collocation in the Register of Current European Union Administrative French/ University of St. Andrews, 2002
24)A Corpus-Based Analysis of Simultaneous Speech in English Conversation/ Victoria University of Wellington, 1997
25)A Corpus-Based Discourse Analysis of the Bei-Construction in Chinese Written Discourse: A study with special reference to the be-passive in English/ Ball State University , Department of English, 2005
26)A Critical Discourse Analysis of University ESL Classrooms: Power and accommodation/ Arizona State University , Department of English, 2003
27)A Data-Driven Methodology for Motivating a Set of Coherence Relations / University of Edinburgh , School of Informatics, 1996
28)A Discourse Analysis of the Interview Process in a Private Social Service Setting/ University of Georgia , Linguistics Program, 1999
317
29)A Government Approach to Finnish-English Intrasentential Code-switching/ University of Southern California , Department of Linguistics, 1994
30)A Sociopragmatic Approach to the Use of Meta-Discourse Features in Effective Non-Native and Native speaker Composition Writing/ University of South Carolina , Program in Linguistics, 2001
31)Antonymy and Semantic Range in English / Northwestern University , Department of Linguistics, 1997
32)Corpus Linguistics, Contextual Collocation and ESP Syllabus Design: A text analysis approach to the study of medical research articles/ University of Birmingham , School of English
33) Informalization in UK General Election Propaganda: 1964-1997/ University of Leeds , School of English, 2002
34)Lexical Vagueness in Student Writing / University of Cambridge , Research Centre for English and Applied Linguistics, 2003
35)Passive Prototypes, Topicality and Conceptual Space/ University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill , Department of Linguistics, 2004
36)Patterns of Stance in English/ Northern Arizona University , Applied Linguistics, 2000
37)Politeness in Cypriot Greek: A frame-based approach/ University of Cambridge , Department of Linguistics, 2001
38)Pronunciation Modeling in Speech Synthesis / University of Pennsylvania , Department of Linguistics, 1998
39)Recurrent Features of Translation in Canada: A corpus-based Study/ University of Ottawa , Department of Computational Linguistics, 2004
40)Situation-Based Intonation Pattern Distribution in a Corpus of American English / University of Washington , Linguistics, 2005
Maths1) Some Notes on the Theory of Hilbert Spaces of Analytic Functions on the Unit Disc/
University of California at Berkeley, PhD, 19942) Some Notes on Game Bounds/ University of California at Berkeley, MA, 19913) Radiative Transfer Using Boltzmann Transport Theory/ Chicago State University Chicago,
USA, MSc, 19984) Affine Lie algebras, vertex operator algebras and combinatorial identities/ NORTH
CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 20055) Learning, adaptation and optimization: The nonnegative Boltzmann machine and the
tunneling salesman algorithm/ PRINCETON UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 20056) Boundary regularity for conformally compact Einstein metrics in even dimensions/
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON/ PhD, 20057) Generalized Tate cohomology/ UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY/ PhD, 20058) Morphlets: A multiscale representation for diffeomorphisms/ HARVARD UNIVERSITY/
PhD, 20059) Computational improvements in the substitution method for bounding percolation
thresholds/ THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 200510) Assessment practices in grade 9 academic and applied mathematics/ QUEEN'S
UNIVERSITY AT KINGSTON (CANADA)/ Med, 200511) Mathematics: Liminal perspectives from those living on the margin/ THE OHIO STATE
UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 200512) A conflict in values: The dilemma of equity, diversity, and participation in higher
mathematics/ UNIVERSITY OF MONTANA/ PhD, 2005Music
1) New Tonality: An examination of the style with analyses of James Hopkins' 'Songs of Eternity', Paul Moravec's 'Songs of Love and War', and an original composition/ University of Northern Colorado, 2005
2) Musical poetics and political ideology in the work of Luigi Nono (Italy)/ PhD, Yale University, 2005
3) A pioneering twentieth-century African-American musician: The choral works of George T. Walker/ THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
4) Use of time and spatial form in String Quartet No. 2 by Charles Ives (with Original composition)/ UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN/ PhD, 2005
318
5) Twentieth-century flesh on an eighteenth-century skeleton: An analysis of George Walker's 'Poeme for Violin and Orchestra'/ MORGAN STATE UNIVERSITY/ MA, 2005
Philosophy/ Religion/ Theology1) Augustine, Manichaeism and the Good/ University of Ottawa and St. Paul University,
Canada, PhD, 19962) Overcoming Women's Subordination in the Igbo African Culture and in the Catholic
Church: Envisioning an Inclusive Theology with Reference to Women/ Graduate Theological Foundation, Indiana, USA, PhD, 2001
3) Does God Change?: Reconciling the Immutable God with the God of Love/ Sydney College of Divinity - Sydney, Australia, MA, 1998
4) The Pretribulation Rapture Doctrine and the Progressive Dispensational System: Are They Compatible?/ Regent College - Vancouver, Canada, MA, 2003
5) Origen of Alexandria and St. Maximus the Confessor: An Analysis and Critical Evaluation of Their Eschatological Doctrines/ St. Elias School of Orthodox Theology Seward, NE, USA, PhD, 2004
6) The Authenticity of the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares and Its Interpretation/ Westminster College in collaboration with Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, England, PhD, 1991
7) Sermons, Systems and Strategies: The Geographic Strategies of the Methodist Episcopal Church in its Expansion into New York State, 1788 – 1810/ Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York, USA, PhD, 1988
8) Nichiren's Nationalism: A Buddhist Rhetoric of a Shinto Teaching/ Univ of Hawaii at Manoa, USA, MA, 1992
9) Conduct and Behavior as Determinants for the Afterlife: Comparison of the Judgments of the Dead in Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece/ Florida State University, USA, PhD, 2000
10) The Process of the Cosmos: Philosophical Theology and Cosmology/ Flinders University of South Australia, PhD, 1998
11) Canon 1096 on Ignorance with Application to Tribunal and Pastoral Practice/ Saint Paul University, University of Ottawa, Canada, PhD, 2001
Physics1) Electronic and Optical Properties of Semiconductors: A Study Based on the Empirical Tight
Binding Model/ Worcester Polytechnic Institute, PhD, 19932) The Manufacture of High Temperature Superconducting Tapes and Films/ University of
Southampton, U.K., PhD, 19963) An Improved Form for the Electrostatic Interactions of Polyelectrolytes in Solution and its
Implications for the Analysis of QELSS Experiments on Sodium Dodecyl Sulfate and Cetyl Trimethyl Ammonium Bromide Solutions/ Worcester Polytechnic Institute, PhD, 1997
4) Development of the COAMPS adjoint mesoscale modeling system for assimilating microwave radiances within hurricanes/ THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
5) Application of effective field theory to density functional theory for finite systems/ THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
6) Cold nitric oxide molecules from a Stark guide/ THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA/ PhD, 2005
7) A precision measurement of the top quark mass/ BOSTON UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 20058) NMR investigations of hydrogen occupation and mobility in palladium and ettringite/
WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 20059) Numerical simulation of a single emitter colloid thruster in pure droplet cone-jet mode/
MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY/ PhD, 200510) Searching for new physics: Contributions to LEP and the LHC/ THE UNIVERSITY OF
WISCONSIN – MADISON/ PhD, 2005Political Science
1) Terrorist Groups Are Aligning To Conduct Global TerrorismBreyer State University - Kamiah Idaho – USA, 2003
2) The New World OrderAn Economic Global RegimeCalifornia State University, U.S, 1994
3) Johnson, McNamara, and the Birth of SALT and the ABM Treaty 1963-1969Kings College, London, 1996
4) Institutional Change in the Horn of AfricaThe allocation of property rights and implications for developmentUniversity of California, Los Angeles, 1995
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5) UK Aid Policy and Practice 1974-90An Analysis of the Poverty-Focus, Gender-Consciousness and Environmental Sensitivity of British Official AidUniversity of Liverpool, United Kingdom, 1994
6) Party Mobilization, Class and EthnicityThe Case of Hawaii, 1930 to 1964Indiana University, 1996
7) Africa and the Democratic OptionA Quest for Effectiveness and Legitimacy in GovernanceClark-Atlanta University - Atlanta, Ga. U.S.A, 1992
8) The Politics of Transnational TelevisionBeyond the Cultural Imperialism QuestionClark-Atlanta University - Atlanta, Ga. U.S.A, 1994
9) Democratic PeaceIn the Spectrum of Conflicts in Sub-Saharan AfricaUniversity of Bradford Bradford/England, 2000
10) Regional integration and the challenge of economic development: The case of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA)/ RUTGERS THE STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW JERSEY – NEWARK/ PhD, 2005
11) The phenomenology of courage (Plato, Herodotus, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Alexis de Tocqueville)/ GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
12) Interjurisdictional competition and urban area fragmentation/ UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, COLLEGE PARK/ PhD, 2005
13) Essays on political and economic attitudes/ COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 200514) Making a global commodity: The production of markets and cotton in Egypt, Turkey, and
the United States/ NEW YORK UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 200515) Authoritarian order as an equilibrium outcome of distributional battles in politics: The logic
of war and political collusion in 19th and 20th century Mexico/ STANFORD UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
Psychology1) Repressive defensiveness in masters level psychology students: Implications for practice/
Tennessee State University, PhD 20042) A cross-discipline evaluation of clinical skills, knowledge base, and approaches to treatment
in a psychiatric emergency, Tennessee State University PhD 20043) The master's tools...maori development inside pakeha psychology. MA, Hamilton:
University of Waikato. New Zealand(1994).4) Cultural safety within Clinical Psychology: A Maori perspective. MA. Hamilton: University
of Waikato 19975) The learning preferences of Maori university students - cooperative, competitive,
individualistic or intra-ethnic. MA. Hamilton: University of Waikato. 19916) A scale to measure motivation and behaviour in psychological experiments, 19727) Are we a violent society? Waikato University Psychology students' perceptions of violent
crime and sentencing. 2004 8) Proactive lucidity: Superconsciousness, creativity, and the virtually real. 20049) Place attachment and traditional place: An examination of the land, identity and wellbeing
relationship between Ngai Te Ahi and Hairini Marae. 200310) Client and caregiver perceptions of prodromal symptoms of relapse of schizophrenia in
Aotearoa University of Waikato 200211) Hazard Perception and headway: The influences of drivers' perception skills on their car
following behaviour. University of Waikato 2001. 12) Maori Identity within Whanau University of Waikato 199613) A Comparison of Two Approaches of Symbolic Modeling and Self-Efficacy/ Indiana State
University, U.S., PhD, 199914) Parental Alienation Syndrome in Court Referred Custody Cases/ Northcentral University,
Prescott, Arizona, PhD, 2001 15) Juvenile Firesetting: An Exploratory Analysis/ Indiana University, USA, PhD, 200016) A Study of the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) with Japanese Subjects/ Southern
California University for Professional Studies, PhD, 199817) Aching to Age/ Barrington University, Des Moines, Iowa, 1999
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18) Paradox Lost and Paradox Regained: An Object Relations Analysis of Two Flannery O'Connor Mother-Child Dyads/ The San Francisco School of Psychology, U.S., PhD, 1999
19) Shades of Community and Conflict: Biracial Adults of African-American and Jewish-American Heritages/ The Wright Institute: Berkeley, California, PhD, 1998
20) The Impact of an Anti-Bullying Program on the Prevalence of Bullying in Junior and Senior High School/ North Central University, Prescott, Arizona, US, PhD, 2000
21) Cognitive, Contextual, and Personality Factors in Wife Abuse/ Kansas State University, PhD, 1995
Sociology1) Farmers' Rural Community Attachment-A Structural Symbolic Interactionist Explanation/
South Dakota State University - Brookings, SD USA, PhD, 20022) Towards the Formation of a Sustainable South Florida-An Analysis of Conflict Resolution
and Consensus Building in the South Florida Ecosystem Restoration Initiative/ Florida International University, Miami, Florida, USA, 1999, PhD
3) Reframing the Attitude-Behavior Debate:The Case of Meat-Abstinence in Vegetarian Student Cooperatives/ University of Michigan, MS, 1995
4) The Politics of Death: A Sociological Analysis of Revolutionary Communication/ University of Colorado, PhD, 1974
5) Sex differences in rape reporting/ Iowa State University, MS, 19956) NHS Complaints Managers: A Study of the Conflicts and Tensions in their Role/ London
School of Economics and Political Science, University of London, London, UK, PhD, 2004
7) Women in Transition: Discourses of Menopause/ University of Windsor, Windsor, Ontario, Canada, MA, 2002
8) Student Perceptions of Rules for Classroom Interaction/ Louisiana State University, MA, 1992
9) Modernisation and social development in Saudi Arabia: An exploratory study of the attitudes of students at King Abdul Aziz University towards individual modernity/ PhD, University of Essex (United Kingdom), 2005
10) Transnational networks and community-based organizations: The dynamics of AIDS activism in Tijuana and Mexico City (Mexico)/ UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO/ PhD, 2005
11) Innovation, imitation, legitimacy and deviance in the design of graphical trademarks in the United States, 1884—2003/ THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA/ PhD, 2005
12) Faculty perceptions of academic freedom at a metropolitan university: A case study/ VIRGINIA COMMONWEALTH UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
13) Why neighborhoods matter: Structural and cultural influences on adolescents in poor communities (Massachusetts)/ HARVARD UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
Town Planning1)Locating the Slovenian nation: Competing folkloristic, state planning, and local constructions of the Trnovo neighborhood, 1895—1989/ University of Pennsylvania, PhD, 2005
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APPENDIX G:
Interview 1
Interviewee says:slm!
Interviewer says:Hello ----, are you there?
Interviewee says:yes hello!
Interviewer says:Everything OK? Shall we start?
Interviewee says:yes - let's
Interviewer says:First of all, how do you feel about EFL501 as a graduate course?
Interviewee says:very useful to students who are about to start their thesis
Interviewer says:Can you elaborate a bit on this usefulness?
Interviewee says:most of the students prior to taking this course had been away from English for a while. This course gave them a chance to reacquaint with for example grammar, vocabulary and most importanty writing skills such as orga
Interviewee says:inzation, detailing, etc. Most of the time most were not familiar with functions necessary in specific genres in this case thesis writing.
Interviewer says:I know that you've taught this course to 2 different groups. Could you please talk a bit about the student profiles?
Interviewee says:Focusing on these specific functions enable students to approach thesis writing more confidently; they feel safe knowing when to use the right type of language in the right place. Again most of these students had not any training in academic writing and being introduced to academic writing conventions gave them the chance to express themselves in a style and manner acceptable acceptable in an acad
Interviewee says:emic environment.
Interviewer says:I know that you've taught this course to 2 different groups. Could you please talk a bit about the student profiles?
Interviewee says:The first group were mainly students at intermediate level (as in Prep) who struggled quite a bit in expressing themselves in writing and they had major grammar problems. The second group had a variety of students. Some were native-like students who only needed to learn about style and academic writing
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conventions. Few others were more advanced (upper intermediate) and they had a variety of proble
Interviewee says:'ms such grammar, vocabulary and elaboration of ideas. And the rest was of basic level; they needed some very basic training in English.
Interviewer says:I can see that there was a variety of students and levels within and among these groups. So are we in a position to say that the problems were specific to one group only? Or can we talk about some common problems? If so, can you please list the most most common problems faced?
Interviewee says:common problems - vocabulary, coherence, grammar, organization and alaboration of ideas
Interviewee says:elaboration of ideas
Interviewer says:What do you think could be done to reduce the problems these students face?
Interviewer says:What more?
Interviewee says:practice practice & practice in writing and definitely more exposure to Engish throughout their academic career. And of course guidance in dealing with problems specific to each individual. Being exposed to excerpts from published thesis could be very useful too.
Interviewer says:Do you think the EFL501 course you were teaching suited the needs of these students?
Interviewee says:within the limited time - yes
Interviewer says:Did you observe any concrete developments in these students' use of the language at the end of the course? Mostly in terms of what?
Interviewee says:yes - mostly better and more formal word choice. It seemed that students paid closer attention to use of correct grammar, expressed ideas more coherently and used academic writing conventions more accurately.
Interviewer says:Thanks for your patience....Just a couple of more questions....Would you teach this course in the same way and using the same approach and materials if you taught it again? If not, what changes/additions/deletions would you make and why?
Interviewee says:I would change the reading materials which set models for students. would chose more authentic texts e.g. excerpts from published thesis. would still focus on teaching functions and the students would be introduced to them through the formentioned authentic texts. Instead of asking students to do separate writing homework for each function, I would try to encourage them to produce texts with appr
Interviewee says:opriate functions throughout the semester which would all fit different sections of
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a standard work of thesis e.g. introduction, conclusion, abstract, etc. The amount of work they produce - I would not change that.
Interviewer says:I don't understand the last bit.....'the amount of work they produce'??
Interviewee says:they had to do writing homework each week. And each homework - some students had to rewrite it twice or more.
Interviewer says:I see, but you would ask this work to be more in the context of parts of a thesis? I'm just checking my own comprehension ))))
Interviewee says:Yes of course.
Interviewer says:Last question....Some faculties have recently made this course a compulsory course for their graduate students. How do you feel about this?
Interviewee says:I think all the other ones should do the same
Interviewer says:---------, thanks a lot. I really appreciate it. I'm hoping to transfer the course back to you next semester with some improvements.
Interviewee says:Wish could have helped more. U know I am more of a morning person - I hope my answers have been sufficient. Would love to see the improvements you have made.
Interviewer says:Take care!!!!!Thanks a lot. Have a good night's sleep.
Interviewee says:No problem Nilgun. I have enjoy
Interviewee says:ed it. Sleep well and have a good Sunday. See you soon.
Interviewee says:And oh yes please let me know about the DVD...
Interviewer says:Definitely, iyi geceler
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APPENDIX H:
Interview 2
Interviewee says:Hi we are ready, are you?
Interviewer says:Please disregard the last 502 course that you have taught while answering the questions
Interviewee says:ok
Interviewer says:With how many different groups have you taught EFL 502, previously 501?
Interviewee says:Oh dear, I've failed on the first item. I don't know, but I must have taught this course six to eight times, I should think.
Interviewer says:Could you describe globally your experiences with these groups of students
Interviewee says:On the whole, the students have been willing, motivated, aware that they need help with their writing. There have been some excellent students, but a number do have serious academic writing problems for students at postgraduate level.
Interviewer says:Could you please talk a little bit about the student profiles, in terms of backgrounds, nationalities, levels, post graduate studies and anything else you think is worth mentioning
Interviewee says:They have mostly been masters students, with more recently a growing number of phd students; nationalities have varied, with the majority being Turkish speaking. But again more recently, there has been an increase in foreign students from Iran, Palestine, Eritrea, and Algeria to name just four. Their fields of study have varied from year to year according really to the emphasis and importance...
Interviewee says:...given to this course in departments. Architecture, Economics, and Communications have been particularly common... Academically, the foreign students academic and linguistic background has tended to be stronger than the Turkish speakers, though there have been exceptions.
Interviewer says:your last comment....What's the reason for this do you think?
Interviewee says:I can't answer that factually, but I suspect the taking of post-graduate courses for our Turkish-speakers has become somewhat ritualised, and that the economic pressure on departments to accept students to take courses even when their level of achievement is not particularly high is quite marked...
Interviewee says:
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It may also be that the foreign students are more of an 'elite' group in their own countries, and we are getting better students from the top range only, whereas with the local students we enjoy the 'whole range'.
Interviewer says:You mentioned some students having serious academic writing problems. Were the problems specific to some groups or can you generalise? What were the most common problems faced by these students in writing? Can you please try to rank the problematic areas starting with the most serious?
Interviewee says:OK...I think I can probably safely generalise...
Interviewee says:1) Lack of preparedness, meaning they are writing too early without a clear idea of where they are going.
Interviewee says:2) Lexis and language problems, particularly the former. In fact, please rank this as number one, because it is the most difficult problem to solve in the short-term, whereas preparedness and organisational issues can be dealt with rather more easily. Specifically: their lexical range is not very high, which can lead their work to be quite repetitive, and their accuracy breaks down, because...
Interviewee says:...their knowledge of the grammar of individual items is weak, e.g. accompanying prepositions, and their sense of collocations is limited.
Interviewee says:4) The limited lexis can make lexical chains quite problematic, as their sense of synonymy and the need for variety in writing is quite limited.
Interviewee says:5) Similarly, this leads to problem with nuances, e.g that 'claim' implies a somewhat critical view on the part of the writer, whereas 'As X states' tends to indicate support; This problem with nuance also leads to problems in such areas as hedging, making exaggerated claims for their own research and so on.
Interviewee says:Structural problems also exist and are marked by a limited range of competence, but do not present such a great problem in the writing process.
Interviewer says:Can you clarify/exemplify the structural problems?
Interviewee says:Yes, there are still marked performance errors with active / passive, with relative clauses, reduction, positioning and appropriacy of discourse markers, and more basic areas with tense and agreement. Prepositions are always a problem, and in fact one real area in English where even very good students struggle is in fact the use of articles
Interviewer says:What do you think are some solutions to these concrete problems that you have mentioned?
Interviewee says:1) More language work before they reach these critical postgraduate writing phases, based in my view on extended reading.
Interviewee says:2) A more systematic approach to lexis, starting with receptive vocabulary instruction and then moving into productive vocabulary production.
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Interviewee says:3) More use of dictionaries, the introduction of thesaurus type work, and identification of collocations and chunks as the key feature of fluent writing.
Interviewee says:4) More work on pre-writing activities, more exposure to models
Interviewee says:5) Less emphasis on formal grammar, as such problems can normally be dealt with fairly easily at the process stage.
Interviewee says:6) More confidence, by asking students to write more but in smaller and shorter doses and to do so at speed.
Interviewee says:7) More awareness that writing is a process, and less obsession with producing 'mistake-free' work as a first draft.
Interviewee says:8) A sense of genre, organisation, and audience.
Interviewee says:Many of these issues could be better dealt with by altering our approach to the teaching of reading, to introduce and deal with these issues.
Interviewer says:Your 501 course has now become 502. Do you mean that there should also be more language focus in the new 501that Sezgi and I are teaching? Maybe there should be more collaboration between 501 and 502 in course design?
Interviewee says:Lexically, I am sure that one can never do enough with these students, but language-wise, I am not sure. I think we have to recognise the difference between 'learned' errors and 'performance' areas. The latter can pretty much by dealt with by a process approach, with the former, it becomes a question of error frequency, and the effects those errors have on meaning.
Interviewee says:Otherwise courses with limited hours inevitably have to prioritise.
Interviewer says:Do you think that the original 501 (now 502) that you have been teaching suits the needs of these learners? Is it adequate in terms of materials and approach? Or do you feel that changes/additions/deletions are necessary?
Interviewee says:I think it has represented a practical and economical approach to the problem that was originally faced. Good writers are good writers because they have absorbed language from written text, which is why I believe in the long run, students have to be exposed to models, and be trained to analyse these models in discoursal terms. In other words students at this point in their education and if ...
Interviewee says:... they are to develop independent skills to deal with their language problems must become critical thinkers about and critical observers of language...
Interviewee says:Good models provide the skeletons and building blocks of good writing, and writing of this type is just as much formulaic as it is creative, a fact that academics are probably simply too immodest to admit. But once you accept the concept of collocation, and particularly chunking, I think there is little choice but to accept this
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Interviewer says:Teaching the 502 course as it is now, have you been observing concrete developments in these students' language use at the end of the semester? If yes, mostly in terms of which area/s?
Interviewee says:Yes, I think so. The beauty of this lexical approach is its simplicity; What might one day have been viewed of as plagiarism, is simply in fact the acquired skill of 'observing language' and recognising that formulaic and semi-formulaic, fixed and semi-fixed expressions make up the body of a text, and that creativity and originality is not dependent on them...
Interviewee says:The students ceratinly acquire and make use of the language once they have identified the necessary chunks, and the progress they make is quite noticeable in a way that I can't say I have observed with more structure-based approaches to language teaching. Process-wise, it also makes complete sense to me that the prior focus to all of this is logical organisation of ideas within the conventions...
Interviewee says:...of the given genre
Interviewer says:This semester for the first time you had students who had already taken 501 before 502? Any noticeable differences? Mostly in terms of what?
Interviewee says:Definitely! Their sense of organisation was much more marked, and their sense and understanding of language functions was very much in place, so much so that elements of the course became redundant. In past years a solely structural understanding of language, and a fixation with grammar and grammar errors would be very noticeable at the beginning of the programme.
Interviewer says:Some faculties have made these two courses compulsory. How do you feel about this?
Interviewee says:I presume they have their reasons, but I would prefer them to be 'placed' in 501, or 502, or neither, according to an independent assessment of their level, either conducted by us, or through an IELTS score. It seems like something of a blanket approach to the issue to me, though it hasn't yet caused any serious problems in practice.
Interviewer says:Last question. You mentioned that some elements of 502 became redundant as these students had taken 501.
Interviewee says:yes
Interviewer says:What's the solution?
Interviewee says:I remember work I used to do in identifying and using structures that realise such functions as 'compare and contrast', 'cause and effect', and even basic work with relative clauses, and so on, as typical examples. It's not a problem basically, because once I'm aware of it, I can simply omit that work and move on. I wouldn't use the word solution, because this is not actually a problem, but rather
Interviewee says:
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a bonus, wouldn't you say?Interviewer says:
Yes, I agree but what about these ideas? Collaboration between the designers of these two courses so that different elements are focused on, merging the two courses together and offering only one comprehensive course or accepting students on 501 or 502 or both or neither according to their language abilities as you have already mentioned?
Interviewee says:Yes, it would make perfect sense right now to sit down with the two course programmes and overview them as a whole, now that these issues have emerged this semester. Maybe we could meet f2f somewhere?
Interviewer says:One very final question!!!!!
Interviewee says:I'm ready!
Interviewer says:Are you happy about the existence of these courses? Do you think that they are doing good service to postgraduate students? And do you feel that they themselves appreciate this support?
Interviewee says:Yes, definitely. Never at any point have I felt I was wasting my time, or that this was a service that wasn't educationally useful. A very fine job - and I think the reactions and feedback and invitations you have received are a great testimony to what has been set up in the new 501 (ie by you...). My experience is that the students do appreciate the work, and some of them express their...
Interviewee says:appreciation to a very high degree. They feel in fact very often that the real academic support they are getting is from us...
Interviewee says:final final final question?
Interviewer says:Thank you very much for your time and your very useful ideas and contributions. I deeply appreciate it.
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APPENDIX I:
Comparison of the top 50 words in the LAC and the TAC
The LAC-21,575 words The TAC-174,093 words
Word Type Frequency Cum. Percent Word Type FrequencyCum.
Percent
I. THE 1543 7.15 THE 12550 7.21
OF 1023 11.89 OF 8631 12.17
AND 754 15.39 AND 6783 16.06
IN 595 18.15 TO 4261 18.51
TO 569 20.78 IN 4223 20.94
IS 450 22.87 A 3699 23.06
A 331 24.4 IS 1904 24.15
THIS 247 25.55 THAT 1872 25.23
THAT 220 26.57 THIS 1664 26.19
10. FOR 216 27.57 FOR 1582 27.09
ARE 202 28.51 AS 1426 27.91
ON 164 29.27 WITH 1145 28.57
BE 153 29.97 ARE 1113 29.21
IT 141 30.63 ON 1080 29.83
WITH 134 31.25 BY 990 30.40
AS 131 31.86 AN 968 30.96
STUDY 128 32.45 S 894 31.47
BY 114 32.98 FROM 749 31.90
WHICH 99 33.44 BE 684 32.29
20. HAVE 89 33.85 STUDY 669 32.68
THESE 87 34.25 IT 631 33.04
FROM 83 34.64 WAS 630 33.40
HAS 82 35.02 WHICH 609 33.75
S 80 35.39 THESE 603 34.10
RESEARCH 79 35.75 THEIR 560 34.42
THEIR 78 36.12 WERE 517 34.72
WILL 73 36.45 HAVE 476 34.99
NOT 71 36.78 HAS 426 35.23
OR 71 37.11 AT 425 35.48
30. USED 71 37.44 OR 417 35.72
DESIGN 70 37.77 BETWEEN 414 35.96
DIFFERENT 70 38.09 RESEARCH 411 36.19
BEEN 69 38.41 NEW 382 36.41
PEOPLE 65 38.71 ITS 371 36.62
QUALITY 64 39.01 NOT 363 36.83
330
WERE 64 39.3 ALSO 349 37.03
CAN 63 39.6 ANALYSIS 343 37.23
AN 62 39.88 I 340 37.43
THEY 62 40.17 THESIS 331 37.62
40. WAS 59 40.44 CAN 330 37.81
ANALYSIS 58 40.71 MORE 326 37.99
ALSO 55 40.97 DESIGN 322 38.18
ONE 54 41.22 BEEN 293 38.35
SOME 54 41.47 MODEL 293 38.51
MOST 52 41.71 USE 292 38.68
THERE 49 41.94 THROUGH 290 38.85
OTHER 48 42.16 DEVELOPMENT 285 39.01
ABOUT 46 42.37 THEY 284 39.18
ITS 45 42.58 USED 284 39.34
50. ALL 44 42.79 PROJECT 281 39.50
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APPENDIX J:
Family Headwords and Word Types used in the LAC and the TAC
Family (HW) in
both LAC and TAC
Actual LAC word tokens Actual TAC word tokens
absorb absorb absorbed, absorptionaccept unacceptable, accepted accept, acceptabilityaccess accessibility access, accessibleaccurate inaccurately accuracy, accurate, accuratelyacknowledge acknowledge acknowledgingadapt adapting, adaptation, adaptive adaptadd added, additions add, adding, additive, addsadminister administering, administrative administered, administratoradvertise advertisers, advertisement adsadverse adverse adverselyage ages agedagent agent agencies, agencyaggregate aggregates aggregationaid unaided aidair air airyalign align alignmentalter alter alteration, alteredamount amounted amountsanalyse analysts analytic, analytically, analyzesanswer answered answeringthesis theses antithesisany anymore, anyone anythingappear appeared appearsargue arguments argue, argued, arguing, argumentarise arising arise, arises, arosearrive arrive, arrives arrivedarticulate articulation articulate, articulatesask asks ask, asked, askingattain attainment attainattract attract, attracting attracted, attractivenessautomobile auto automobileaward award awardsbank banks bankingbegin begin, beginnings began, beginsbird birds birdblind blind blindnessbond bonds bond, bondingboom boomed boombear bearing born, bornebranch branches branching
332
Family (HW) in
both LAC and TAC
Actual LAC word tokens Actual TAC word tokens
bring bring bringsbuild builders buildscapacity capacity capacitiescarry carry, carries carrier, carryingcast casting castcausal causality causalcensor censorship censoredcentre centre, centered centers, centredchance chances chancecheap cheap cheaplycircumstance circumstance circumstancescivilise civilization civilizedclaim claiming claimed, claimsclassify classifying, classified classifications, classifycolumn columns columncombine combinations combinescommerce commerce, commercials commerciallycommission commissioning, commissions commissioncomplete completed complete
concept conceptualconception, conceptions, conceptualizes
confidence confident confidenceconsequential consequentially consequentialconsequent consequent consequentlyconserve conserved conservationist, conserveconsist consists consisted, consistingconstitute constituent constituents, constitutes, constitutiveconstrain constrains constrainedconstruct constructions constructsconsume consumes consuming
control controllingcontrolled, controller, controllers, controls
convert converter conversioncope coping copecorrect correct, correctness corrected, correctioncouple couple couplingcourse courses coursecover covered coverage, coveringcreate creativity, creators, recreating creationscurve curves curvecycle cycle, cyclic cyclingdam dams damdatabase database databasesdecide undecided decideddecrease decreases, decreasing decreased
333
Family (HW) in
both LAC and TAC
Actual LAC word tokens Actual TAC word tokens
define definitions definesdegrade degrading degradeddemography demographics demographydepartment departmental departmentdepend dependencies depended, dependent, dependingdepict depicting depictsdepress depression depressed, depressingdetect detecting detecteddetermine determining, deterministic determinations, determinismdevelop developmental developersdisease diseased diseasesdistinct distinctive distinction, distinctlydistribute distribute distributionaldocument documenting documentation, documenteddoor indoor, outdoor doorsdoctor doctor drdrama dramatically dramaticdrastic drastically drasticdrive drive, drivers drivereast eastern easteconomy economy, economical, economists economicseducate educated educate, educatorselastic inelastic elasticityelect elections elect, electioneliminate eliminate eliminated, eliminatingemotion emotion emotions
employemployees, employers, unemployed, unemployment employ, employee
enforce enforcing enforcementengage engaged engage, engagement, engagingensure ensure, ensures ensuredequip equipped equipmentequivalent equivalent equivalenceestablish establishing establish, establishesexceed exceeding exceed, exceedsexcess excess excessiveexcite excitation excitement, excitingexhibit exhibits exhibited, exhibitionexpense expensive, expenditure, expenditures expensesexplain explanation explainingexploit exploited, exploiting exploitsexplore exploring explorationexport exporting exportextend extensively extends, extensionsfail fail, fails failingfall fall fallsfashion fashionable fashion
334
Family (HW) in
both LAC and TAC
Actual LAC word tokens Actual TAC word tokens
feed feed fed, feedersfight fight fightingfigure figured figuresfinance finance, financed financiallyfiscal fiscal fiscallyfix fixing fixedfluctuate fluctuations fluctuated, fluctuatingfollow follows follow, followedforce forced, forces forcefounded founded founderfriend friendly friendship, friendshipsfulfil fulfillment fulfil, fulfilledgain gained gainsgather gather gatheringgenerate generations generativegeography geography, geographically geographic, geographiesglobe globalized globalization, globego goes gonegovern governing, governed gov, governmental, governorgraduate graduates, graduation graduategraphic graphic, graphical graphicallyhard hardened hardworkingharmony harmony harmoniousheat heating heatshelp helpful helpedshe she herhold holder, holding hold, holdingshospital hospitals hospitalhot hot hotlyhuman humanity humanism, humans
hypothesis hypotheticalhypotheses, hypothesised, hypothesized
impose impose, imposed imposingimpress impressive impressionpure pure impurities, impurityincorporate incorporation incincentive incentive incentivescomplete completed incomplete
incorporate incorporationincorporated, incorporates, incorporating
independent independence independent, independentlyindicate indications indicativeinduce induce inducedinitiate initiated initiationinstitute instituted institution, institutionalinteract interactive interactionist, interactionsdepend dependencies interdependence
335
Family (HW) in
both LAC and TAC
Actual LAC word tokens Actual TAC word tokens
value valuation invaluablevary variants, varies invariablyinvest investors investinvestigate investigative investigatinginvolve involved involvementjoint joints jointjudge judgement judgmentskeep keeps keepingknow knowing knowledgeablelack lacking, lacks lackedlag lagging laggedlast lasting, lasts lastlylay laid layslead misleading leader, leadershiplearn learnt learned, learners, learnslimit limitations, limiting limitslink link linkinglist listed list
local localslocalisation, localised, localization, localized, locally
loss loss losseslow lows loweringmaintain maintains maintain, maintainedmanage manage, managing manager, managerialmap mapping mapsmathematics mathematical mathmatter matter mattersmaximise maximize, maximized maximizationmeaning meanings meantmeasure measure measurements, measuringmechanic mechanical mechanicsmechanise mechanization mechanisticmemory memory, memorize memoriesmetre meter meters, metricminimise minimize, minimizes, minimized minimizationunderstand understood misunderstandingmodel modeled modelingmoment moment momentarymrs ms mrsnation nationals, nationality nation, nationally, nationwidenear nearly neared, nearernew renewing newlynormal normal, normalized normallyobstruct obstructs obstructionoccupation occupations occupation, occupationaloccupy occupancy occupiedoccur occurrence occurring
336
Family (HW) in
both LAC and TAC
Actual LAC word tokens Actual TAC word tokens
organize organized organizers, organizesorigin originality origin, originated, originsoscillate oscillating oscillation, oscillatorpanel panels panelpar pars parparent parent parentsparticle particles particlepartner partners, partnerships partnerpass passes passingpatron patrons, patronizing patronpattern pattern patternsperceive perceiving perceivespercent percentage percentperform performer performingpermanent permanence permanentphenomenology petroleum phenomenologyphotograph photography, photos photographsplace placement placesplay player, playing, plays playedpolitic politic, politician, politicians politicallyportfolio portfolios portfolioposit posit positspower powerful powersprecise precise precisionpredict predict predictable, predicted, predictorsprepare prepare, preparation, prepared preparatorypreserve preservation preservedpressure pressured pressureprevent prevention preventingprofit profit, profitable profitably, profitsprogramme programmes programmedprogress progressively progressproject projection projectedpromote promotion, promotions promote, promotes, promotionalproportion proportion, proportions proportionalprove proved, proving proven, provespurchase purchased, purchases purchasingpure pure puritypurpose purposeful purposelypursue pursue pursuingrate rating ratedreact reacted react, reaction, reactiverealise realize realizesreason reasons reasonably, reasonedrecognize recognize, recognizes recognitioncombine combinations recombinationconstruct constructions reconstructed, reconstructing,
337
Family (HW) in
both LAC and TAC
Actual LAC word tokens Actual TAC word tokens
reconstructsdefine definitions redefinesdistribute distribute redistributionrefine refinery refined, refinements, refiningreflect reflection reflections, reflectiveregister registered registerregulate regulate regulation, regulatoryreinforce reinforcement reinforcedrelax relax relaxation, relaxedrely reliably, relying relies, relyremain remaining remain, remained, remainsremove removal remove, removed, removesnew renewing renewedrepresent representatives, representing representation, representationalrequire requirement requires, requiringresearch researches researcheduse usable reuserevise revising revisionright right rightlyroutine routine routinelyrule rules rulescenario scenario scenariosschedule scheduling scheduledscience scientifically sciences, scientific, scientistsseem seemed seemingly, seemssegment segments segmentationconduct conducting, conductivity semiconductor, semiconductorssend sending sent
separateseparated, separately, separates, separating separations
sequence sequence sequencesserve servant servants, served, servesshare share, shares sharedshore shores shoresick sick sicknessside side, sides sidedsimilar similarity similarlysketch sketch, sketching sketchesslide sliding slidessolve solving solvedson son sonsspecial special specializationspecific specifications specifically, specificitysplit splits splitsquare sq square, squaresstable instability, stabilized stabilizing, stablestatistic statistic statisticallystory stories story
338
Family (HW) in
both LAC and TAC
Actual LAC word tokens Actual TAC word tokens
style stylish styled, stylisticroutine routine subroutinesucceed succeeded successfullysuffer suffered, suffering, suffers suffersupply suppliers suppliestechnical technically technicaltend tendency tend, tended, tendstheme thematically themesthreat threats threattolerate tolerance toleranttravel traveling travel, travelingtremendous tremendously tremendousattract attract, attracting unattractiveavoid avoided unavoidablebalance balances, balanced unbalancedclear clearing unclearcomfort comfortable uncomfortablycontrol controlling uncontrolledcover covered uncover, uncoveredunderstand understood understandsstable instability, stabilized unstableupdate updated updateutilise utilize utilisation, utilization, utilizesvary variants, varies variance, varied, varyingvisual visually visualizationweak weakness, weaknesses weaklywish wishes wishyield yield yielded
339
APPENDIX K:
The TAC Wordlist - 165 Word Families selected for further analysis
Words from GSL 1
BASE ONE FAMILIES RANGE TYFREQ FAFREQ F1 F2 F3 F4
1 APPLY 4 17 202 31 24 104 432 BASE 4 12 327 51 84 96 963 BUILD 4 23 342 222 32 64 244 CASE 4 153 188 31 27 52 785 CHANGE 4 140 315 60 81 67 1076 CHARACTER 4 15 160 35 45 46 347 CONSIDER 4 19 167 48 51 27 418 DESCRIBE 4 39 155 36 51 41 279 DEVELOP 4 59 621 152 106 219 14410 DIFFERENCE 4 12 302 47 104 83 6811 EFFECT 4 70 254 36 45 69 10412 FIND 4 44 286 40 75 53 11813 FORM 4 117 220 67 76 35 4214 GROUP 4 117 193 24 65 33 7115 HIGH 4 101 226 21 41 76 8816 IMPORTANT 4 126 190 52 61 25 5217 INCLUDE 4 58 243 59 54 73 5718 INCREASE 4 45 168 33 22 48 6519 KNOW 4 13 161 20 38 44 5920 LARGE 4 91 172 33 34 58 4721 LEVEL 4 115 175 20 47 48 6022 MAKE 4 57 195 48 43 35 6923 NATURE 4 117 189 65 59 28 3724 NEED 4 80 169 48 20 60 4125 NEW 4 382 392 133 82 116 6126 ORGANIZE 4 4 199 20 44 18 11727 PART 4 113 164 38 46 49 3128 PARTICULAR 4 106 155 30 51 30 4429 PRESENT 4 88 269 47 86 84 5230 PROBLEM 4 98 166 24 27 70 4531 PRODUCT 4 46 160 42 28 37 5332 PROPOSE 4 22 161 43 29 63 2633 PROVIDE 4 137 365 78 80 95 11234 RELATION 4 43 405 94 127 60 12435 RESULT 4 76 363 55 91 114 10336 SHOW 4 89 218 36 65 56 6137 STATE 4 98 199 52 31 45 7138 STUDY 4 669 919 174 270 153 32239 SUGGEST 4 50 161 21 65 22 5340 SYSTEM 4 262 530 112 48 222 14841 TIME 4 190 219 35 68 59 5742 UNDERSTAND 4 52 206 53 57 28 6843 USE 4 292 930 187 213 284 246
340
44 VALUE 4 68 170 37 26 50 5745 WELL 4 148 150 42 34 37 3746 WORK 4 228 344 96 125 49 74
Words from GSL 2
BASE TWO FAMILIES RANGE TYFREQ FAFREQ F1 F2 F3 F4
1 AIM 4 37 86 16 28 16 262 COLLECT 4 4 100 30 21 13 363 COMBINE 4 7 77 21 19 19 184 COMPARE 4 11 152 29 49 49 255 CRITIC 4 3 101 21 34 22 246 DISCUSS 4 14 130 26 38 28 387 EXAMINING 4 24 303 73 101 33 968 EXPLORE 4 37 177 57 48 26 469 GOVERN 4 1 144 14 34 48 4810 IMPROVE 4 46 133 25 14 67 2711 INFORM 4 8 256 36 44 48 12812 MANAGE 4 10 214 25 35 75 7913 MODEL 4 293 444 72 87 139 146
Words from the AWL
BASE THREE FAMILIES
RANGE
TYFREQ FAFREQ F1 F2 F3 F4
1 ANALYSE 4 8 568 75 193 132 1682 DESIGN 4 322 469 286 46 87 503 RESEARCH 4 411 441 78 111 64 1884 PROJECT 4 281 424 90 30 245 595 PROCESS 4 241 372 87 62 128 956 CULTURE 4 108 358 95 142 26 957 THESIS 4 331 331 53 112 106 608 CONSTRUCT 4 14 310 86 37 161 269 THEORY 4 155 293 46 70 46 13110 ENVIRONMENT 4 151 289 108 54 76 5111 IDENTIFY 4 62 288 63 135 55 3512 METHOD 4 86 287 44 62 112 6913 STRUCTURE 4 127 267 61 63 78 6514 DATA 4 262 262 31 62 77 9215 ECONOMY 4 37 245 30 28 47 14016 APPROACH 4 174 238 43 57 72 66
341
17 CREATE 4 48 219 79 48 39 5318 SIGNIFICANT 4 132 212 33 66 35 7819 STRATEGY 4 67 184 34 27 78 4520 INVESTIGATE 4 31 183 35 70 26 5221 ROLE 4 147 182 46 51 19 6622 VARY 4 14 182 15 77 39 5123 CONTEXT 4 131 181 40 65 31 4524 AREA 4 86 180 40 59 50 3125 SITE 4 94 177 58 75 30 1426 REGION 4 86 173 49 89 17 1827 FOCUS 4 77 172 42 44 30 5628 CHAPTER 4 135 171 42 64 30 3529 TECHNOLOGY 4 124 167 28 15 30 9430 CONCEPT 4 65 152 45 38 27 4231 RESPOND 4 10 150 32 46 30 4232 COMMUNITY 4 95 147 58 44 13 3233 FRAMEWORK 4 134 145 17 31 52 4534 TRADITION 4 31 145 55 46 17 2735 SPECIFIC 4 75 144 28 36 38 4236 COMPLEX 4 77 136 34 30 38 3437 TECHNIQUE 4 44 134 30 28 60 1638 FUNCTION 4 59 131 34 30 41 2639 ISSUE 4 27 130 34 35 18 4340 DEMONSTRATE 4 43 130 30 37 44 1941 INTERACT 4 10 129 25 18 45 4142 IMPACT 4 90 127 16 20 32 5943 CONTRIBUTE 4 24 127 36 38 21 3244 INSTITUTE 4 8 123 26 19 17 6145 INDICATE 4 48 121 15 49 12 454 INDIVIDUAL 4 79 120 18 39 13 50
342
647 REQUIRE 4 18 119 37 17 43 2248 PERCEIVE 4 6 116 30 42 16 2849 FINAL 4 37 116 28 24 37 2750 SELECT 4 10 115 26 28 34 2751 DEFINE 4 28 115 24 44 29 1852 MAJOR 4 96 112 19 26 34 3353 DYNAMIC 4 60 106 17 19 40 3054 PARTICIPATE 4 6 105 18 28 22 3755 LOCATE 4 4 102 28 40 16 1856 ACHIEVE 4 29 101 12 19 45 2557 ASSESS 4 21 101 19 29 32 2158 EVALUATE 4 21 100 13 12 40 3559 CONCLUDE 4 10 99 14 37 15 3360 POTENTIAL 4 86 96 17 17 43 1961 SOURCE 4 35 92 18 32 25 1762 ESTABLISH 4 23 91 25 37 13 1663 INVOLVE 4 8 90 19 21 23 2764 REVEAL 4 20 90 26 33 11 2065 UTILISE 4 0 87 10 16 38 2366 ASPECT 4 6 85 25 23 17 2067 CONSIST 4 2 81 12 24 17 2868 RESOURCE 4 29 81 10 26 20 2569 NETWORK 4 42 81 15 23 33 1070 MAINTAIN 4 17 79 15 18 26 2071 RANGE 4 57 79 13 27 29 1072 AFFECT 4 29 77 11 19 14 3373 SIMILAR 4 47 74 19 30 12 1374 COMPONENT 4 26 72 17 13 23 1975 CONSUME 4 3 70 10 11 30 19
343
76 ELEMENT 4 13 70 27 23 10 1077 CHALLENGE 4 23 69 21 12 23 1378 OCCUR 4 21 67 12 27 17 1179 LINK 4 23 65 17 14 15 1980 DIMENSION 4 15 65 14 22 12 1781 APPROPRIATE 4 45 64 19 17 12 1682 AUTHOR 4 40 61 13 24 10 1483 ALTERNATIVE 4 37 60 16 10 22 1284 SUSTAIN 4 9 52 19 10 11 1285 OBJECTIVE 4 38 40 5 12 16 7
Off-list Words
TYPE RANGE FREQ F1 F2 F3 F41 DISSERTATION 4 204 72 48 16 682 INTERVIEWS
INTERVIEWINTERVIEWEDINTERVIEWEESINTERVIEWERSFAMILYOCCURRENCES: 89
43421
62141021
83200
198611
90100
263110
***3 ORGANIZATIONALORGANIZERS FAMILYOCCURRENCES: 56
42
533
52
121
80
280
***4 OBJECTIVES 4 18 2 1 10 55 NOVEL 4 45 5 13 21 66 COLLABORATE
COLLABORATED COLLABORATION COLLABORATIONS COLLABORATIVE COLLABORATIVELYCOLLABORATOR COLLABORATORSFAMILYOCCURRENCES: 44
12414111
12
211
16111
01213110
01503000
00
1006001
10404000
7 CORRELATECORRELATEDCORRELATIONCORRELATIONALCORRELATIONSFAMILYOCCURRENCES: 28
12413
25
1713
00101
20201
04510
01901
8 DEMOGRAPHERDEMOGRAPHIC
14
1 0 1
1 8
02
07
344
DEMOGRAPHICS DEMOGRAPHYFAMILYOCCURRENCES: 31
32
1866
00
21
30
15
9 ENTERPRISEENTERPRISESFAMILYOCCURRENCES: 27
41
243
60
20
90
70
10 HYBRID HYBRIDISATION HYBRIDIZATION HYBRIDIZING HYBRIDSFAMILYOCCURRENCES: 30
41211
191811
120101
30000
31710
10000
11 LANDSCAPE LANDSCAPED LANDSCAPES LANDSCAPINGFAMILYOCCURRENCES: 146
4121
1231
211
911
111
280
100
1000
3000
12 LARGE-SCALE 4 23 6 5 10 213 LONG-TERM 4 25 5 6 10 414 MANIFEST
MANIFESTATION MANIFESTATIONS MANIFESTED MANIFESTING MANIFESTSFAMILYOCCURRENCES: 25
222422
256624
133211
020103
000210
103100
15 MOBILEMOBILISATION MOBILITY MOBILIZATIONFAMILYOCCURRENCES: 49
3241
242
221
0030
4130
4030
161
131
16 NEGOTIATE NEGOTIATED NEGOTIATES NEGOTIATING NEGOTIATION NEGOTIATIONS FAMILYOCCURRENCES: 40
311343
6114
1810
200020
201121
0001
114
210235
17 QUANTIFIABLE QUANTIFICATION QUANTIFIED QUANTIFY QUANTIFYING QUANTITATIVE QUANTITATIVELYFAMILYOCCURRENCES: 49
1134243
25482
226
2521010
0011061
0013152
00031
103
18 QUESTIONAIRE QUESTIONNAIRE QUESTIONNAIRESFAMILYOCCURRENCES: 28
142
2206
040
253
040
073
19 REFERENCE 4 31 4 11 11 5
345
REFERENCED REFERENCES REFERENCING REFERENT REFERENTIAL REFERENTS FAMILYOCCURRENCES: 44
131211
141313
011000
020213
110000
000100
20 URBAN 4 151 118 4 22 721 REFORM REFORMATION
REFORMED REFORMER REFORMERS REFORMING REFORMIST REFORMISTS REFORMSFAMILYOCCURRENCES: 48
412121113
221415131
10
1211030311
203120000
100000001
700001008
22 SPATIAL SPATIALITY SPATIALLYFAMILYOCCURRENCES: 67
413
6313
2710
2301
301
1001
23 SYNTHESES SYNTHESIS SYNTHESISE SYNTHESISED SYNTHESIZE SYNTHESIZED SYNTHESIZERFAMILYOCCURRENCES: 38
1411212
22511216
0600100
0711102
2 8
00014
0400000
***24 USAGE 4 11 2 2 4 3***25 TECHNOLOGIES 4 59 13 3 16 27
*** These words are placed together with their families by the researcher for further analysis.
346
APPENDIX L:
THE AAC BANK OF MOVES AND SUB-MOVES BASED ON IMRD
MOVE 1: INTRODUCTION
Sub-move 1: Defining the Scope of the Study
The scope of the research
This
study (274)
thesis (231)
dissertation (134)
research (116)
work (29)
paper (15)
project (14)
investigation (11)
report (5)
research study (3)
inquiry (2)
provides(120)
an overview of …examines(114) the relationship between …
how …explores (59) the importance of …
the ways in which …how …
shows(52) how …that …
presents (51) a qualitative investigation of …focuses (43) on the development of …demonstrates(35) how …
that …the emergence of …
proposes(34) to determine …that …a new design of …the integration of …
investigates (30) the impact of …offers (30) alternatives / suggestions …
attempts to identify … to establish …
argues(27)
that …for the need to …
describes the theory and methods of a … approach …
is based on a synthesis of …upon results obtained from …
represents(24)
a means of understanding …
considers (23)
a series of … who / which …
347
The scope of the researchseeks (23)
to offer strategies …
traces (21) the evolution of …the development of …
develops (21)
a systematic methodology to …
identifies (20)the risks of …
analyzes (20)
the role of …how …why …
supportsthe formation of …
addresses two main issues; first, …
discusses how best to design, implement and evaluate a…
documents the importance of … in the …
contributes to an understanding of …
is concerned with the development of …
reports the results of …
claims that …
combines … and …
reviews the different classes of …
integrates… and …… with …two concepts …
compares the two … in terms of …
illustratesthat …how …the consequences of …
348
The scope of the research
introduces a … model …
emphasizes the centrality of …
applies the … to …
brings
together research done … to light a phase of … in a much needed perspective on …
outlines the case …
extends previous work on …
adopts an (interpretive) approach to …
assesses the contribution of … to …
Sub-move 2: Identifying a Research Gap
-Previous research has not adequately explained why …-Previous research highlights a need for …-Previous research is unclear about …-Previous studies have demonstrated the feasibility of …, however, … still require further investigation-Previous attempts to identify … relied on data from ... Inadequacies in the data often resulted in ... -Although the importance of the topic of the … is evidenced through …, studies on this topic are scarce.-Although there have been many studies on … in recent years, there is no comprehensive study of …-Although researchers have devoted much attention to …, they have devoted little attention to …-Although … has been proposed before as a solution, little serious investigation has been undertaken into …-Although studies have discussed the importance of …, few have actually focused on …-Although overlooked in the … domain, …-Unlike previous … studies, …-Unlike previous studies that examine only …, …-Unlike previous work, …-However, no attempt so far could be found to …-However, no … research has been undertaken on …-However, little research has been conducted to …
349
-However, little empirical research has studied the impact of … on the …-However, little research has been directed at ….-Despite such noteworthy efforts, however, few scholars have investigated …-Despite the importance of the subject, no full ... exists.-Despite evidence that …, researchers still understand relatively little about …-… yet ironically no serious study has been done on ….-… yet no … is available.-Yet, little has been done on …-… yet an in-depth analysis of … does not exist.- Little research has been done on …- Little research in ….. had previously focused on the …- Since there is no agreed and established method for …- Since little …… research has been conducted in …, …-… the previous … research, which generally only acknowledges that …-… to clarify previous research-… which has not been the subject of previous study.-… the disparate findings of previous research.- … previously under-explored territory.-… a previously unstudied / understudied / unexamined…-… the unexplored problem of …-… that have not been previously studied.-… hitherto unexamined … materials…-… broader … range than previously published materials.-… largely unexplored.-No comprehensive study of the … exists to date.-There is no published evidence that …-To date, however, no research exists on …-Unfortunately, very little experimental data exists that demonstrates …-One area of investigation that has received little critical attention, however, is …-A challenge that has received relatively little attention is …- This … has received little attention in … research.- The number of studies in … is very few as opposed to other areas such as …- Many scholars have failed to ...
Sub-move 3: Filling the Research Gap
-Where previous research has often focused on …, this research targeted …-Previous attempts to identify … relied on data from ... Inadequacies in the data often resulted in ... This research demonstrates that …-Unlike previous … studies, this research explicitly takes into account …-Unlike previous studies that examine only …, this study also focuses on …-Unlike previous work, the current study considered the …-This study extends the previous … research, which …-This study seeks to go further by …-This study combines … evidence to contribute to an ongoing effort to … advance … and reveal previously under-explored territory.- The current study seeks to clarify previous research. This is the first study to use ...- In presenting …, this dissertation brings to light a previously unstudied phase of …- This text marks a little milestone in the …- This thesis presents results for a broader … range than previously published materials.- This research represents one of a few studies to explore how …, and offers a new theoretical framework to explain …
350
-The purpose of this study is to provide the first … that have not been previously studied.- The motivation for this study arises from previously unexamined phenomena-Unfortunately, very little experimental data exists that demonstrates … Therefore, one of the objectives of this study conducted was …-A broad range of literature has been reviewed and it was found that little research in … had previously focused on the ... As such, this research presents a new area in … study.- Despite such noteworthy efforts, however, few scholars have investigated … in any comprehensive fashion. Thus, the dissertation examines …- Based on previously unexamined ….., my dissertation emphasizes the …- Although studies have discussed …, few have actually focused on … The overall aim of this study, therefore, is to increase understanding of why and how …, and what results are achieved.-I emphasize two previously understudied mechanisms of …-In this paper, we focus on the unexplored problem of … and examine methods to study how …
Sub-move 4: Stating the ‘aim’ or ‘purpose’ of the studyPattern 1
THE
purpose (s) (82)
aim (s) (45)
objective / s (32)
goal (s) (23)
intention (10)
object (4)
intent (4)
OF THIS
study (274)
thesis (231)
dissertation (134)
research (116)
work (29)
paper (15)
project (14)
investigation (11)
report (5)
research study (3)
inquiry (2
IS TO
provide (137) examine (69)determine (68)identify (62)develop (59)understand (52)improve (45)increase (45)demonstrate (43)analyse / analyze (39)describe (39)explore (37)investigate (31)make (29)contribute (24)reduce (23)enhance (23)propose (22)evaluate (21)integrate (19)apply (17)
present (16)design (15)compare (11)extend (7)
351
Pattern 2
THIS
STUDY (274)
THESIS (231)
DISSERTATION (134)
RESEARCH (116)
WORK (29)
PAPER (15)
PROJECT (14)
INVESTIGATION (11)
REPORT (5)
RESEARCH STUDY (3)
INQUIRY (2)
SEEKS (22)AIMS (16)ATTEMPTS (11)TRIES (3) INTENDS (1)
TO
-address those concerns over …-answer two questions: …-answer some of the most fundamental questions of why and how …-bridge the knowledge gap in …-clarify the challenges faced in …-contribute to the growing body of scholarship on …-demonstrate the … role played by …-develop a discourse on how …-document and interpret this …-enlarge the role of …-establish a ……-examine the engagement between … and …-examine the issue of … with reference to …-explain the types of …-explain why …….-expand … theories …-explicate the concept of …-formalize, and define a common ground for …-formulate consensus through …-further our understanding of …-go further by …-identify the linkages between … and … about …-identify the most significant influences on …-illuminate how and why …-make sense of and provide insight into …-offer strategies for …-offer a theoretical foundation for the concept of …-provide an answer to ...-provide information and analysis that would …-understand the interaction between …
Pattern 3
THIS
STUDY (274) THESIS (231)DISSERTATION (134)RESEARCH (116)
WILL
analyze the current …argue that …be the first comprehensive analysis to bring together …contribute to the …demonstrate that …discuss the …examine the …explore the validity of the …
352
PAPER (15) illustrate the way that …investigate two different approaches to …look at how …propose to reconnect …provide a greater understanding of …show that …
Pattern 4
THISSTUDYPROJECTDISSERTATION
AIMS AT
reconstructing …
providing a framework that …
planning, developing, and revitalizing the …
MOVE 2: METHODOLOGY
Sub-move 1: Presenting the methodology employed
This study
-utilized
-used
-employed
-a qualitative/quantitative methodology (72)
This thesis This dissertationThis reportThis research
uses (12)
utilizes (9)
employs (7)
-the … model
-a/an … approach / perspective / model / technique / algorithm
-to study …
-to examine …-to construct … -to optimize …
Name of approac
h / method /
tool
isare
waswere
has/have beencan be
used (289)
utilized (22)
employed (20)
-to determine the …-to test the … -to direct …-to compute-for the classification of the results-by different researchers.-in this study / research.-in the analysis.-as a … device.
-This new -The research -The proposed -The
methodologyproduces adopts
applies to provides
-… results.-a/an … approach as the mode of inquiry.-a wider range of …-a … framework for …
353
resultant
The methodological design is a qualitative, historical-comparative
approach to …
Many researchers
are of the belief that the two methodologies compliment … and thereby strengthen the …
Using a … method provides more ...Drawing upon theories of …, this study uses a
mixed-method approach based on grounded theory and employing …
A multi-method approach
is used with a quantitative analysis of …, followed by a qualitative analysis of …
Both the method and the model are used in the development of …
A pluralistic research method combining a case study and a field survey made up of a questionnaire and interviews is used to provide the necessary data.
The research method followed is a multiple case study analysis.
This method of analysis is applied to two case studies of …
The research method is qualitative, using … to ...The research applies the phenomenological
method of investigation in its original form as developed by …
The method sets the boundaries of the research.
The thesis adopts a
method of qualitative research using … to …
Using a … approach, a second analysis focuses more closely on …
A specially developed method of … is used to categorise the ….
A … method is used to determine …
354
Sub-move 2: Justifying the methodology employed
A pluralistic research method combining a case study and a field survey made up of a questionnaire and interviews
is used to provide the necessary data.
This framework
is used as a theoretical base for the collection and analysis of data.
The research adopted an interpretive approach using an ethnographic case study technique to
gather information accompanied by other methods of data collection to have data triangulation.
Archival, historical and ethnographic records
are used to locate the data within … contexts and to reconstruct a model of …
Based on the proposed framework, two operations
are developed which allow the viewing or interpreting of data … within different contexts.
This research presents and reviews a significant number of new and innovative ways to promote …
providing the reader with data to …
-To pursue this problem, -I combined elements of … theory and … text analysis.
-We address this problem -by designing and developing a … system …-by formalizing a … specification which …
-This study explores this problem -using an approach derived from …-Some … have attempted to resolve
this problem -by involving …
-Resolution of this problem -will require more detailed analysis of …
Sub-move 3: Describing the context
This dissertation
examines the problem of …
within the context of …
This thesis documents the importance of …
in a wider … context.
This thesis is concerned with understanding …
within the context of …
The concepts of …
are considered in the context of …
Optional sub-move: Describing the variables-Other variables such as …-Two independent variables
-are considered.
-Variables -Frequencies of occurrence between these variables -Interactions between variables
-were analyzed for …-were investigated.-were tested-contributed significantly.
355
-… variables -included …MOVE 3: RESULTS
Sub-moves 1 and 2: What the data show / What the data mean
KEY WORD: DATAThe …
DATA (from … / obtained from …/ derived from … / produced by … / obtained using / collected from / gathered from …)
-showed that-shows
-… lead to …-support for this theory.An analysis of
… Preliminary that …Results from an analysis of …
a strong … differentiation between ….
This combination of … and …
illustrates that … and … are intimately connected to …
demonstrate a …, suggesting …A review of … provides an understanding of the …Analysis of the …These emphasize the complexity of the … by …The results of the
supported … hypotheses …
Results from … using …
provide highly suggestive evidence that …
-The …-A thematic analysis of …-Analysis of…
has revealed / revealed
-that … was influenced by …-… themes relating to … -striking differences in …
The suggests the ability to …Based on these … was
identifiedas being …
It appears the corroborates observations and definitions of …
The has implicated the …By analyzing these
we can determine
the … as well as …
My analysis of …
implies extensive …
Through a set of
sufficient evidence was found
to support the basic hypotheses:
The empirical results, supported with comprehensive secondary
confirmed virtually all of the research hypotheses.
356
KEY WORDS: ANALYSIS / ANALYSES
-A second set of (sing.)-The results of the-The-Further-The case -An (sing.)-This (sing.)
analyses (pl.)analysis (of …) (sing.)
found that … reduces the probability of …indicatesindicated
that …
shows / showedshows / has shown
-that …-support for …
demonstrate demonstratesdemonstrated
-the utility of …-that …-the extent to which …
identifies significant differences in …revealedreveals
-several … characteristics …-significant / striking differences in …-that …-a heavy bias towards …
provide / provided
-support that … -a better understanding of the …-an opportunity to gain insight into …
suggestedsuggests
-that …-similar increases in … -benefits …
implies extensive …assists in considering the …contribute to the interpretation of …underscores that …
the importance of …supported the notion …
-this findingaids in the …
KEY WORDS: FINDINGS / RESULTS
(The / these / experimental/ research / three key) FINDINGS
(The / empirical / these / major)RESULTS
indicate / indicated that …illustrate -the duality of …
-that …identified … key areas … (clearly) confirm / confirmed
-that …-the significant impact of …-the hypothesis of this study.-the validity of …
exhibited a …demonstrate -significant evidence of …
-that …reinforce the role of …are that …show that …failed to achieve this outcome due to …represent a … improvement in …can be grouped into two categories:
357
MOVE 4: DISCUSSION
Sub-move 1: Describing the ‘key findings’
KEY WORDS: IMPLY / SUGGESTThe results imply … growth …These … records imply that …The rationale for this approach implies the need to …My analysis of … data implies extensive…The findings / analyses/ results/ suggest /s -that …
-there is no relationship …-a link between …-… principal conclusions.
KEY WORDS: SEEM / APPEAR… factors seem strongly related to …Differences in … seem related to …The results seem to be dependent on …The contribution of … to …
does not seem to be significant.
Some practices appear to be-context-dependent.-positively related to …
… appeared immune to the influence of …… appear to influence …It appears that …The patterns … appear to fit criteria supporting the
hypothesis of …There appears to be no single …… evidence suggests that many …
appear to be similar to one another.
KEY WORDS: TEND / TENDENCYThe patterns tend to reflect issues that
are connected to the relationship between …
The results of the …
tended to show no differences between … and …
The findings suggest that the presence of …
tends to generate responses …
Evidence for …
tends to suggest that …
Research findings include a
tendency for … to become …
358
Sub-move 2: Relating the findings of the study to already existing research
KEY WORDS: PAST / PREVIOUS
The findingsThe results
are consistent with past studies showing that …supported previous work conducted by …are in agreement with previous research.
KEY WORD: PREVIOUSConsistent with
previous research, the findings suggest that …
Unlike previous work, the current study considered …Contrary to previous claims, the integration of …. does not …
Sub-move 3: Describing the ‘conclusions’KEY WORDS: CONCLUDE / CONCLUSION
This study / dissertation / thesis /investigation
concludes -that …-with …
It is concluded that …The conclusions drawn from the
analysisindicate that …
A / The conclusion of this study
is that …
Several conclusions derive from the …The primary / central conclusions of this investigation
are that…
The conclusion reiterates that …In conclusion, this study shows that …Two main conclusions are derived.
Sub-move 4: Discussing the contributions of the study to the research field
KEY WORD: CONTRIBUTIONThe key contribution of this research is the suggestion that the
use of …
The main contribution of this study is the support of …The core theoretical
contribution of this research concerns the provision of …
The thesis’ contribution is twofold: practical and theoretical
This dissertation’s
contribution is to demonstrate …
The first two contributions of this thesis introduce … techniques that …There are three main
contributions of the project: The first is …
The main theoretical
contributions of the thesis are 1) the development of …
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KEY WORD: CONTRIBUTION
This paper / thesis
-has -makes
-a significant methodological-the following principal
contribution
contributions
The thesis makes a theoreticala methodological
contribution
-by extending the …-to the ongoing debates about …-to the growing field of …
This work is believed to be an important contribution to the literature.
The investigations reported in this thesis
represent a significant contribution to the field of …
KEY WORD: CONTRIBUTEThe results contribute -to the international need to document and to
explore …The research (therefore)
contributes -to the … debate about …-to an understanding of …
The researchThis piece of research
contributes -practical implications and insights into …-to the development of …
The … analysis contributes -to the interpretation of …Our findings contribute -not only to … but also to …This and future work
may contribute -significantly to the understanding of …
This work contributes -new techniques for …
OTHER VERBS DENOTING ‘CONTRIBUTION’ / KEY WORD: STUDY
The study
has increased our knowledge of …constitutes a valid process for …has resulted in … publications …
provided / provides-the following benefits.-support for …
reconceptualizes or elaborates on, or even modifies
the systemic approach of … by …
should dispel some myths about …promotes the application of …validates the …established -a … strategy to …
-thatproduced a model of …
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OTHER VERBS DENOTING ‘CONTRIBUTION’ / KEY WORDS: FINDINGS / RESULTS
(The / these / experimental/ research) findings
(The / empirical / these / major) results
provided / provide -the knowledge needed to …-a better understanding of …-highly suggestive evidence that …-new insights into …
have conclusively proven that …offer the first empirical evidence for establish that …were used to establish a framework for …shed new light on …reinforce the role of …clearly confirmed -the effectiveness of
-the validity of open new prospects to improvechallenge … approaches to …
UNDERSTANDING / INSIGHT / KNOWLEDGE TO DENOTE ‘CONTRIBUTION’The thesis makes a methodological
contributionto an understanding of …
This study contributes to an understanding of …This dissertation provides a better understanding of …
This provides us with insight about how …The new … offer a number of
innovativeinsights into …
The research
contributes insights into …
These findings provide the knowledge needed both to …
This research contributes by increasing
our knowledge of …
Sub-move 5: Making recommendations / suggestions based on the research findings
RECOMMENDATIONS: KEY WORDS: RECOMMEND /SUGGEST / PROPOSEsuggest / s -that a … approach to … is absolutely
necessary-a model for the …
It is recommendedis proposedis suggested
that a … should be …that a … be added to…
The findings suggest new approaches to …This thesis makes some recommendations for …This new … provides a unified set of
recommendationsthat …
This thesis / study
recommends that … the use of … be applied to …
The results are recommended to be applied to future … projects …
This researchThe current study
proposedproposes
-that …-a … model to assist in …- a new perspective in …
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-ideas that …-the construction of …
RECOMMENDATIONS: KEY WORDS: RECOMMEND /SUGGEST / PROPOSERecommendations were outlined for improving …-A series of recommendations-Recommendations
is provided
are provided
to …
to …
Recommendations for further study
include …
Based on the findings of this research, recommendations
are put forth to aid …
Specific recommendations will be directed towards …
A … classification of …
A … schemeA new synthesis
is proposed.
is proposed
-as a way of …-which …-for …
Methodological improvements
are suggested in order to …
RECOMMENDATIONS: KEY WORDS: MUST / SHOULDThe research findings must be interpreted in the light of …The changes that … must be addressed and
simplifiedMembers of the … team
must work together and find a mutually agreeable …
This thesis concluded that …
should apply … at the … level.
We should work to provide … with …The findings from this study
should not be generalized to define all …
Sub-move 6: Discussing the Implications of the research
‘IMPLICATIONS’- KEY WORD: IMPLICATIONImplications regarding …
of this study for …of …
are discussed.are also considered.range from …to …are examined.
The implication
for … is also analyzed.
One implication
of this study is that …would be that …
The main practicalThe wider
implications (of this research) are that …
Other theoretical implications
of the research findings relate to …
Practical implications
regarding … are derived from the research findings.
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‘IMPLICATIONS’- KEY WORD: IMPLICATIONThis research / dissertation
has (important) implications for …
The results / findings have (broad) implications for … research.
The study The research
concludes with
implications for …
discusses (the)
(possible) implications (of …)
for …
contributes (practical) implications into …offers empirically grounded
implicationsfor …
Sub-move 7: Opening up new areas of research
‘SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH’- KEY WORDS: FUTURE / FURTHER
This study offers provides
suggestions for further research.
FutureFurther
research is recommended into …on
Recommendations on further
study include … methodologies …
Suggestions for further
study are made.
The study emphasizes the need for further research.Based on the results,
suggestions were / are made for future research.
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APPENDIX M:
Screenshots of ENGL501 Moodle
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APPENDIX N:
A student-led discovery task
Task 1- A student-led discovery task.Data is plural; the singular of data is datum which is the record of a single observation. Data as noun:
What are the relevant data? Pursuing it, he has logged 500,000 miles, suffered indescribable digestive
indignities, and meticulously collected physiological data on the health and eating habits of 10,000 individuals, from Bantu tribesmen to Italian contadini.
For many of these unwed mothers, the data on their family life and early childhood experiences revealed several indications and sources of their basic mistrust of their parents in particular and of the world in general.
In addition, the 1952 study collected comparable data from 4,585 students at ten other colleges and universities scattered across the country: Dartmouth, Harvard, Yale, Wesleyan, North Carolina, Fisk, Texas, and University of California at Los Angeles, Wayne, and Michigan.
Data as an adjective The x ray data are consistent with particle sizes of 1000 A or greater Preliminary data from 1959 Eta give an average impact rate of **f for
masses larger than **f for about 1000 events in a 22-day period (LaGow and Alexander, 1960).
At the fifteenth magnitude, **f and at the twenty-fifth magnitude, **f These extrapolated fluxes are about an order of magnitude less than the values from the satellite data and the figures in Whipple's table.
Some Verbs used to talk about data 1. find out the data 2. analyze the data 3. figure out the data 4. express the data 5. provide the data 6. interpret the data 7. use the data 8. Determine the data of…. 9. Measure the data from…. 10. express the data in terms of physical quantities
3 sentences 1. From the resulting data the doctor can determine lung defects with hitherto unknown accuracy and detail. 2. The selective and directional qualities of basic value-orientations are clearly evident in these data : 3. The market for computers and other data -handling continues to expand at the rate of about 30% annually, reaching some $450 million in 1960.
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APPENDIX O:
Teachers’ Notes for the Advanced Academic Thesis Writing Course
The current ENGL501 advanced academic thesis writing course adopts a genre-
based corpus-informed data-driven lexico-grammatical approach to thesis writing.
The course therefore focuses on the generic features of texts, makes use of the
corpora compiled and analyzed for this study as well as larger corpora, offers the
participants the opportunity to explore the corpus data through data-driven learning
activities, and pays special attention to how lexico-grammatical structures achieve
different language functions. The participants are constantly alerted to the fact that
fluency in productive skills is achieved through the knowledge of collocations and
lexico-grammatical structures.
The course has three contact hours a week, complemented by the online component
of the course on Moodle. Before the three contact hours each week, the participants’
prior knowledge of the section of the thesis to be focused on that week is elicited
through a discussion forum on Moodle. The participants share their ideas regarding
the sub-genre online in a collaborative environment. They are also encouraged to do
research regarding the sub-genre on the web, and provide the source for reference.
The discussion is generally structured in such a way as to encourage the participants
to consider the sub-sections of the sub-genre in question, and how they are
organized, thus focusing on the generic discourse structure. The thesis introduction
is given as a sample here.
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The first discussion forum on Moodle regarding thesis introductions is entitled
‘What is ‘CARS’?”. The participants are aware that CARS is related to thesis
introductions, so they make predictions about the meaning. As they are collaborating
with each other, they come up with ideas such as ‘Critical Analysis Research
System’, as well as more entertaining ones such as “Ferrari is the most famous
motor designer in the world because of its hi-quality and excellent design”. After
this initial discussion on thesis introductions, the in-class input materials are put
online on Moodle one or two days before the contact hours. The participants
continue their discussion in class, and find out that CARS stands for ‘Create A
Research Space’, and reflects the three moves in thesis introductions. The in-class
materials provide the participants with an authentic sample introduction, and a
variety of tasks ensure that the discourse structure of the thesis introduction is clear.
Focus on the organization is followed by work on language, how different moves
and sub-moves are achieved through lexico-grammatical structures. After an
intensive three hours in class, more samples of thesis introductions, links to good
outside sources, and online tasks focusing on organization and language are offered
to the participants on Moodle. Not only are data-driven learning tasks designed to
promote the exploitation of the corpora, the participants are encouraged to explore
the AAC Bank of moves and sub-moves for the relevant language. When enough
input, exposure, and practice tasks are provided, the participants are invited to
submit their first draft introductions online. The feedback from the course instructor
is in the form of suggestions, and guidance to sources, and by no means a
proofreading and correction exercise. After getting feedback, the participants write
their second drafts and submit them online to receive a second round of feedback
from the course instructor.
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