A concordance- and genre-informed approach to ESP essay writing

Weber, Jean-Marie

doi:10.1093/elt/55.1.14

Cited by 77 publications

(26 citation statements)

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“…Yoon, 2008), which have highlighted issues in need of further research when learners consult corpora as a resource in the writing process. Some are theoretically-based and descriptive, with a focus on how to incorporate corpora into L2 writing (Bernardini, 2002;Lee & Swales, 2006;Thurstun & Candlin, 1998;Tribble, 1997Tribble, , 2001Tribble, , 2002Weber, 2001); others examine the effects of corpus use by learners as a consultation skill for error correction in revising their drafts (Chambers & O'Sullivan, 2004;O'Sullivan & Chambers, 2006;H. Yoon, 2008) or for learning particular types of linguistic points in writing, such as connectors (Cresswell, 2007), conjunctions (Tseng & Liou, 2006), or reporting verbs (Bloch, 2009).…”

Section: Application Of Corpora In Second Language Writing: a Criticamentioning

confidence: 99%

The effects of paper-based DDL on the acquisition of lexico-grammatical patterns in L2 writing

Huang

2014

ReCALL

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This paper examines whether and to what extent data-driven learning (DDL) activities can improve the lexico-grammatical use of abstract nouns in L2 writing. A topic-based corpus was compiled to develop concordance learning activities, and 40 Chinese students majoring in English were randomly assigned to a control group or an experimental group. At the prewriting stage, both groups were given a list of five abstract nouns: the experimental group was provided with paper-based concordance lines to study the collocations of the words, while the control group was allowed to consult dictionaries for the usage of the words. The written texts of the pre-test, immediate post-test, and delayed post-test were analysed and compared between and within groups. The results showed that the written output by the experimental group, as compared with the control group, contained a higher variety of collocational and colligational patterns and had fewer linguistic errors in using the target abstract nouns. The post-experiment learning journals and questionnaires administered to the experimental group further confirmed that concordance activities encouraged usage-based learning, helped students notice the lexical collocations and prepositional colligations of the target words, and thus improved accuracy and complexity in their productive language. Despite these positive findings, potential problems of using concordance activities for independent learning were also reflected in the students' written output and reported in the learning journals.

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Section: Application Of Corpora In Second Language Writing: a Criticamentioning

confidence: 99%

The effects of paper-based DDL on the acquisition of lexico-grammatical patterns in L2 writing

Huang

2014

ReCALL

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“…Accordingly, concordances permit learners to make sense of English words easily. Aside from this, concordances also allow researchers to link words with the bigger context, a method forwarded by Weber (2001) in teaching law undergraduates how to write legal essays. Web genre has also benefitted from the use of concordances.…”

Section: Genre Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Genre analysis of the “About Us” sections of Asian Association of Open Universities websites

Villanueva

Dolom

Belen

2018

AAOUJ

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Purpose This paper is a corpus-driven study of written electronic texts, particularly the “About Us” sections in the university websites of 41 members of the Asian Association of Open Universities (AAOU). This inquiry is important because it will provide an insight as to how AAOU members describe and portray themselves in the World Wide Web, a platform which is highly utilized in the field of distance education. This will also lead to the understanding of conventional knowledge among AAOU members during the period of study. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach Guided by Swales’ (1990) seminal work on genre analysis, the researchers conducted a three-part genre analysis which involved identification and analysis of moves, keywords, and concordance lines. Findings Results of the keyword analysis were conducted using the AntConc application. Anthony (2017) found that the top 100 keywords with positive keyness exemplified inherent characteristics of open and distance learning institutions as well as characteristics common to higher education institutions and their thrusts. The analysis also found that the use of adjectives and verbs with positive denotations is common in the “About Us” sections. Concordance for several keywords related to the overarching theme of the AAOU 2017 Conference then revealed that the AAOU members are active in the discourse about accessibility, assessment, and quality, while there is not much discourse on openness, inclusivity, and justice. Meanwhile, subscribing to equality and equity could still be a point of discussion among the AAOU members as the concordance analysis revealed more discourse on equality than equity as a goal and principle. Overall, results of the genre analysis resonated with previous studies of the academic genre as the “About Us” sections are promotional in both authoritarian and inclusive ways. Originality/value The inquiry will provide the members of the AAOU with an overview of their common communicative purposes, overused or underused keywords, and their usage of these words which they may opt to work on in the future.

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“…The concept of teaching literacy for specific contexts goes by a variety of names-disciplinary literacy, academic literacy, special-purposes English-and is discussed in a variety of educational contexts-from middle-school and high-school reading (e.g., Shanahan & Shanahan, 2012) to university writing (e.g., Henderson & Hurst, 2006) to second-language English for Specific Purposes (e.g., Weber, 2001). In this thesis, I use the term disciplinary literacy to refer somewhat broadly to the language abilities necessary to participate competently in a specific academic discipline, professional field, or other special-purpose context.…”

Section: The Importance Of Disciplinary Literacy and Vocabulary Develmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Since Johns (1991) named this approach, DDL has been growing in popularity with second-language instructors, especially for teaching ESP. Recent studies have looked at the use of DDL in ESP contexts such as English for Academic Purposes (e.g., Charles, 2014;Gaskell & Cobb, 2004;Yoon, 2008), English for Medical Purposes (e.g., Donesch-Jezo, 2010;Önder, 2014), Engineering English (e.g., Mudraya, 2004Mudraya, , 2006, Legal English (e.g., Weber, 2001;Yunus & Awab, 2012, and English for Tourism (e.g., Hou, 2014;Marinov, 2013;Marzá, 2014).…”

Section: Data-driven Learning For Teaching Specialized Vocabularymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A number of studies have looked at teaching grammar features (e.g., Vannestål & Lindquist, 2007;Smart, 2014) and even genre features (e.g., Weber, 2001) through DDL, so it would be useful to consider ways for teachers to systematically determine what features should be taught and which would be well suited to teaching through DDL.…”

Section: Limitations and Future Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

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An Analytical System for Determining Disciplinary Vocabulary for Data-Driven Learning: An Example from Civil Engineering

Otto¹

2000

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Data-driven learning (DDL), an inductive teaching approach in which students learn through corpus interaction, has gained recent traction as way to teach specialized vocabulary in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) classes. There is little research, however, that addresses how to choose specialized vocabulary for teaching with DDL.This study addressed this gap in research by exploring the potential of a three-part analytical, corpus-based system for determining vocabulary to teach with DDL for a specific context of language use. This system included (1) identifying words that were significantly more frequent in a specialized expert corpus than in a corpus of general English, (2) narrowing to words that showed patterned differences in use between the specialized corpus and a student corpus, and (3) narrowing further to words with salient enough patterns of usage to teach with DDL. This three-part system was applied to the context of civil engineering in order to find vocabulary words to teach civil engineering students with low-proficiency writing skills at Portland State University.For the first step in my analytical system, I found 201 words that occurred significantly more frequently in civil engineering practitioner writing than in the Corpus of Contemporary American English and that met requirements for frequency, distribution, and other criteria. I tested the second and third steps on 45 of these words and identified 14 words that showed evidence of needing to be taught and being well suited to DDL.After reflecting on my process, I found that the analytical system was successful in meeting my goals for finding civil engineering vocabulary for data-driven activities. I ii also made several observations that may be useful for ESP teachers who are interested in applying this methodology for their classes, the most notable of which were:1. The system was especially useful for connecting words that are not explicitly civil engineering themed (e.g., encountered or using) to important writing functions that civil engineers perform.2. Although it provided a systematic basis for vocabulary teaching decisions, the process was generally time-consuming and required complex judgments, which indicated that it may only be worth performing if teachers plan to regularly incorporate DDL vocabulary instruction into their course.iii Acknowledgments

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A concordance- and genre-informed approach to ESP essay writing

Cited by 77 publications

References 3 publications

The effects of paper-based DDL on the acquisition of lexico-grammatical patterns in L2 writing

The effects of paper-based DDL on the acquisition of lexico-grammatical patterns in L2 writing

Genre analysis of the “About Us” sections of Asian Association of Open Universities websites

An Analytical System for Determining Disciplinary Vocabulary for Data-Driven Learning: An Example from Civil Engineering

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