A meaning-based approach to the study of complexity in L2 writing: The case of grammatical metaphor

Ryshina‐Pankova, Marianna

doi:10.1016/j.jslw.2015.06.005

Cited by 60 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…Importantly, it was assumed that the quality of writing does not necessarily depend on the mere counting of any specific lexicogrammatical resources used but on the writer's strategic use and deployment of meaning‐making resources in response to the communicative purpose of the genre. In the context of the genre of summary, the use of a particular reformulation pattern should not be interpreted in simplistic terms reducable to a more is better argument (Ryshina‐Pankova, ). With this assumption in mind, this study attempts to look into learner data focusing on qualitative investigations of how their strategic use of meaning‐making resources can contribute to reformulating the original source information.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Toward a Framework for Linking Linguistic Knowledge and Writing Expertise: Interplay Between SFL‐Based Genre Pedagogy and Task‐Based Language Teaching

Yasuda

2017

TESOL Quarterly

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This article attempts to apply some systemic functional linguistic (SFL) concepts to task-based language teaching (TBLT) as a means of enriching the fields of learning, teaching, and evaluating writing in an additional language. The purposes are twofold. First, this article presents a concrete example concerning SFL-initiated genre-based tasks, which were designed for college-level writers of English as a foreign language (EFL) so that they can learn genre, task, content, and language concurrently. Second, this article presents a descriptive study on how the systematically designed genre-based tasks were experienced by the EFL writers, how their genre awareness changed as they experienced the genre-based tasks, and how their meaningmaking choices for constructing a genre changed over time. This study's findings highlight the effectiveness of linking the conceptual framework of SFL to the methodological principles of TBLT in terms of the simultaneous development of linguistic knowledge and writing expertise.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Toward a Framework for Linking Linguistic Knowledge and Writing Expertise: Interplay Between SFL‐Based Genre Pedagogy and Task‐Based Language Teaching

Yasuda

2017

TESOL Quarterly

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“…In the case of written language, it is argued that as it becomes more complex, it becomes more lexically dense and more metaphorical, which is achieved, for the most part, through nominalization (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014: 726-729). Therefore, the studies using the meaning-based approach propose the use of grammatical metaphor (GM) for investigating the nature of complexification for more advanced proficiency levels (Ryshina-Pankova & Byrnes, 2013;Ryshina-Pankova, 2015). This meaning-based approach has been referred to as the study of semantic complexity (Ryshina-Pankova, 2015: 53), and is now seeing increased use in combination with the syntactic approach (Ortega, 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Linguistic complexity in high-school students’ EFL writing

Delić

Jašić

2017

ExELL

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This study examined the syntactic and semantic complexity of L2 English writing in a Bosnian-Herzegovinian high school. Forty texts written by individual students, ten per grade, were quantitatively analyzed by applying methods established in previous research. The syntactic portion of the analysis, based on the t-unit analysis introduced by Hunt (1965), was done using the Web-based L2 Syntactic Complexity Analyzer (Lu, 2010), while the semantic portion, largely based on the theory laid out in systemic functional linguistics (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014), was done using the Web-based Lexical Complexity Analyzer (Ai & Lu, 2010) as well as manual identification of grammatical metaphors. The statistical analysis included tests of variance, correlation, and effect size. It was found that the syntactic and semantic complexity of writing increases in later grades; however, this increase is not consistent across all grades.

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“…Thus, nouns are identified to be a prominent landscape in academic texts [14]. In fact, the use of complex nouns, which reflect the level of sophistication in structures, as well as knowledge, makes up the feature of academic genres [15]- [16]. In addition, it is found to be a strong association with L2 learners" academic level; exposures to complex noun constructions are proven to boost the academic writing performance of L2 learners [2].…”

Section: A Nouns In Academic Textsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, the complexity of noun groups in academic genres poses problems to L2 learners [16]. The different and specific nature of academic discourse of various disciplines also provide challenges in learning specialised languages.…”

Section: A Nouns In Academic Textsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Extracting Significant Words in Engineering Texts for Specialised Language Descriptions

2019

IJITEE

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The academic discourse of a specialised language is characterised by specialised and technical vocabulary, and lexicogrammar. Studies on language description suggest the need to explore and determine the specific characteristics of the academic discourse of each specialised language, to serve the language needs of the learners. This study demonstrates an exploration of this discipline specificity by looking at the nouns used in a specialised language - an Engineering English. It attempts to integrate a multivariate technique, i.e. the Correspondence Analysis (CA), as a tool to extract significant nouns in a specialised language for any further language use scrutiny. CA allows visual representations of the word interrelationships across different genres in a specialised language. To exemplify this, an Engineering English Corpus (E2C) was created. E2C is composed of two sub-corpora (genres): Engineering reference books (RBC) and online journals articles (EJC). The British National Corpus (BNC) was used as the reference corpus. 30 key-key-nouns were identified from the E2C, and the frequency lists of the words were retrieved from all the corpora to run the CA. The CA maps of the nouns display how these corpora are different from each other, as well as, which words characterise not only E2C from a general corpus (BNC), but also the different genres in E2C. Thus, CA proves to be a potential tool to display words which characterise not only a specialised corpus from a general corpus, but also the different genres in that specialised corpus. This study promises more informed descriptions of a specialised language can be made with the identification of specific and significant vocabulary for any academic discourse investigations.

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A meaning-based approach to the study of complexity in L2 writing: The case of grammatical metaphor

Cited by 60 publications

References 16 publications

Toward a Framework for Linking Linguistic Knowledge and Writing Expertise: Interplay Between SFL‐Based Genre Pedagogy and Task‐Based Language Teaching

Toward a Framework for Linking Linguistic Knowledge and Writing Expertise: Interplay Between SFL‐Based Genre Pedagogy and Task‐Based Language Teaching

Linguistic complexity in high-school students’ EFL writing

Extracting Significant Words in Engineering Texts for Specialised Language Descriptions

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