Variation in University Student Writing


Book Description

This book provides a comprehensive description of the situational and linguistic characteristics of undergraduate student writing, considering both assignment type and discipline. Drawing on a corpus of more than 900 undergraduate student assignments from four disciplinary groups (Arts and Humanities, Social Sciences, Physical Sciences, and Life Sciences), the book combines corpus-based analyses of linguistic features with analyses of communicative purposes and text characteristics. Variation in University Writing takes a new approach to register variation by grouping assignments by their communicative purpose (to argue, to explain, to compare, to describe, to narrate a personal event, to give a procedural recount, to give personal advice, and to propose), rather than register categories. A multidimensional analysis provides a detailed description of the linguistic patterns of undergraduate writing. The findings presented in this book will be of interest to teachers of writing, instructors of English for Academic Purposes (EAP), and researchers of university writing.




Genres Across the Disciplines


Book Description

Genres across the Disciplines presents cutting edge, corpus-based research into student writing in higher education. Genres across the Disciplines is essential reading for those involved in syllabus and materials design for the development of writing in higher education, as well as for those investigating EAP. The book explores creativity and the use of metaphor as students work towards becoming experts in the genres of their discipline. Grounded in the British Academic Written English (BAWE) corpus, the text is rich with authentic examples of assignment tasks, macrostructures, concordances and keywords. Also available separately as a paperback.




Student Writing in Higher Education


Book Description

This is the first book to examine student writing in the context of major changes taking place in today's higher education. For example, students now come to higher education from an increasingly wide range of cultural and linguistic backgrounds, to study in a number of diverse learning environments. Their courses often no longer reflect traditional academic subject boundaries, with their attendant values and norms. there is also an increasing recognition of the importance of lifelong learning, and the necessity for universities to adapt their provision to make it possible for learners to enter and return to higher education at different points in their lives.




Grammatical Complexity in Academic English


Book Description

Using corpus-based analyses, the book challenges widely held beliefs about grammatical complexity, academic writing, and linguistic change in written English.




Advances in Corpus-based Research on Academic Writing


Book Description

This volume showcases some of the latest research on academic writing by leading and up-and-coming corpus linguists. The studies included in the volume are based on a wide range of corpora spanning first and second language academic writing at different levels of writing expertise, containing texts from a variety of academic disciplines (and sub-disciplines) and of different academic registers. Particularly novel aspects of the collection are the inclusion of research that combines rhetorical moves with multi-dimensional analysis, studies that cover both fixed and variable phraseological items (lexical bundles, phrase-frames, constructions), and work that is based on corpora of English as an academic lingua franca. Going beyond merely summarizing their findings, the authors also discuss what their research means for academic writing practice and pedagogical settings. The volume will be of interest to researchers, students, and teachers who would like to expand their knowledge of how academic writing functions and what it looks like in a variety of contexts.




Academic Writing for Graduate Students


Book Description

A Course for Nonnative Speakers of English. Genre-based approach. Includes units such as graphs and commenting on other data and research papers.




Multi-Dimensional Analysis


Book Description

Multi-Dimensional Analysis: Research Methods and Current Issues provides a comprehensive guide both to the statistical methods in Multi-Dimensional Analysis (MDA) and its key elements, such as corpus building, tagging, and tools. The major goal is to explain the steps involved in the method so that readers may better understand this complex research framework and conduct MD research on their own. Multi-Dimensional Analysis is a method that allows the researcher to describe different registers (textual varieties defined by their social use) such as academic settings, regional discourse, social media, movies, and pop songs. Through multivariate statistical techniques, MDA identifies complementary correlation groupings of dozens of variables, including variables which belong both to the grammatical and semantic domains. Such groupings are then associated with situational variables of texts like information density, orality, and narrativity to determine linguistic constructs known as dimensions of variation, which provide a scale for the comparison of a large number of texts and registers. This book is a comprehensive research guide to MDA.




Chinese Students' Writing in English


Book Description

Chinese students are the largest international student group in UK universities today, yet little is known about their undergraduate writing and the challenges they face. Drawing on the British Academic Written English corpus - a large corpus of proficient undergraduate student writing collected in the UK in the early 2000s - this study explores Chinese students’ written assignments in English in a range of university disciplines, contrasting these with assignments from British students. The study is supplemented by questionnaire and interview datasets with discipline lecturers, writing tutors and students, and provides a comprehensive picture of the Chinese student writer today. Theoretically framed through work within academic literacies and lexical priming, the author seeks to explore what we know about Chinese students’ writing and to extend these findings to undergraduate writing more generally. In a globalized educational environment, it is important for educators to understand differences in writing styles across the student body, and to move from the widespread deficit model of student writing towards a descriptive model which embraces different ways of achieving success. Chinese Students’ Writing in English will be of value to researchers, EAP tutors, and university lecturers teaching Chinese students in the UK, China, and other English or Chinese-speaking countries.




Increasing Naturalness in the Language Learning Classroom


Book Description

This volume links corpus research to classroom practice and critically assesses how the integration of a corpus-informed methodology affects pedagogical choices, teaching materials and classroom activities. Focusing on the language classroom, and drawing on examples from English, French, German and Hungarian, this book demonstrates that such methodology is applicable to languages with very different properties. Drawing on both larger, general and smaller, more specialised corpora, including both spoken and written data, this volume: presents the key features of natural language according to corpus linguistics, establishing principles and methods to observe and practice natural-sounding language use suggests the characteristics of a coherent, corpus-informed methodology and contrasts this with existing methodologies explores ways in which this methodology can enhance language learning and discusses the types of activities that are most effective explains how this methodology be integrated into teacher training Bridging the long-persisting gap between corpus-informed language teaching research and applied classroom reform, this book is key reading for researchers in applied linguistics and language pedagogy, as well as teacher trainers and practitioners.




The Routledge Handbook of Corpus Linguistics


Book Description

The Routledge Handbook of Corpus Linguistics 2e provides an updated overview of a dynamic and rapidly growing area with a widely applied methodology. Over a decade on from the first edition of the Handbook, this collection of 47 chapters from experts in key areas offers a comprehensive introduction to both the development and use of corpora as well as their ever-evolving applications to other areas, such as digital humanities, sociolinguistics, stylistics, translation studies, materials design, language teaching and teacher development, media discourse, discourse analysis, forensic linguistics, second language acquisition and testing. The new edition updates all core chapters and includes new chapters on corpus linguistics and statistics, digital humanities, translation, phonetics and phonology, second language acquisition, social media and theoretical perspectives. Chapters provide annotated further reading lists and step-by-step guides as well as detailed overviews across a wide range of themes. The Handbook also includes a wealth of case studies that draw on some of the many new corpora and corpus tools that have emerged in the last decade. Organised across four themes, moving from the basic start-up topics such as corpus building and design to analysis, application and reflection, this second edition remains a crucial point of reference for advanced undergraduates, postgraduates and scholars in applied linguistics.