Second language learners and real-life contexts of writing

International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 2013

Formulaic sequences are recognised as having important roles in language acquisition, processing, fluency, idiomaticity, and instruction. But there is little agreement over their definition and measurement, or on methods of corpus comparison. We argue that replicable research must be grounded upon operational definitions in statistical terms. We adopt an experimental design and apply four different corpus-analytic measures, variously based upon n-gram frequency (Frequency-grams), association (MI-grams), phrase-frames (P-frames), and native norm (items in the Academic Formulas List – AFL-grams), to samples of first and second language writing in order to examine and compare knowledge of formulas in first and second language acquisition as a function of proficiency and language background. We find that these different operationalizations produce different patterns of effect of expertise and L1/L2 status. We consider the implications for corpus design and methods of analysis.

Recurrent word sequences, also termed lexical bundles, have recently been enjoying considerable attention in the studies of learner language. This study was designed to investigate recurrent word sequences in written language produced by Lithuanian learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) at two different levels of proficiency. The definition and interpretation of lexical bundles draws on corpus studies of English , Hyland 2008. The major focus of this paper is on the clause structure and clause segments which tend to cluster and thus form recurrent sequences in learner corpora. Undertaken as a corpus-driven analysis, the study also re-addresses the question of what becomes a recurrent sequence in learner language and argues for a more cautious methodological approach to learner corpus material. The data for the analysis comes from two corpora of learner English, representing Lithuanian EFL learners. The research method involves a contrastive analysis of automatically retrieved sequences of 4-7 words which were analysed in terms of the clause segments that they span. The results of the quantitative analysis reveal that written language produced by less proficient learners contains more repetitive lexical strings than the language of advanced learners. The structural analysis showed that learners of different proficiency levels tend to cluster different segments of the clause. The language of less proficient learners contains more recurrent sequences that incorporate full sentence stems and predicates. Moreover, recurrent sequences in the language of more proficient learners indicate the subsequent complementation pattern. In contrast, sequences in the corpus of intermediate learners predominantly end in a lexical word and contain no evidence of the complementation pattern of the last word in the sequence.

2020

2012

In this paper, the acquisition of phrasal verbs (PVs) by L2 learners is explored from the perspective provided by a usage-based approach to language. This involves looking at low scope or item-specific schemas, which in this article are identified as the actual particles, prepositions and PVs used by the learners, together with the more abstract syntactic or semantic schemas that emerge from their use. Given the labour intensive work required by this type of analysis, the focus is placed on the use of verbout constructions made by L2 learners of the PVs as reflected in a corpus of learner language, i.e. the Spanish, Italian, Swedish, Dutch, Russian and Bulgarian subsections of the ICLE (1,287,517 words). More concretely, I analyse L2 use of out-PVs at different grain levels and provide an account of the factors influencing the acquisition of these linguistic units. The results obtained from the analysis show 1) that out is underused by learners, at the lowest level of constituency, the level of the word and its collocates and that this may be due its low cue answer contingency (it is a short form with many meanings); 2) that out-PVs, as other formulaic sequences, shows a pattern of overuse of a small number of frequent verbs and underuse of the rest; 3) that, at a morpho-syntactic level, out-PVs used by L2 learners are typically frozen with little variability in both the tenses and the syntactic patterns chosen; and 4) that at the semantic level, more prototypical and frequent meanings in the text type analysed, not necessarily literal uses, are used with greater frequency by NNS. All in all, the usage-based approach adopted has allowed us to reveal the complexity of factors involved in explaining the difficulty L2 learners have in acquiring phrasal verbs.

EUROSLA Yearbook 2014, 2014

This chapter reports on a follow-up study to Paquot (2013) which replicates its methodology to investigate transfer effects on French EFL learners’ use of recurrent word sequences. The study focuses on a large dataset of two- to four-word lexical bundles overrepresented in the French component of the International Corpus of Learner English (ICLE) as compared to nine other ICLE learner sub-corpora. Results are in line with a usage-based view of language that recognizes the active role that the first language (L1) may play in the acquisition of a foreign language. In accordance with Paquot’s (2013) findings, the different manifestations of L1 influence displayed in the learners’ idiosyncratic use of lexical bundles are traced back to various properties of French words and word combinations, among which their discourse function and frequency of use seem to play a crucial role.

Sequences in Language and Text, 2015

Applied Linguistics, 11, 281-296, 1990

The study compared native speaking learners of English with foreign learners, with regard to confusions of 'synforms' (similar lexical forms). Tests were designed in which the learners were required to distinguish between synforms often categories (ten types ofsynformic similarity).

Language Teaching Research, 2021

This study investigates the use of formulaic sequences (FS) in academic writings of Chinese learners of English as a foreign language across different levels of studies at a public university in Ch...

This paper investigates the extent to which productive use of formulaic sequences by intermediate students of two typologically different languages, i.e., English and Spanish, is associated with their oral proficiency in these languages. Previous research (e.g., Boers et al. 2006) has shown that appropriate use of formulaic sequences helps learners of English come across as fluent and idiomatic speakers. The evidence from the present study, which was conducted with the participation of Dutch-speaking students of English and Spanish, confirms that finding, as oral proficiency assessments based on re-tell tasks correlated positively with the number of formulaic sequences the students used in these tasks. The correlations were strongest in the English language samples, however. It seems that the greater incidence of morphological-inflectional errors in our participants' spoken Spanish dampens the contribution that using formulaic sequences tends to make to their oral proficiency (as perceived by our assessors). The findings are discussed with reference to typological differences between L1 and L2.

Applied Linguistics, 1990

The study compared native speaking learners of English with foreign learners, with regard to confusions of 'synforms' (similar lexical forms). Tests were designed in which the learners were required to distinguish between synforms often categories (ten types ofsynformic similarity).