The diploma thesis analyses written academic text. Academic prose is frequently characterized as a highly complex style which is structurally elaborated, contains a large number of subordinate clauses and expresses meaning relations explicitly. However, new research (e.g. Biber & Gray, 2010) shows that complexity of academic writing occurs on the level of noun phrases which often contain extensive premodification and/or postmodification. The thesis studies noun phrase structure in research articles from two disciplines: medicine and sociology. Two articles from each discipline were selected, each yielding 50 complex noun phrases. These 200 examples were analysed with respect to their modification, its form and levels of embedding. The results were compared for both disciplines. The aim of the thesis was to describe complex noun phrase structure and identify its relation to the type of academic discipline. Key words: noun phrase, modification, academic text, sociology, medicine

Research conducted in the readability of texts shows that there is an extensive problem with learners' of all phases academic skills in terms of reading comprehension and insight into writing texts in accordance with generally accepted academic standards. It is important that sufficient attention and research are devoted to possible solutions to this problem, since various theorists have found that effective reading and writing skills are of great importance for learners' academic progress and achievement. A reason for this is that most academic material that is made available to learners appear in written format, and that learners have to report on their knowledge in the same format. Although educational institutions formulate academic texts (of which study guides form part) with a high readability level, the current study investigates some problems and shortcomings that appear in study guides. If the readability of the mentioned study material is increased in light of text linguistic insights, learners should have greater accessibility to the textual content, which could impact positively on academic achievement. With the above mentioned in mind, this study focuses on a text linguistic approach to investigating the readability of study guides which are written for first-year learners at a tertiary institution. The main problem addresses how lexical cohesive devices and conjunction markers can be included as part of a text linguistic approach to writing study guides, and how this can be used by authors of study guides in practice as a tool to increase the efficiency of the writing process. The research is conducted on the basis of various theories, which include Systemic Functional Linguistics, Halliday and Hasan's Cohesion theory and Stotsky's adaptation thereof for written academic texts, as well as Hyland's theory about academic metadiscourse. Applicable insights regarding text linguistic criteria for writing academic texts, which are identified through this literature study, are converted into a framework for text analysis and then implemented to investigate the effective use of specific textual markers in the obtained study guides. This will be done in a descriptive and primarily qualitative manner. Ten Afrikaans study guides, pertaining to diverse subject groups, and which were recently used at a tertiary institution as introductory study guides for first-year learners, form the data of this study. In order to conduct a reliable investigation, the data is analised procedurally (with reference to the mentioned text analytical model) by hand and also using WordSmith Tools. Based on both the literature study and the text analysis, guidelines that can be used when writing Afrikaans study guides are formulated from a text linguistic point of view. These guidelines may be used to supplement the existing guide used by writers of study guides at the particular institution. The possibility also exists that these guidelines can be used to improve and standardise the quality and readability of the mentioned learning material. / Thesis (M.A. (Afrikaans and Dutch))--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2009.

Research conducted in the readability of texts shows that there is an extensive problem with learners' of all phases academic skills in terms of reading comprehension and insight into writing texts in accordance with generally accepted academic standards. It is important that sufficient attention and research are devoted to possible solutions to this problem, since various theorists have found that effective reading and writing skills are of great importance for learners' academic progress and achievement. A reason for this is that most academic material that is made available to learners appear in written format, and that learners have to report on their knowledge in the same format. Although educational institutions formulate academic texts (of which study guides form part) with a high readability level, the current study investigates some problems and shortcomings that appear in study guides. If the readability of the mentioned study material is increased in light of text linguistic insights, learners should have greater accessibility to the textual content, which could impact positively on academic achievement. With the above mentioned in mind, this study focuses on a text linguistic approach to investigating the readability of study guides which are written for first-year learners at a tertiary institution. The main problem addresses how lexical cohesive devices and conjunction markers can be included as part of a text linguistic approach to writing study guides, and how this can be used by authors of study guides in practice as a tool to increase the efficiency of the writing process. The research is conducted on the basis of various theories, which include Systemic Functional Linguistics, Halliday and Hasan's Cohesion theory and Stotsky's adaptation thereof for written academic texts, as well as Hyland's theory about academic metadiscourse. Applicable insights regarding text linguistic criteria for writing academic texts, which are identified through this literature study, are converted into a framework for text analysis and then implemented to investigate the effective use of specific textual markers in the obtained study guides. This will be done in a descriptive and primarily qualitative manner. Ten Afrikaans study guides, pertaining to diverse subject groups, and which were recently used at a tertiary institution as introductory study guides for first-year learners, form the data of this study. In order to conduct a reliable investigation, the data is analised procedurally (with reference to the mentioned text analytical model) by hand and also using WordSmith Tools. Based on both the literature study and the text analysis, guidelines that can be used when writing Afrikaans study guides are formulated from a text linguistic point of view. These guidelines may be used to supplement the existing guide used by writers of study guides at the particular institution. The possibility also exists that these guidelines can be used to improve and standardise the quality and readability of the mentioned learning material. / Thesis (M.A. (Afrikaans and Dutch))--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2009.

Esta tese é um risco. É pau. É pedra. É um pouco sozinho. É um terceiro caminho. É leitura errante. É a morte. É a vida. É escrita diante da escrita. É um laço. É um anzol. É o queira ou não queira. É uma ponte. É um conto. É Maria. É José. É um incômodo diante de um problema: a pergunta importada e, em consequência, a necessidade forjada de pesquisar um objeto. É um ato inaugural na história de uma ideia, também chamada de hipótese: há uma tendência de o texto acadêmico se confluir com o texto publicitário. É um desejo de pergunta: Que efeitos de sentido os mecanismos promocionais usados para incorporação de objetos discursivos produzem no texto acadêmico? É filiação: Barzotto (2012); Ducrot (1972); Pêcheux (1979); Rossi-Landi (1985); Baudrillard (1989). É tomada de posição: a recusa à estabilização de leituras sobre um objeto: o texto lido pela dificuldade de domínio de um código, a escrita acadêmica; o texto lido pelo uso indevido da escrita de terceiros, o plágio. É a proposição de uma nova leitura: o texto lido pela inserção do pesquisador no código de ética do malandro. É um corpus, é um tempo: teses inscritas na área de Linguística e Educação, defendidas entre 2010 e 2012. É um até onde, um escopo: a) teses cujo objeto de análise é o texto do aluno; b) teses cujo objeto de análise é a formação do professor. É um método: método de dedução frequencial e análise por categorias temáticas (PÊCHEUX, 1990). É uma metáfora por onde se lê a burla, o blefe, a malandragem: Memórias de um Sargento de Milícias, de Manoel Antônio de Almeida; A volta do marido pródigo, de Guimarães Rosa; e O homem que falava javanês, de Lima Barreto. É um gesto, são gestos de análise. É uma carta-convite. É a proposição: há uma terceira margem do rio, de onde se inscreve numa ética que nega a do malandro, onde se insere numa outra ordem de feitura do conhecimento, do texto acadêmico e de si. Esta é uma tese: é um risco assumido. É a minha tese. / This thesis is a risk. It is a lonely bit. It is a third path. It is a wandering read. It is death. It is life. It is writing before the writing. It is a tie. It is a hook. It the willing or not. It is a bridge. It is a tale. It is Maria. It is José. It is a trouble before a problem: it is an alien question, and therefore, a molded necessity of investigating an object. It is the first moment along the story of an idea, otherwise called hypothesis: there is a tendency of the academic text to converge into the advertising text. It is a wish of question: the promotional mechanisms used for the incorporation of discursive objects, which kind of effects of sense do they produce on academic texts? It is a bloodline: Barzotto (2012); Ducrot; (1972); Pêcheux (1979); Rossi-Landi (1985); Baudrillard (1989). This is a taking a stand: the refusal to fix interpretations on an object: a text read through the difficulty to master the code of the academic writing. The text read in virtue of the misuse of others, the plagiarism. This is the proposal for a new reading: the text read through the insertion of the researcher into the ethical code of the malandro. It is a corpus, it is a time: theses within the field of Linguistics and Formation, discussed between 2010 and 2012. This is a up to where, it is a purpose: a) theses which aim to investigate student text; b) theses which aim to investigate teacher formation. It is a method: frequency deductive method and analysis by thematic categories (PÊCHEUX, 1990). It is a metaphor: Memórias de um Sargento de Milícias, by Manoel Antônio de Almeida; A volta do marido pródigo, by Guimarães Rosa; and O homem que falava javanês, by Lima Barreto. It is an act of analysis, a plenty of them. It is an invitation letter. It is a proposal: there is a third river bank, where a new ethic inscribes itself, rejecting the one of malandro\'s; where it places itself in a new order of building the knowledge, the academic text, the self. This is a thesis: a risk I took. This is my thesis.

Esta tese é um risco. É pau. É pedra. É um pouco sozinho. É um terceiro caminho. É leitura errante. É a morte. É a vida. É escrita diante da escrita. É um laço. É um anzol. É o queira ou não queira. É uma ponte. É um conto. É Maria. É José. É um incômodo diante de um problema: a pergunta importada e, em consequência, a necessidade forjada de pesquisar um objeto. É um ato inaugural na história de uma ideia, também chamada de hipótese: há uma tendência de o texto acadêmico se confluir com o texto publicitário. É um desejo de pergunta: Que efeitos de sentido os mecanismos promocionais usados para incorporação de objetos discursivos produzem no texto acadêmico? É filiação: Barzotto (2012); Ducrot (1972); Pêcheux (1979); Rossi-Landi (1985); Baudrillard (1989). É tomada de posição: a recusa à estabilização de leituras sobre um objeto: o texto lido pela dificuldade de domínio de um código, a escrita acadêmica; o texto lido pelo uso indevido da escrita de terceiros, o plágio. É a proposição de uma nova leitura: o texto lido pela inserção do pesquisador no código de ética do malandro. É um corpus, é um tempo: teses inscritas na área de Linguística e Educação, defendidas entre 2010 e 2012. É um até onde, um escopo: a) teses cujo objeto de análise é o texto do aluno; b) teses cujo objeto de análise é a formação do professor. É um método: método de dedução frequencial e análise por categorias temáticas (PÊCHEUX, 1990). É uma metáfora por onde se lê a burla, o blefe, a malandragem: Memórias de um Sargento de Milícias, de Manoel Antônio de Almeida; A volta do marido pródigo, de Guimarães Rosa; e O homem que falava javanês, de Lima Barreto. É um gesto, são gestos de análise. É uma carta-convite. É a proposição: há uma terceira margem do rio, de onde se inscreve numa ética que nega a do malandro, onde se insere numa outra ordem de feitura do conhecimento, do texto acadêmico e de si. Esta é uma tese: é um risco assumido. É a minha tese. / This thesis is a risk. It is a lonely bit. It is a third path. It is a wandering read. It is death. It is life. It is writing before the writing. It is a tie. It is a hook. It the willing or not. It is a bridge. It is a tale. It is Maria. It is José. It is a trouble before a problem: it is an alien question, and therefore, a molded necessity of investigating an object. It is the first moment along the story of an idea, otherwise called hypothesis: there is a tendency of the academic text to converge into the advertising text. It is a wish of question: the promotional mechanisms used for the incorporation of discursive objects, which kind of effects of sense do they produce on academic texts? It is a bloodline: Barzotto (2012); Ducrot; (1972); Pêcheux (1979); Rossi-Landi (1985); Baudrillard (1989). This is a taking a stand: the refusal to fix interpretations on an object: a text read through the difficulty to master the code of the academic writing. The text read in virtue of the misuse of others, the plagiarism. This is the proposal for a new reading: the text read through the insertion of the researcher into the ethical code of the malandro. It is a corpus, it is a time: theses within the field of Linguistics and Formation, discussed between 2010 and 2012. This is a up to where, it is a purpose: a) theses which aim to investigate student text; b) theses which aim to investigate teacher formation. It is a method: frequency deductive method and analysis by thematic categories (PÊCHEUX, 1990). It is a metaphor: Memórias de um Sargento de Milícias, by Manoel Antônio de Almeida; A volta do marido pródigo, by Guimarães Rosa; and O homem que falava javanês, by Lima Barreto. It is an act of analysis, a plenty of them. It is an invitation letter. It is a proposal: there is a third river bank, where a new ethic inscribes itself, rejecting the one of malandro\'s; where it places itself in a new order of building the knowledge, the academic text, the self. This is a thesis: a risk I took. This is my thesis.

The diploma thesis is concerned with exploring the differences between the noun phrases in written and spoken academic monologue, focussing on the length of the phrase, its internal complexity and syntactic functions. In the theoretical part of the study, the noun phrase, its constituents, structure and usage are introduced. The noun phrase is introduced as one of the means of complex condensation. The basic characteristics of written and spoken academic language are introduced as well. The practical part of the study is a detailed analysis of 210 noun phrases. The written sample is collected from selected academic articles, whereas the sample of spoken lecture is collected from the lecture database of the BASE corpus. Since the study focuses on two different forms of language, the material is analysed for each of them separately and the results are subsequently compared in the final part of each subsection. The hypothesis of the thesis is that the written sample contains noun phrases with more complex modification, whereas the spoken sample contains more simple noun phrases and more clausal modification. The hypothesis was, for the most part, confirmed.

När lärare undervisar utgår de från en ämnesplan som innehåller information om de delar en kurs omfattar. Lärare tar ofta hjälp av olika läroböcker för att genomföra sin undervisning. Mellan åren 1938 och 1991 granskades läroböcker statligt innan de kom ut på marknaden. Efter 1991 sker granskning inte längre statligt utan det är upp till varje lärare att avgöra om en lärobok passar till undervisningen. Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka hur presentationen av texttyper från ämnesplanerna för svenska 1, svenska 2 och svenska 3 i tre serier med tryckta läroböcker överensstämmer med ämnesplanerna. Utgångspunkten är texttyperna argumenterande text, utredande text och text av vetenskaplig karaktär. De läroböcker som undersöks är serierna Svenska helt enkelt och Svenska impulser samt läroboken Människans texter. Språket. Studiens metod är en kvalitativ innehållsanalys som undersöker hur läroböckerna explicit och implicit presenterar innehållet från ämnesplanerna. Resultatet visar att serien Svenska helt enkelt behandlar allt utvalt innehåll från ämnesplanerna medan serien Svenska impulser och läroboken Människans texter. Språket inte behandlar allt utvalt innehåll. Studien kommer fram till att läroboken kan användas som ett stöd i undervisningen men inte som enskilt underlag då det kan finnas innehåll från ämnesplanerna som inte behandlas i läroboken. / The practice of teaching usually starts with the syllabus which contains information about the content that should be taught in a course. Teachers often use textbooks in order to fulfill the course. Between the years 1938 and 1991 textbooks were reviewed by the Swedish government before entering the market. After 1991 reviewing textbooks is done by the teachers and they decide if the book fits their way of teaching. The purpose of this study is to analyze how the presentations of different genres of text in different textbooks correspond with the syllabus. The genres in focus are argumentative text, investigative text and academic text. The textbooks that are being reviewed are the series Svenska helt enkelt and Svenska impulser as well as the textbook Människans texter. Språket. The method used is a qualitative text analysis that analyzes how the selected textbooks explicitly and implicitly present the content from the syllabus. The results of the analysis show that the series Svenska helt enkelt treat all content from the syllabus while the series Svenska impulser and Människans texter. Språket does not treat all content. The conclusion is that textbooks can be used as support for teaching a course but they cannot be used as base for the course since there might be content from the syllabus that is not treated by the textbook.

Changing demographics impact our schools as children come from more linguistically and culturally diverse backgrounds. The various social, cultural, and economic backgrounds of the students affect their early language learning experiences which expose them to the academic language needed to succeed in school. Teachers can help students acquire academic language by introducing words that are within their Zone of Proximal Development and increasing exposure to and use of academic language. This study investigated the effects of increasing structured activities for students to orally interact with informational text on their scientific academic language development and comprehension of expository text. The Academic Text Talk activities, designed to scaffold verbalization of new words and ideas, included discussion, retelling, games, and sentence walls. This study also evaluated if there were differences in scientific language proficiency and comprehension between boys and girls, and between English language learners and native English speakers. A quasi-experimental design was used to determine the relationship between increasing students’ oral practice with academic language and their academic language proficiency. Second graders (n = 91) from an urban public school participated in two science units over an 8 week period and were pre and post tested using the Woodcock Muñoz Language Survey-Revised and vocabulary tests from the National Energy Education Project. Analysis of covariance was performed on the pre to post scores by treatment group to determine differences in academic language proficiency for students taught using Academic Text Talk compared to students taught using a text-centered method, using the initial Florida Assessment for Instruction in Reading test as a covariate. Students taught using Academic Text Talk multimodal strategies showed significantly greater increases in their pre to posttest means on the Woodcock Muñoz Language Survey-Revised Oral Language Totals and National Energy Education Development Project Vocabulary tests than students taught using the text-centered method, ps < .05. Boys did not show significantly greater increases than girls, nor did English language learners show significantly greater increases than the native English speakers. This study informs the field of reading research by evaluating the effectiveness of a multimodal combination of strategies emphasizing discourse to build academic language.