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This study examines the use of discourse-organising nouns (DONs), such as fact, issue, and problem, in Swedish advanced students’ academic writing in second language (L2) English, and in what ways texts produced by the L2 students resemble or differ from those produced by advanced native-speaker (L1) students and from expert writing in this respect. The study uses corpus linguistic methodology and is set within the frameworks of Halliday’s systemic-functional linguistics and Granger’s Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis. Results show both similarities and differences across the writer groups. Noteworthy similarities include overall frequencies of DONs and their modifiers. Differences include variety of usage and register appropriacy. These differences were often the largest between the L2 student writing and the expert writing, though findings suggest that both student groups can usefully be thought of as learners of academic writing in English in this respect. Specifically, the students’ usage was found to be less varied than the expert writing, and to be characterised by more frequent use of semantically vague nouns (e.g., thing and fact) and nouns marking attitude and involvement (e.g., opinion and question). Other central findings include the tendency, on the part of the students, to use DONs less frequently in syntactic structures prototypical of formal academic prose, and to use them more frequently in structures with the potential to express stance, compared to the expert writing. The study also found more frequent use of evaluative modifiers of DONs in the student writing. In sum, the L2 student writing and, to a lesser extent, the L1 student writing, was found to approximate the corpus of expert writing in many respects, but with less variety, fewer markers of formality, and more frequent occurrences of interpersonal features in their use of DONs. The result is discourse that can in part be characterised as vague and subjective, as well as involved and informal. / This study examines the use of discourse-organising nouns (DONs), such as fact, issue, and problem, in Swedish advanced students’ academic writing in second language (L2) English, and in what ways texts produced by the L2 students resemble or differ from those produced by advanced native-speaker students and from expert writing in this respect. Results show both similarities and differences across the writer groups. Noteworthy similarities include overall frequencies of DONs and their modifiers. Differences include variety of usage and register appropriacy. In short, the L2 student writing and, to a lesser extent, the L1 student writing, was found to approximate the corpus of expert writing in many respects, but with less variety, fewer markers of formality, and more frequent occurrences of interpersonal features in their use of DONs. The result is discourse that can in part be characterised as vague and subjective, as well as involved and informal. These differences were often the largest between the L2 student writing and the expert writing, though findings suggest that both student groups can usefully be thought of as learners of academic writing in English in this respect.

Os estudos sobre o ensino da tradução no Brasil ainda oferecem muito espaço para discussões. Valendo-se disso, este trabalho traz como um de seus objetivos uma breve reflexão sobre a sala de aula e sugere um possível método de ensino de tradução baseado na análise de material produzido por tradutores-aprendizes. A intenção é que, por meio da Linguística de Corpus, consigamos observar o processo de construção do texto de chegada pela ótica do aluno, nos mesmos moldes que o fazemos ao analisar material produzido por aprendizes de idiomas. Para tanto, compilamos um corpus de aprendizes de tradução, constituído por oito textos originais e cerca de 100 traduções para cada um deles. Alinhar tantas traduções referentes a um original de modo a permitir análises não foi tarefa fácil. A estratégia empregada para superar tal dificuldade foi o desenvolvimento de uma metodologia específica de alinhamento tendo como ferramenta planilhas eletrônicas. Tal metodologia tornou-se o foco central desta pesquisa. A utilização de fórmulas para a manipulação de dados textuais na planilha eletrônica resultou em um corpus alinhado, com todos os textos de partida e suas referidas traduções com cabeçalhos e com todas as linhas etiquetadas. Esse procedimento possibilitou a organização de um corpus para ser analisado tanto no editor de planilhas eletrônicas quando em programas como AntConc e WordSmith Tools. Além disso, também apresentamos a planilha eletrônica como uma ferramenta didática para ser usada nas aulas de prática de tradução. / Studies on the teaching of translation in Brazil still offer room for discussions. Having that in mind, one of the goals of this research aims at fostering a brief reflection upon the classroom and proposes a teaching method based on the analyses of material produced by translation learners. We show that Corpus Linguistics can be used to analyze student translations in the same way we do when we analyze material produced by language learners. For that purpose, we compiled a corpus of translations produced by learners, consisting of eight source texts in English and about 800 translations into Portuguese, approximately 100 for each text. Aligning so many translations to their original texts to favor analyses was not a simple task. Such difficulties were overcome by the development of a methodology for alignment, which became the central focus of this research. By utilizing formulas to deal with textual data in spreadsheets resulted in an aligned corpus containing source texts and their referring translations with headers and all lines tagged. Such procedure allowed us to come up with a corpus to be analyzed in both the spreadsheet editor and in programs such as AntConc and WordSmith Tools. In addition to that, we also introduced the spreadsheets as a didactic tool to be used in translation practice classes.

Os estudos sobre o ensino da tradução no Brasil ainda oferecem muito espaço para discussões. Valendo-se disso, este trabalho traz como um de seus objetivos uma breve reflexão sobre a sala de aula e sugere um possível método de ensino de tradução baseado na análise de material produzido por tradutores-aprendizes. A intenção é que, por meio da Linguística de Corpus, consigamos observar o processo de construção do texto de chegada pela ótica do aluno, nos mesmos moldes que o fazemos ao analisar material produzido por aprendizes de idiomas. Para tanto, compilamos um corpus de aprendizes de tradução, constituído por oito textos originais e cerca de 100 traduções para cada um deles. Alinhar tantas traduções referentes a um original de modo a permitir análises não foi tarefa fácil. A estratégia empregada para superar tal dificuldade foi o desenvolvimento de uma metodologia específica de alinhamento tendo como ferramenta planilhas eletrônicas. Tal metodologia tornou-se o foco central desta pesquisa. A utilização de fórmulas para a manipulação de dados textuais na planilha eletrônica resultou em um corpus alinhado, com todos os textos de partida e suas referidas traduções com cabeçalhos e com todas as linhas etiquetadas. Esse procedimento possibilitou a organização de um corpus para ser analisado tanto no editor de planilhas eletrônicas quando em programas como AntConc e WordSmith Tools. Além disso, também apresentamos a planilha eletrônica como uma ferramenta didática para ser usada nas aulas de prática de tradução. / Studies on the teaching of translation in Brazil still offer room for discussions. Having that in mind, one of the goals of this research aims at fostering a brief reflection upon the classroom and proposes a teaching method based on the analyses of material produced by translation learners. We show that Corpus Linguistics can be used to analyze student translations in the same way we do when we analyze material produced by language learners. For that purpose, we compiled a corpus of translations produced by learners, consisting of eight source texts in English and about 800 translations into Portuguese, approximately 100 for each text. Aligning so many translations to their original texts to favor analyses was not a simple task. Such difficulties were overcome by the development of a methodology for alignment, which became the central focus of this research. By utilizing formulas to deal with textual data in spreadsheets resulted in an aligned corpus containing source texts and their referring translations with headers and all lines tagged. Such procedure allowed us to come up with a corpus to be analyzed in both the spreadsheet editor and in programs such as AntConc and WordSmith Tools. In addition to that, we also introduced the spreadsheets as a didactic tool to be used in translation practice classes.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-28T18:22:45Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Denise Delega Lucio.pdf: 5910043 bytes, checksum: e39fb054a13db1353de44dcdf6626c8b (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-10-17 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / This thesis aims to check the way how argumentative texts produced by English learners vary and, by means of this knowledge, suggest procedures for developing activities for English teaching material. The research resorts to the theoretical framework of Corpus Linguistics, Learner Corpus Linguistics, and Multidimensional Analysis. Our study corpora were the International Corpus of Learner English (ICLE), the Brazilian International Corpus of Learner English (BrICLE), and the Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays (LOCNESS). In the first phase of this research, we checked the way how variation in learner s essays was distributed along the dimensions of English variation proposed by Biber (1988). In the second phase, we identified the specific variation dimensions in leaner s essays, something which resulted in 4 dimensions of variation: dimension 1 literate writing versus narrativelike and oral-like writing; dimension 2 description-driven writing versus action-driven writing; dimension 3 writing focused on thought and report; and dimension 4 qualifying writing. In the third phase, we addressed the linguistic characteristics observed in the dimension literate writing versus narrative-like and oral-like writing to find contents for the teaching activities about variation in texts. In addition to the suggested activities, we present the procedures needed to use results from researches like this for producing language teaching materials / Esta tese tem por objetivo verificar o modo como textos argumentativos produzidos por alunos de inglês variam e, a partir desse conhecimento, sugerir procedimentos para o desenvolvimento de atividades para material didático de inglês. A pesquisa recorre ao arcabouço teórico da Linguística de Corpus, Linguística de Corpus de Aprendiz e Análise Multidimensional. Nossos corpora de estudo foram o International Corpus of Learner English (ICLE), o Brazilian International Corpus of Learner English (BrICLE) e o Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays (LOCNESS). Na primeira fase desta pesquisa, verificamos o modo como a variação nas redações de aprendizes se distribuía nas dimensões de variação do inglês propostas por Biber (1988). Na segunda fase, identificamos as dimensões de variação específicas nas redações de aprendizes, o que resultou em 4 dimensões de variação: dimensão 1 escrita letrada versus escrita narrativizada e oralizada; dimensão 2 escrita com foco na descrição versus escrita com foco no agir; dimensão 3 escrita com foco no pensamento e no relato; e dimensão 4 escrita qualificativa. Na terceira fase, partimos das características linguísticas observadas na dimensão escrita letrada versus escrita narrativizada e oralizada para encontrar conteúdos para as atividades didáticas sobre a variação em textos. Além das atividades sugeridas, apresentamos os procedimentos necessários para utilizar resultados de pesquisas como esta para a produção de materiais didáticos para ensino de línguas

The present thesis is concerned with the topic of fluency in learner language, more precisely of two types of fluency - perceived and productive. Little is known about L2 fluency, especially about the fluency of Czech learners of English. The main aim of the thesis is to establish whether there is a correlation between productive fluency, represented by speech rate, and perceived fluency, represented by native speakers' evaluations. In addition, it aims at better understanding the process of evaluation of perceived fluency by native speakers of English. The material for the analysis were samples of recordings from the LINDSEI corpus, for which speech rate in WPM was calculated, evaluations of fluency of these samples by native speakers of English on a 7-point scale and the raters' commentaries on the evaluation process. The analysis tries to prove or disprove the hypothesis that speech rate is one of the features which influence perceived fluency. The results show medium correlations for two raters, low or no correlations for the rest of the raters, showing together with the commentaries, that there is a relation between perceived fluency and speech rate, but it is not as strong as previous research suggests. The results show that fluency is a complicated, highly subjective phenomenon, and further...

L’objectif principal de ce travail est d’explorer la frontière entre les erreurs grammaticales d'une part et les erreurs textuelles d'autre part, dans les productions écrites des étudiants francophones rédigeant en anglais langue étrangère (L2) à l’université. Pour ce faire, un corpus de textes d’apprenants en anglais L2 a été recueilli et annoté par le biais de plusieurs schémas d’annotation. Le premier schéma d’annotation est issu de l’UAM CorpusTool, un logiciel qui fournit une taxonomie d’erreurs intégrée. Les premières annotations ont été croisées avec d’autres annotations issues des métafonctions sémantiques que nous avons établies, en nous appuyant sur la linguistique systémique fonctionnelle.En plus de fournir des statistiques en termes de fréquence d’occurrence des erreurs spécifiques chez les apprenants francophones, le croisement des schémas a permis d’identifier certaines valeurs proprement phraséologique, sémantique et textuelle qui semblent poser des problèmes particulièrement épineux. A ce titre, une classification de ce que nous avons appelé des erreurs d’acceptabilité textuelle a été établie, dans le but notamment d’avoir une vue globale sur les erreurs identifiables à ce niveau d’analyse. En bref, le présent travail retrace donc le cheminement de l’ensemble de notre thèse de ses débuts conceptuels jusqu’à la proposition d’un modèle explicatif permettant d’établir la description de toute occurrence erronée identifiée en langue étrangère – qu’elle soit notamment grammaticale (c’est-à-dire, imputable au système linguistique) ou textuelle(c’est-à-dire, imputable au texte). / The main objective of this study is to try and pinpoint the frontier between grammatical (or sentence-level) errors on the one hand and textual errors on the other in university student essays. Accordingly, a corpus of English L2 learner texts, written by French learners, was collected and annotated using several annotation schemes. The first annotation scheme used is based on a model from the UAM CorpusTool software package, which provided us with an integrated error taxonomy. The annotations obtained were then cross-analyzed using the semantic metafunctions identified in systemic functional linguistics.In addition to providing statistics in terms of specific error frequency, our cross analysis has identified some areas that appear to pose particularly difficult problems, i.e. phraseology, and certain semantic and textual constructions. A classification of what we have called textual acceptability errors has thus been established. In short, the thesis begins with an examination of conceptual issues and ends with the proposal for an explanatory model that can describe erroneous occurrences identified in a foreign language – whether they are grammatical (i.e., linked to the language system itself) or textual (i.e. linked to the text) in nature.

本研究旨在探討以中文為母語之人士如何學習英語條件句，及其在習得時所遭遇之困難及相關原因。本文除對英語條件句之分類方式做詳盡介紹外，並嘗試以形式功能對應之理論架構，研究其習得之順序，並利用『錯誤分析』區分出條件句之動詞各類錯誤的誤用形式及原因。本研究語料來源為包含一百萬字，以電腦輔助建立錯誤標記之『中國學習者英語語料庫』。 研究結果發現，外語學習者之習得順序為一形式功能對應之過程，具較多形式或功能內涵者愈晚且愈難習得，符合功能認知模式的預測。 中文學習者的錯誤特徵為添加及省略，原因為過度矯正(hypercorrection)及過度類化(overgeneralization)。學習者最大的困難來自對條件句動詞變化規則不熟悉、形式及功能的複雜性、以及對應失敗的結果。本論文建議未來研究方向可深入探討時間指涉與假設程度對條件句使用之影響。 / Issues of conditionals have been highlighted for a long time, but the focus was seldom fixed on acquisition, particularly for L2. The determinate features of tense, mood and modality are interwoven in the conditional construction, thus resulting in an insurmountable obstacle for L2 learners. However, the factors impede acquisition have never been satisfactorily treated. Therefore, this paper attempts to explore the L2 developmental sequence, and to probe the error characteristics of acquiring if-conditionals. Disengaging the expression of conditionality into two dimensions: temporality and hypotheticality, we identified the features of syntactic forms and semantic functions of different conditional types, and created a new scheme to account for their mapping, on which the difficulty levels of acquisition were inferred. In contrast to the previous studies on the grounds of markedness theories, this research described the acquisition of conditionals in a Functional-Cognitive Model. Furthermore, the factors of difficulties were examined via an error analysis. The targets are Chinese English learners, who were well-known to face great problems in expressing conditionals. The data was searched from CLEC (Chinese Learner English Corpus), a big-scale corpus consisting of roughly 1,000,000 words with error tags. The investigation on the acquisition sequence and error patterns shows: (1) the acquisition order parallels to the prediction on the form-function mapping underpinnings: those with heavy content load and complex lexical shapes are acquired later (2) the two prominent misuses of the Chinese learners are addition and omission, resulted from hypercorrection and oversimplification. It was concluded that their difficulties could be ascribed to unfamiliarity of rules, complexities of forms and functions, and their mapping failure. Hence, this present work serves to provide some explanatory accounts, in a hope to unveil the mystery of the arduousness of acquiring conditionals, contribute to the tightening of acquisition theorizing and shed new insights into pedagogical growth.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-28T18:22:32Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Wendel Mendes Dantas.pdf: 2248359 bytes, checksum: d5c27ce03f0a60ff11f719e7ba0ce737 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-05-17 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / The aim of this study was to identify and classify errors found in Brazilian English learners s written tasks. The questions which guide this research are: Which are the most common errors in COBRA-7_recorte? ; What is the error variation among course levels for learners found in COBRA-7_recorte? and Which course level shows the highest error diversity in COBRA-7_recorte?". The main theoretical underpinning for the research is provided by Corpus Linguistics, an area devoted to the collection and criterious analysis of data collected from texts in electronic formar, and, specifically, by research on learner corpora. the corpora used in this research were the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) (consultation corpus) and a sample of COBRA-7 (COBRA-7_recorte), the study corpus, compiled from the writings of adult learners enrolled in a network of schools which teach English as a foreign language in the state of São Paulo, and which have been produced between 2009 and 2010. The data have been collected from the institution's online server in 2011. Results have shown that the most common errors found in the analysis corpus are: wrong lexical choice, tense and aspect use, use of determiners, and wrong use of questions, negatives or auxiliaries. They have also revealed that pre-intermediate course level has the highest quantity and diversity of errors, probably because it is a level at which learners are exposed to diverse verbal tenses. Finally, this study has also shown that although wrong lexical choice, particularly the replacement of prepositions or particiles by words from the same or other grammatical categories, seem to be a problem for learners, this difficulty tends to decrease along the course, unlike errors of verbal tense and aspect use, which tend to increase / O trabalho tem como objetivo identificar e classificar os erros na escrita de aprendizes brasileiros de inglês. As perguntas que norteiam a pesquisa são: Quais os erros mais comuns no córpus COBRA-7_recorte? ; Qual a variação de erro entre os níveis de curso dos aprendizes no córpus COBRA-7_recorte? e Qual nível de curso apresenta maior diversidade de erros no córpus COBRA-7_recorte? . Esta pesquisa encontrou suporte teórico na Linguística de Córpus, área que se dedica à coleta e análise criteriosa de dados de textos em formato digital, e especificamente nas pesquisas dedicadas a córpus de aprendizes. Os córpora empregados na pesquisa foram o Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) (córpus de consulta) e uma amostra do COBRA-7 (córpus de estudo), compilado a partir de redações de aprendizes adultos matriculados em uma rede de escolas de inglês como língua estrangeira do estado de São Paulo, produzidas entre 2009 e 2010. Os dados foram coletados de um servidor online da própria instituição em 2011. Os resultados indicaram que os erros mais comuns encontrados no córpus de análise referem-se a: má escolha lexical, uso de tempo e aspecto verbal, uso de determinantes, e uso inadequado de questões, negações ou auxiliares. Revelaram também que o nível de curso pré-intermediário apresenta as maiores quantidade e diversidade de erros, provavelmente por se tratar de um nível no qual os aprendizes são expostos a tempos verbais diversos. Por fim, mostraram que embora a má escolha lexical, sobretudo a substituição de preposições ou conjunções por outras ou pelas mesmas classes gramaticais constitua um problema para os aprendizes, essa dificuldade diminui ao longo do curso, ao contrário do erro no uso dos tempos e aspecto verbais, que tende a aumentar

過去多數英文介系詞語意之研究皆以介系詞為多義詞，並藉由語意網絡去分析其詞義（e.g. Lindner, 1983; Tyler and Evans, 2001），或透過意象圖式理論（image schema theory）來探究介系詞語意，依不同的前景名詞（figure）與背景名詞（ground）組成可產生不同的形貌結構，從而衍生出其特殊語意（e.g. Lakoff, 1987）。然而，有關介系詞片語中詞彙搭配詞組如何影響介系詞使用之研究則較不多見。故本論文著重在分析前景與背景名詞等搭配詞組之語意特徵，探究其對介系詞in和on語意及介系詞片語組成之影響。以英國國家語料庫（British National Corpus）和政治大學外語學習者語料庫（The NCCU Foreign Language Learner Corpus）作分析，比較學習者與以英語為母語者使用in和on介系詞片語在語意上的差異。 本研究共分三部分。第一部分的詞義分析比較學習者與母語人士在使用in與on之詞義之異同，在介系詞in的部分，學習者與母語人士語料相較之下僅有細微的差異，多數語料皆為原型場景（proto-scene）之詞義的使用。介系詞on的詞義使用則稍有不同；學習者較傾向作具體位置的指涉，然母語者則較傾向呈現此介系詞的抽象意涵。第二部分的語意特徵分析則比較介系詞in和on在具體（literal）與抽象（metaphorical）片語組成上，前景與背景語意特徵之異同。研究結果顯示不同的介系詞片語會由特定類型的前景與背景名詞組成，故在組成不同語意之介系詞片語時，特定語意特徵出現的頻率會呈現顯著性地差異。第三部分為學習者語料的錯誤分析，探究學習者誤用in和on介系詞片語之情形。 綜合上述研究結果可得知，組成介系詞片語的名詞詞組會依上下文語意而產生不同之語意偏好（semantic preferences），介系詞的語意除了會受到後接名詞的影響，周圍名詞也可能造成語意上的差異。這些名詞可能會選擇特定的介系詞來使用，亦會影響介系詞在片語中之語意。 本論文深入地探討了介系詞片語詞組之組成，透過大量的語料分析，為英語介系詞複雜的語意層面提出了一個較系統化且完整之解釋，期能將研究發現應用於教材設計上，希望能在學習介系詞使用上有所幫助，也供未來介系詞相關研究作為參考。 / The meanings of English preposition have been explored greatly through vast directions of research. Most studies agree that preposition is a polysemous lexical item whose senses can be construed from the semantic network (e.g. Lindner, 1983; Tyler and Evans, 2001). Its senses has also been examined under the image-schema theory from the cognitive perspective (e.g. Lakoff, 1987), in which the figure (or trajector) and ground (or landmark) interact differently to form various configurations that contribute to sets of distinct senses. Though these studies attempt to provide a comprehensive network for the meanings of prepositions, how the semantic features of the figure and ground might influence the choice of a preposition and the construction of a prepositional phrase is hardly seen. The thesis adopted a native speaker corpus (British National Corpus, BNC) and a learner corpus (The NCCU Foreign Language Learner Corpus, NCCU) to probe into how the semantic features of the figure and ground nouns can help explicate the semantic profiles of the preposition in and on, and to compare learners’ understanding of them with that of the native speakers’. Based on the corpora, the study is composed of three major analyses. The sense analysis compared the sense distributions of in and on, from which similarities and differences may be found between BNC and NCCU. The result of this analysis showed that in the sense categories of in, the distribution did not differ greatly since most of the data were categorized into the proto-scene sense in both BNC and NCCU, and only slight variations could be found in other categories. In the sense categories of on, in senses that refer to location, higher frequency could be found in NCCU, while more metaphorical constructions of on were identified in BNC. In the second analysis, the semantic feature analysis, the distribution of the semantic features are compared between literal and metaphorical constructions of in and on and between BNC and NCCU respectively. For the comparison of in and on, the statistical results showed that different types of nouns could be observed in the data of particular prepositions. Thus, for nouns in prepositions of different meanings, there may be significant differences in the semantic features identified in these nouns This result implied that the nouns surrounding a preposition might have some influences toward the meaning of this preposition. In the third analysis, the errors in the learner data were identified and examined. Based on the results, we proposed that in a prepositional phrase formed by a particular meaning of a preposition, there exist a range of semantic preferences shown in their co-text. The meanings of a preposition are influenced by the lexical words surrounding the preposition, rather than by the word that goes after the preposition (the ground). This thesis extends from the previous studies on the semantics of prepositions and includes the important linguistic elements in forming the prepositional phrases in the analysis. By incorporating a large amount of data, it also provides a systematic analysis and a more comprehensive explanation toward the complex semantics of English prepositions. The findings can be applied to the design of English teaching materials and techniques and may hopefully bring some insights to further preposition-related studies.