Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-ph5wq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-17T19:32:56.021Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The use of general and specialized corpora as reference sources for academic English writing: A case study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 February 2014

Ji-Yeon Chang*
Affiliation:
Education Research Institute, Seoul National University, Korea (email: jchang200@gmail.com)

Abstract

Corpora have been suggested as valuable sources for teaching English for academic purposes (EAP). Since previous studies have mainly focused on corpus use in classroom settings, more research is needed to reveal how students react to using corpora on their own and what should be provided to help them become autonomous corpus users, considering that their ultimate goal is to be independent scholars and writers. In the present study, conducted in an engineering lab at a Korean university over 22 weeks, data on students’ experiences and evaluations of consulting general and specialized corpora for academic writing were collected and analyzed. The findings show that, while both corpora served the participants well as reference sources, the specialized corpus was particularly valued for its direct help in academic writing because, as non-native English-speaking graduate engineering students, the participants wanted to follow the writing conventions of their discourse community. The participants also showed disparate attitudes toward the time taken for corpus consultation due to differences in factors such as academic experience, search purposes, and writing tasks. The article concludes with several suggestions for better corpus use with EAP students regarding the compilation of a corpus, corpus training, corpus competence, and academic writing.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © European Association for Computer Assisted Language Learning 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anthony, L. (2006) Developing a freeware, multiplatform corpus analysis toolkit for the technical writing classroom tutorial. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 49(3): 275286.Google Scholar
Boulton, A. (2009) Testing the limits of data-driven learning: Language proficiency and training. ReCALL, 21(1): 3751.Google Scholar
Boulton, A. (2010) Data-driven learning: Taking the computer out of the equation. Language Learning, 60(3): 534572.Google Scholar
Cargill, M. and Adams, R. (2005) Learning discipline-specific research English for a world stage: A self-access concordancing tool? Higher education in a changing world: Proceedings of the 28 thHERDSA annual conference. Sydney: Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia, 86–92.Google Scholar
Chambers, A. (2005) Integrating corpus consultation in language studies. Language Learning & Technology, 9(2): 111126.Google Scholar
Chambers, A. and O’Sullivan, Í. (2004) Corpus consultation and advanced learners’ writing skills in French. ReCALL, 16(1): 158172.Google Scholar
Chan, T.-P. and Liou, H.-C. (2005) Effects of web-based concordancing instruction on EFL students’ learning of verb-noun collocations. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 18(3): 231251.Google Scholar
Chang, J.-Y. (2011) The use of general and specialized corpora as reference tools for academic and technical English writing: A case study of Korean graduate students of engineering. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Seoul National University.Google Scholar
Chang, J.-Y. (2013) Korean graduate engineering students’ evaluations of feedback from a specialized corpus on academic English writing. Korean Journal of Applied Linguistics, 29(1): 245271.Google Scholar
Chapelle, C. A. and Duff, P. A. (2003) Some guidelines for conducting quantitative and qualitative research in TESOL. TESOL Quarterly, 37(1): 157178.Google Scholar
Charles, M. (2007) Reconciling top-down and bottom-up approaches to graduate writing: Using a corpus to teach rhetorical functions. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 6(4): 289302.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Charles, M. (2011) Using hands-on concordancing to teach rhetorical functions: Evaluation and implications for EAP. In: Frankenburg-Garcia, A., Flowerdew, L. and Aston, G. (eds.), New trends in corpora and language learning. London: Continuum, 2643.Google Scholar
Charles, M. (2012) ‘Proper vocabulary and juicy collocations’: EAP students evaluate do-it-yourself corpus-building. English for Specific Purposes, 31(2): 93102.Google Scholar
Cho, D. W. (2009) Science journal paper writing in an EFL context: The case of Korea. English for Specific Purposes, 28(4): 230239.Google Scholar
Cobb, T. (1997) Is there any measurable learning from hands-on concordancing? System, 25(3): 301315.Google Scholar
Corbin, J. and Strauss, A. (2008) Basics of qualitative research: Techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory. Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coxhead, A. and Nation, P. (2001) The specialised vocabulary of English for academic purposes. In: Flowerdew, J. and Peacock, M. (eds.) Research perspectives on English for academic purposes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 252267.Google Scholar
Currie, P. (1998) Staying out of trouble: Apparent plagiarism and academic survival. Journal of Second Language Writing, 7(1): 118.Google Scholar
Daengbuppha, J., Hemmington, N. and Wilkes, K. (2006) Using grounded theory to model visitor experiences at heritage sites: Methodological and practical issues. Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, 9(4): 367388.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duff, P. A. (2008) Case study research in applied linguistics. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Estling Vannestål, M. and Lindquist, H. (2007) Learning English grammar with a corpus: Experimenting with concordancing in a university grammar course. ReCALL, 19(3): 329350.Google Scholar
Flowerdew, J. (2008) Scholarly writers who use English as an additional language: What can Goffman’s ‘Stigma’ tell us? Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 7(2): 7786.Google Scholar
Flowerdew, J. and Li, Y. (2007) Language re-use among Chinese apprentice scientists writing for publication. Applied Linguistics, 28(3): 440465.Google Scholar
Flowerdew, L. (2001) The exploitation of small learner corpora in EAP materials design. In: Ghadessy, M., Henry, A. and Roseberry, R. (eds.), Small corpus studies and ELT: Theory and practice. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 363379.Google Scholar
Gaskell, D. and Cobb, T. (2004) Can learners use concordance feedback for writing errors? System, 32(3): 301319.Google Scholar
Geluso, J. (2011) Phraseology and frequency of occurrence on the web: Native speakers’ perceptions of Google-informed second language writing. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 26(2): 144157.Google Scholar
Hafner, C. A. and Candlin, C. N. (2007) Corpus tools as an affordance to learning in professional legal education. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 6(4): 303318.Google Scholar
Hanauer, D. I. and Englander, K. (2011) Quantifying the burden of writing research articles in a second language: Data from Mexican scientists. Written Communication, 28(4): 403416.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Howard, R. M. (1995) Plagiarisms, authorships, and the academic death penalty. College English, 57(7): 788806.Google Scholar
Johns, T. (1991) Should you be persuaded: Two samples of data-driven learning materials. In: Johns, T. and King, P. (eds.) Classroom concordancing. English Language Research Journal, 4: 116.Google Scholar
Johns, T. (1994) From printout to handout: Grammar and vocabulary teaching in the context of data-driven learning. In: Odlin, T. (ed.) Perspectives on pedagogical grammar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 293313.Google Scholar
Kennedy, C. and Miceli, T. (2001) An evaluation of intermediate students’ approaches to corpus investigation. Language Learning & Technology, 5(3): 7790.Google Scholar
Kennedy, C. and Miceli, T. (2010) Corpus-assisted creative writing: Introducing intermediate Italian learners to a corpus as a reference resource. Language Learning & Technology, 14(1): 2844.Google Scholar
Lee, D. and Swales, J. (2006) A corpus-based EAP course for NNS doctoral students: Moving from available specialized corpora to self-compiled corpora. English for Specific Purposes, 25(1): 5675.Google Scholar
Lincoln, Y. S. and Guba, E. G. (1985) Naturalistic inquiry. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liu, D. and Jiang, P. (2009) Using a corpus-based lexicogrammatical approach to grammar instruction in EFL and ESL contexts. Modern Language Journal, 93(1): 6178.Google Scholar
Mauranen, A. (2003) The corpus of English as lingua franca in academic settings. TESOL Quarterly, 37(3): 513527.Google Scholar
O’Sullivan, Í. (2007) Enhancing a process-oriented approach to literacy and language learning: The role of corpus consultation literacy. ReCALL, 19(3): 269286.Google Scholar
O’Sullivan, Í. and Chambers, A. (2006) Learners’ writing skills in French: Corpus consultation and learner evaluation. Journal of Second Language Writing, 15(1): 4968.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Park, K. (2012) Learner–corpus interaction: A locus of microgenesis in corpus-assisted L2 writing. Applied Linguistics, 33(4): 361385.Google Scholar
Park, K. and Kinginger, C. (2010) Writing/thinking in real time: Digital video and corpus query analysis. Language Learning & Technology, 14(3): 3150.Google Scholar
Pecorari, D. (2003) Good and original: Plagiarism and patchwriting in academic second-language writing. Journal of Second Language Writing, 12(4): 317345.Google Scholar
Pérez-Paredes, P., Sánchez-Tornel, M. and Alcaraz Calero, J. M. (2012) Learners’ search patterns during corpus-based focus-on-form activities. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 17(4): 483516.Google Scholar
Sha, G. (2010) Using Google as a super corpus to drive written language learning: A comparison with the British National Corpus. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 23(5): 377393.Google Scholar
Shei, C.-C. (2008a) Discovering the hidden treasure on the Internet: Using Google to uncover the veil of phraseology. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 21(1): 6785.Google Scholar
Shei, C. (2008b) Web as corpus, Google, and TESOL: A new trilogy. Taiwan Journal of TESOL, 5(2): 128.Google Scholar
Shin, I. (2010) The importance of English for Korean postgraduate engineering students in the global age. English Teaching, 65(1): 221240.Google Scholar
Stake, R. E. (1995) The art of case study research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Sun, Y.-C. and Wang, L.-Y. (2003) Concordancers in the EFL classroom: Cognitive approaches and collocation difficulty. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 16(1): 8394.Google Scholar
Thurston, J. and Candlin, C. N. (1998) Concordancing and the teaching of the vocabulary of academic English. English for Specific Purposes, 17(3): 267280.Google Scholar
Todd, R. W. (2001) Induction from self-selected concordances and self-correction. System, 29(1): 91102.Google Scholar
Tribble, C. (2002) Corpora and corpus analysis: New windows on academic writing. In: Flowerdew, J. (ed.), Academic discourse. Harlow: Longman, 131149.Google Scholar
Uzuner, S. (2008) Multilingual scholars’ participation in core/global academic communities: A literature review. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 7(4): 250263.Google Scholar
Wood, A. (2001) International scientific English: The language of research scientists around the world. In: Flowerdew, J. and Peacock, M. (eds.), Research perspectives on English for academic purposes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 7183.Google Scholar
Wu, S., Franken, M. and Witten, I. H. (2009) Refining the use of the web (and web search) as a language teaching and learning resource. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 22(3): 249268.Google Scholar
Yoon, C. (2011) Concordancing in L2 writing class: An overview of research and issues. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 10(3): 130139.Google Scholar
Yoon, H. (2008) More than a linguistic reference: The influence of corpus technology on L2 academic writing. Language Learning & Technology, 12(2): 3148.Google Scholar
Yoon, H. and Hirvela, A. (2004) ESL student attitudes toward corpus use in L2 writing. Journal of Second Language Writing, 13(4): 257283.Google Scholar