Paper 025: Comparing measures of directness in corpora of essays written by Iraqi EFL learners, native English-speakers, and advanced ESL college students

COX, Ashleigh (Georgia State University, USA); FRIGINAL, Eric (Georgia State University, USA); MUSTAFA, Sabah S. (University of Baghdad)

Keywords: learner corpus, comparative corpora, EFL writing

Abstract

Learner corpora offer valuable insight on variation in EFL writing. This study compares markers of directness and indirectness in corpora of argumentative essays written by Iraqi students learning English, native English-speaking undergraduate students in the United States, and advanced nonnative English-speaking undergraduate students in the United states. The advanced nonnative English-speaking group is included as a successful nonnative model for comparison. There are many previous comparative corpus studies, but Iraqi EFL writing remains under-researched. Ortega (2017) argues that there is a need to include more under-researched populations of language learners in SLA studies, and a learner-corpus approach is one way to address this gap by expanding our knowledge of inter-language writing patterns (Gilquin & Granger, 2015). One area of writing that can be studied using learner corpora is cultural variation in argument styles. Comparing learner writing with successful nonnative English writing can also help inform teachers and researchers about how to help English learners advance. This can be particularly useful for research on helping students with TOEFL essays.

In this study, corpora of argumentative essays written by 100 Iraqi students learning EFL, 100 native English-speaking undergraduate students in the United States, and 100 advanced ESL undergraduate students in the United States were compared. Each student participating wrote two essays, one on the prompt ‘‘Write an essay based on this statement: Nowadays, people put too much emphasis on personal appearance and fashion” and another on the prompt “Write an essay based on this statement: The best way to ensure a good future for yourself is to plan carefully while you are still young.” The essays were scored using TOEFL rubrics, and linguistic features were tagged using the Multidimensional Analysis Tagger (Nini, 2014), which use a tagging system modeled after the Biber Tagger. The use of hedges, possibility modals, downtoners, emphatics, and amplifiers were compared for essays written by each group of students, taking into consideration the effect of the prompt. The three groups differed significantly in their use of hedges, possibility modals, downtowners, and emphatics, and they differed moderately significantly in their use of amplifiers. Prompt had a significant impact on the use of hedges and downtoners. Implications for teaching EFL writing, with a special focus on learners from Iraq, are discussed.

References

Gilquin, G., & Granger, S. (2015). Learner language. In D. Biber & R. Reppen (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of English corpus linguistics (pp.418-435). Cambridge University Press. http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/145508

Nini, A. (2014). Multidimensional Analysis Tagger (Version 1.3.1) [Software]. Available from: http://sites.google.com/site/multidimensionaltagger.
Ortega, L. (2017). New CALL-SLA research interfaces for the 21st century: Toward equitable multilingualism. Calico Journal 34(3), 285-316.

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