Universitetet i Agder: UiA Journal System
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Genres in young learner L2 English writing: A genre typology for the TRAWL (Tracking Written Learner Language) corpus
No full textIn learner corpus research, it is well known that one should control for genre when collecting and analysing written L2 (second language) English data, as genre is one factor that has been shown to account for language variation. This article presents a genre typology for annotating learner texts from the lower secondary level in Norway (ages 13-15, school years 8-10). The data are drawn from TRAWL (Tracking Written Learner Language), a new learner corpus currently under compilation. As the TRAWL corpus will be openly available for research, it is important that the typology is clearly described, which is the primary aim of the present study.
Little research has been carried out on younger learners, and no detailed genre typology exists for classifying learner texts at the lower secondary level. Therefore, a genre typology developed by Ørevik (2019) for the upper secondary level was tested on data from TRAWL using a functional, social semiotic perspective and a mixed-methods (quantitative and qualitative) approach. The analysis showed that Ørevik’s typology was largely suitable for annotating the selected TRAWL data and only had to be slightly modified.
By highlighting some of the theoretical and methodological challenges with the genre typology, the analysis may inform discussions about genre in L2 English teaching, which was a secondary aim of the present study. Not only do the results mirror the tensions in the international debate within genre research, they also mirror the everyday challenges of lower secondary school teachers/examiners, who seem to adopt an eclectic approach to genre
Development of lexical richness among beginning learners of French as a foreign language
No full textVocabulary knowledge forms the basis of all the communicative skills and is a core component of language proficiency. In educational contexts in which target language input is limited, the acquisition of new vocabulary can be a challenging task for learners, and lexical development might be slow. This study explored the extent to which 14 upper-secondary students of French as a foreign language (FFL) in Norwegian schools showed signs of increased lexical richness in their written production over a period of approximately six months. The data were taken from the TRAWL (Tracking Written Learner Language) corpus, a digital collection of second and foreign-language learner texts. Two aspects of lexical richness were investigated: 1) lexical sophistication was measured using the MultiLingProfiler software for lexical frequency profiling and supplemented by a manual and more detailed analysis of five learners’ texts; 2) lexical diversity was measured using D_Tools v.2.0 and word family counts. The data revealed that although many learners showed signs of using a somewhat more varied vocabulary over time, it is difficult to find proof of productive vocabulary development among beginning learners of FFL within such a limited period. The study suggests that finer-grained measures of analysis could be added to existing automated tools to make these tools more useful for beginner levels
Writing in German as a foreign language in Norwegian upper secondary school: An investigation of patterns of language choices for meaning-making
No full textThe main objective of this article is to identify and describe characteristic patterns of language choices in texts written by Norwegian upper secondary school students of German as a foreign language (GFL) (age 16/17, school year 12, 5th year of FL learning). The study maps language choices in a set of 12 learner responses to a writing prompt about interpreting a film title. The aim of the study is to describe these choices in terms of how the learners use ideational meaning-making resources to arrive at meaningful content. The study takes a systemic functional linguistics (SFL) approach and analyses the responses in terms of the following lexicogrammatical and discourse semantic systems of resources: Transitivity, taxonomic and logico-semantic relations. The study finds several strategies and language choices that presented themselves as particularly relevant for meaning-making. For example, the learners reach an interpretation through clauses relating two messages to each other, and one of those two messages is typically structured in a complex way. Overall, the study provides insights into relevant patterns for expository writing in general and such that seem important to the particular context in which the response was situated. The article also points to the sophistication of the learners’ language use and the linguistic demands regarding the task at hand. In line with existing research, the current study also shows how SFL and genre theory can be successfully applied to the analysis of responses by beginner to intermediate GFL learners
Gender Inequality: Review Article
No full textThe review article considers three books by Tutchell and Edmond
