1,721,068 research outputs found
Towards a longitudinal study of Metadiscourse in EFL Academic Writing: Focus on Italian learners’ use of it-extraposition
No full textThe article explores the use of it-extraposition constructions in the Italian component of the LONGDALE project, and specifically in a sub-corpus made up of reports and argumentative essays written by Italian undergraduate university students in the second and third year respectively. The results show that the use of it-extraposition increases over the two years, and that the extraposed embedded clauses (e.g. for/to clauses) and the adjectives and past participles employed in them are more varied in the third year. Furthermore, the data seems to suggest that the mistakes made by the learners are mainly due to the unsuccessful combination of it-extraposition with other features of academic English (e.g. the passive voice, post-modification of noun phrases). The analysis of the rhetorical aims of the constructions reveals that the learners use them mainly to emphasise their claims, yet in the third year they also perform other functions through them
Text Complexity and Reading Comprehension Tests
No full textThe volume explores the relation between the complexity of written texts and the difficulty of reading comprehension tests. The results are based on a specially compiled corpus of internationally recognised EFL reading tests at different levels of proficiency. It brings together quantitative and qualitative linguistic investigation into the text-inherent complexity of the tests and a study of the data derived from their live administration to groups of Italian university students. The former area of research draws mainly on corpus and text analysis methodologies and on linguistic analyses of co-reference and other cohesive resources occurring in the input texts and between the texts and the tasks. The latter, by contrast, is informed by research on language testing, and, in particular, on findings and methods of Classical Test Theory and Item Response Theory for the study of test difficulty. Some of these were used to analyse and interpret both the data obtained from the administration of the tests and the data collected by means of evaluative questionnaires that test takers were asked to complete. The application of such diverse methodologies and analyses revealed interesting correlations between the aspects of linguistic text-inherent complexity investigated and between some of them and the perceived and actual difficulty of the tests
Online Covid 19 related Information for Travelers: A Corpus-based Study of Modality in Airport Websites
Full text linkDue to the current pandemic situation, international airport hubs need to adopt special procedures and distancing technology solutions to protect the health of travelers and employees (Sigala 2020). This paper explores the language of the sections of international airports’ websites specifically devoted to Covid-19-related issues and procedures, an emerging type of discourse dynamically reflecting the evolving situation. Like other types of specialized discourse, these informative and regulatory texts present “interdiscoursive” features (Bhatia 2010) borrowed from other genres, mainly legal English (Maci 2013). The paper presents the results of an investigation into the use of modality in a specially compiled 126,000-word corpus of texts concerning major British, North American, central European (Dutch and German) and Italian airports. The findings revealed differences among the four varieties, concerning the frequency and use of core modals, semi-modals, and some suasive verbs and their nominalizations identified through the analysis of keywords. The British websites feature the largest amount of core- and semi-modals, followed by the central European ones. The American texts score the third lowest number of core- and semi-modals and the highest number of suasive verbs/nominalizations, while the Italian sub-corpus presents the lowest values for all the categories, with the exception of the suasive verb recommend, which they employ extensively. Must is used the most in the central European texts, probably because of L1 interference, while recommend is at times erroneously used by the Italian writers. The paper discusses these and other findings and their implications for prospective writers of such texts
"Language at Work: Analysing Language Use in Work, Education, Medical and Museum Contexts", Edited by Helen de Silva Joyce Newcastle upon Tyne, Cambridge Scholar Publishing, 2016, pp. 277
Full text linkThe reviewed volume "Language at Work" explores the language used in a variety of workplace contexts ranging from call centres through secondary schools and hospitals to museums. Written, spoken and/or multimodal texts are analysed, with a view to investigating how professionals communicate with their colleagues, costumers, students, patients or visitors. The majority of the thirteen contributions concern private or public contexts in Australia. Eleven of them draw on the theoretical framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). The book consists of four parts. Part 1 refers to three different workplace contexts, Part 2 to education contexts, Part 3 to medical contexts and Part 4 to museum contexts
Investigating a corpus of Italian university students’ spoken interactions in English
No full textThis article explores a small corpus of transcripts of spoken informal and formal Skype interactions between second-year students of Mediazione Linguistica e Culturale at the University of Padua (Italy). It investigates the learners’ use of discourse markers and their politeness strategies, and discusses some implications for teaching and assessing interactive oral skills at a university level
An approach to the assessment of spoken interaction at level B2 in a university context with the aid of a learner corpus
No full textIl presente contributo prende in esame il processo di insegnamento e di verifica dell’abilità di interazione orale in inglese come lingua straniera in un contesto universitario italiano. Esso mostra come lo studio di un learner corpus, formato dalle trascrizioni di interazioni tra studenti frequentanti un modulo di Lingua inglese orale, livello B2, CEFR, ha fornito dati ed indicazioni utili circa la lingua da loro utilizzata, le loro abilità interattive e le strategie di cortesia da loro impiegate. Particolare attenzione è rivolta al modo in cui i risultati delle analisi svolte hanno permesso di ridefinire gli obiettivi del modulo e di specificare i parametri in base ai quali effettuare la valutazione linguistica finale
Exploring Existential and Locative Constructions in a Learner and in an Expert corpus of Promotional Tourist Texts
Full text linkCon questo contributo ci si propone di analizzare le caratteristiche delle costruzioni esistenziali e locative usate in un corpus di testi turistici promozionali scritti in lingua inglese da esperti di madrelingua inglese (circa 150.000 parole) e in un learner corpus composto di testi scritti da studenti universitari italiani con la finalità di promuovere la città di Padova (circa 40.000 parole). L’articolo si apre con la rassegna di alcuni studi recenti condotti in Italia e all’estero sulle caratteristiche morfosintattiche, lessicali, fraseologiche e testuali dei testi turistici promozionali, le quali sembrano fare della lingua in essi utilizzata un linguaggio specialistico. Seguono un’introduzione teorica alle costruzioni esistenziali in inglese e la discussione dettagliata dei risultati dell’analisi contrastiva dei due corpora. Come prevedibile, tali costruzioni vengono usate frequentemente sia nei testi turistici professionali che in quelli degli apprendenti, ma le loro realizzazioni lessico grammaticali risultano essere differenti nelle due varietà. É emersa, in particolare, la presenza di almeno sei pattern esistenziali e locativi ricorrenti che contraddistinguono i due corpora. L’articolo si conclude con la considerazione che i risultati dell’analisi non hanno solo implicazioni per l’insegnamento della scrittura dei testi in esame, ma, indirettamente, anche per la definizione puntuale di un importante aspetto lessico grammaticale distintivo delle pubblicazioni turistiche, ovvero l’espressione linguistica dell’esistenza di luoghi e attrazioni e della loro localizzazione nello spazio
Ways of Representing and Promoting Padua: Professional, Novice and (Non-)Native Voices
No full textThe article explores tourism texts about the city of Padua (Italy) produced by internationally renowned publishing houses, local tourist boards, EFL learners and novice native writers. Four specially compiled corpora representing these types of writing provide the linguistic material for the study of various aspects of the use of adjectives in these texts: the distribution of tokens and types of adjectives across the corpora, creative and clichéd uses, the syntactic patterns in which they occur, and their semantic and pragmatic features. The results reveal that the international publishing houses employ the highest percentages of types and low-frequency adjectives as well as of adjectives with an unfavourable connotation. They also bring to light some erroneous uses in the writing of all the types of writers but the international ones. The article discusses these and other findings and their implications for teaching English for tourism
- …
