Elena Tarasheva, PhDNew Bulgarian University

Conclusions at last year’s BETA conference

Method and effect of the previous study2 corpora: students’ writing – film analysis; 1st &

2nd draft

Analysis of the message of Michael Palin’s Travel series about Eastern Europe

The first draft corpus revealed features of informal style, lack of cohesive devices through Key words; Concordancing revealed racial language.

The second draft showed improvement

Corpora and method for this studyStudents’ summaries of a text; 300 words

longThe text for the summary

Key words for the summaries are compared to the key words for the text

Concordancing reveals how each key word is used for the summaries and in the original

Word lists suggest common mistakes in the writing

The corpora13 student summaries1st year students at Sofia UniversityLanguage proficiency – C1Taught about cohesion, coherence, linking

devices, text flow4 hours of teaching per weekThe summary was set as a homework. The

work was submitted via the electronic platform Moodle

statisticstokens (running words) in text 2,667 types (distinct words) 729type/token ratio (TTR) 27.33standardised TTR basis 1,000mean word length (in characters) 4.99sentences 2,792 mean (in words) 18.99paragraphs 377 mean (in words) 100.93

Key wordsCalculated via a statistical procedureAn automatic function of The Word SmithCompares the frequency list of a task corpus

to the frequency list of a balanced corpus – in this case: the British National Corpus

The words with a frequency higher than in the balanced corpus tend to show the ‘about-ness’ of a text, specific language idiosyncrasies, particulars of the style etc.

The words with a frequency lower than in the balanced corpus show what the author avoided

Key words in the original

Key words in the summaries

RhetoricWeWritingRadicalWriterTowardOur ConservativeStudentCompositionHonestCoherenceLearns

RhetoricWritingConservativeWriterRadicalLiberalCoherenceTextCompositionExamplesAuthorDoesns

ConcordancingAll the cases when a word is used in the

corpus The word is highlightedThe context to the left and right is shownThe concordances can be arranged to criteria

pre-set by the researcher – L or R, -2, +3 etc.

The degree of formality

The possessive ‘s

The Use of linking devices

Linking devices

Linking devices

Clusters Automatically calculated by the Word SmithWords which occur togetherThe number of words can be pre-set – 3, for

this study, but it can be 4, 5, 6

Major key words in contextOriginal collocates Summary collocates

A missing key word

concordancingIn this case – arranged according to -L1Because the word is a noun and we are

interested in the attributes used with itIf it was a verb and we wanted to see what

objects follow, then we would arrange for +R1

Relative clauses

Relative clauses

Language Functions

Language functions

Negative keyness

original summary

Conclusions

Comparing the key word lists of a text and its summary reveal whether the gist of the text has been grasped

Concordances show differences in focus, suggests possible misunderstandings

Word lists allow assessing the acquisition of grammatical features, such as relative clauses, linking words etc.

High key-ness can reveal language functionsWord lists also reveal adherence to a style