Development of specificity in first year writing through elaboration of the nominal groupCCCCTampa, FL. March 21, 2015

Sandra Gollin-Kies, PhDBenedictine University, Lisle, Illinois. USA.

The FYC Project

No evidence of a shift to orality over the past 15 years

BUT… Novice writing does exhibit features

more characteristic of spontaneous speech than sophisticated published academic text.

Hypothesis

Compared with experienced academic writers, first year students will under-utilize the grammatical resources available for elaboration of the noun phrase.

Successful upper-level students will show greater use of elaboration in the noun phrase than first-year students.

Research Questions

Do FYC students’ nominal groups indicate lesser or greater orality than the reference corpora*?

Does FYC students’ writing indicate lesser or greater orality than the writing of final year undergraduates and professional writers?

*Reference corpora Corpora referred to by Biber (1988) and Biber et. al.

(2004, 2006, 2011). (Academic spoken and written texts, but no student writing).

MICUSP (Michigan Corpus of Upper-level Student Papers).

Corpus Materials and Methods

The corpora: 200 student research essays on

George Orwell’s “1984.” from a mid-western community college.

50 essays from final year students at the University of Michigan.All essays are on topics in literatureAll essays are either argumentative

essays or “reports.”

Method

1. Review of previous research on differences between conversation and academic written text.

2. Selection of comparable written student texts 3. Conversion of word files to machine readable txt. files4. Parsing of essay texts using UAM 3.17 (O’Donnell).5. Analysis of general linguistic features using UAM and generation

of descriptive stats. 6. General comparison with Biber’s (1988) Mean frequencies for

academic prose and face to face conversation. (Not all categories are easily comparable).

7. Finer analysis of wordlists using Wordsmith Tools 6 (Smith)8. Concordancing of specific features using WST 6.

Future research: More fine-grained analyses. Factor analysis (Biber 1988, 2006).

Characteristics of spoken vs written text in academic contexts.

In the university context:“a fundamental oral/literate opposition” … holds between spoken and written modes “regardless of purpose, interactiveness, or other pre-planning considerations.”

(Biber 2006, p. 186).

University registers (Biber, Conrad, Reppen, Byrd, and Helt, 2002)

Written (e.g. textbooks, syllabi, administrative info.)

Spoken (e.g. lectures, labs. study groups, office hrs)

Information-dense (D1) Involvement and interaction

Non-narrative focus (D2) Non-narrative focus (D2)

Elaborated reference (D3) Situated reference

Little overt persuasion (D4) More overt persuasion

Impersonal style (D5) Less impersonal in style

Oral and literate discourse compared on Dimension 1:

Positive features for orality:

“interactiveness and personal involvement (1st and 2nd person pronouns, WH questions), personal stance (e.g., mental verbs, that-clauses with likelihood verbs and factual verbs, factual adverbials, hedges), and structural reduction and formulaic language (e.g., contractions, that- omission, common vocabulary, lexical bundles)” (p. 186.)

These features contrast with literate discourse:

“informational density and complex noun phrase structures (frequent nouns and nominalizations, prepositional phrases, adjectives, and relative causes) as well as passive constructions” (p. 186.)

Why focus on nominal groups? Nominal groups have been overlooked in

corpus research. In academic writing, nouns are more

frequent than verbs. In academic writing, nouns carry more

informational burden than verbs. Expansion of the nominal group is a major

resource for elaborating information in academic writing.

Halliday (1979, 1985) Conversation has more subordination

than formal writing.

Grammatical metaphor as a major resource for abstraction.

The Nominal Group

Det. + (premod.) + headnoun + (postmod. & complement)

(Biber et al., 1999)

Developmental stages in premodification of head noun : attributive adjectives (2)

• big earthquake• potential disaster

participial premodifiers (2)• contaminated world; • devastating tsunami

nouns as premodifiers (3)• power stations; • bomb blast

possessive nouns as premodifiers (3)• people’s views

(Parkinson and Musgrave (2014) following Biber et al., (2011))

Developmental stages in postmodification of head noun full relative clause (3)

• earthquake which happened…; • warming that results…

prepositional phrase as postmodifier – concrete meanings (3)

• risk of this technology; • war on the Korean peninsula

non-finite relative clause (4) -ed clause risk involved with terrorism -ing clause people living around the

place

(Parkinson and Musgrave (2014) following Biber et al., (2011))

Developmental stages contd. prepositional phrase as postmodifier – abstr. meanings (4)

• the production of fossil fuels; • an influence on speaking and listening

preposition + nonfinite complement clause (5)• price of keeping the acceptable security standard

complement clause controlled by noun (5)• viewpoint that using nuclear energy is equal to

suicide appositive noun phrase (5)

• uranium the source of nuclear energy to clause as postmodifier (5)

• technology to prevent radioactive contamination

(Parkinson and Musgrave (2014) following Biber et al., (2011))

Comparison of FYC, MICUSP with Biber’s data: Mean frequency/1,000 words

Feature Biber 1998 Face-to-face conversation

Biber 1998Academic prose

MICUSP

Final yr undergrad

FYC

First yr undergrad

nouns 137.4 188 270 285

Adjective (all)

40.8 76.9 61 63.3

Preposition 85.0 139.5 123 119

Conjunction 0.3 3.0 34.3 33.6

Verb (past) 37.4 21.9 11.8 27.3

Verb (pres) 128.4 63.7 60.9

(13.3+47.6)

49

(20 + 29)

Pron. (pers) 39.3 5.8 37.5 33

Adverb 86.0

51.8 47.2 41.3

Pre-modifiers of nouns

Adjective (attrib)+nounFYC: 46 per 1,000 words

economic factors, next day-ing or -ed participle (rare)

distressing situation, televised enemy

MICUSP: 42 per 1,000 words Christian values, poor communities -ing or -ed participle (rare)

a tiered system

Difficulties in assigning –ing words

pre-modifier of a noun subject of a verb complement of a verb head of progressive verb phrase complement of a preposition

Possessive ’s or s’ + noun

FYC: 2.4 per 1,000 words The nation’s capital citizens’ rights

MICUSP: 0.4 per 1,000

Anse’s heart

Post-modifiers of nouns

Prepositional phrases with “of” Post-modifying non finite clause with “to” Post-modifying non-finite clause with “ing”

participle Post-modifying non finite clause with “ed”

participle Relative clauses with “that”, “which”, or

“who”

Prepositional phrase with “of”

FYC: 0.4 per 1,000 words The Bay of Pigs, the abuse of power, the effects of brainwashing

MICUSP: 29.3 per 1,000

Post-modifying non finite clause with “to”

FYC: 5.0 per 1,000 tactics to sell its products up to the media to serve the public the ability to choose

MICUSP: 9.6 per 1,000

Post-modifying non-finite clause with “ing” participle

FYC: 0.4 per 1,000 words the country doing the colonizing the audience watching late night

television (non-finite pre-determiners - e.g.,

decision making processes are quite rare)

MICUSP: 0.9 per 1,000 words

Post-modifying non finite clause with “ed” participle

FYC: 0.6 per 1,000 words the dangers involved with sex a small elite group of the population

known as the inner party the tactics used to persuade

consumers.

MICUSP: 1.5 per 1,000 words

All clauses with “that”

fact, things, way that... FYC: 3.1 per 1,000 words

MICUSP: 6.1 per 1,000 words the idea that God made the world the options that Theseus presents

Also: Demetrius requests that Lysander give up; Laertes reminds his sister that..

Relative clauses

With “that” FYC: 1.4 MICUSP: 2.5

With “which” FYC: 0.3 MICUSP: 0.6

With “who” FYC: 0.7 MICUSP: 1.2

FYC had slightly more with what or whoever, but not significant

Findings

MICUSP and FYC students have mastered pre-modification of the noun phrase to almost the same extent.

FYC students are more dependent on attributive adjectives.

MICUSP students have mastered post-modification of the noun phrase to a greater extent than FYC students

Conclusion

Students have more exposure to instructional spoken classroom genres like the lecture and written genres such as the textbook than professional academic writing.

First year students are still in the process of mastering certain grammatical resources that are out side their everyday experience.

Implications

Students need to engage analytically with samples of typical academic writing.

Pedagogical strategies to draw attention to the variety of resources for specificity.

Practice writing more specific texts.

References

Biber, D. (1988) Variation across speech and writing. Cambridge NY: Cambridge University Pres.

Biber, D., Johannsen, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S., & Finegan, E. (1999). Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Harlow, England: Pearson Education.

Biber, D. (2006 ) University Language: A corpus-based study of spoken and written registers. John Benjamins.

Biber, D., Conrad, S.M., Reppen, R., Byrd, R.P. , Helt, P., Clark, V., Cortes, V. , Csomay, E., Urzua, A. (2004). Representing Language Use in the University: Analysis of the TOEFL 2000 Spoken and Written Academic Language Corpus. TOEFL Monograph Series. Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service.

Halliday, M. A. K., & Matthiessen, C. (2004). An introduction to functional grammar (3 ed.). London: Arnold.

O’Donnell, M. UAM Corpus Tool Parkinson, J., & Musgrave, J. (2014). Development of

noun phrase complexity in the writing of English for Academic purposes students. Journal of English for Academic Purposes. (14), 48-59.

Scott, M. (2012). Wordsmith Tools version 6. Liverpool: Lexical Analysis Software.