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Incorporating Corpus data into an Advanced

Academic Thesis Writing Course

Nilgün Hancıoğlu

Submitted to the
Institute of Graduate Studies and Research
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

in

English Language Teaching

Eastern Mediterranean University


January 2009, Gazimağusa
North Cyprus
Approval of the Institute of Graduate Studies and Research

________________________________
Prof. Dr. Elvan Yılmaz
Director(a)

I certify that this thesis satisfies the requirements as a thesis for the
degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Language Teaching.

________________________________
Assist. Prof. Dr. Fatoş Erozan
Chair, Department of English Language Teaching

We certify that we have read this thesis and that in our opinion it is
fully adequate in scope and quality as a thesis for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy in English Language Teaching.

________________________________
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Gülşen Musayeva Vefalı
Supervisor

Examining Committee
___________________________________________________________________

1. Prof. Dr. Gürkan Doğan ______________________________

2. Prof. Dr. Ülker Vancı Osam ______________________________

3. Prof. Dr. Deniz Zeyrek ______________________________

4. Assoc. Prof. Dr. Necdet Osam ______________________________

5. Assoc. Prof. Dr. Gülşen Musayeva Vefalı ______________________________


ABSTRACT

Since English remains the primary language of science and research across the

globe, many academics are required to produce research in a language that is not

their own. This research has been motivated by the difficulties this presents for the

post-graduate students at the Eastern Mediterranean University (EMU). The main

aim of the study is to construct a comprehensive pedagogic corpus for such students,

and to incorporate it into an advanced academic thesis writing course. To this end, a

learner abstract corpus (LAC) and a target abstract corpus (TAC) were compiled

respectively from work produced by post-graduate students at EMU, and from

abstracts written by post-graduate students in English speaking countries. Both

quantitative and qualitative methods were utilized to analyse the corpora. The

comparison of the corpora exhibited extensive use of higher frequency vocabulary, a

tendency to repeat similar items, and recurrent inadequacy in using appropriate

collocations and lexico-grammatical patterns in the LAC. The work in the TAC,

however, demonstrated the use of a wider range of lower frequency words, as well

as a more varied lexico-grammatical utilization of these items. Accordingly, a

pedagogic corpus was constructed. This corpus includes the Academic Abstract

Corpus (AAC) Bank, which offers alternative lexico-grammatical patterns for

fulfilling the required generic moves and sub-moves in abstract and thesis writing;

the TAC Wordlist of 165 key words for thesis writing; the web concordances of the

LAC and the TAC; and a variety of teacher-led data driven and learner-led discovery

tasks as well as other diverse academic writing resources. The corpus-informed

course is mounted on Moodle, a virtual learning platform founded on social

constructivist principles. The study produced major conclusions regarding corpora,

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wordlists, and lexico-grammatical patterns, the broader implications and

applications of which are explored from a range of perspectives.

Keywords: corpus, pedagogic corpus, learner corpus, lexico-grammar, genre,

academic writing

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ÖZET

Günümüzde İngilizce’nin tüm dünyada bilim ve araştırma dili olması, birçok

akademisyenin kendi dili olmayan bir dilde araştırma üretmesini gerektiriyor. Bu

çalışma, Doğu Akdeniz Üniversitesi’nde lisansüstü eğitim yapmakta olan

öğrencilerin bu bağlamda yaşadıkları zorluklardan esinlenmiştir. Araştırmanın temel

amacı bu tür öğrenciler için kapsamlı bir eğitsel bütünce oluşturup, bunu ileri

düzeyde tez yazımı dersine kazandırmaktır. Bu amaçla, biri Doğu Akdeniz

Üniversitesi lisansüstü öğrencilerinin, diğeri ise ana dili İngilizce olan ülkelerdeki

üniversitelerde lisansüstü eğitim görmüş öğrencilerin yazdığı tez özetlerinden oluşan

iki bütünce oluşturulmuş ve oluşturulan bütüncelerin çözümlemesinde nitel ve nicel

yöntemlerden yararlanılmıştır. Bu bütünceler öğrenci tez özeti bütüncesi (LAC) ve

hedeflenen tez özeti bütüncesi (TAC) olarak adlandırılmıştır. İki bütüncenin

karşılaştırılması sonucu LAC’taki tez özetlerinde en sık kullanılan sözcük

listelerindeki sözcüklerin yaygın olarak kullanıldığı, benzer sözcüklerin

tekrarlandığı, eşdizimsel sözcük ve sözcük gruplarının doğru kullanımlarının

yetersiz olduğu gözlemlenmiştir. Diğer yandan, TAC’taki tez özetlerinin

çözümlemesi, daha ender sözcüklerin sıkça ve eşdizimsel sözcüklerle ve sözcük

grupları içinde doğru olarak kullanıldığını göstermiştir. Çözümleme sonuçlarından

çıkan verilere dayanarak yaratılan kapsamlı eğitsel bütünce, tez özeti ve tez

yazımında kullanılan hamleleri oluşturmak için gereken eşdizimsel sözcüklerden ve

sözcük gruplarindan oluşan bir banka (AAC Bank), tez özeti yazımında en çok

kullanılan 165 sözcük ailesi (TAC list), çözümlemede kullanılan iki bütüncenin örüt

dizini (web concordance), bilgisayar ve veri destekli öğretmen ve öğrenci

önderliğinde farklı türde aktiviteler ile çeşitli akademik yazı kaynaklarından

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oluşmuştur. Bütünce destekli ileri düzey tez yazımı dersi sosyal oluşturmacılık

ilkesine dayanan sanal etkileşimsel bir örüt (web) ortamına (Moodle) taşınmıştır. Bu

çalışma, bütünce, sözcük sıklığına dayalı listeler, eşdizimsel sözcük ve sözcük

gruplarıyla ilgili önemli sonuçlar üretmiştir. Bu sonuçların çıkarımları ve uygulama

alanları çalışmada değişik açılardan irdelenmektedir.

Anahtar sözcükler: bütünce, öğrenci bütüncesi, eğitsel bütünce, eşdizimsel

sözcük ve sözcük grupları, yazı türü (genre), akademik yazı

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In a unique corpus-based study of dissertation acknowledgements, Ken Hyland

remarks that completing a thesis is a long and difficult task, and that many students

see “an acknowledgement as an important way of publicly recognizing the role of

mentors and the sacrifices of loved ones” (2004b, p. 306). As I have now reached

this concluding stage, I can understand these sentiments only too well.

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor, Assoc. Prof. Dr.

Gülşen Musayeva Vefalı, for being my constant guide and mentor, for providing me

with invaluable feedback by reading my numerous drafts not merely line by line, but

word by word, to ensure that there were no gaps or omissions. I genuinely appreciate

her tireless work, and support.

I am extremely grateful to the members of the thesis monitoring committee, Prof.

Dr. Gürkan Doğan and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Necdet Osam. It is thanks to their

comprehensive, thoughtful, and highly useful feedback that this research developed

in the way that it has. I would also like to thank the members of the jury, Prof. Dr.

Ülker Vancı Osam, Prof. Dr. Deniz Zeyrek and Assist. Prof. Dr. Ali Sıdkı Ağazade

for their valuable comments towards the improvement of this thesis.

I decided to conduct corpus related research in 2002. It was during this period that I

first read Averil Coxhead’s article on the development of the Academic Word List.

Her article then led me to Prof. Dr. Tom Cobb’s extraordinary Lexical Tutor

Website, the riches of which have generously been made freely available to us all. I

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would therefore like to acknowledge the genuinely inspirational role of both these

researchers in the realization of this study.

I would like to thank all those friends that accompanied me on the long road to this

PhD. It was fun because of them. Special thanks go to my closest companion,

Elmaziye Özgür Küfi, with whom I went through thick and thin.

My colleagues at the Department of General Education have been extremely

understanding and helpful. I would like to thank all of them, especially Ayfer Şen

and Yeşim Dede for helping ensure that time and space was made available for me to

focus on my research, especially in the last period, and Aytül Dereboylu for being by

my side when I most needed support and a helping hand.

I should also thank all those ENGL501 students who have taken this course over the

years, for bearing with me as the course evolved, and for willingly taking time out of

their own busy research schedules to assist me further when I asked. This research

and accompanying course has been developed on their behalf, and their positive

responses and appreciation therefore make me feel immensely proud and privileged.

I would like to thank my whole family, and especially my sister, Berna, my brother,

Attila, my aunt and my uncle Jennifer and Engin Kemal Örek, and my niece and

three nephews for their encouragement and support. Special thanks go to Özbil Ege,

who showed a genuine interest in my work despite his young age.

This has indeed been a long and stressful journey. I would like to express my

deepest gratitude to my beloved parents, Serpil and Özbil Hancıoğlu, for teaching

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me the meaning of hard work and sacrifice, for encouraging me, and believing in me

not only through this period, but all my life. It really means a lot to me.

How can I ever thank my dear friend, Steve Neufeld, who was always there when I

needed help, guidance, and advice? On this strenuous journey, it was wonderful to

be accompanied by a true friend, and a positive personality, one who seems to lack

words of negation in his mental lexicon.

I owe the greatest debt and gratitude to my dear husband, who looked after me,

encouraged me, guided me with his wisdom, and always stood by me. It is a cliché

to say “I could not have done it without you”. In my case, it is the essential reality. I

could not have done it without you, John P. Eldridge.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT III
ÖZET V
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.................................................................................................VII
TABLE OF CONTENTS........................................................................................................X
CHAPTER I 1
INTRODUCTION....................................................................................................................1
1.1 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY ...............................................................................................1
1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM................................................................................................9
1.3 PURPOSE OF THE STUDY......................................................................................................12
1.4 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY...............................................................................................15
1.5 DEFINITION OF TERMS........................................................................................................17
CHAPTER II 21
REVIEW OF LITERATURE................................................................................................21
2.1 TEXTS..............................................................................................................................21
2.1.1 Text and textuality.................................................................................................21
2.1.2 Text Creation ........................................................................................................26
2.1.3 Intertextuality........................................................................................................34
2.1.3.1 Genre and Text Type........................................................................................... ........36
2.1.3.2 Genre and Register.................................................................................. ...................38
2.1.3.3 Genres, Generic Structure, and Moves....................................................................... .39
2.1.4 Academic Discourse..............................................................................................41
2.1.4.1 Genres in Academia............................................................................................. .......44
2.1.4.1.1 An academic genre: The Abstract ................................................... ...................45
2.2 WRITING PEDAGOGY..........................................................................................................48
2.2.1 Approaches to Writing...........................................................................................48
2.2.2 The Process Genre Approach in EAP ...................................................................55
2.3 CORPORA AND APPLICATIONS ..............................................................................................57
2.3.1 Corpora..................................................................................................................57
2.3.2 Types of Corpora...................................................................................................63
2.3.3 The Use of Corpora in Applied Linguistics ..........................................................65
2.3.4 The Use of Corpora in Language Teaching...........................................................66
2.4 RELATED STUDIES..............................................................................................................73
2.5 SUMMARY ........................................................................................................................81
CHAPTER III84
METHODOLOGY.................................................................................................................84
3.1 OVERALL RESEARCH DESIGN..............................................................................................84
3.2 RESEARCH QUESTIONS........................................................................................................89
3.3 THE CONTEXT...................................................................................................................90
3.4 PARTICIPANTS....................................................................................................................94
3.5 DATA COLLECTION INSTRUMENTS.........................................................................................96
3.5.1 Interviews with course instructors.........................................................................96
3.5.2 Questionnaires administered to course participants..............................................97
3.5.3 Compilation of the Learner Abstract Corpus.........................................................99
3.5.4 Compilation of the Target Abstract Corpus.........................................................100
3.6 DATA COLLECTION PROCEDURES .......................................................................................103
3.7 METHODS FOR DATA ANALYSIS ........................................................................................105
3.7.1 Analysis Procedure for Interviews.......................................................................106

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3.7.2 Analysis Procedure for Questionnaires...............................................................108
3.7.3 Corpus Analysis Methodology ..........................................................................109
3.7.3.1 Corpus Analysis Tools......................................................................... .....................113
3.7.3.2 Corpus Analysis Procedures.................................................................................... ..117
3.8 MOODLE - A VIRTUAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENT ..................................................................119
3.9 LIMITATIONS AND DELIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY..................................................................121
CHAPTER IV 125
DATA ANALYSIS.................................................................................................................125
4.1 ANALYSIS OF THE PRELIMINARY DATA .................................................................................126
4.1.1 Interviews with EFL 501 (ENGL501) course instructors....................................127
4.1.2 Needs Analysis Questionnaires and End-of-the-semester Feedback Questionnaires
administered to course participants....................................................................129
4.1.3 A sample of participants’ writing profiles ...........................................................137
4.1.4 Cross-reference of the Findings from the Interviews and the Questionnaires....138
4.1.5 Sample work from the LAC and some preliminary assumptions........................139
4.2 ANALYSIS OF THE CORPUS EVIDENCE..................................................................................141
4.2.1 Analysis of the LAC............................................................................................141
4.2.2 Analysis of the Target Abstract Corpus (the TAC)..............................................153
4.2.3 Comparison of the LAC with the TAC................................................................163
4.2.3.1 Comparison of the LAC with an equal-sized TAC............................................. .......180
4.3 CONSTRUCTING A PEDAGOGIC CORPUS FOR THESIS WRITING.................................................186
4.3.1 The development of the TAC (Target Abstract Corpus) Wordlist.......................187
4.3.2 The development of the AAC (Academic Abstract Corpus) Bank of Moves and
Sub-moves..........................................................................................................200
4.3.2.1 Description of the AAC (Academic Abstract Corpus) Bank of Moves and Sub-moves
based on IMRD........................................................................................ ................204
4.3.2.2 Significance of the AAC Bank of Moves and Sub-moves .................................... ....218
4.3.3 The Pedagogic Corpus.........................................................................................219
4.3.3.1 Task Framework and Taxonomy.................................................................. .............222
4.3.3.2 The Pilot Implementation and Evaluation of the course- 2007-2008 Fall Semester. .236
4.3.3.3 The Pilot Implementation and Evaluation of the course- 2007-2008 Spring Semester
................................................................................................................. ................238
4.4 SUMMARY.......................................................................................................................246
CHAPTER V 247
CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS..........................................................................247
5.1 DISCUSSION....................................................................................................................247
5.1.1 Aims and methods...............................................................................................249
5.1.2 Major findings.....................................................................................................251
5.2 CONCLUSIONS..................................................................................................................255
5.2.1 Wordlists..............................................................................................................255
5.2.2 Lexico-grammatical patterns and banks..............................................................259
5.2.3 Semantic frequency: Moves and Sub-moves......................................................260
5.2.4 Generic versus discipline-specific lexico-grammatical patterns.........................261
5.2.5 A genre-based corpus-informed data-driven lexico-grammatical approach to
thesis writing .....................................................................................................263
5.2.6 Virtual learning environments.............................................................................264
5.2.7 The use of Corpora..............................................................................................266
5.3 IMPLICATIONS..................................................................................................................271
5.3.1 Teachers and Teacher Education..........................................................................271
5.3.2 Students ..............................................................................................................272
5.3.3 Software Applications and Virtual Learning Environments ...............................272
5.3.4 The Use of Vocabulary Profiling Software..........................................................274
5.4 IMPLICATIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH................................................................................275

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5.5 THE FINAL WORD...........................................................................................................277
REFERENCES.....................................................................................................................279
APPENDICES......................................................................................................................292
APPENDIX A:
EFL 501 COURSE DESCRIPTION...................................................................................292
APPENDIX B:
ENGL501 COURSE DESCRIPTION................................................................................294
APPENDIX C:
INTERVIEW GUIDE .........................................................................................................297
APPENDIX D:
NEEDS ANALYSIS QUESTIONNAIRE ..........................................................................298
APPENDIX E:
COURSE EVALUATION QUESTIONNAIRE ................................................................300
APPENDIX F:
LIST OF ABSTRACTS .......................................................................................................302
APPENDIX G:
INTERVIEW 1.....................................................................................................................324
APPENDIX H:
INTERVIEW 2.....................................................................................................................327
APPENDIX I:
COMPARISON OF THE TOP 50 WORDS IN THE LAC AND THE TAC..................332
APPENDIX J:
FAMILY HEADWORDS AND WORD TYPES USED IN THE LAC AND THE TAC334
APPENDIX K:
THE TAC WORDLIST - 165 WORD FAMILIES SELECTED FOR FURTHER
ANALYSIS 342
APPENDIX L:
THE AAC BANK OF MOVES AND SUB-MOVES BASED ON IMRD .......................349
APPENDIX M:
SCREENSHOTS OF ENGL501 MOODLE......................................................................367
APPENDIX N:
A STUDENT-LED DISCOVERY TASK............................................................................368
APPENDIX O:
TEACHERS’ NOTES FOR THE ADVANCED ACADEMIC THESIS WRITING
COURSE 369

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CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

The skill of writing is to


create a context in which
other people can think.
Edwin Schlossberg

This research study adopts a corpus-informed approach to academic writing

pedagogy, and employs two corpora with the aim of constructing a pedagogic corpus

with multiple components that incorporate teacher-directed data-driven in-class

work, complemented by a virtual learning environment providing access to the

authentic corpus data and learner-led exploratory tasks. The pedagogic corpus

incorporating manifold constituents is envisaged to assist non-native post-graduate

students involved in research and publication in producing accurate and appropriate

written texts.

This introductory chapter first provides the background to the study. After the

problem that prompted this research is described in detail, the chapter presents the

purpose of the study. Following a discussion of the factors that make this research

significant, the terms that are exploited in this study are defined.

1.1 Background to the Study

English is the primary international language of research communication (Garfield

& Welljams-Dorof, 1990; Krashen, 2003; Swales, 1990), “today’s premier research

language” (Swales, 2004, p. 33), and “indeed the international language of science”

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(Wood, 2001, p. 71). As the overall trend in many domains, including education and

academic scientific research, is toward globalization, “more and more nonnative

speakers are seeking to publish in international journals devoted to English language

teaching, applied linguistics, and related areas” (Flowerdew, 2001, p. 121). Further,

while the percentage of articles written in English in the 1977 Science Citation

Index was 83% (Krashen, 2003), by 1997, this number had increased to 95% and of

this, only half came from authors in English-speaking countries (Graddol, 1997).

This increase was not due to more research done by scholars in English-speaking

countries, but because of more scholars from non-English speaking countries

publishing in English (Krashen, 2003). It is clear, therefore, that non-native speakers

do write ‘a considerable number’ of research articles even in the “most prestigious

journals in science” (Wood, 2001, p. 80).

Swales (2004) refers to today’s ‘Anglophone research world’, and states that “the

status and contribution of the non-native speaker of English has become somewhat

more central than it used to be and increasingly (albeit slowly) is perhaps recognized

as such by native speakers of English” (p. 52). He further holds that by the

beginning of the 21st century, there has been some internationalization of the

research world, and the role of ‘non-Anglophones in that Englishized world’ has

gained greater recognition (Swales, 2004, p. 46). According to Wood (2001), to

become a member of this world, the scientist needs to produce research accepted by

the community. “The more central the claim and the more widely accepted by the

community, the more central a member of the community the researcher becomes”

(Wood, 2001, p. 81). For the achievement of these aims, Wood (2001) claims, “the

researcher must deploy a skilful use of language” (p. 81).

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Such statistics and observations stated above clearly indicate that non-native

speakers of English are under increasing pressure to both follow the latest research,

and probably even more so, to have their own research published. Non-native

speakers of English “risk being unaware of- and overlooked by- mainstream

international research unless they learn to read, write, and publish in English”

(Garfield & Welljams-Dorof, 1990). Given the speed of change and development in

all aspects of science, technology, and research in general, and the generally

accepted view, and necessity that a common language of research is required to

disseminate research and findings with efficiency, it is unlikely that the position of

English as the dominant research language will diminish in the near future. Wood

(2001) states that:

for scientists to become recognized and successful their work must be read
and cited by their peers as frequently as possible. To ensure such citation it is
imperative that their work be accessible to as many as possible and thus that
it be written in English. (p. 71)

Hence, non-native speaker researchers and academics would seem to have little

choice, but to continue to try and master the prevailing conventions of academic

English. This may not be a major problem for NNS (non-native speaker) researchers

with experience, as “experienced NNS writers are familiar with the discourse

requirements of their discipline” (Wood, 2001, p. 77). Nevertheless, Wood (2001)

acknowledges that the beginning writer faces difficulties in terms of publishing

research (p. 77), and cites Canagarajah (1996), Jernudd and Baldauf (1987), St John

(1987), and Swales (1990, 1996), who have emphasized non-native writers’

difficulties in publishing in English (p. 77).

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There seems to be little question, then, that non-native speakers of English need and

will continue to need a lot of guidance and support in developing acceptable

performance levels in reporting research. This is more so for beginning researchers.

Whether or not they have traditionally been provided with this support is a different

issue. Swales, for example, points out that there is little research on “how non-native

speakers of English manage to survive in an increasingly English-dominated

research world” (1990, p. 102).

Hyland (2004a) also agrees that “in an era of globalisation, English is now

established as the world’s leading language for the dissemination of academic

knowledge” (p. ix). He further emphasizes that:

whether we see this as a facilitative lingua franca or a rampaging


Tyrannosaurus rex (Swales, 1997), the dominance of English has
transformed the educational experiences and professional lives of countless
students and academics across the planet. (Hyland, 2004a, p. ix)

Writing, therefore, has become a central element of university courses, as well as

professional development programs, which necessitated the understanding of “what

these discourses of the academy are, and what counts as ‘good writing’” (Hyland,

2004a, p. x).

According to Grabe and Kaplan (1996), “academically valued writing requires

composing skills which transform information or transform the language itself” (p.

17). Therefore, writing, particularly the more complex composing skill appreciated

in the academy, “involves training, instruction, practice, experience, and purpose”

(Grabe and Kaplan, 1996, p. 6). Conventionally, English for Academic Purposes

(EAP) classes have offered academic language support to especially university

4
students. Yet, these courses have generally tended to focus on the general needs of

students involved in academic studies, and catered more for university students at

undergraduate level, who are not expected to carry out or publish research. However,

post-graduate candidates who are engaged in conducting and disseminating research

have more sophisticated needs in terms of language knowledge and related skills,

the most important of which is producing cohesive and coherent written text. Hyland

(2005) holds that EAP teachers should do more research in their classes to better

understand their teaching context (p. 60). This need is even more pressing for EAP

teachers of post-graduate students who have very specialized needs, and who need a

lot of guidance and support in attaining a language level whereby they can report

their research and compete in the international academic discourse community.

Written text is “the product of a series of complicated mental operations” (Clark and

Clark 1977, cited in Richards, 1990, p. 101), and is not easy to construct. After

deciding on a meaning to be conveyed, writers must consider the genre, the style

they are going to employ, the purpose they want to achieve and the amount of detail

required to achieve it (Richards, 1990, p. 101-102). Nunan agrees that “producing a

coherent, fluent, extended piece of writing is probably the most difficult thing there

is to do in language” and “it is something most native speakers never master”. He

also acknowledges the enormity of this challenge for second language learners,

“particularly for those who go on to a university and study in a language that is not

their own” (1999, p. 271).

One very important consideration in text creation is that language does not exist in a

vacuum, but is a social phenomenon used for social interaction. Gumperz (1968, p.

219) emphasizes this fact by referring to verbal interaction as “a social process in

5
which utterances are selected in accordance with socially recognized norms and

expectations”. He states that “the communication of social information presupposes

the existence of regular relationships between language usage and social structure”

(Gumperz, 1968, p. 220). The fact that language use is closely related to the social

context naturally leads to the concept of ‘genre’.

Hyland characterizes genres as “socially recognized ways of using language” (Johns

et al., 2006, p. 3). For Swales, a genre is “a class of communicative events, the

members of which share some set of communicative purposes” (1990, p. 58), and

this purpose determines the genre’s ‘generic’ (Flowerdew, 2000; Halliday & Hasan,

1985; Henry, 2007; Nunan, 1993), ‘organizational’ (Flowerdew, 2000), ‘discourse’

(Swales, 1990), ‘generic move’ (Flowerdew, 2000), or ‘schematic’ (Swales, 1990)

structure. This structure is achieved through units of purpose, called ‘moves’

(Swales, 1990) or ‘move structures’ (Flowerdew, 2000) which are fulfilled by

lexico-grammar (Henry, 2007, p. 1-2). Key lexical phrases represent the move

structures of a genre (Flowerdew, 2000, p. 374). Moves, in turn, are realized through

different ‘strategies’ or ‘tactics’ (Henry 2007), which are tactical selections of the

writer in accomplishing the purpose (Bhatia, 1993, p. 19). These tactics or strategies

similarly necessitate the exploitation of lexico-grammar. Therefore, it can be

concluded that lexico-grammar has a major function in the fulfillment of strategies

or tactics leading to moves, which in turn form the generic structure of a genre, and

thereby reflect its communicative purpose.

The major role lexico-grammar plays in text creation requires a thorough analysis of

lexico-grammatical features employed to fulfill different communicative purposes in

texts, and this comprehensive analysis is nowadays viable through the use of a

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corpus, “a collection of naturally-occurring language text, chosen to characterize a

state or a variety of a language” (Sinclair, 1991, p. 171). Referring to the late 1950s,

Leech (1991) recalls that “for years, corpus linguistics was the obsession of a small

group which received little or no recognition from either linguistics or computer

science” (cited in Granger, 2003, p. 538). Due to the recent developments in

computer technology, however, it is now possible for anyone to store large amounts

of language data on a computer for analysis. Like many other scholars and

researchers, Hunston holds that “corpora, and the study of corpora, have

revolutionized the study of language and the applications of language” (Hunston,

2002, p. 1). Referring to the emergence of this new view of language and the use of

technology related to it, Sinclair points out that “the analysis of language has

developed out of all recognition” (1991, p. 1).

In the last two decades, extensive vocabulary research has been carried out using

corpora. In the 1980’s, the English Language Research group at the University of

Birmingham collaborated with Collins publishers to create language reference

works, and the Collins Cobuild dictionary project produced new research areas in

the study and teaching of languages (Sinclair, 1991, pp. 1-3). Extensive research has

also been done on compiling wordlists based on frequency, as research shows that

most English texts are covered by a limited number of words, with the most frequent

2,000 word families making up 79.7% of all text (Cobb, 2002). Basing her research

on West’s manually compiled list of the most commonly used 2,000 words in

English (GSL, General Service List) in 1953, Coxhead (2000) produced the

Academic Word List (AWL), which is based on a corpus of academic texts from

different fields and consists of the most frequent 570 word families not included in

the GSL. More recently, Billuroglu and Neufeld (2005), in an attempt to tackle the

7
weaknesses they observed in the GSL and the AWL, compiled the BNL (Billuroglu

Neufeld List), which is based on an analysis of six different wordlists comprising

2,709 word families. These lists are invaluable in teaching English, especially for

academic purposes, and are, undoubtedly, indispensable resources for vocabulary

recognition and tools for staged vocabulary development. However, they are

criticized for treating words as isolated units, and separating lexis and grammar.

Wordlists, inasmuch as they are very useful resources in language learning, cannot

be the sole resource to rely on for productive vocabulary teaching purposes, as in

real life, words are never encountered or produced in isolation, but in a social

context.

As regards grammar, the belief is that corpus-based studies have the potential to

revolutionize grammar teaching in the 21st century through providing register-

specific descriptions of English grammar, shifting the emphasis from structural

accuracy to appropriate use of structures, and most importantly, incorporating

grammar teaching with the teaching of vocabulary (Conrad, 2000, p. 549). Extensive

research employing corpora is also being increasingly carried out by genre analysts,

especially by researchers involved in EAP. In addition to studies that focus on the

generic move structure of many different kinds of genres, there has also been

considerable research concerned with how different moves are achieved through

language, i.e, lexico-grammar (Bonn & Swales, 2007; Flowerdew, 2000; Henry,

2007; Hyland, 2004a; Hyland & Tse, 2005; Ozturk, 2007; Paltridge, 2002; Weber,

2001). However, in spite of the wealth of the research in this field, there are few

studies analyzing problems that non-native post-graduate students face in producing

coherent and appropriate language to write their thesis, and to publish in

internationally recognized journals. In addition, although there are books (Swales &

8
Feak, 1994), websites (http://www.uefap.com/index.htm), and university academic

writing centres trying to provide support for post-graduate students in writing their

theses, there has been insufficient attention to the thesis writing instruction.

As already stated, EAP practitioners need to do more research in the classroom so as

to be able to acquire a better understanding of the teaching-learning experiences, and

provide continuous and up-to-date support and guidance to students. The need,

therefore, is to focus more on classroom practices, and exploit corpora not only for

research but also for pedagogic purposes.

1.2 Statement of the Problem

In academic settings, especially at post-graduate levels, non-native speakers of

English are faced with a serious problem. They are specifically expected to produce

work at a native-like level to be admitted into the academic discourse community.

As the conventions in text types determine the intertextuality of texts, creating texts

should not be considered an “individually-oriented, inner directed cognitive

process….but an acquired response to the discourse conventions which arise from

preferred ways of creating and communicating knowledge within particular

communities” (Swales, 1990, p. 4). These communities are known as discourse

communities and they are:

recognized by the specific genres that they employ, which include both
speech events and written text types. The work that members of the discourse
community are engaged in involves the processing of tasks which reflect
specific linguistic, discoursal and rhetoric skills. (Swales, 1990, p. vii)

9
This study focuses on the academic genre of ‘theses’. ENGL501 (currently

Advanced Thesis Writing) is an advanced writing course offered to Masters’ and

PhD candidates from all faculties by the Modern Languages Division of the

Department of General Education at EMU (Eastern Mediterranean University), an

English-medium university in North Cyprus. The students taking this course come

from a variety of countries and backgrounds. The original EFL 501 course was

designed by the former School of Foreign Languages, upon the request of the EMU

Graduate Institute to support Master’s and PhD students languagewise in the thesis

writing stage, as although language support is provided for undergraduate students,

post-graduate students were not previously given language guidance.

The course was first designed to focus on the common language functions and lexis

in academic writing prior to thesis writing. Gradually it evolved into a thesis writing

course with a language focus. Currently, the aims of the course are specified in the

course description as follows: The purpose of this course is to develop the academic

thesis writing knowledge and skills of post-graduate candidates. The course focuses

on improving the participants’ academic study skills, and their knowledge of

academic conventions, and thesis structure and format. It is also the objective of the

course to systematically develop post-graduate candidates’ academic vocabulary

knowledge and skills, to develop their awareness of the need and benefit of

producing multiple drafts with the aim of improving the structure, lexis and style of

their own text, and bringing their work to an acceptable level.

The participants of the thesis writing course observe and analyze the organization,

the discourse structure, the grammar and lexis of different sections or chapters of

authentic theses, and how they are made cohesive and coherent through the use of

10
lexico-grammatical devices. The post-graduate candidates then produce their own

work and are encouraged to identify their own problems with language use, and find

solutions to those problems. To this end, they work on multiple drafts, which make

up their end-of-semester portfolio, until the end-product is adequate.

Although the participants are given guidance and support in terms of the moves

making up the generic structure of the thesis in accordance with the genre-based

approaches, the quality of most of their work reveals a gap between actual and target

performance levels in producing coherent text. The main problem hindering the

production of coherent and appropriate texts seems to be the participants’

insufficient knowledge of the lexico-grammatical resources necessary for meaning

creation. This problem possibly arises from insufficient exposure to, and lack of

awareness of collocations, and syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations that are of

major significance for creating meaning. This problem is consistent with the

findings in the literature. For example, Hunston cites Halliday and Martin (1993)

who emphasize that non-native writers use “fewer of the lengthy noun phrases that

are essential to formal, particularly academic, writing in English” due to the fact that

they do not use prepositions in a ‘native-like’ way (2002, p. 82).

Jordan (1997) also maintains that “written work has been referred to as being one of

the major causes of concern for students” (p. 46), and reports a study (Jordan 1981)

exploring the writing difficulties of overseas post-graduate students taking writing

classes in UK universities. The results showed that these students had the most

difficulty in vocabulary (62%), followed by style (53%), spelling (41%), grammar

(38%), punctuation (18%) and handwriting (12%) respectively. When asked what

caused the difficulty in vocabulary, the students stated ‘using a word correctly’

11
(21%), ‘own lack of vocabulary’ (15%), and ‘confusion caused by similar

sounding/looking words’ (12%). As regards the difficulties with grammar, the

students reported ‘verbs: tense formation and use; active / passive use’ and

‘agreement of verb and subject’ (Jordan, 1997, pp. 46-47). As can be observed from

the percentages, the greatest difficulty in text creation seems to be related to lexico-

grammar.

The problem that has led to the present study can therefore be summarized as

follows. Like all post-graduate students worldwide, the students pursuing a post-

graduate degree at EMU are expected to produce coherent and appropriate academic

texts, so that their work can be accepted in the global academic discourse

community, and so that they can disseminate their research internationally. However,

most of the work produced by the post-graduate candidates taking ENGL501 reveals

problems specifically at the lexico-grammatical level.

1.3 Purpose of the Study

This study employs a corpus-informed approach (McCarthy, 2001) whereby the

applied linguist can “mediate the corpus, design it from the very outset and build it

with applied linguistic questions in mind, ask of it the questions applied linguists

want answers to, and filter its output, use it as a guide or tool for what you, the

teacher, want to achieve” (p. 129). Extracting lexico-grammatical information from

a corpus applies this approach (McCarthy, 2001, p. 138).

The main aim of the study is to construct a pedagogic corpus for ENGL501 that

incorporates various corpus-informed components. The key component of the

pedagogic corpus is a bank of lexico-grammatical patterns to fulfill the generic

12
moves that constitute the overall generic structure of thesis abstracts. In the

pedagogic corpus, there are also tasks for teacher-directed data-driven in-class work,

and a complementary web-based interactive platform (Moodle) to provide access to

the authentic data, the corpora, and to promote learner-led exploratory work. The

complementary platform is a virtual classroom, with all the features of a traditional

classroom and more, which is expected to increase the post-graduate students’

exposure to the pedagogic corpus. Moreover, the increased interaction with the data,

the tasks, peers and the teacher is anticipated to maximize the participants’ learning

opportunities. It is envisaged that the construction of a comprehensive corpus-

informed advanced thesis writing course will assist the post-graduate students

involved in research and publication in creating coherent academic texts, and

therefore help to minimize the gap between the current and the target performance

levels. Through the authentic corpus data and the data-driven tasks, the students are

expected to observe the use of language themselves, and become language

researchers, or ‘language detectives’ (Johns, 1997).

The two corpora incorporated into the pedagogic corpus are constructed from thesis

abstracts. One of the reasons for this choice is that abstracts do not normally include

quotations and paraphrases, and the language is expected to be the writers’ own. The

second reason is that abstracts are miniature forms of research studies. The scientific

research article has a particular type of rhetorical pattern which is reflected through

the Introduction-Method-Results-Discussion (IMRD) format (Swales, 1990).

Although there may be variations across different disciplines, Wood (2001) holds

that these rhetorical conventions “are so accepted and so standard that they are often

given in journal guidelines to contributors” (p. 74). In the same vein, according to

Swales, the abstract, like other genres reporting research, also seems to have an

13
IMRD (Introduction-Method-Results-Discussion) structure (1990, p.181). This

structure reflects the main chapters of the thesis: Introduction, Methodology,

Analysis, and Conclusion. Therefore, it is anticipated that the analysis of abstracts in

this study will reveal language data that are relevant to the thesis as a whole.

For this study, two corpora are compiled: a learner corpus of abstracts of about 100

non-native participants as a representative sample of the whole ENGL501

population (LAC: Learner Abstract Corpus), and a specialized target corpus of

abstracts from universities in countries where English is the native language (TAC:

Target Abstract Corpus). The abstracts in the target corpus are also produced by

learners, not experts. Flowerdew (2000) draws attention to the importance of

providing good ‘apprentice’ models rather than ‘expert’ generic models as these are

difficult to replicate due to learners’ communicative and linguistic deficiencies.

Both corpora are analyzed through computer-based tools: RANGE

(http://www.vuw.ac.nz/lals/staff/paul-nation/nation.aspx) for range and frequency,

Concordance (http://www.concordancesoftware.co.uk/)   and   AntConc 

(http://www.antlab.sci.waseda.ac.jp/software/README_antconc3.2.1.txt) to explore

the syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations of words. The learner abstract corpus

(LAC) is analyzed to identify the most common lexico-grammatical problems in the

academic work produced by the post-graduate candidates enrolled in the advanced

thesis writing course. Then the target abstract corpus (TAC) is analyzed to extract

the targeted lexico-grammar used for fulfilling the strategies and moves within the

generic structure of a thesis, and compose a bank of moves and sub-moves. The data

are integrated into the pedagogic corpus through both teacher-directed data-driven

and learner-led discovery work. Through various task-based activities, the

14
participants are provided with the opportunity to enrich their lexico-grammatical

knowledge, and produce coherent and appropriate academic text. The study will

seek answers to the following research questions:

1. What are the major lexico-grammatical patterns identified in the LAC?

2. What are the major lexico-structural patterns in the TAC?

3. How does the LAC relate to the TAC?

4. What does the cross-examination of the two corpora necessitate in terms of

the comprehensive pedagogic corpus design?

1.4 Significance of the Study

Post-graduate students pursuing Master’s and PhD degrees are required to follow the

latest international developments in their fields, get their research articles published

in international journals and present at conferences. Authenticity and high

performance standards of their academic work are of primary significance. Writing

even in the mother tongue is no easy task. In a foreign language, text creation

becomes a major challenge. Hence, in academic environments, EFL learners have to

compete with their native peers in the international arena not only in terms of the

quality and relevance of their research, but also in the coherent and appropriate

manifestation of their work. Due to the recent developments in computer technology

which have made possible the compilation of vast amounts of authentic data

electronically, more and more studies across the globe are making use of corpora not

only to provide better descriptions of languages, but also to offer a new, and a more

15
effective way of learning languages. However, most of these studies “have focused

on teaching a corpus approach per se rather than incorporating it into the writing

process” (Yoon, 2008, p. 31). The current study is significant, as corpus data is

integrated into the writing process, providing a data-rich environment where post-

graduate students are exposed to authentic language use, and engaged in a process of

discovery learning. Furthermore, this study is the first post-graduate study making

use of corpora in EMU.

This research is also significant in terms of the nature of the ENGL501 course. Most

universities have Academic Writing Centers, academic writing courses, and research

methods courses to assist their post-graduate students. There are not, however, many

universities that offer language support for thesis writing to their post-graduate

students. In fact, a search of all domains ending with '.edu.tr' using WebCorp

produced no reference to any blended advanced thesis writing course at any Turkish

University in Turkey or the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.

Another factor making this research significant is that this pedagogic study

incorporates the use of an e-learning platform, or a virtual learning environment,

which is widely used in the world, including the Open University in the UK

(http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/index.php), but quite innovative on the EMU campus.

This platform, Moodle (http://moodle.org/), which is based on strong underlying

pedagogical principles, provides an environment where new knowledge is created

through the individual’s interaction with the environment, as well as through

individuals constructing things for one another

(http://docs.moodle.org/en/Philosophy). The use of Moodle in this research has

16
increased the participants’ exposure to the target language, and the target genre

manifold.

The research is also noteworthy in that the researcher has continued to teach the

course throughout the research and thesis writing process. This made it possible for

the researcher to examine the difficulties of new groups of post-graduate students,

and continuously revise the pedagogic corpus. Furthermore, she could observe the

impact of the pedagogic corpus and its components on the course participants’

learning and performance.

1.5 Definition of Terms

Corpus:

Sinclair (1991, p. 171) provides the following definition for a corpus: “A corpus is a

collection of naturally-occurring language text, chosen to characterize a state or

variety of a language”. A similar definition is provided by Biber, Conrad, and

Reppen (1998): A corpus “is a large and principled collection of natural texts” (p.

12), which is analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively (p. 5). Hunston (2002)

also states that “a corpus is planned, …, and it is designed for some linguistic

purpose. The specific purpose of the design determines the selection of texts” (p. 2).

In this study, authentic abstracts from the World Wide Web, and from the thesis

writing course participants were compiled into two corpora based on the required

design principles and for a linguistic purpose, and analyzed both quantitatively and

qualitatively to address the identified language-related problem and work towards its

solution.

17
Learner Corpus:

A learner corpus is comprised of texts produced by learners of a language. A learner

corpus is used to “identify in what respects learners differ from each other and from

the language of native speakers ….” (Hunston, 2002, p. 15). The compilation of

learner corpora is very recent, it started only in the 1990s (Granger, 2003, p. 538).

O’Keeffe, McCarthy and Carter (2007) define the compilation of learner corpora as

a very important development, and acknowledge Granger as a ‘forerunner in the

area’ (p. 23). Granger (2003) refers to a learner corpus as “an electronic collection of

authentic texts produced by foreign or second language learners” (p. 538). The best

known learner corpus is the International Corpus of Learner English (ICLE)

(Granger, Dagneaux & Meunier, 2002). The present study utilized a learner corpus

of abstracts produced by EFL post-graduate students.

Specialised Corpus:

For this corpus, particular types of texts are chosen. Therefore, “it aims to be

representative of a given type of text. It is used to investigate a particular type of

language” (Hunston, 2002, p. 15). In this study, the Target Abstract Corpus (TAC) is

a specialized corpus as it is representative of post-graduate thesis abstracts, and is

used to explore the lexico-grammatical patterns fulfilling moves and sub-moves in

theses.

Pedagogic Corpus:

A pedagogic corpus “can consist of all the course books, readers, etc. a learner has

used, plus any tapes, etc. they have heard” (Hunston, 2002, p. 16). In short,

18
according to Hunston, this corpus is comprised of “all the language a learner has

been exposed to” (p. 16). Willis, on the other hand, provides a more comprehensive

definition, and points out that a pedagogic corpus involves the texts that the learners

have encountered, or will encounter (Willis, 2003, p. 165). He maintains that

“learners process a set of texts to enable them to develop their own vocabulary and

work out their own grammar of the language”, and this set of texts can be described

as a pedagogic corpus (Willis, 2003, p. 163). According to Willis (2003), tasks are

also components of a pedagogic corpus (p. 223). This study adopts Willis’ more

inclusive definition of the pedagogic corpus.

Genre:

A genre is “a class of communicative events, the members of which share some set

of communicative purposes” (Swales, 1990, p. 58). Stubbs (2002, p. 20) uses ‘genre’

and ‘text type’ interchangeably. However, according to Biber, “genre categories are

determined on the basis of external criteria relating to the speaker’s purpose and

topic; they are assigned on the basis of use rather than on the basis of form”,

whereas “text types represent groupings of texts that are similar in their linguistic

form, irrespective of genre” (1988, p. 170). Flowerdew and Peacock (2001) define

‘genre’ as “a particular type of communicative event which has a particular

communicative purpose recognized by its users, or discourse community” (p. 15).

This study adopts the definition of ‘genre’ by Swales (1990), Biber (1988) and

Flowerdew and Peacock (2001), and differentiates between ‘genre’ and ‘text type’.

In this study, the genres of post-graduate theses, and specifically thesis abstracts are

explored.

19
Virtual Learning Environment:

A virtual learning environment is “a collection of integrated tools enabling the

management of online learning, providing a delivery mechanism, student tracking,

assessment and access to resources” (http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/InfoKits/

effective-use-of-VLEs). Moodle, which is employed in this study, is an open-source,

free, and highly adaptable virtual learning environment offering a rich selection of

features (Robb, 2004, p. 1).

20
CHAPTER II

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

This chapter aims to present the conceptual framework of the study through a

comprehensive review of text and textuality, text creation and the importance of

lexico-grammar, the significance of the discourse community and the concept of

‘genre’, and the features of academic texts in general and thesis abstracts in specific.

After this exploration of ‘text as product’, writing pedagogy is reviewed as this

study is pedagogical in nature and it is, therefore, essential to explore how text

creation, i.e. writing in language teaching terms, is taught. Following an in-depth

discussion of corpora, their relevance to language teaching pedagogy is assessed.

The section on the use of corpora in language teaching incorporates a review of a

closely related issue, Data-driven Learning (DDL), and the need for a platform to

host and exploit corpora as well as DDL tasks. After the related research studies are

reviewed, and their relevance to the present study explored, the chapter concludes

with a summary of the literature review focusing on the implications for the present

study.

2.1 Texts

2.1.1 Text and textuality

The concept of text has been extensively defined by linguists. Halliday and Hasan

(1976) maintain that a text is not a collection of sentences, but realized through

sentences, and a text needs to form a ‘unified whole’ to be considered as text. They

21
note that most teachers are sometimes unsure about whether their students’

compositions can be regarded as texts or not, and stress the fact that “the distinction

between a text and a collection of unrelated sentences is … a matter of degree” (p. 1-

2).

What, then, is a text and what are the features and regularities through which

textuality is achieved? Stubbs (1996) defines text as “an instance of language in use,

either spoken or written: a piece of language behaviour which has occurred

naturally, without the intervention of the linguist” (p. 4). Halliday and Matthiessen,

on the other hand, consider “any instance of language, in any medium, that makes

sense to someone who knows the language” (2004, p. 3) as text. For Nunan, text is

“any written record of a communicative event” (1993, p. 6) and for Widdowson,

“the product of the process of discourse” where, in written language, the writer is

“part of the communication” (1996, p. 132). Halliday and Hasan provide the

following definition for text: “any instance of living language that is playing some

part in a context of situation” (1985, p. 10).

The common element in all these definitions is that text is an instance of language, a

record, or a product of language in use, making a distinction between ‘text’ and

‘discourse’, the process of language in use. According to Stubbs (Hoey et al., 2007),

text is a static, fixed product, and discourse is a dynamic, interactive process (p.

146). Likewise, Beaugrande and Dressler refer to ‘text’ as an ‘occurrence’, implying

some sort of completion. According to them, a text is a “communicative occurrence

which meets seven standards of textuality” (1981, p. 3). These seven standards are

“the constitutive principles of textual communication and they define and create the

22
form of behaviour identifiable as textual communicating” (Beaugrande and Dressler,

1981, p. 11).

The first standard of textuality is cohesion, “the way in which the components of the

surface text, i.e. the actual words we hear or see, are mutually connected within a

sequence” (Beaugrande and Dressler, 1981, p. 3). According to Halliday and Hasan,

“typically, in any text, every sentence except the first exhibits some form of

cohesion with a preceding sentence, usually with the one immediately preceding”.

That is, each sentence contains at least one anaphoric tie that links it with the

previous one or ones (1976, p. 293). Nunan has a word of caution about cohesion.

He holds that “the cohesive devices themselves do not create the relationships in the

text; what they do is to make the relationships explicit” (1993, p. 27). In a similar

vein, Beaugrande and Dressler emphasize that cohesion by itself is not sufficient,

and for efficient communication, there should be interaction with the other standards

of textuality (1981, p. 4). They point out that cohesion “is the function of syntax in

communication” (1981, p. 48) and it relies on grammatical dependencies which are

“major signals for sorting out meanings and uses” (1981, p. 3).

Coherence “concerns the ways in which the components of the textual world, i.e. the

configuration of concepts and relations which underlie the surface text, are mutually

accessible and relevant” (Beaugrande and Dressler, 1981, p. 4), and it is “the

outcome of cognitive processes among text users” (Beaugrande and Dressler, 1981,

p. 6). The foundation of coherence is the continuity of meaning among the

knowledge stimulated by the expressions of the text (1981, p. 84). Stubbs refers to

coherence as semantic unity or connectedness (1983, p. 9).

23
In addition to cohesion and coherence, which are text-centred notions, there are also

‘user-centred notions’ acting upon textual communication (Beaugrande and Dressler,

1981, p. 7). Two of these are ‘intentionality’ and ‘acceptability’. The text producer

intends to produce a cohesive and coherent text in line with the objectives, and the

text receiver accepts the text as cohesive and coherent and relevant for the objectives

(Beaugrande and Dressler, 1981, p. 7). ‘Acceptability’ requires the text receiver to

maintain cohesion and coherence by providing material, and tolerating disturbances

as required (pp.7-8). Text receivers support coherence through inferencing, and

therefore contributing to the sense of the text (p. 8).

‘Informativity’ is the fifth standard and “concerns the extent to which the

occurrences of the presented text are expected vs. unexpected or known vs.

unknown / certain” (Beaugrande and Dressler, 1981, pp. 8-9). Low informativity

causes boredom, and even rejection of text. On the other hand, very high

informativity puts too much burden on the receivers’ processing and may endanger

communication (Beaugrande and Dressler, 1981, p. 9).

“The factors which make a text relevant to a situation of occurrence” are known as

‘situationality’. Through this standard, “the sense and use of the text are decided”

and the situation helps to make sense of the text (Beaugrande and Dressler, 1981, pp.

9-10). ‘Intertextuality’, the seventh standard, “concerns the factors which make the

utilization of one text dependent upon knowledge of one or more previously

encountered texts”, and it is “responsible for the evolution of text types as classes of

texts with typical patterns of characteristics” (Beaugrande and Dressler, 1981, p. 10).

Although there are certain features that are common to all texts to be considered as

24
texts, there are also texts that share some common characteristics that distinguish

them from other texts.

Beaugrande and Dressler consider these 7 standards of textuality to be concerned

with how occurrences are linked to others “via grammatical dependencies on the

surface (cohesion), via conceptual dependencies in the textual world (coherence);

via the attitudes of the participants towards the text (intentionality and

acceptability); via the incorporation of the new and unexpected into the known and

expected (informativity); via the setting (situationality); and via the mutual

relevance of separate texts (intertextuality)” (1981, p. 37).

In addition to these constitutive principles, there are also ‘regulative’ ones that

“control textual communication rather than define it” (Beaugrande and Dressler,

1981, p. 11). These are ‘efficiency’, ‘effectiveness’, and ‘appropriateness’ of a text.

Efficiency refers to the use of a text with minimum effort by the participants. The

effectiveness of a text is “its leaving a strong impression and creating favourable

conditions for attaining a goal”. “The agreement between its setting and the ways in

which the standards of textuality are upheld” is the appropriateness principle that

regulates and controls a text (Beaugrande and Dressler, 1981, p. 11). According to

Beaugrande and Dressler, “acceptability and appropriateness are more crucial

standards for texts rather than grammaticality and well-formedness” (1981, pp. XIV-

XV).

25
2.1.2 Text Creation

Nunan states that the creation of a written text is a complicated undertaking (1993,

p. 2). An understanding of how textuality is achieved, therefore, initially requires an

understanding of how language resources are used to create text, “the most extensive

unit of meaning” (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004, p. 566). Halliday and Hasan

regard text “as a semantic unit; a unit not of form but of meaning” (1976, p. 2).

Halliday and Matthiessen emphasize that it is important “to be able to think of text

dynamically, as an ongoing process of meaning” (2004, p. 524). Beaugrande and

Dressler maintain that “the text producer has the intention of pursuing some goal via

the text” and thus, text creation is a sub-goal towards the main goal (1981, p. 39).

Texts, then, are produced to achieve goals and to convey meanings, and the greatest

challenge is whether or not the intended messages are coherently and appropriately

communicated through the use of language since, as Beaugrande and Dressler point

out, “knowledge is not identical with language expressions that represent or convey

it” (1981, p. 85).

Having established that text creation is a means to an end, and the ultimate objective

is to communicate via the text, it is worth examining how meaning is encoded

through language. Widdowson proposes that “semantics is the complex interplay of

morphology, lexis, and syntax” (1996, p. 61). They interact with each other to create

meaning. Semantics is concerned with the meanings of words as lexical items

(lexis), the meanings of derivational and inflectional morphemes (morphology) and

how words are ordered (syntax) (Widdowson, 1996, p. 53). Morphology is

concerned with “how morphemes operate in the processes of derivation and

inflection” (Widdowson, 1996, p. 129). Derivation involves ‘lexical innovation’ or

26
‘formation’, i.e. the way words mean, and inflection is about ‘grammatical

adaptation’, i.e. the way words function (pp. 47-48). Therefore, morphology is

closely related to lexis and syntax. Widdowson concludes that although meaning is

communicated by “the morphological and syntactic processes of word adaptation

and assembly; … it is the words which provide the main semantic content” (1996, p.

54).

Morphological and syntactic processes together make up the study of grammar; how

words are combined in sentences, and how they are adapted (Widdowson, 1996, p.

48). As grammar is concerned with word combinations and adaptations, it is

impossible to think of lexis and grammar as two separate entities. McCarthy

believes that there is no major distinction between vocabulary and grammar and “…

any word in the language can be examined from the point of view of grammar, and,

vice versa, any word, even words like articles and prepositions, can be considered as

vocabulary items” (1990, p. 12).

Halliday and Matthiessen use the terms ‘lexicogrammar’ and ‘grammar’

interchangeably and argue that “grammar and vocabulary are not two separate

components of a language- they are just the two ends of a single continuum”, and

“the sound system and the writing system are the two modes of expression by which

the lexicogrammar of a language is presented, or realized” (2004, p. 7). In

lexicogrammar, according to Halliday and Hasan, there is “no hard-and-fast division

between vocabulary and grammar; the guiding principle in language is that the more

general meanings are expressed through the grammar, and the more specific

meanings through the vocabulary” (1976, p. 5). Grammar is the fundamental

processing unit of language (p. 21), and a resource for making meaning (Halliday

27
and Matthiessen, 2004, p. 31). Widdowson also considers grammar as a tool to

express meaning. Grammar, he says, is important because of its communicative

purpose. It serves to “adapt words morphologically and organize them syntactically

so that they are more capable of encoding the reality that people want to express”

(1996, p. 51).

Within lexicogrammar, system and structure are very important in the creation of

meaning. Structure is the “syntagmatic ordering in language patterns, or regularities,

in what goes together with what”. System, which is the paradigmatic ordering in

language, involves “patterns in what could go instead of what” (Halliday and

Matthiessen, 2004, p. 22). System and structure work together and “… each system-

each moment of choice- contributes to the formation of the structure” (Halliday and

Matthiessen, 2004, p. 23). Therefore, what goes together with what and what has the

potential to go instead of what are very important in text creation and “a text is the

product of ongoing selection in a very large network of systems- a system network”

(Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004, p. 23).

Widdowson states that language elements combining with others along a horizontal

dimension are in a syntagmatic relationship, and those that have the same potential

to vertically appear in the same environment are in paradigmatic relationship. The

horizontal elements exist in combination; sounds or letters combine to form words,

words combine to form phrases, phrases combine to form sentences. The vertical

elements, on the other hand, exist in association; “when different forms have the

same possibility of occurrence in a structure at a particular level, and are therefore

equivalent in function, they are paradigmatically associated as members of the same

class of items” (1996, p. 33-34). According to Widdowson, this two-dimensional

28
mode of organization allows the generation of infinite expressions from finite means

and “is the essential source of the creativity and flexibility …. of human language”

(1996, p. 34).

Halliday and Hasan argue that all components of the semantic system are realized

through the lexicogrammatical system” (1976, p. 6). Stubbs holds that “.. messages

are conveyed not only explicitly, by words themselves, but also implicitly, by lexical

and syntactic patterning” (1996, p. 10). Morphological and syntactic processes,

according to Widdowson, perform the function of extending word meanings, and so

“constitute a communicative resource” (1996, p. 52). Therefore, although

grammatical processes play a supportive role in organizing and adapting existing

units of lexical meaning to requirements, they do not initiate meaning but “act upon

meaning already lexically provided” (Widdowson, 1996, p. 55).

As lexis is the initiator of meaning and grammar organizes and changes lexical

meaning according to needs through syntax and morphology, it would be meaningful

to look at the major carrier of meaning in more detail. A lexeme or a lexical item is a

“separate unit of meaning, usually in the form of a word, but also as a group of

words” (Widdowson, 1996, p. 129). Sinclair holds that “lexical items are not always

words, and each word may enter into a variety of relationships with others to realize

lexical items” (2004, p. 161). Lexical words are the ‘content’ words of the

vocabulary of a language, and “they can be viewed in terms of the relations in which

they enter: paradigmatic relations (the options that are open to them) and

syntagmatic relations (the company they keep)” (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004, p.

38).

29
Ginzburg defines paradigmatic relations as those “that exist between individual

lexical items which make up one of the subgroups of vocabulary items, e.g. sets of

synonyms, lexico-semantic groups, etc.”, and holds, for example, that “the meaning

of the verb to get can be fully understood only in comparison with other items of the

synonymic set: get, obtain, receive, etc.” (1979, p. 46). Paradigmatically, words can

form lexical sets. “They function in sets having shared semantic features and

common patterns of collocation” and “typically, the semantic features that link the

members of a lexical set are those of synonymy or antonymy, hyponymy and

meronymy” (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004, p. 40). Antonymy is “the sense

relation of various kinds of opposing meaning between lexical items” (Widdowson,

1996, p. 125), and synonymy “the sense relation of equivalence of meaning between

lexical items” (Widdowson, 1996, p. 131). Cohyponyms are “words that are

subtypes of the same type” and comeronyms are words that are “part of the same

whole” (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004, p. 40). Hyponymy is characterized by

Widdowson as “the sense relation between terms in a hierarchy, where a more

particular term (the hyponym) is included in the more general one (the

superordinate)” (1996, p. 128).

According to Ginzburg, “syntagmatic relations define the meaning the word

possesses when it is used in combination with other words” (1979, p. 46).

Syntagmatically, lexical items can form collocations, “the co-occurrence of lexical

items in text” (Widdowson, 1996, p. 125) and “a tendency for words to occur

together” (Sinclair, 1991, p. 71). Approaches to the semantic analysis of natural

languages depend on the view that ‘lexical items are interrelatable’ (van Buren,

1975, p. 126). The probabilistic view, also known as the ‘collocational theory of

lexical meaning’, was supported by the British linguist J. R. Firth (van Buren, 1975,

30
p. 126). According to Firth, the word ‘night’ is more likely to collocate with the

word ‘dark’ than with ‘hippopotamus’, and this probability is part of the meaning of

the word ‘night’ (van Buren, 1975, p. 126-127). “These probabilistic lexical relations

cut across and therefore independent of grammatical structure” (van Buren, 1975, p.

127). According to the collocational theory, “lexical items are not co-extensive with

any grammatical unit” (van Buren, 1975, p. 127). A lexical item like ‘put up with’

should be considered as one lexical item if it significantly co-occurs with ‘a unique

cluster of other items’ (van Buren, 1975, p. 127).

Carter and McCarthy also refer to Firth as the father of collocation, stating that he

brought the term ‘collocation’ into prominence (1988, p. 32). According to this

Firthian view, collocation is one type of meaning and it is “an abstraction at the

syntagmatic level and is not directly concerned with the conceptual or idea approach

to the meaning of words” (Firth, 1951/1957, cited in Carter and McCarthy, 1988, p.

32). Although collocation is often referred to as a ‘Firthian’ term, Nation (2001)

notes that Palmer used it before Firth. Palmer’s idea of collocation was that each

“must or should be learnt, or is best or most conveniently learnt as an integral whole

or independent entity, rather than by the process of piecing together their component

parts” (Palmer, 1933, p. 4, cited in Nation, 2001, p. 317).

Halliday and Matthiessen consider collocation “an instance of lexical cohesion”

which depends on a tendency of items to co-occur (2004, p. 576-577). McCarthy

holds that the relationship of collocation is central to the study of vocabulary as it is

“an important organizing principle in the vocabulary of any language” (1990, p. 12).

He regards collocation as a “marriage contract between words”, some words being

“more firmly married to each other than others” and gives ‘blond hair’ as a strong

31
collocation as blond can refer to almost nothing else but hair (1990, p. 12).

McCarthy does not make a distinction between collocation and colligation, and

regards the co-occurrence of ‘the’ (a function word) with a noun (a content word) as

collocation (1990, p. 12). Hunston defines ‘colligation’ as “the collocation between a

lexical word and a grammatical one” but mostly refers to this co-occurrence as just

‘collocation’ (2002, p. 12-13). Nation also provides a ‘loose’ definition of

‘collocation’ as “any generally accepted grouping of words into phrases or clauses”

(2001, p. 317).

Syntagmatically, words may also appear together with other words forming phrasal

verbs, compound nouns, and formulaic phrases, “a (relatively) fixed collocation”

(Widdowson, 1996, p. 60). A lot of collocations, however, “are not fixed and can be

syntactically modified to a certain extent” (Widdowson, 1996, p. 60). Halliday and

Matthiessen point out that words sometimes come together and form “patterns

which lie somewhere between structures and collocations, having some sort of the

properties of both” and give ‘take + pride / pleasure / delight + in + -ing’ as an

example (2004, p. 45). It is clear from the example that lexical co-occurrences

(collocations) and co-occurrences of lexical and grammatical words (colligations)

may come together and form longer lexical phrases. Nation has the most global view

of collocations:

Collocations differ greatly in size (the number of words involved in the


sequence), in type (function words collocating with content words (look with
at), content words collocating with content words (united with states), in
closeness of collocates (expressed their own honest opinion), and in the
possible range of collocates (commit with murder, a crime, hara kiri,
suicide…). (2001, p. 56)

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Syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations of lexis play a significant role in text

production through forming ‘lexical relations’ (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004, p.

571). Therefore, lexical cohesion is achieved through lexical relations at the

syntagmatic (collocation) and paradigmatic level (synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy,

meronymy). Through the choice of lexical items, “a speaker or writer creates

cohesion in discourse” (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004, p. 570). According to Hoey

(1991), “lexical cohesion is the only type of cohesion that regularly forms multiple

relationships (though occasionally reference does so too). If this is taken into

account, lexical cohesion becomes the dominant mode of creating texture” (p. 10).

Halliday and Matthiessen believe that collocations have quite a cohesive effect. This

is so because they are “one of the factors on which we build our expectations of

what is to come next” (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004, p. 577). Nation draws

attention to the significant relationship between the size of word groupings such as

collocation, and the level of proficiency:

when language users segment language for reception or production or to hold


it in memory, they typically work with meaningful groupings of items. The
size of these groupings, called chunks, depends on the level of proficiency
they have attained. At one level they are realized as collocations. (Nation,
2001, p. 317)

Grammar and lexis, therefore, “are the essential resources for meaning”, but “how

these resources have to be exploited for language users to achieve meaning”

(Widdowson, 1990, p. 117) is also very important. Therefore, in addition to the

semantic meaning created in language through lexico-grammatical processes, there

is another dimension in text creation: pragmatics, “what people mean by the

language they use” (Widdowson, 1996, p. 61). It is impossible to think of text

33
creation only in semantic terms as, through text, not only are meanings encoded, but

they are also appropriately communicated to the target reader through the context.

Communication “can only be achieved by relating language with context”

(Widdowson, 1990, p. 94).

Pragmatics is concerned with “what people mean in a particular context and how the

context influences what is said” (Yule, 1996, p. 3). It also involves “how people

conform to social conventions” as well as “how people assert themselves and

manipulate others” by taking individual initiative (Widdowson, 1990, p. 68).

Therefore, pragmatics “is concerned with how people negotiate meaning” and also

“how they negotiate social relations” (Widdowson, 1990, p. 68). Appropriateness of

the language to the social context is very important in conforming to social

conventions and building interpersonal relationships. Inappropriate use of language

does not simply mean “a violation of linguistic appropriateness norms”, but “may

lead to misunderstanding of intent” (Gumperz, 1982, p. 50). Pragmatics is about

how people actualize the meaning potential of language (Widdowson, 1996, p. 61).

It is “much concerned with written as with spoken uses of language” such that

“writers assume a degree of shared schematic knowledge, produce texts which are

cohesive and which conform to the conventions of a particular genre” (Widdowson,

1996, p. 68).

2.1.3 Intertextuality

“Every text is in some sense like other texts” (Halliday and Hasan, 1985, p. 42) and

texts, in general, share certain characteristics that help them to be recognized and

accepted as texts. Nonetheless, research has also shown that “texts vary according to

34
the nature of the contexts they are used in” (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004, p. 27).

Therefore, it may be concluded that some texts share more features than others

based on the purposes they serve and the contexts in which they are used.

“The production and reception of a given text depends upon the participants’

knowledge of other texts” (Beaugrande and Dressler, 1981, p. 182). Intertextuality,

according to Beaugrande and Dressler, plays such a central role in the science of

texts that “the whole notion of textuality may depend upon exploring the influence

of intertextuality as a procedural control upon communicative activities at large”

(Beaugrande and Dressler, 1981, p. 206). The role of intertextuality in text creation

is also emphasized by Swales who states that creating texts should not be considered

an “individually-oriented, inner directed cognitive process … but an acquired

response to the discourse conventions which arise from preferred ways of creating

and communicating knowledge within particular communities” (1990, p. 4). These

preferred ways make texts recognizable in their discourse communities. Discourse

communities “tend to separate people into occupational or speciality-interest

groups” (Swales, 1990, p. 24) and have “common goals, participatory mechanisms,

information exchange, community specific genres, a highly specialized terminology

and a high general level of expertise” (1990, p. 29). Swales (1990) suggests that

discourse communities use some specific lexis and also community-specific

abbreviations and acronyms (p. 26).

Beaugrande and Dressler (1981) consider the notion of discourse community to be

very important. They focus on the importance of what some scholars call ‘text types’

and state that “the scientists themselves cannot belong to a scientific community

until they have acquired its conventions of discourse and argumentation. Instruction,

35
description, explanation, examination, interviews, questionnaires, research reports-

all these commonplace uses of texts are as indispensable to science as the most

elaborate technological instruments” (1981, p. 212).

2.1.3.1 Genre and Text Type

In the literature, two different terms are used to refer to texts which share particular

characteristics. These terms are ‘genre’ and ‘text type’. Although some linguists and

researchers do not make a distinction between these two concepts and use them

interchangeably, others consider them as having distinct meanings. Beaugrande and

Dressler use the term ‘text type’ to mean “classes of texts expected to have certain

traits for certain purposes” (1981, p. 182). They say that texts can be assigned to a

text type according to their function in communication (Beaugrande and Dressler,

1981, p. 185), and give ‘descriptive’, ‘narrative’ and ‘argumentative’ texts as

examples of text types, and emphasize that many texts may include all these three

functions (1981, pp. 182-184). However, they also refer to telegrams and road signs

as text types (1981, p. 142), which could be considered genres by other scholars.

Nunan holds that “different types of communicative events result in different types

of discourse, and each of these will have its own distinctive characteristics” (1993,

p. 49), emphasizing ‘purpose’ of different genres. In fact, he stresses the fact that

“the overall structure, appearance and grammatical elements reflect the purposes for

which the texts were created” (Nunan, 1993, p. 53). Nunan refers to the structure of

a text as its ‘generic structure’ and argues that this structure is determined by the

communicative purposes of the text (1993, p. 58).

36
Biber makes a clear distinction between ‘genre’ and ‘text type’. He believes that

“genre categories are determined on the basis of external criteria relating to the

speaker’s purpose and topic; they are assigned on the basis of use rather than on the

basis of form”, whereas “text types represent groupings of texts that are similar in

their linguistic form, irrespective of genre” (1988, p. 170). Therefore, for example,

“particular texts from press reportage, biographies, and academic prose might be

very similar in having a narrative linguistic form, and they would thus be grouped

together as a single text type, even though they represent three different genres”

(Biber, 1988, p. 206). According to Widdowson, genre is “a type of discourse in

written or spoken mode with particular characteristics established by convention”

(1996, p. 127). That he refers to ‘a formal meeting’ (Widdowson, 1996, p. 67) as a

genre seems to indicate that his understanding of genre is similar to that of Biber’s.

Stubbs acknowledges that “some authors distinguish between text type and genre”

(1996, p. 11), but he does not. Therefore, he uses the two terms interchangeably and

cites Kress (1989) to define these terms as “conventional ways of expressing

meanings: purposeful, goal-directed language activities, socially recognized text

types, which form patterns of meaning in the social world” (Stubbs, 1996, p. 11). He

refers to jokes, sermons, chats, committee meetings, debates, signs, etc. as genres (or

text types) (1996, p. 11), and claims that we can gain an understanding of them

through identifying and comparing different genres (1996, p. 12).

In his seminal study “Genre Analysis’, Swales provides a comprehensive definition

of ‘genre’: “A genre comprises a class of communicative events, the members of

which share some set of communicative purposes” (1990, p. 58). He notes that these

communicative purposes form the rationale of the genre which “shapes the

37
schematic structure of the discourse and influences and constrains choice of content

and style” (Swales, 1990, p. 58). From the definition, we can infer that genres share

purposes, schematic structures, content and style.

2.1.3.2 Genre and Register

A discussion on genre necessitates some clarification as to what differentiates it

from the ‘well-established and central concept in linguistics’ (Swales, 1990, p. 41),

register. A register involves “the linguistic features which are typically associated

with a configuration of situational features” (Halliday and Hasan, 1976, p. 22), and

it refers to a language variety defined according to the characteristics of the situation

(McArthur, 1992, p. 839). Halliday and Matthiessen define register as “a functional

variety of language” (2004, p. 27). Halliday and Hasan hold that when a text is

coherent with respect to the situation, it is consistent in register (1976, p. 23).

Registers are sub-classified into field, tenor, and mode of discourse. “Field is

associated with the management of the ideas, tenor with the management of personal

relations, and mode with the management of discourse itself” (Swales, 1990, p. 40).

Couture (cited in Swales, 1990, p. 41) holds that registers enforce limitations on

syntax and vocabulary, whereas genres enforce them on discourse structures.

Additionally, unlike register, a genre can be realized in completed texts and specifies

conditions for beginning, continuing and ending a text. The two concepts are distinct

in that a genre (research report, business report) is a text with a structure, whereas a

register (language of newspaper reporting, bureaucratic language) represents more

generalizable stylistic choices. According to Swales, the study of genre is evolving,

38
it is essential to disconnect genres from registers or styles, and to recognize that

genres have schematic structures (1990, p. 42).

2.1.3.3 Genres, Generic Structure, and Moves

Paltridge defines genres as “ways in which people ‘get things done’ through their

use of language in particular contexts” (Johns et al., 2006, p. 2). According to

Hyland, genres are the socially recognized ways that writers use language “to

respond to and construct texts for recurring situations” (Johns et al., 2006, p. 3).

Tardy admits that genres are complex and provides an interesting definition for

genre, that it is “a kind of nexuses among the textual, social, and political

dimensions of writing” (Johns et al., 2006, p. 4). According to Coe, a genre is a

“culturally typical structure that embodies a socially appropriate strategy for

responding to varied situations” (Johns et al, 2006, p. 8). The common theme

emerging in all definitions of the concept of ‘genre’ is that a genre involves the

socially acceptable use of language in a situation or context to achieve a purpose.

Another common view involving genres is that they should not be seen as

‘permanent’ formulas, as they are living texts and they change according to the

needs of their users (Crossley, 2007, p. 15). Swales (2004) also admits that his 1990

definition of genre was ‘long and bold’, and that such definitions may not be

relevant to “all possible worlds and all possible times” (p. 61).

The overall structure of a genre represents its purpose. Nunan agrees that the

communicative purpose of a text determines its ‘generic structure’ (1993, p. 58). In

the literature, this overall structure of a text is referred to as ‘generic structure’

(Flowerdew, 2000; Halliday & Hasan, 1985; Henry, 2007; Nunan, 1993),

39
‘organizational structure’ (Flowerdew, 2000), ‘discourse structure’ (Swales, 1990),

‘generic move structure’ (Flowerdew, 2000), and ‘schematic structure’ (Swales,

1990). Genres are composed of units of purpose, called ‘moves’ (Swales, 1990) or

‘move structures’ (Flowerdew, 2000), some of which are compulsory and some

optional (Flowerdew, 2000; Hasan, 1985;). These constituent parts, or moves,

represent the writer’s communicative purpose (Flowerdew, 2000) and perform

specific functions (Bhatia, 1993 cited in Henry, 2007, p. 2).

Swales holds that a move is “a discoursal or rhetorical unit that performs a coherent

communicative function in a written or spoken discourse” (2004, p. 228). He

emphasizes that a move should be “seen as flexible in terms of its linguistic

realization”, although “it has sometimes been aligned with a grammatical unit such

as a sentence, utterance, or paragraph” (Swales, 2004, pp. 228-229). He emphasizes

that a move is a ‘functional, not a formal unit’, and can be fulfilled by a clause, or by

several sentences (2004, p. 229).

In addition to the discourse structure represented by the moves, the language used to

realize the moves is also extremely important. Henry emphasizes the significance of

the lexico-grammatical features commonly employed to fulfill moves (2007, p. 1-2),

Flowerdew draws attention to key lexical phrases ‘representative of the move

structures’ (2000, p. 374), and Tardy also emphasizes the lexico-grammatical

features in generic moves (Johns et al., 2006, p. 5). Moves can be realized in a

number of ways, each of which is called a ‘strategy’ (Henry, 2007, p. 3) or a ‘tactic’

(2007, p. 7). Bhatia defines ‘strategies’ as the tactical choices made by the writer to

fulfill his or her intention. He states that these strategies are generally used to make

the “writing more effective, keeping in mind any special reader requirements,

40
considerations arising from a different use of medium or prerequisites or constraints

imposed by organizational and other factors of this kind”. He emphasizes that

strategies do not generally change the fundamental communicative purpose of the

genre (1993, pp. 19-20). Henry highlights the fact that each strategy has its own

lexico-grammatical features that need to be identified (2007, p. 3).

These strategies are clearly identified by Bhatia. After emphasizing that a writer may

use different rhetorical strategies to realize a communicative intention at the level of

a move, he exemplifies this with the first move of research article introductions:

‘establishing the research territory’. According to Bhatia, this first move can be

realized through three strategies. These are a) asserting centrality of the topic, or b)

stating current knowledge, or c) ascribing key characteristics, and the choice

depends upon “the constraints like the nature of the topic / field, the background

knowledge of the intended readership, reader-writer relationship etc.” (1993, pp. 30-

31). It is obvious that the discourse structure of a genre fulfilled by moves, as well as

the lexico-grammatical patterns representative of the relevant moves, play

significant roles in genre studies, and specifically in academic discourse.

2.1.4 Academic Discourse

Jordan discusses the features of academic texts and highlights formality, avoidance

of contractions, colloquialisms and personal pronouns, and the need to use cautious

language while making claims (1997, pp. 240-244). This concept of cautious

language was first termed ‘hedging’ in 1972 and 1973 by George Lakoff (cited in

Jordan, 1997, p. 240) Selinker explains why hedging is important and states that in

scientific writing every attempt to explain a phenomenon in a certain way is open to

41
an alternative explanation (cited in Jordan, 1997, p. 240). Different ways of making

academic language vague are also mentioned by Hyland (cited in Jordan, 1997, p.

241) as the use of modal verbs (would, could), adverbs (probably, possibly),

adjectives (certain, probable), nouns (assumption, estimate) and some lexical verbs

(seem, appear, suggest).

Another feature of academic texts is formality. Formality involves not using

contractions, colloquialisms, many phrasal verbs and personal pronouns, although ‘I’

can sometimes be appropriate depending on the situation. The writer should use an

analytical, objective, intellectual and rational approach and employ a serious,

impersonal and formal tone. In academic texts, passive forms of verbs, complex

sentence structures and specialized vocabulary are frequently used (Jordan, 1997, p.

245).

Some academic discourse conventions, such as the need to be impersonal and

objective, have been changing and evolving. For example, Elbow questions the

language of academic texts which excludes the personal voice, and eliminates the

author from the text. He maintains that ‘a detached and impersonal stance’ is a

‘pretense’ since arguments and opinions cannot be treated separately from the person

who possesses them (cited in Zamel, 1993, p. 3). Hyland states that “over the past

decade or so, academic writing has gradually lost its traditional tag as an objective,

faceless and impersonal form of discourse and come to be seen as a persuasive

endeavour involving interaction between writers and readers” (2005, p. 173). The

recent view is that academic discourse should not be considered as ‘a uniform set of

norms and conventions’, since this attitude would prevent the experience of

constructing knowledge in a community (Zamel, 1993, p. 3). She claims that

42
academic cultures, like all cultures, are constantly re-created by people who enter as

well as the languages they bring with them (1993, p. 7).

The focus in academic discourse nowadays seems to have shifted to knowledge

creation and ‘solidarity’ (Hyland, 2005) with the readers. Writers, Hyland argues,

“do not act in a social vacuum, and knowledge is not constructed outside particular

communities of practice” (2005, p. 191). He suggests that academics do not simply

produce texts, but also use language ‘to acknowledge, construct and negotiate social

relations’, and therefore a successful academic text “displays the writer’s awareness

of both its readers and its consequences” (Hyland, 2005, p. 174). Therefore,

nowadays extensive research is carried out on how writers in academia “use

language to express a stance and relate to their readers” (Hyland, 2005, p.174).

In an earlier article, Hyland again emphasizes the importance of the reader, and

focuses on ways of achieving a collegial stance towards them. He maintains that one

important consideration in academic discourse is how writers try to “modify the

assertions that they make, toning down uncertain or potentially risky claims,

emphasizing what they believe to be correct, and conveying appropriately collegial

attitudes to readers” (2000, p. 179). This stance, or position is achieved through

expressions of doubt and certainty, known as hedges and boosters (Hyland, 2000, p.

179). “Hedges such as might, probably and seem signal a tentative assessment of

referential information and convey collegial respect for the views of colleagues”.

Boosters, on the other hand, are expressions like clearly, obviously and of course,

and they help writers to express confidence and also their involvement and unity

with an audience (2000, p. 179). Hyland claims that conscious awareness of

‘pragmatic features’ such as hedges and boosters are very important in teaching

43
English for Academic Purposes (EAP) (2000, p. 180), since these tools help to get

the work of academics accepted “by balancing conviction with caution, and by

conveying an appropriate disciplinary persona of modesty and assertiveness”

(Hyland, 2000, p. 179).

It may be concluded that in academic discourse, the appropriate expression of ideas

has become as important as the accurate use of the linguistic resources. Pragmatic

features, such as the use of linguistic resources to express solidarity with colleagues,

to get one’s work considered seriously, and therefore to become a member of the

discourse community, are now equally essential. Thus, powerful personal expression

of ideas and arguments has gained major significance in academia.

2.1.4.1 Genres in Academia

Academic texts are of different genres. As stated by Swales, genres share some

common features in terms of purpose, target audience, structure, style, and content.

A genre comprises a class of communicative events, the members of which


share some set of communicative purposes. These purposes are recognized
by the expert members of the parent discourse community, and thereby
constitute the rationale for the genre. This rationale shapes the schematic
structure of the discourse and influences and constrains choice of content and
style. ….In addition to purpose, exemplars of a genre exhibit various patterns
of similarity in terms of structure, style, content and intended audience.
(Swales, 1990, p. 58)

Jordan gives research articles, abstracts, theses, and textbooks as examples of genres

in academic written English (1997, p. 231). Swales regards research articles,

research presentations, grant proposals, theses and dissertations, reprint requests,

and abstracts as instances of academic genres (1990). Scholarly books and

44
conference presentations are also listed as academic genres by Bonn and Swales,

although the research article in a first-rank peer-reviewed journal is referred to as the

‘top’ academic genre as it provides the greatest reward for its writers (2007, p. 93-

94).

2.1.4.1.1 An academic genre: The Abstract

Specific parts of a genre, such as abstract, introduction, discussion and literature

review sections of research articles and theses, are named part genres by some

scholars (Hyland, 2005; Flowerdew, 2000). Although abstracts are sometimes

considered as part genres (Bonn and Swales, 2007), they are generally treated as a

distinct genre as they are ‘independent discourses’ (van Dijk, 1980, cited in Swales,

1990, p. 179). They are independent, as not everyone who reads the abstract will

necessarily read the article itself (Swales, 1990, p. 179).

Morton also stresses the ‘independent’ quality of especially research article

abstracts, and defines an abstract as “a continuous piece of prose written in whole

sentences that can function as an independent discourse” (1999, p. 179). He also

emphasizes the necessity that the abstract “should reflect the structure of the article,

and follow its order exactly” (Morton, 1999, p. 179). He describes this structure as

the presentation of the state of previous research, or a description of the background,

followed by a description of the experiment or research conducted, a description of

the results, and finally a statement of the implications of these results (1999, p. 179).

Morton’s observation is confirmed by Swales, who stands at the forefront in the field

of genre studies. Swales holds that abstracts, like other genres reporting research,

can be said to have an IMRD (Introduction-Method-Results-Discussion) structure

45
(1990, p.181). What is significant is that these moves recur throughout thesis and

research writing in general. Therefore, abstracts act as a miniature of the academic

research genre as a whole, which makes them a powerful and useful research and

teaching device in general. However, Swales (1990) observes that abstracts are a

neglected genre which is quite unfortunate, as they are specifically suitable for genre

investigation (p. 181).

Chan and Foo hold that “the abstract is perceived as a rhetorical structure” (2001, p.

4). They also emphasize the information structure realized by moves. They maintain

that the abstract is genre specific, “governed by a consistent set of information

elements, organized in a specific structure, and expressed in a particular style”

(2001, p. 4). They also stress the fact that the cohesion of the abstract is sustained by

a move structure, and “follows a broad model of the research paper” (Chan & Foo,

2001, p. 4): an introduction, which includes the statement of purpose, followed by

the main method used, then the most significant result, and finally the conclusion or

recommendation statement (2001, p. 4).

The research article abstract “has emerged as a result of a well-defined and

mutually-understood communicative purpose that most abstracts fulfil, irrespective

of the subject-discipline they serve” (Bhatia, 1993, pp.77-78). Bhatia defines an

abstract as “a description or factual summary of the much longer report, … meant to

give the reader an exact and concise knowledge of the full article” (1993, p. 78).

Bhatia also identifies four moves in abstracts: Introducing purpose, describing

methodology, summarizing results, and presenting conclusions (1993, pp. 78-79).

46
Research results reveal that journal abstracts reflect the structure of the research

article, across different disciplines (Hyland, 2000 cited in Hyland, 2004, p. 203).

Again consistent with Swales’ IMRD moves and Bhatia’s four moves, the rhetorical

moves in article abstracts are given as: Introduction, Purpose, Method, Results,

Conclusion (Hyland, 2000 cited in Hyland, 2004, p. 204). Hyland also provides

information on the key features of journal abstracts revealed in the study (2004, p.

204). Firstly, while the present tense is used for the background introduction and

purpose, the past tense is common in reporting methods and results. Another finding

is that although writers sometimes refer to themselves using pronouns, the use of the

passive voice and inanimate subjects is also common. The verbs used in different

moves differ. For the ‘purpose’ move, presentation verbs like discuss, describe,

explore, and address are employed, while verbs such as show, demonstrate, find, and

establish are used in the ‘results’ move. Extensive use of noun groups, which

“allows the writers to package complex events and entities as single things”

(Hyland, 2004, pp. 204-205), is also observed. Hedges are common in an attempt to

avoid overstating findings. “This may be intended to state the writers’ confidence in

the findings precisely, to avoid criticism, or to show respect for the alternative views

of others” (Hyland, 2004, p. 205).

Hedges are used in abstracts written in other languages as well. According to the

findings of a small-scale study comparing Turkish-medium thesis abstracts with

those written in English, grammatical and lexical words are employed as hedges.

Further, while the tense in abstracts written in both languages is predominantly

present, their move structures also display considerable similarity (Hancioglu, 2002,

pp. 4-6). Cross-linguistic analysis of abstracts has attracted considerable attention in

the recent years. Bonn and Swales (2007) compared French and English academic

47
article abstracts from the language sciences, and found that in French article

abstracts longer sentences are used, and in English abstracts, more passives are

employed (p. 93). An interesting finding was that the abstracts written in English

attempt to situate their research within a wider academic context (p. 104). Bonn and

Swales (2007) state that this may be due to the wider size of the English discourse

community (p. 93).

2.2 Writing Pedagogy

So far, the product, i.e. the text, has been explored in depth. As this research is

pedagogical in nature, and since especially non-native writers from different fields

need guidance and instruction in becoming aware of, and meeting the requirements

of producing a coherent and appropriate text, writing pedagogy, with a special focus

on academic writing (EAP-English for Academic Purposes), also needs to be

investigated.

2.2.1 Approaches to Writing

Different approaches to teaching writing are characterized by their different focuses:

the form, the writer, the reader. Although these approaches have developed as a

reaction or as an attempt to improve the previous one, they all have a place in theory

and in practice today (Raimes, 1991, p. 408). The Product Approach emerged in the

late 1960’s, when the audio-lingual method was used in language instruction. Jordan

defines this approach as being concerned with ‘the finished product’ (1997, p. 164).

This approach, also known as text-based approach, considers writing “as mainly

concerned with knowledge about the structure of language”, and development in

writing is regarded as “the result of imitation of input in the form of texts” (Badger,

48
2002, p. 1). Pincas states that this approach considers writing “as primarily about

linguistic knowledge, with attention focused on the appropriate use of vocabulary,

syntax, and cohesive devices” (cited in Badger and White, 2000, p. 153). In this

approach, learning how to write has four stages: familiarization by analyzing the

target text, controlled writing, guided writing and free writing. Leki criticizes this

approach saying that what is called guided writing in this approach is in fact

‘disguised grammar exercises’ (1991, p. 8). The other main criticisms of this

approach are that skills, such as planning, play a minor role, that the learners’

knowledge is undervalued, and that the social context in which texts are produced is

not paid enough attention (Badger, 2002, p. 1). Another criticism is that presenting

the students with an ‘aimed-for model’ and expecting them to produce a parallel text

restricts them in what they can write and how they can write it (Jordan, 1997, p.

164).

The emergence of the communicative approach led to student-centred learning, and

therefore resulted in focus on the writer, rather than the finished text, the meaning

rather than the form, the process approach. One vital element of this approach is the

feedback from the teacher and peers to enable the writer to make improvements to

the writing produced. Keh points out that feedback in the form of comments,

suggestions and questions a reader provides for the writer serves as a good

opportunity for revision by offering a reader perspective (1990, p. 294). The process

approach mainly regards writing “as the exercise of linguistic skills and writing

development as acquisition which happens in situations where teachers facilitate the

exercise of writing skills” (Badger, 2002, p. 1). The writing skills mentioned here

are rehearsing or pre-writing, drafting, revising and editing. The focus in this

approach is not the product, but the process the students go through to create it. The

49
rationale is that “error-free writing without substance is not as good as substantive

writing even with errors” (Leki, 1991, p. 10), and “text evolves as a result of the

writer’s efforts to explore, formulate, and reformulate meaning through revision”

(Dheram, 1995, p. 160).

Jordan holds that to help students with the challenging process of expressing

themselves effectively in writing, the process approach, which “is concerned with

the processes of writing that enable the product to be achieved”, is used. Especially

lower level students are expected to benefit from this approach since “the processes

involved match the mental processes inherent in writing in the mother tongue,

namely, planning, drafting, rethinking, revising, etc.” (1997, p. 164). Leki believes

that when students are not focused on grammatical mistakes, and instead they write

freely to convey a message, they “develop confidence and a sense of power over the

language …” (1991, p. 8). With this approach, the students, liberated from an

approach emphasizing correct form and accuracy, can express themselves fluently.

They have “more opportunities for meaningful writing, are less dependent on the

teacher, and work collaboratively with other students” (Richards, 1990, p. 110).

There are, however, some critics of this approach as well. Badger summarizes these

criticisms as follows: These approaches “regard all writing as being produced by the

same set of processes”, do not pay a lot of attention to the kind of texts writers

produce, and may not “provide learners with sufficient input to carry out the writing

tasks successfully” (2002, p. 1). One other criticism is that since EAP writing is very

product-oriented and the conventions regarding the organization and expressions are

very tight, an approach that encourages meaning, individuality and fluency may not

be appropriate for it. Therefore, there is the need to familiarize students with these

50
conventions to help them operate within them (White, 1988 cited in Jordan, 1997, p.

168).

Hyland is also a strong critic of process approaches and he offers five limitations

related to this approach. Firstly, process writing “represents writing as a

decontextualised skill by foregrounding the writer as an isolated individual

struggling to express personal meanings” (2003, p. 18). Language use is the

outcome of ‘individual capacities’. Thus, while this “approach acknowledges the

cognitive dimensions of writing and sees the learner as the active processor of

information, it neglects the actual processes of language use” (Hyland, 2003, p. 19).

Secondly, these models “disempower teachers and cast them in the role of well-

meaning bystanders” (2003, p. 19). The feedback stage is the most important step in

this approach as explicit teaching of language is most likely to occur here. However,

as language and rhetorical organization are only dealt with in the final ‘editing’

stage, students are not offered an understanding of how different texts are

constructed in clear and recognizable ways in terms of their purpose, audience and

message. The third limitation of this approach is that what is to be learned is not

clear. Students are expected to discover appropriate forms as they are writing, aided

by the teacher’s feedback and samples of expert writing which are not analysed. This

attitude presupposes knowledge of target texts. L1 students may actually have this

knowledge. However, L2 learners “do not have access to this cultural resource and

so lack knowledge of the typical patterns and possibilities of variation within the

texts that possess cultural capital”. These L2 learners are then forced to utilize “the

discourse conventions of their own cultures and may fail to produce texts that are

either contextually adequate or educationally valued” (Hyland, 2003, p. 19).

51
A fourth limitation, according to Hyland, is the role of the hidden American values

in process methods. Principles such as personal voice, peer review, critical thinking

and textual ownership “incorporate an ideology of individualism which L2 learners

may have serious trouble accessing”. These norms of thought and expression may be

clear and familiar to American students, but for students whose cultures do not

involve the ideology of individualism, these norms may be difficult to recognize and

accept (Hyland, 2003, p. 20). The final limitation that Hyland mentions is the “lack

of engagement with the socio-political realities of students’ everyday lives and target

situations”. This approach caters for the individual needs and personalities of

learners and fails to offer them access to the resources to “participate in, understand,

or challenge valued discourses”, thus failing to present them with “the cultural and

linguistic resources necessary for them to engage critically with texts” (Hyland,

2003, p. 20).

After remaining the dominant pedagogical practice for more than 30 years, the

process approach started to be replaced by more socially-oriented views of writing,

which reject the liberal individualism (Hyland, 2003, p. 17). The genre-based

approach has been “a response to the occasional excesses of a process approach to

writing instruction. An emphasis on a process approach often disregards the

importance of written form and, in effect, takes power away from learners,

particularly those from different language and culture backgrounds” (Reppen, 2002,

p. 321). For these learners from different backgrounds, unless teachers bring the

forms and patterns of language use to conscious awareness, many writing

conventions will forever remain unlearned. Emphasizing the process at the expense

of the product ignores the need for direct instruction of features of text.

52
Nevertheless, students are still being assessed on features such as text organization

and sentence structure (Reppen, 2002, p. 321-322). The genre approach, on the other

hand, recognizes the vital role of language in written communication. Genre,

therefore, “is, in part, a social response to process” (Hyland, 2003, p. 9).

Genres have their own specific structures and own grammatical forms that reflect

their specific communicative purpose. Nunan notes that this communicative purpose

will determine the characteristics of the type of discourse (1999, p. 280). The goal of

genre pedagogies is to “explore ways of scaffolding students’ learning and using

knowledge of language to guide them towards a conscious understanding of target

genres and the ways language creates meanings in context” (Hyland, 2003, p. 20). A

genre-based approach to writing regards writing as “essentially concerned with

knowledge of language in context and the development of writing as a response to

input in the form of texts” (Badger, 2002, p. 1).

There are strong similarities between this relatively new approach and the product

approach and, in some ways, “genre approaches can be regarded as an extension of

product approaches”. Like the product approach, this approach “regards writing as

predominantly linguistic,” but unlike the product approach, it emphasizes that

“writing varies with the social context in which it is produced” (Badger and White,

2000, p. 155). The focus in this approach is on purpose. Different kinds of writing

fulfill different purposes. In addition to purpose, there are some other important

considerations such as the subject matter, the relationships between the writer and

the audience, and the pattern of organization. The theory of learning in this

approach, although not explicitly stated, is that “learning is partly a question of

imitation and partly a matter of understanding and consciously applying rules”

53
(Badger and White, 2000, p. 155). In this approach, after a sample text is introduced

and analysed, students manipulate the language elements and eventually produce the

target text (Badger, 2002, p. 1).

According to Hyland, “genre analysis can … provide the vocabulary and concepts to

explicitly teach the text structures we would like our students to produce. It places

language at the center of writing development by allowing shared understanding and

explicit guidance” (1992, p. 16). Genre theory suggests that explicit knowledge of

language is a very important aspect of effective communication and “seeks to

establish that it is the context-determined structure of a piece of writing in

combination with its propositional content that gives the text its meaning” (Hyland,

1992, p. 17).

The genre-based approach has however been criticized for underemphasizing the

skills needed to produce a text and causing the learners to be passive. The learners

may be able to deal with the types of texts they have studied in the classroom, but

not be able to tackle new forms of texts outside the classroom. Moreover, they are

not likely to use the language creatively (Badger, 2002, p. 1). The Process Genre

Approach emerged as a consequence of the dissatisfaction caused by the emphasis

on the product in the genre approach, where skills like drafting, revising and editing

are undervalued. The development of writing in this approach is regarded as

involving knowledge about language (product and genre approaches), knowledge of

the context in which writing takes place (genre approach) and the purpose for the

writing (genre approach). According to the process genre view, writing develops by

extracting the learner’s potential (process approach), and by providing input for the

learner to respond (product and genre approaches) (Badger and White, 2000, p.

54
158). In the genre approach, writing takes place in a social situation and aims to

achieve a specific purpose, which determines the subject matter, the writer/reader

relationship, and organization, channel, or mode. To enable learners to be able to do

so, the genre approach focuses on the language used in a particular text. In the

process genre approach, the writers’ processes in producing a text by reflecting such

elements as field (purpose of communication, the subject matter), tenor (who the

audience is/the social role relationships), and mode (channels of communication) are

included. After learners have identified the field, mode and tenor with the help of the

teacher, peers or sample texts, they use the skills appropriate to the genre, such as

redrafting and proofreading, and produce a text (Badger and White, 2000, p. 158).

A writing class employing a process genre approach starts with the situation that

leads to a specific genre of writing. Then students produce some writing “in line

with their own needs supported by the teacher, their peers and sample texts”

(Badger, 2002, p. 1). Therefore, where learners lack knowledge, there are three

potential sources: the teacher, other learners and examples of the target genre. The

most typical source of input on contextual and linguistic knowledge is language

awareness activities, based on a corpus of the relevant genre as there are similarities

between texts written for the same reason. These activities help learners to notice the

kind of sentence structure and vocabulary used in this genre (Badger and White,

2000, p. 159).

2.2.2 The Process Genre Approach in EAP

EAP (English for Academic Purposes) writing is currently dominated by genre-

based approaches as there is widespread belief that different communicative

55
purposes result in different genres, and it is more valuable to focus on the discourse

structure and linguistic features relevant to that genre, rather than the general

features of text in general. Henry believes that the aims of a genre approach in ESP

(English for Specific Purposes) are to focus on the organization of information in

genres through moves performing specific purposes, and to establish the obligatory

and optional moves and their order. This focus is claimed to have resulted in

students organizing their writing more effectively (Henry, 2007, p. 1).

Another very important aim in this approach to writing is to identify the linguistic

features employed to achieve the moves and present these in a meaningful context.

Yet, in this regard, Henry has a word of caution. He emphasizes the need to provide

learners with ‘a wide enough range of linguistic options’ to choose from to fulfill the

different generic functions, since otherwise there is the risk of learners perceiving

“the limited number of formulas as a template to be followed rather than as a

description of acceptable language conventions” (2007, pp. 1-3).

Genre-based models are based on explicit theory of “how language works or the

ways that social context affects linguistic outcomes” (Hyland, 2003, p. 20). In

academic contexts, the acceptability of texts is very important to be able to become a

member of the academic discourse community and in a genre-based approach,

“language is seen as embedded in (and constitutive of) social realities, since it is

through recurrent use of conventionalized forms that individuals develop

relationships, establish communities, and get things done” (Hyland, 2003, p. 21).

Considering this view, the Process Genre approach seems to be a valuable approach,

especially in the teaching of academic writing. The strength of product-based

56
approaches is that they set out principles for the selection of content, which is a

matter of syllabus design. Process-oriented approaches, on the other hand, have

implications towards classroom action, which are purely methodological concerns

(Bamforth, cited in Nunan, 1999, p. 287). Nunan points out that “any comprehensive

approach to pedagogy must incorporate syllabus design, methodology, and

assessment” (Nunan, 1999, p. 287).

As already stated, generic moves in different genres are realized by strategies, which

are in turn fulfilled through distinct lexico-grammatical structures. Flowerdew

maintains that key lexical phrases are “representative of the move structures” (2000,

p. 374). In this regard, the use of corpora, which will be discussed in detail in this

chapter, is a great means of extracting the lexico-grammar, as a corpus provides vast

amounts of data and corpus software allow quick and easy manipulation of the

language data. Beaugrande notes that “the advent of large corpus data with user-

friendly access marks a turning point in the evolution of descriptive linguistics”

(2002, p. 1), and concludes that “we should no longer displace real data with

invented data” (Beaugrande, 2002, p. 28).

2.3 Corpora and Applications

2.3.1 Corpora

A corpus may be defined as “a large collection of instances of spoken and written

texts” (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004, p. 29), as “a collection of naturally

occurring examples of language, consisting of anything from a few sentences to a set

of written texts or tape recordings, which have been collected for linguistic study”

(Hunston, 2002, p. 2), and more recently as “collections of texts (or parts of text)

57
that are stored and accessed electronically” (Hunston, 2002, p. 2). Sinclair adds a

new dimension to the definition by pointing out that “a corpus is a collection of

naturally-occuring language text, chosen to characterize a state or variety of a

language” (1991, p. 171).

Corpora, which were first constructed in computer-readable form in the 1960s and

1970s (Stubbs, 1996, p. xvii), have made the observation of language possible. In

the past, language description relied on introspection, which utilized intuitions, and

elicitation, which drew on the intuitions of other members of the community.

Although these two methods of linguistic data collection reveal information about

the formal properties and the typical functioning of language, they do not expose

data about actual language behaviour (Widdowson, 1996, pp. 72-73). Corpora make

the observation of language possible on a vast scale (Widdowson, 1996, p. 73) and

provide authentic data. Referring to this authenticity, Halliday and Matthiessen

maintain that “what people actually say is very different from what they think they

say; and even more different from what they think they ought to say” (2004, p. 34).

Sinclair calls this ‘objective evidence’ (1991, p. 1) and holds that supporting the idea

that “invented examples can actually represent the language better than real ones” is

‘absurd’ (1991, p. 5). Cook and Prodromou suggest that corpus data include all the

peculiarities of native speaker language and contain cultural elements, and therefore

material to be presented to the learner should be adapted according to the local

context. On the other hand, Carter, like Sinclair, advocates the use of genuine

language with learners, saying that otherwise the learner would always be an

average user of the language and would be deprived of the opportunity to use the

language at a native speaker level (cited in Deterding, 2005).

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A corpus gives information about what language is like, and it is more dependable

than native speaker intuition since although the native speaker has “experience of

very much more language than is contained in even the largest corpus, much of that

experience remains hidden from introspection” (Hunston, 2002, p. 20). Intuition is

not very helpful in four aspects of language: collocation, frequency, prosody and

phraseology. It is easy to intuit some common collocations, such as ‘play – game’,

while it is not for some others such as adverb-adjective combinations, such as

‘acutely aware’. Without corpus evidence, the native speaker may not be aware of

them (Hunston, 2002, p. 21). Similarly, without corpus data, being conscious of the

relative frequency of words, phrases and structures is difficult. For native speakers,

it is equally difficult to intuit many instances of pragmatic meaning, and also

unusual phraseology without corpus backup (Hunston, 2002, pp. 21-22). However,

intuition is very important in “extrapolating important generalizations from a mass

of specific information in a corpus” (p. 22). Hunston stresses the fact that “the

corpus simply offers the researcher plenty of examples, only intuition can interpret

them” (2002, p. 23).

Over the last few decades, “corpora, and the study of corpora, have revolutionized

the study of language and the applications of language” (Hunston, 2002, p. 1), as

computers became more accessible, and more technologically advanced, making it

possible to handle large amounts of data and allowing more corpus studies to be

conducted (Hunston 2002, Biber et al. 1998). Biber et al. also maintain that

empirical investigations of corpora “can shed new light on previously intractable

research questions in linguistics” (1998, p. ix), and the corpus-based approach “has

opened the way to a multitude of new investigations of language use” (1998, p. 3).

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According to Biber et al. (1998), through the study of corpora, it is not possible to

determine what is possible in language, but how the language is actually used in

naturally occurring texts (p. 1). Therefore, a corpus-based approach involves the

study of language use, and analysts “attempt to uncover typical patterns rather than

making judgments of grammaticality” (Biber et al., 1998, p. 3). Hunston similarly

draws attention to the fact that a corpus does not give information about the

possibility of a language item. Instead, it will present data on its frequency.

Furthermore, she adds that a statement about evidence in a corpus will be relevant

for that particular corpus, and therefore “conclusions about language drawn from a

corpus have to be treated as deductions, not as facts” (2002, pp. 22-23).

The corpus-based approach is empirical, “analyzing the actual patterns of use in

natural texts”, and relies on quantitative as well as qualitative analytical techniques

(Biber et al., 1998, p. 4). Biber et al. point out one important consideration for

corpus-based approaches. The analyses should go beyond simple counts of linguistic

features, and include qualitative, functional interpretations of quantitative patterns

(1998, pp. 4-5). Hunston similarly maintains that a corpus provides evidence in the

form of many examples which can only be interpreted by intuition (2002, p. 23).

A corpus-based approach may study the language use patterns for a linguistic

structure, the language of a text or a group of speakers / writers, or the language of

different texts or groups of texts (Hunston, 2002, p. 2). The patterns of language use

in different texts provide information on language varieties, how different situations

require different language registers. Such studies attempt to describe the

characteristics of registers, in which grammatical and lexical choices play a major

role (Hunston, 2002, p. 2). McCarthy also emphasizes the ‘social’ dimension of

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corpora and corpus linguistics. He states that “its method, gathering large amounts

of representative data, whether written or spoken, immerses it in the social, the

world of texts and users, of producers and consumers” (2001, p. 125).

There are different approaches to corpora (McCarthy, 2001). The ‘corpus-based’

approach is using corpora to demonstrate some known facts about the language. On

the other hand, through a ‘corpus-driven’ approach, one can “go with a completely

open mind to a corpus, willing to be guided, illuminated by it in ways one could not

dream of”. A third approach, which critics of corpus work like Widdowson fail to

explore according to McCarthy, is the ‘corpus-informed approach’. Widdowson

claims that ‘freezing language in a computer database’ decontextualizes language

and makes it impossible to use it as ‘real’ and ‘authentic’ in the language classroom

(cited in McCarthy, 2001, p. 128). However, McCarthy holds that with the corpus-

informed approach, the applied linguist can “mediate the corpus, design it from the

very outset and build it with applied linguistic questions in mind, ask of it the

questions applied linguists want answers to, and filter its output, use it as a guide or

tool for what you, the teacher, want to achieve” (2001, p. 129). Extracting lexico-

grammatical information from a corpus is an example for this approach (McCarthy,

2001, p. 138).

A corpus can do nothing at all by itself, but corpus access software re-arranges this

store of used language, allows observations of various kinds to be made and

provides a new perspective on language (Hunston, 2002, p. 3). Corpus analysis tools

manage data in three ways: to show frequency, phraseology, and collocation (2002,

p. 3), which will be explained in Chapter three in detail. Frequency counts are very

useful, since they give valuable information on the frequencies of lexical and

61
grammar words in different corpora (Hunston, 2002, p. 3), as well as frequencies of

categories of linguistic items (e.g. present and past tenses) across registers (2002, p.

8). Through phraseology, on the other hand, differences between easily confused

words can be easily observed from the concordance lines (Hunston, 2002, p. 12).

Through concordance lines, it is also possible to observe the ‘central and typical’,

meaning distinctions, meaning and pattern, and detail (Hunston, 2002, p. 42).

Although a corpus cannot be used to establish what is impossible or possible in a

language, it provides information about ‘central and typical usage’. Typicality

involves “the most frequent meanings or collocates or phraseology of an individual

word or phrase” (Hunston, 2002, p. 42). Centrality, on the other hand, “can be

applied to categories of things rather than to individual words” (2002, p. 43). For

example, although present progressive can be used for the present, the future, or no

specific time, the central use is for the present time. A corpus serves an important

purpose here as the prototypical (what is felt to be typical) may not be the most

frequent (Hunston, 2002, pp. 43-44). Exploring collocations in corpora is also very

valuable, as they “can indicate pairs of lexical items, … , or the association between

a lexical word and its frequent grammatical environment”, the latter frequently

called ‘colligation’ (Hunston, 2002, p. 12). Collocational information can be useful

in highlighting the different meanings of a word, therefore providing a semantic

profile of the word, and in obtaining a profile of the semantic field of a word

(Hunston, 2002, pp. 75-79).

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2.3.2 Types of Corpora

Corpora are designed for particular purposes, and the purpose determines the

corpora types. Sinclair broadly classifies corpora into two as ‘sample’ and ‘monitor’

corpora (1991, p. 23). In sample corpora, the most important consideration is ‘the

printed language as a whole’, and there is a ‘close to random selection of extracts

within genres’ (Sinclair, 1991, p. 23). The Brown Corpus and LOB (the Lancaster-

Oslo/Bergen Corpus) are sample corpora which consist of American English and

British English, respectively. The LOB corpus “is the British counterpart of the

Brown Corpus of American English”, and it is compiled from texts printed in the

same year as the Brown Corpus, in 1961, so that comparison between these two

varieties of English could be made

(http://www.essex.ac.uk/linguistics/clmt/w3c/corpus_ling/content/corpora/). The

second type, the ‘monitor’ corpora, holds a “’state of the language’ for research

purposes” (Sinclair, 1991, p. 26) as opposed to ‘sample’ corpora, which “have a

large and up-to-date selection of current English available” (1991, p. 25). Sinclair

suggests that the monitor corpus is now ‘a standard research tool’ (1991, p. 26).

Hunston, on the other hand, has a more specific classification regarding the types of

corpora, and lists the commonly used corpus types as ‘specialised corpus’, ‘general

corpus’, ‘comparable corpora’, ‘parallel corpora’, ‘learner corpus’, ‘pedagogic

corpus’, ‘historical or diachronic corpus’ and ‘monitor corpus’ (2002, pp. 14-16). A

specialized corpus aims to represent a specific text type, and researchers often

compile “their own specialized corpora to reflect the kind of language they want to

investigate” (Hunston, 2002, p. 14). A general corpus consists of texts of different

types, and it is not likely to represent any particular ‘whole’. This type is generally

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larger than a specialized corpus, and it is sometimes referred to as ‘reference corpus’

as “it is often used as a baseline in comparison with more specialized corpora”. LOB

and the Brown corpus are early examples of general corpora (Hunston, 2002, pp. 14-

15). This kind of corpus is called a ‘sample corpus’ by Sinclair (1991, p. 23).

Comparable corpora are two or more corpora which are used to compare different

languages or different varieties of a language. Parallel corpora, on the other hand,

contain texts “that have been translated from one language into the other” (Hunston,

2002, p. 15). A historical or diachronic corpus contains texts from different time

periods and it is “used to trace the developments of aspects of a language over time”

(Hunston, 2002, p. 16). A monitor corpus is “designed to track current changes in a

language”, so that a language can be compared yearly (2002, p. 16).

A learner corpus is composed of texts which are produced by learners of a language.

The compilation of learner corpora is a very recent development. Granger (2003)

emphasizes that “only in the early 1990’s did publishers and academics-

concurrently but independently- start collecting and analyzing learner data” (p. 538).

In this early period, two learner English corpora were developed: the Longman

Learners’ Corpus (Longman Corpus Network, 2003), and the International Corpus

of Learner English (ICLE, Granger, n.d) (Granger, 2003, p. 538). Learner corpora

aim to find out “in what respects learners differ from each other and from the

language of native speakers”. To fulfil the latter aim, a comparable corpus of native-

speaker texts is necessary (Hunston, 2002, p. 15).

The last type in Hunston’s categorization of corpora is the pedagogic corpus, which

consists of “all the language a learner has been exposed to” (Hunston, 2002, p. 16).

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Willis’s definition, however, is much more inclusive: A pedagogic corpus involves

the texts that the learners have encountered, or will encounter (Willis, 2003, p. 165).

According to Willis (2003), “learners process a set of texts to enable them to develop

their own vocabulary and work out their own grammar of the language”, and this set

of texts can be described as a pedagogic corpus (p. 163).

2.3.3 The Use of Corpora in Applied Linguistics

Corpora are currently used in various fields and for various purposes in Applied

Linguistics, ‘to solve real-world problems’ (Hunston, 2002, p. 136). By far the most

influential application of corpora has possibly been in the writing of dictionaries and

grammar books for learners in that “even people who have never heard of a corpus

are using the product of corpus investigation” (Hunston, 2002, p. 96). The effect of

corpus analysis has been that there is now more emphasis on frequency, collocation

and phraseology, variation, lexis in grammar, and authenticity in dictionaries and

reference books. As a result, reference books stress frequency and typicality, as well

as phraseology and the interaction between lexis and grammar more (Hunston, 2002,

pp. 108-109).

Another application of corpora has been in the study of ideology and culture, critical

linguists or critical discourse analysts studying “the role of language in forming and

transmitting assumptions about what the world is and should be like, and the role of

language in maintaining (or challenging) power relations” (Hunston, 2002, p. 109).

Hunston gives as an example a research study carried out by Fairclough who used

two corpora (New Labour and Old Labour Party documents) with the aim of

showing changes in the ideology of the party through its language (2002, p. 110).

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Corpus investigation is also increasingly used in translation, as for institutions such

as the European Union, improving and automating translation are very important

(Hunston, 2002, p. 123) and corpora offer evidence for “how words are used and

what translations for a given word or phrase are possible” (2002, p. 128).

Although dictionaries, grammars and translation aids may all help writers, current

work making use of corpora to offer support for writers appears to concentrate on

writers in specific areas, “who have fairly narrow identifiable needs” (Hunston,

2002, p. 135). Hunston highlights a very important point regarding this support,

stating that “for many writers who are expert in their own field, ……it is not the

technical terminology but what might be called the terminology of rhetoric that

causes problems” (2002, p. 135). Experts in academic disciplines trying to write

papers in a foreign language are confronted with this problem, ‘signals of

organization and purpose’ being more challenging to use for them than the technical

terminology. Corpus analysis of specific kinds of paper may be employed to isolate

words and phrases associated with specific moves and functions to provide the

writer with on-line support to use the most appropriate phraseology at different

points of the article (Hunston, 2002, p. 135). This last use of corpora naturally leads

to a review of the use of corpora in pedagogy.

2.3.4 The Use of Corpora in Language Teaching

Corpus analysis is being used progressively more in language teaching, and it has

had two significant effects on the language teacher’s professional life, in terms of

content and approach to syllabus design and methodology (Hunston, 2002, p. 137).

Corpora give rise to new descriptions of a language, causing a radical change in

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what the language teacher is teaching (Hunston, 2002, p. 137). O’Keeffe, McCarthy

and Carter agree that “the contribution of corpus linguistics, … , to the description

of the language we teach is difficult to dispute” (2007, p. 21). They state, therefore,

that “as well as providing an empirical basis for checking our intuitions about

language, corpora have also brought to light features about language which had

eluded our intuition” (O’Keeffe, McCarthy, & Carter, 2007, p. 21). They give the

frequency of ready-assembled chunks as an example for the above observation

(2007, p. 21).

In a similar vein, Sinclair (1991) states that the fact that words occur in ‘preferred

sequences’ has put phraseology at the heart of language description, leading to three

important consequences (cited in Hunston, 2002, p. 138). The first is that pattern and

meaning are closely related and when a word has more than one meaning, each

meaning requires its own pattern and therefore, the ‘word’ as the unit of vocabulary

teaching is replaced by the phraseology for each meaning of the word (Hunston,

2002, p. 139). That language is organized mainly according to ‘the idiom principle’

and, when this does not work, to ‘the open-choice principle’ is the second

consequence. The open-choice principle is a “way of seeing language text as the

result of a very large number of complex choices” and “at each point where a unit is

completed (a word or a phrase or a clause), a large range of choice opens up and the

only restraint is grammaticalness” (Sinclair, 1991, p. 109). This model is sometimes

called a ‘slot-and-filler’ model, visualizing texts “as a series of slots which have to

be filled from a lexicon which satisfies local restraints” (1991, p. 109). Sinclair

describes the ‘idiom principle’ as a large number of semi-constructed phrases

constituting single choices being available to the language user (1991, p. 110).

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Hunston further clarifies Sinclair’s principles by saying that “meaning is either made

by the phrase as a whole, in accordance with the conventional phraseology, or (less

often) it is made by the individual words, operating in accordance with grammatical

rules” (2002, p. 145). That “language as word list may be described in terms of

phraseology, and language as text may be accounted for in terms of the idiom

principle” (Hunston, 2002, p. 149) leads to the third consequence that there is no

distinction between lexis and grammar. Sinclair claims that “a model of language

which divides grammar and lexis, and which uses grammar to provide a string of

lexical choice points is a secondary model” (1991, p. 114). Hunston emphasizes

Sinclair’s claims that lexical (content) words and grammatical words (empty words)

are not essentially different and “the observed patternings of lexical items are

observations about both lexis and grammar” (2002, p. 149). The notions about words

that support a distinction between lexis and grammar are challenged by corpus

evidence. For example, the fact that not all grammatical words in a corpus come

before all the lexical words refutes the notion that grammatical words are more

frequent than lexical words (2002, p. 150).

The use of corpora to store vast amounts of data also resulted in the compilation of

wordlists, and made it possible to determine which words frequently occur in the

language, which words learners need to know primarily, which words to focus on at

different stages of learning, and thus provide appropriate support for language

learners. In other words, the use of corpora has also influenced syllabus design and

methodology. West’s General Service List (GSL) is a “classic list of high frequency

words which contains 2,000 word families” (Nation, 2001, p. 15), compiled in 1953

(2001, p. 11).

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After West’s GSL of 1953, wordlists attracted attention again years later when

computers became more advanced and more accessible, allowing vast amounts of

data to be processed with speed and efficiency. Ellis refers to this inactive period as

‘40 years of exile’ for frequency profiling (2002, p. 143). Michael West’s GSL was

developed from a corpus containing 5 million words, considering the needs of

EFL/ESL learners. The words in the list were selected by West in terms of certain

criteria: frequency, ease of learning, coverage of useful concepts, and stylistic level

(Coxhead, 2000, p. 213). Each of the 2,000 words is a headword embodying a word

family. It is argued that knowing the 2,000 word families in the GSL helps learners

to understand 80% of the words in written texts and thus instigates motivation

(Carter and McCarthy, 1988, p. 7). The GSL “greatly influenced the choice of

vocabulary for EFL course materials, graded readers, and dictionaries until the mid-

1970’s” (McArthur, 1992, p. 859), and it is still influential today as there has not

been a ‘comparable replacement’ so far (Coxhead, 2000, p. 214).

More recent attempts to provide learners with more specialized lists resulted in a

word list of academic words. The AWL (Academic Word List, Coxhead, 2000),

compiled from a corpus of 3.5 million running words of written academic text in

1998, contains 570 word families, about 10% of the total words in academic text.

The compilation was done according to the range and frequency of words in

academic text outside the GSL. Coxhead based the selection of the AWL on GSL

because as well as the academic words, the most commonly used 2,000 words are

necessary for the learner in an academic environment. Therefore, the word families

in the GSL and the AWL together constitute 86% of the academic corpus (Coxhead,

2000, p. 222). Coxhead holds that the AWL may be used in setting vocabulary

targets in EAP courses and designing relevant teaching materials to help students to

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focus on key vocabulary items. However, Billuroglu and Neufeld (2005), thinking

that the separation of the GSL and the AWL is not valid, as there are words in the

GSL which are very commonly used in the academic world, and words in the AWL

which can very comfortably be used outside the academic circles, compiled the BNL

(Billuroglu Neufeld List), which they claim to be more representative of any written

text. The rationale for the BNL is therefore that treating the GSL and the AWL

separately, and focusing solely on the AWL in academic writing classes, may cause

serious consequences and may deprive learners of valuable learning opportunities

(Hancioglu et al., 2008, p. 475). The BNL is based on “the identification of

contemporary words in common use, leading to the creation of a critical lexical mass

of 2,709 word families that consistently provides 90% to 95% coverage of the

tokens (not including proper nouns, acronyms or abbreviations) in academic

corpora” (Billuroglu & Neufeld, 2005, p. 1).

As mentioned earlier, the use of corpora has the potential to change, in addition to

the description of language and instructional content, the views on syllabus design,

methodology, the role of teacher, in fact education as a whole. McCarthy states that:

corpus linguistics probably also foreshadows even more profound


technological shifts that will impinge upon our long-held notions of
education, the roles of teachers, the cultural context of the delivery of
educational services and the mediation of theory and technique as the
twentieth century becomes history. (2001, p. 125)

Aston also adopts a similar viewpoint. He maintains that with cheap concordancing

software and the development of computer technology that allows storing of vast

amounts of language data, “teachers and learners seem set to have an enormous

quantity of material at their fingertips, with obvious implications (at least in theory)

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for greater democratization and autonomy of learning” (1995, p. 257). Data-driven

Learning (DDL) is how this democratization and autonomy is actualized. The use of

corpora in teaching and learning languages has become widespread through DDL,

which was initially developed for use with international students by Tim Johns, who

said “Research is too important to be left to the researchers” (1991, cited in Hunston,

2002, p. 170). The theory behind DDL is that students become ‘language detectives’

(Johns, 1997, p. 101), “discovering facts about the language they are learning for

themselves, from authentic examples” (Hunston, 2002, p. 170). Johns especially

takes into account the foreign language learner, and emphasizes that the learner’s

duty is to ‘discover’ the foreign language, and the language teacher is responsible for

providing “a context in which the learner can develop strategies for discovery –

strategies through which he or she can ‘learn how to learn’” (Johns, 1991, p. 3).

DDL is a methodology that makes use of computerized concordancing, and this has

made a great contribution to the development of CALL (Computer Assisted

Language Learning) (Levy, 1997, pp. 64-65). Hunston maintains that “DDL involves

setting up situations in which students can answer questions about language

themselves by studying corpus data in the form of concordance lines or sentences”

(2002, p. 170). In this case, students answer their own questions. As an alternative,

Hunston states, self-access materials can be prepared to give students the chance to

explore items that are considered either problematic or useful (Hunston, 2002, pp.

170-171). The advantage of the first kind of study is maximizing student motivation,

as the student is asking a question to which s/he requires an urgent answer, and

consults the corpus data to discover information. In the second kind of study, the

advantage is that the teacher has more control over the information. Yet, the

motivation of students is not as high as in the first type of study. The fact that

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dealing with problematic items is more motivating for students leads to the use of

learner corpora for designing appropriate DDL tasks. For instance, learner corpora

can be investigated to explore learners’ misuse, over- and underuse of language

items, and DDL exercises can be developed to raise learners’ awareness of the

problematic items (O’Keeffe et al., 2007, p. 23).

O’Keeffe et al. (2007) also emphasize CALL (Computer Assisted Language

Learning), where “learners get hands-on experience of using a corpus through

guided tasks or through materials based on corpus evidence” (p. 24). This inductive

approach involving the observation of patterns in the target language and forming

generalizations about language form and use is referred to as Data-driven Learning

(Johns 1986, cited in O’Keeffe et al., 2007, p. 24). Data-driven Learning often

makes use of concordance lines. According to Nation (2001), through examining

concordances, learners observe words in real contexts, and multiple contexts

provided through concordance lines offer rich information, such as collocates, and

grammatical patterns, about words (p. 111). Moreover, “the use of concordances

involves discovery learning, where the learners are being challenged to actively

construct generalizations and note patterns and exceptions” (Nation, 2001, p. 111).

Through this practice, learners “control their learning and learn investigative

strategies” (Nation, 2001, p. 111), and therefore become ‘language detectives’

(Johns, 1997).

Nation (2001) emphasizes that learners need training in reading concordance lines

(p. 111). Arkin (2003) similarly draws attention to the necessity of providing

“guidance, support and training for teachers in integrating computer technology

resources into language instruction” (p. 101). As mentioned earlier though, the use

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of corpora has transformed what teachers teach, as well as how they teach it, and

how learners learn it. As “the corpus revolution is here to stay” (McCarthy, 2008, p.

573), teachers and learners alike need to embrace these innovations, and adapt to

changes. One major change in this regard is the need for user-friendly platforms on

which corpora, concordances and DDL activities can be mounted. A number of such

applications are now widely used, including Moodle, which is a versatile,

interactive, virtual learning environment based on social constructivist principles,

and powerful enough both to host such data as well as generate relevant activity

types (Philosophy, 2008). The full scope and potential of Moodle in these respects is

explored in more detail in the methodology chapter.

2.4 Related Studies

The final section of the literature review is devoted to the discussion of similar

research projects that have been conducted in the field, so that the current research

can be considered in context.

Vocabulary has been found to be one of the problems students have with written

expression. In one study, Laufer (1998) looked at active vocabulary knowledge

which is an important factor in creating written texts. He describes quantitative

research investigating three types of English as a foreign language vocabulary

knowledge, passive, ‘controlled active’, and free active in one year of school

instruction. The study also explores how these types of vocabulary knowledge are

related to one another, and what changes take place in these relationships after one

year. The results of the research showed that passive vocabulary size progressed

very well, controlled active vocabulary also improved, albeit less than the passive.

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However, active vocabulary did not progress at all. Passive and controlled active

vocabulary size scores correlated well, but there was no correlation between the free

active vocabulary and the other two types, which means that gains in passive and

controlled active vocabulary were not reflected in the lexical profiles of free writing

(Laufer, 1998).

Not only vocabulary at word level, but also ‘phraseological competence’ is

identified to be an important factor in producing effective writing. The corpus-based

study by Howarth (1996) involved L2 writers, who were overseas post-graduate

students in university social science departments. The central hypothesis tested in

the research is that non-native speakers often lack phraseological competence, even

at a fairly high level of proficiency, and this aspect of linguistic competence is

frequently not well developed, obstructing easy comprehension, and reducing the

effectiveness of their writing. Howarth concludes that native speaker writers of

academic English depend as much on the stock of familiar and easily processed

'ready-mades' as language users in other registers. He further maintains that if the

lexicogrammatical form conforms to the norms of the register to the anticipated

degree, the reader's conscious attention is focused on meaning while the form is

processed subconsciously (Howarth, 1996).

Similar to Howarth (1996), Hyland (2008) focuses on the importance of ‘lexical

bundles’, “extended collocations which appear more frequently than expected by

chance, helping to shape meanings in specific contexts and contributing to our sense

of coherence in a text” (2008, p. 4), in language production, but also emphasizes

disciplinary variation. In the study, Hyland explores the forms, structures and

functions of 4-word bundles in a 3.5 million word corpus of research articles,

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doctoral dissertations, and Master’s theses in four disciplines to find out about their

frequencies and preferred uses. The study makes use of both quantitative and

qualitative procedures for data analysis. Hyland’s findings support studies that have

identified considerable variation in the frequency of forms, structures, and functions

across different types of academic writing. Hyland concludes that there should be

pedagogical focus on bundles in EAP courses, suggests that EAP course designers

take this fact into consideration, and start with the student’s specific target context.

He also maintains that corpus-informed lists and concordances can be used to

identify these frequently occurring bundles.

In another study, Hyland and Tse (2007) challenge the notion of a single core

vocabulary, and analyse the assumption that “students of EAP should study a core of

high frequency words because they are common in an English academic register” (p.

235). The study, which makes use of both quantitative and qualitative analyses,

employs Coxhead’s (2000) Academic Word List (AWL) to investigate the

distribution of the 570 word families in a corpus of 3.3 million words from a range

of eight academic disciplines and seven different genres. The results showed that

although the AWL offered good coverage of the corpus compiled for the study, it

was not evenly distributed. Hyland and Tse conclude that each subject discipline is

dependent on its own rhetorical practices, and that “teachers help students develop a

more restricted, discipline-based lexical repertoire” (2007, p. 235). Hyland and Tse

therefore propose that field and genre provide a more solid basis for corpus-

informed work than the concept of a “single academic literacy” (Hyland and Tse,

2007).

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Considering disciplinary variation, Mudraya (2006) also carried out a study with the

aim of establishing a frequency-based corpus of student engineering lexis. The

Student Engineering English Corpus (SEEC), which contained 2,000,000 running

words, was reduced to 1,200 word families and 9,000 word types. Based on the

research findings, Mudraya maintains that sub-technical vocabulary (lexical items

with technical and non-technical senses) as well as Academic English should be

emphasized more in the ESP classroom. Mudraya also argues that data-driven

instructional activities consistent with the lexical approach should be used “in order

to help students acquire the so-called language prefabs, or formulaic multi-word

units / collocations, for technical and non-technical uses” (2006, p. 235).

Quite a few studies emphasize the importance of rhetorical, or move structures for

the teaching of different academic genres. One study carried out by Flowerdew

(2000) proposes the use of a genre-based framework for the teaching of the

organizational structure of academic report writing. The study involved 15

mechanical engineering under-graduate project reports from a university in Hong

Kong, and an analysis of these reports revealed that there may be variations in terms

of the moves, the ordering of the moves as well as their linguistic realizations within

genres.

In another study, Anthony (1999) evaluates the standard model for describing the

structure of research article introductions, the CARS (Create a Research Space)

model (Swales, 1990), in terms of how it can be applied to twelve articles in the

field of software engineering. The results showed that although the model was very

successful in describing the main framework of introductions, problems emerged

when a more detailed description was necessary. Many steps in the model were

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redundant or rarely used because the model was developed based upon a wide

variety of disciplines. A more serious problem identified by Anthony was the

absence of a separate ‘evaluation of research’ step, which was shown to be a crucial

element in achieving the aims of the introduction in his research. Anthony (1999)

concludes that if the limitations of the CARS model are understood, it can be

effectively used as a pedagogic tool in the classroom.

Henry (2007) thinks that although a lot of research has been conducted on

identifying moves and their order in specific genres, rather less attention has been

paid to the presentation of key lexico-grammatical features of genres and moves.

The aim of Henry’s study is to determine the effectiveness of a website in presenting

computer-based, corpus analyses of sentence level genre features to language

learners in a meaningful way in an EAP/ESP teaching situation. When the job

application letters written by the learners before and after using the website were

compared, it was found out that the learners wrote more effective letters of

application, including more obligatory and optional moves, and making use of the

lexico-grammatical features associated with the genre. The learners also responded

positively to the use of a website and the self-study approach taken. One of the

suggestions Henry makes for future research is to investigate if this approach would

be effective with less formulaic genres, such as essays and dissertations.

Recently, a number of studies have focused on specifically post-graduate level

students. A pedagogic study particularly relevant to the current study explores the

effect of corpora on writing competence of post-graduate students. Yoon (2008)

investigates the changes in students’ writing process associated with corpus use over

an extended period of time through a qualitative study. The findings reveal that

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corpus use helps the students solve their immediate writing problems as well as

promote their perceptions of lexico-grammar and language awareness. With the

introduction of the corpus into the writing process, the students assumed more

responsibility for their writing, became more independent writers, and their

confidence in writing increased.

Studies have also been conducted on the difficulties faced by post-graduate students

in thesis writing. Paltridge (2002), through his study, aims to find out “the extent to

which published advice on the organisation and structure of theses and dissertations

concurs with what happens in actual practice” (p. 125). Paltridge maintains that

published advice on thesis writing is quite important, as there is very little research

carried out on the actual theses due to various reasons. The study examined guides

which focused on only thesis, and also handbooks which focused on the research

process in general, but also referred to thesis writing. According to the findings, the

published advice covered many important aspects of the research process, like

selecting a topic, and writing a research proposal. However, the majority of the

books emphasized thesis writing, rather than the content of the individual chapters.

In addition, none of the books described the complete range of thesis options

available to thesis writers. The study found a wider range of thesis types than

focused on in the guides and handbooks. Paltridge (2002) argues that teaching

materials should present students the range of thesis options, emphasize the kind of

variation that occurs in actual texts, and consider the rationale for these various

choices.

Thesis writing is even more challenging for post-graduate students who need to

report their research in a second or foreign language. Yet, research on non-native

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post-graduate students’ writing difficulties, and “how faculty assist these students in

their thesis/dissertation writing is sparse” (Dong, 1998, p. 370). Therefore, Dong

aimed to find out the difficulties especially the non-native post-graduate students

faced in writing their thesis, the discipline, genre, and audience specific knowledge

of these students about thesis writing in science, the quality and quantity of the

supervisor’s assistance in thesis writing, the helping networks available for these

students, and the impact of perceived language and cultural differences on thesis

writing. The research was carried out at two state research universities in the U.S,

with Master’s and PhD students in science and engineering departments, who had

passed their qualifying exams, and were in the process of doing their thesis research

and writing. 137 native and non-native students and 32 advisors were involved in the

research. The survey instruments included a thesis writing scale and a questionnaire,

and the data analysis involved both quantitative and qualitative procedures. The

results showed that the professors were more likely than students to perceive that

they had provided help with topic selection, idea development, drawing conclusions,

avoidance of plagiarism, paragraph organization, and logical presentation. Dong

(1998), based on the findings, concludes that knowledge transformation skills should

be taught in EAP classes, helping networks should be established to provide thesis

writing support, and there should be collaboration among disciplines on

audience/genre/discipline specific writing instruction.

Another very relevant study employs a corpus of theses written by native speakers,

and genre-based pedagogy to improve the writing skills of non-native post-graduate

students (Charles, 2007). In the pedagogic study, Charles explores how top-down

and bottom-up approaches can be reconciled in EAP writing materials through the

use of discourse analysis and corpus investigation. Charles defines ‘genre analysis’

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as a top-down approach, and corpus investigation as a bottom-up approach to EAP.

In the construction of EAP materials, emphasis is first on macro-textual features,

whereas in corpus linguistics, the analyst starts with the linguistic features and

subsequently attempts to connect them to wider discoursal concerns. In the small

pilot project described in the study, the materials in the study were used with 40

international post-graduate students. Based on the research findings, Charles

concludes that “it is the combination of the two approaches that provides the

enriched input necessary for students to make the connection between general

rhetorical purposes and specific lexico-grammatical choices” (2007, p. 289). She

further emphasizes that “in moving from discourse to corpus, the class moves from

studying what texts do, to investigating how they do it” (Charles, 2007, 300).

In what could be considered the most related study to the present research, Lee and

Swales (2006) present a discussion of an experimental course in corpus-informed

EAP for non-native doctoral students, the aim of which was to introduce students to

the corpus approach to language, “where the authority for language standards is

decentered, and where learners, given some guidance and structured help, can take a

more active role in their own learning” (p. 68). As part of this course, the

participants were given access to specialized academic corpora, instructed in the use

of web- and PC-based concordancers, and inducted into the skills needed to exploit

the data for both directed and self-learning. The induction involved such practices as

the analysis of language items and using the context to disambiguate near-

synonymous pairs of words through examining concordances, frequency patterns in

language usage and change through corpus frequencies, and understanding fixity

and flexibility in language through collocations and prefabricated expressions. Lee

and Swales report that at the end of the course, they had ‘an exceptional group of

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learners’ who could engage intelligently with ‘expert corpora’ of language, and

examine them for lexico-grammatical and discourse patterns. This afforded the

learners models against which they could compare their own performance. Lee and

Swales are positive with the findings, and maintain that this approach to language

learning would probably lead to assuming more control over one’s own learning.

2.5 Summary

As far as the present research is concerned, a number of key issues emerge from the

review of the literature to date. Most importantly, it should be acknowledged that

creating text is a complicated and challenging task requiring not only knowledge of

grammar and lexis, but a wide range of structural and lexico-grammatical nuances

that create both textual cohesion and coherence. Further, standards of textuality

require knowledge of textual features, namely intentionality, acceptability,

informativity, situationality and intertextuality. This sophisticated knowledge

contributes not only to the creation of text but to the creation of discourse

communities, and associated genres, which may have specialized ways of expressing

themselves, and lexico-grammatical features that represent them.

Genres themselves are very often constituted of moves, which may be compulsory

or optional. These moves are realized through strategies, or tactics, reflected through

lexico-grammatical elements, that allow for both paradigmatic and syntagmatic

choice. Although in theory this generates an infinite number of possibilities out of a

finite number of items, one problem learners face is that their paradigmatic and

syntagmatic knowledge is often highly restricted, particularly as far as such areas as

synonymy, and collocations are concerned. Genres are not necessarily subject field

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specific, and in fact may cut across multiple specialized fields and discourse

communities. Academic genres, regardless of subject specialization, seem to display

certain common features of different types that may need mastering. Some of these

features are degrees of formality, the need for hedging, avoidance of continuous

tenses, the use of passives or impersonal subjects, as well as generic organization.

Writing pedagogy has developed and tested different ways of instructing learners to

express intended meanings coherently and appropriately. There have been

approaches focusing on the product or the process, most of which have been

criticized for various reasons. Current thinking leans towards a more integrated

model, a process genre approach, which may be facilitated by technological

developments that allow the creation of and access to large language corpora that

can be analysed for lexico-grammatical content, word frequency, collocation and

phraseology through concordance lines. This empirical approach towards teaching

of text creation has the advantage of providing authentic data. What is more, such

information can also be accessed by learners if compiled and organized effectively,

therefore can be used not just as a basis for research, but also for teaching-learning.

Hence, the use of corpora has implications for both syllabus and methodology. DDL

(Data Driven Learning) methodology provides the opportunity for learners to act as

language researchers. They can find instant answers and solutions to their language

and language-related problems, discover regularities and commonalities in the

language, and thus become autonomous and self-directed learners. Furthermore,

nowadays, e-learning or virtual learning platforms like Moodle are very popular, as

they allow the learner to interact with the environment, the data, and other learners,

which are believed to be effective contributors to learning.

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In the light of the literature review, the main objective of the current research,

therefore, is to construct a pedagogic corpus and incorporate data-driven learning

tasks into the advanced academic writing course to develop the text creation skills of

post-graduate students involved in thesis writing. However, it should be borne in

mind that while dealing with texts, “we should work to discover regularities,

strategies, motivations, preferences, and defaults rather than rules and laws”

(Beaugrande & Dressler, 1981, p. xv).

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CHAPTER III

METHODOLOGY

In this chapter, first, the overall research design of the study is introduced, and the

research context and the participants are described. After the presentation of the

development and implementation of the data collection instruments, detailed

information pertaining to the data collection and data analysis instruments and

procedures is given. Then the virtual learning environment used in this study to host

the corpora and the DDL activities, Moodle, is described. The chapter concludes

with a discussion of the limitations and the delimitations of the study.

3.1 Overall Research Design

Educational research aims at continuous examination and improvement of the

educational context. This necessitates the identification of any existing or emerging

problems, seeking knowledge and ultimately taking required action to improve the

practices. This type of research is referred to as ‘Action-Oriented Problem-Solving

Research’ (Patton, 2002, p. 221). Cohen and Manion state that “the aim of action

research is to improve the current state of affairs within the educational context in

which the research is being carried out” (cited in Nunan, 1992, p. 18).

This study falls into the category of practical action research, “which takes a more

applied and contextualized approach to action research” (Mills, 2000, p. 21). Mills

defines the goals of action research as “gaining insight, developing reflective

practice, effecting positive changes ... on educational practices … and improving

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student outcomes and the lives of those involved” (Mills, 2000, p. 6). In action

research, teacher researchers choose their areas of study, decide on their data

collection techniques and develop action plans after analyzing and interpreting their

data (Mills, 2000, p. 9). Action research involves having a reflective and critical

stance towards educational practice, and possessing the willingness to improve or

enhance it. In the process, the researcher validates and challenges existing practices

while also taking risks (Mills, 2000, p. 11).

Hyland stresses the importance of research carried out by teachers themselves. He

argues that “a good teacher is a reflective teacher, and a reflective teacher is

someone who is familiar with the research, or carries out research” (2005, p. 58).

Advocating the same view, McCarthy calls teachers ‘action-oriented’ applied

linguists (2001, p. 124).

Mills states that action research is a four-step process involving identifying a focus

area, collecting data, analyzing and interpreting data, and developing an action plan

(2000, p. 6). The four-step cycle of action research was realized in this research in

the following way:

Step 1: Identifying an area of focus

Like all post-graduate learners worldwide, the graduate Master’s and PhD

candidates taking ENGL501, currently Advanced Thesis Writing at EMU, are

expected to carry out academic scientific research, report their research in their

thesis, and contribute to their research fields by getting their research articles

published, and be accepted in the global academic discourse community. To this end,

these non-native learners of the English language living and studying in a non-

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English speaking environment are required to possess adequate academic language

competence, and produce accurate and appropriate written work. However, these

post-graduate candidates’ written work revealed deficiencies at specifically the

lexico-grammatical level.

The problem was initially identified through:

• observation of classroom performance / analysis of written assignments over

six academic semesters;

• needs analysis questionnaires administered to the candidates at the beginning

of the semester;

• end-of-semester feedback forms from the candidates.

Step 2: Seeking knowledge - collecting data

• Interviews with teachers who have taught the course before

• Observation of class performance, and written assignments

• Compilation of the Learner Abstract Corpus (the LAC) including 100 learner

abstracts collected through six semesters

• Compilation of the Target Abstract Corpus (the TAC) including 600 thesis

and dissertation abstracts from four domains (Architecture, Arts and

Humanities, Sciences, Social Sciences), and written by Master’s and PhD

students living and studying in English-speaking countries

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Step 3: Analyzing and interpreting data

The collected data were analyzed to provide answers to the following four research

questions which guided the research study:

1 What are the major lexico-grammatical patterns identified in the LAC?

2 What are the major lexico-structural patterns in the TAC?

3 How does the LAC relate to the TAC?

4 What does the cross-examination of the two corpora necessitate in terms of

the comprehensive pedagogic corpus design?

Step 4: Developing and implementing an action plan

The construction of a comprehensive pedagogic corpus with multiple components;

making the pedagogic corpus as well as all the data available on line, and

accompanied by data-driven exploratory tasks, with students learning and discussing

the complexities of academic text in a learning environment; creation of a corpus-

informed advanced thesis writing course for post-graduate candidates at the

institution.

Quantitative and qualitative research methods in education cannot be considered as

polar opposites. Patten points out that “some researchers conduct research that is a

blend of the two approaches” (2004, p. 21), and Reichardt and Cook state that

“researchers in no way follow the principles of a supposed paradigm without

simultaneously assuming methods and values of the alternative paradigms” (cited in

Nunan, 1992, p. 3). Fraenkel and Wallen hold that “much research in education is a

mixture of quantitative and qualitative approaches” (1993, p. 380), and Patton

87
(2002) maintains that “research and evaluation studies employing multiple methods,

including combinations of qualitative and quantitative data, are common” (p. 5). In

Applied Linguistics as well, the trend is more towards qualitative research, as stated

by McCarthy “the emphasis on both sides of the Atlantic and internationally has

shifted away from purely quantitative notions of research in applied linguistics

towards qualitative research paradigms” (2001, p. 119).

This is a combined study that made use of both quantitative and qualitative methods.

The study initially envisaged applying qualitative methods, as it approached the

problem in question inductively, and the research study developed as the data

unfolded. The researcher identified a problem through observation over an extended

period, and also through semi-structured interviews and open-ended questionnaires.

Qualitative studies explore the quality of relationships, activities, situations or

materials (Fraenkel and Wallen, 1993, p. 380). Accordingly, the study sought to find

out how far the integration of corpus data-driven work into a thesis writing course

would contribute to the quality of participants’ written work.

The present study, however, also exploited quantitative research tools, as in corpus

studies, range and frequency calculation yields meaningful quantitative data.

Subsequently, an in-depth study of corpus data produced qualitative data. The

corpus-based approach is empirical, “analyzing the actual patterns of use in natural

texts”, and relies on quantitative as well as qualitative analytical techniques (Biber et

al., 1998, p. 4). Biber et al. emphasize that in research employing corpora, the

analyses should go beyond simple counts of linguistic features, and include

qualitative, functional interpretations of quantitative patterns (1998, pp. 4-5).

88
Hunston similarly draws attention to the fact that a corpus provides evidence in the

form of many examples which can only be interpreted by intuition (2002, p. 23).

3.2 Research Questions

The major objective of the current research was to construct a pedagogic corpus

with multiple components, and incorporate corpus data as well as data-driven

learning activities into the advanced thesis writing course with the aim of improving

the text creation skills of non-native post-graduate students involved in thesis

writing. As can be seen in Figure 3.1, multiple data sources were utilized to ensure

triangulation.
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The following research questions steered the research:

1. What are the major lexico-grammatical patterns identified in the LAC?

2. What are the major lexico-structural patterns in the TAC?

3. How does the LAC relate to the TAC?

4. What does the cross-examination of the two corpora necessitate in terms of

the comprehensive pedagogic corpus design?

3.3 The Context

The Eastern Mediterranean University (EMU) is an English medium university in

Northern Cyprus providing higher education to 14.000 students of 68 different

nationalities. Seven faculties (Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Faculty of Architecture,

Faculty of Business and Economics, Faculty of Communication and Media Studies,

Faculty of Education, Faculty of Engineering and Faculty of Law) and three schools

(English Preparatory School, Tourism and Hospitality Management, Computing and

Technology) offer instruction at undergraduate level. The students, who are

generally non-native speakers of English, receive language support in the

preparatory and in the freshman year to enable them to cope with their academic

studies in the target language. The Institute of Graduate Studies and Research runs

Master’s and PhD programs at the institution

(http://www.emu.edu.tr/e/academic/instituteofgraduatestudies.htm). At graduate

level there was no language support until 2000, which led the Institute of Graduate

90
Studies and Research to request the former School of Foreign Languages for a

language course that would help Master’s and PhD candidates with thesis writing.

Therefore, the former School of Foreign Languages designed a new course, EFL

501, Advanced Writing, and started to offer it as a non-credit course to graduate

students as of 2001. In the year 2002, the Academic Writing Unit was founded by

the researcher of this study with the primary aim of providing further individualized

or group assistance to final year undergraduate and graduate students in improving

their academic writing skills. The basis for foundation of the Academic Writing Unit

was that language support was not provided in the final years of undergraduate

studies. The Academic Writing Unit delivered educational services both through

one-to-one tutorials and group workshops. In the year 2003, having observed the

difficulties the graduate students were having with English, especially in terms of

the accurate and appropriate expression of ideas in writing, the researcher and an

associate, who was also a tutor at the Academic Writing Unit, proposed a

prerequisite course to the then existing EFL 501. This course would be EFL 501,

Advanced Writing 1 and would be offered as a non-credit elective course to Master’s

and PhD candidates who were still taking courses and who had not started writing

their thesis. The earlier EFL 501 therefore became EFL 502, and was offered to

graduate students who had entered the thesis writing stage.

This new EFL 501 (now ENGL501) course aimed at developing the academic

writing skills of graduate students, and was designed to provide opportunities for the

participants to analyze the structure and lexis of authentic academic texts. The

participants then produced their own work and were encouraged to recognize their

language problems, and find solutions to those problems. The syllabus (see

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Appendix A) covered the common functions in theses. Therefore, relevant input and

tasks were provided on such functions as introducing, comparing, interpreting data,

narrating/reporting, and classifying/categorising.

ENGL501 (now Advanced Thesis Writing) has been offered as a non-credit course

for almost five years now, and some departments (Departments of Civil

Engineering, Industrial Engineering), and the Faculty of Architecture have made the

course compulsory for their post-graduate students. Two other departments

(Departments of Banking and Finance, and Economics) have asked the researcher to

teach the course as a departmental course, and currently the advanced writing course

is also offered under the course names of ‘Seminar in Banking and Finance’ and

‘Seminar in Economics’, with course codes BANK 598 and ECON 598. These

developments seem to suggest that the post-graduate participants, as well as their

departments benefit from the course.

ENGL501 has been revised every semester since its inception, taking into account

the teacher researcher’s observations and experiences with the coursework, feedback

from the participants, and feedback from the departments. In the year 2005,

ENGL501 and ENGL 502 were merged upon the request of the Department of

Banking and Finance that felt that their post-graduate students needed both courses.

Therefore, the new course was completely redesigned, and was developed into an

advanced thesis writing course with a language focus, and with special emphasis on

academic writing conventions.

At present, the revised syllabus (Appendix B) is based on the five chapters in a

traditional thesis, the thesis proposal, and the abstract. Therefore, the participants

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have the opportunity to produce a miniature of their thesis during the course. The

instructional materials, which are obtained from the World Wide Web, are entirely

authentic, and are enhanced with tasks designed by the researcher to promote

awareness and critical analysis of the input. The approach is process-genre based.

The focus is on the different generic moves in theses, and how they are fulfilled

through language. For instance, the students are presented with alternative language

for opening up a research gap, which is a necessary move in thesis introductions. As

regards the process focus, drafting, revising, and editing are valued as fundamental

steps in the writing process, and the participants go through these stages when they

are producing their work. Academic writing conventions, and quoting, paraphrasing,

referencing, and summarizing skills receive maximum emphasis.

The feedback received from multiple sources as regards the ENGL501 course has

been very positive through the years. Yet, in education there is always room for

improvement, and there should always be the motivation and will to enhance the

learning outcomes. With the advanced computer tools, it is now possible for teacher

researchers to compile their own specialized corpus, and offer this comprehensive

authentic source to the service of their students. In the study, corpus work and DDL

(Data Driven Learning) activities were integrated into the course to provide more

learning opportunities for the candidates in developing their academic writing

performance. Furthermore, the virtual learning environment was incorporated into

the course to increase the amount of exposure to the data, and also enhance the

autonomous learning and self-study skills of the participants.

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3.4 Participants

This section presents a semester-based breakdown of the participants’ background in

terms of the degree pursued, subject field, and nationality. Table 3.1 presents

information on how the profiles changed through the three years in which the data

were collected.

Table 3.1

Profiles: Degrees pursued, subject fields, and nationalities (2004-2007)

Degree 04-051 04-052 05-061 05-062 06-071 06-072 Total


pursued (30) (5) (14) (19) (13) (19) (100)
Master’s 17 3 11 13 12 15 71
PhD 13 2 3 6 1 4 29

Subject Field 04-051 04-052 05-061 05-062 06-071 06-072 Total


Com.& Med. 17 - - - 1 - 18
Arch. 7 1 3 5 1 4 21
B&E 3 1 1 3 6 7 21
Educ. 2 1 1 - - - 4
Engineering 1 1 9 11 5 8 35
A&S - 1 - - - - 1

Nationality 04-051 04-052 05-061 05-062 06-071 06-072 Total


North Cyprus 14 2 2 7 - 6 31
Turkey 7 - - 1 - 1 9
Iran 6 2 7 6 10 9 40
Indonesia 1 - - - - - 1
Pakistan 1 - - - - - 1
Eritrea 1 - - - - - 1
Palestine - 1 1 2 - - 4
Nigeria - - 1 - - 1 2
Sudan - - 1 - - - 1
Libya - - 2 1 - - 3
Iraq - - - 1 - - 1
Kosovo - - - 1 - - 1
Zambia - - - - 1 - 1
Malawi - - - - 1 - 1
Albania - - - - 1 1 2
Macedonia - - - - - 1 1

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It can be observed from the table that almost 30% of the total number of the

participants who took the course between 2004 and 2007 were pursuing a PhD

degree at the Eastern Mediterranean University. As regards subject fields, there was

an increase in the number of Engineering students taking the course in the 2005-

2006 Fall Semester, as the Department of Civil Engineering made EFL501 a

compulsory course for their post-graduate students. A similar increase can be

observed for the Faculty of Business and Economics in the 2006-2007 academic

year, as the Department of Banking and Finance made the course compulsory for the

post-graduate students, and the researcher started to offer the course as BANK598

for these students. In the 2006-2007 Spring semester, the Economics Department

also started to offer ENGL501 as a Seminar course. Therefore, although the course

offered was exactly the same, it was under three different course codes: ENGL501,

BANK598, and ECON598.

Finally, regarding the nationality of the participants, of the 100 participants who

took ENGL501 in these six academic semesters, 40 were Persian, 31 from North

Cyprus, 9 from Turkey, 4 from Palestine, 3 from Libya, 2 from Albania, 2 from

Nigeria, 1 from Malawi, 1 from Zambia, 1 from Pakistan, 1 from Indonesia, 1 from

Iraq, 1 from Macedonia, 1 from Kosovo, 1 from the Sudan, and 1 from Eritrea.

Therefore, 40% of the participants were of Turkish background, while 60% were

from a variety of different countries, had different mother tongues. Although during

these six semesters the ENGL501 course was offered to the participants from a

variety of national, first language, disciplinary and academic backgrounds, these

participants exhibited and reported very similar problems in terms of the accurate

and appropriate use of English in academic writing, specifically at the lexico-

structural level. The 100 international participants who took the course between

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2004 and 2007 were therefore regarded as a representative sample of the whole

ENGL501 population.

3.5 Data Collection Instruments

The current study employed multiple tools to collect abundant quantitative and

qualitative data for an in-depth examination of the problem identified. This section

presents the tools which were used in the research study for triangulated data

collection.

3.5.1 Interviews with course instructors

Two other instructors other than the researcher were previously involved in the

teaching of EFL501, Advanced Writing I (now ENGL501, Advanced Thesis

Writing). These two instructors were interviewed to explore their teaching

experiences with the participants, find out whether similar problems regarding the

participants’ written work were observed, and elicit the instructors’

recommendations on how to further enhance the participants’ learning experiences

through revisions to the course.

The advantage of interviews is that they are personalized, and “permit a level of in-

depth information gathering, free response, and flexibility that cannot be obtained by

other procedures” (Seliger and Shohamy, 1989, p. 166). Furthermore, the researcher

has the chance to gather unpredicted data by probing for information (Seliger and

Shohamy, 1989, p. 166). An interview guide listing the questions or issues to be

explored during the interviews was used (Patton, 2002, p. 343). The advantage of an

interview guide is ensuring that “the same basic lines of inquiry are pursued with

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each person interviewed” (Patton, 2002, p. 343), and providing “topics or subject

areas within which the interviewer is free to explore, probe, and ask questions that

will elucidate and illuminate that particular subject” (Patton, 2002, p. 343). This

gives the researcher the opportunity to have a conversation on a subject area, and

adopt a conversational style while focusing on a predetermined subject (Patton,

2002, p. 343). Yildirim and Simsek (1999) also list the advantages of employing an

interview guide as allowing the researcher the flexibility of changing the order of the

questions, going into more detail with some questions, omitting some questions that

have already been answered by the interviewee, and getting systematic and

comparable information from different interviewees (p. 95). Seliger and Shohamy

(1989) similarly state that in semi-structured interviews, specific questions are

prepared in advance, which provides a platform for the researcher to ‘branch off’

and “explore in-depth information, probing according to the way the interview

proceeds, and allowing elaboration, within limits” (p. 167). The interview guide

(Appendix C) in this research included twelve questions. If the interviewee had

already answered a question while commenting on other issues, the question was not

asked again.

3.5.2 Questionnaires administered to course participants

Each semester, two questionnaires were administered to the course participants. One

of these was completed by the participants at the beginning of the semester, and

aimed to determine needs, while the other was filled in at the end of the semester

and provided feedback on the course. Some parallel questions also helped to

compare the participants’ responses as regards the effectiveness of the course. As

most of the items in the questionnaires were unstructured in nature, and were

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therefore open-ended questions, the participants’ language use also provided data on

the level of the language both before and after taking the course. Best and Kahn

(1986) note the advantages of questionnaires as the researcher having the

opportunity to establish rapport, explaining the aim, and explaining the meaning of

possible unclear items (p. 166). The closed form, or restricted type questionnaires

necessitate short responses, they are easy to tabulate and analyse, and they are useful

for certain types of information (Best and Kahn, 1986, p. 167). The open-form, on

the other hand, “calls for a free response in the respondent’s own words” and

provides greater depth of response, encouraging the respondent to reveal the reasons

for their responses (Best and Kahn, 1986, pp. 167-8).

Many questionnaires, Best and Kahn state, include both open- and closed-type items

(1986, p. 168). In this research, the open type was used in both pre- and post-

questionnaires, with the exception of the last closed-type section in the two

questionnaires (Appendix D and Appendix E) that required the participants to mark

the relevant choices. Slavin (1984) holds that “open-form questions are difficult to

code and are disliked by many respondents as they take too much work” (p. 88). Yet,

in cases where it is desired that the respondents express complicated opinions,

closed-form questions are not suitable, and open-form questions become desirable

(Slavin, 1984, p. 88).

In second language acquisition research, questionnaires are generally used to gather

data on not so easily observable phenomena like attitudes, motivation, and self-

concepts, as well as to collect information on background information about the

research subjects (Seliger and Shohamy, 1989, p. 172). The questionnaires

administered at the beginning and end of every semester provided the researcher

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with valuable data about the course participants’ backgrounds, their needs and

levels, as well as their progress.

3.5.3 Compilation of the Learner Abstract Corpus

For this study, the abstracts for the Learner Abstract Corpus (LAC) were collated

over a period of three years (six academic semesters) from 100 non-native

ENGL501 participants, who took the course between the years 2004 and 2007. The

individual abstracts written by the participants were first saved as word files. After

the accumulation of 100 learner abstracts, the word files were converted into text

files and stored as a databank ready to be analyzed. The reason for the conversion of

the word files into text files was that some corpora analysis programs do not support

word files, and operate on text files.

The LAC was composed of 100 thesis abstracts. The reason for the choice of

abstracts is that they are short and independent texts, so they are easy to analyze, and

they contain all the information in a thesis in summary form. Abstracts, according to

Swales, like other genres reporting research, seem to have an IMRD (Introduction-

Method-Results-Discussion) structure (1990, p.181). Within this structure, almost all

abstracts appear to have common moves, which are the scope of research, problem

statement, aim of research, methodology, main results and conclusions. Thus,

abstracts are a sort of miniature of the research study and reflect the main sections of

the thesis: Scope of research-problem-aim-method-results-conclusions.

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3.5.4 Compilation of the Target Abstract Corpus

Initially, a smaller pilot corpus was compiled for purposes of experimentation, and

to get an insight into the applicability and practicality of the tools. This corpus was

made up of abstracts from five sub-fields, namely 36 communications abstracts from

Canadian universities, 32 archaeology abstracts from Australian universities, 40

psychology abstracts from New Zealand universities, 41 information technology

abstracts from the United Kingdom and 40 economics abstracts from America, a

total of 189 abstracts from countries where English is the mother tongue. The pilot

corpus was invaluable in terms of the familiarization and experimentation with the

corpus analysis tools.

In the process of the compilation of the target corpus, three important criteria in

corpus design were taken into consideration: size, content, and balance /

representativeness (Hunston, 2002). As computer technology is developing day by

day, it is now possible to store and manipulate very large amounts of language data.

At present, very large corpora are being used, such as the Bank of English which is

400 million words, and the British National Corpus which is 100 million words

(Hunston, 2002, p. 25). However, “the exact amount of language required, of course,

depends on the purpose and the use of the research” (Coxhead, 2000, p. 216).

Corpora of only a few thousand words are also used when they are designed for a

specific research study (Hunston, 2002, p. 26) and for a specific purpose. Kennedy

and Thorp (1999) report a research study concerning the compilation of a corpus of

answers to the Academic Writing Task 2 of the UCLES IELTS Examination, where

the aim is reported to be the investigation of the linguistic nature of the answers at

three levels. (8 - expert, 6 - competent and 4 - limited). The compiled corpus is

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referred to as a ‘large’ corpus of 130 scripts (36,000 words). This research study is

an example of how smaller corpora can serve a specific purpose.

The second criterion, content, is related to what will go in the corpus, and this is

determined by “what the corpus is going to be used for but also about what is

available” (Hunston, 2002, p. 26). When the purpose of corpus development is to

create representation of a particular type of language, representativeness and balance

are of utmost significance. This necessitates breaking up the representative whole

into component parts and seeking to incorporate equal amounts of data from each

part (Hunston, 2002, p. 28).

The present target corpus was compiled in an electronic format from the World Wide

Web and is approximately 174,000 words. In order to qualify for the corpus, the

abstracts primarily had to be from universities in countries where English is the

native language. Another important criterion was that the abstracts had to be thesis

and dissertation abstracts, since abstracts written for journal articles and conference

presentations tend to differ. Therefore, journal article and conference presentation

abstracts were disqualified and did not appear in the corpus so as not to distort

representativeness.

Yet another criterion was that the abstracts had to be written at Master’s and PhD

levels at educational institutions. This criterion naturally excluded abstracts written

at Bachelor’s level. One advantage of abstracts is that they do not exhibit significant

differences in terms of length. This property contributes to balance within the

corpus. To ensure representativeness of the corpus in accordance with the purpose of

the study and corpus design in general, the corpus covers four main disciplines: Arts

101
and Humanities, Social Sciences, Sciences and Architecture/ Urban and Regional

Planning. Each discipline, making up a sub-corpus, includes 150 representative

texts, in this case abstracts.

In the Arts and Humanities sub-corpus, 5 abstracts come from Anthropology, 30

from Archaeology, 19 from Art History, 7 from History, 40 from Language /

Literature / Linguistics, 10 from Philosophy / Religion / Theology, 21 from

Psychology, 5 from Music and 13 from Sociology. Of the 150 abstracts in the Social

Sciences sub-corpus, 20 are from Business Administration, 17 from

Communications, 3 from Demography, 20 from Economics, 20 from Education, 5

from Geography, 38 from Information Technology, 12 from Accounting and 15 from

Political Science. The Sciences sub-corpus is composed of 3 abstracts from Algebra,

13 from Biological Sciences, 10 from Chemistry, 11 from Computer Science, 92

from Engineering, 12 from Mathematics and 10 from Physics. The Architecture sub-

corpus includes abstracts from the fields of town and regional planning, landscape

architecture, interior architecture as well as architecture.

As the abstracts were taken from the World Wide Web, html entities distorted the

data, especially in subjects where symbols and equations are abundantly used. All

the abstracts had to be examined both manually and with the help of software to

discard the html entities before the corpus was put through any analysis. Also, there

is always the risk of the same abstract being used by multiple web sites. To avoid

this risk, all the abstract titles and the names of universities the abstracts came from

were recorded during the compilation of the target corpus (Appendix F).

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3.6 Data Collection Procedures

The proposal to carry out the present research was accepted by the EMU Institute of

Graduate Studies and Research (IGSR) in December 2004, and the data collection

process was initiated immediately. This process took longer than anticipated, and

lasted about three years in order to be able to gather sufficient data, in the form of

abstracts, for the compilation of the Learner Abstract Corpus. Therefore, the

collection process which began with the compilation of abstracts in February 2005

ended when 100 abstracts had been accumulated by June 2007. Accordingly, the

analysis of the LAC and the cross-reference of the LAC with the TAC was delayed

until August 2007 beyond the researcher’s control, as the number of the participants

taking the course each semester was unpredictable and irregular. As the LAC was

being gradually compiled into a databank, in the interim, the interviews were held

with the course instructors, and the pre- and post-course questionnaires were

designed and administered to the course participants.

After appointments were made with the instructors beyond working hours so that

they could freely answer the questions without time and work pressures, the

interviews were held through the Hotmail messenger chat program and in an

informal manner. This would provide the interviewees with the time they needed to

contemplate the question and express their opinions without the fear of being

misheard, misunderstood, or misinterpreted. Yildirim and Simsek (1999, p. 92) state

that a good interview should not have the mistakes such as not listening attentively,

and being biased that occur in everyday conversation. One of the reasons why a chat

program was used for the interviews was to avoid any misinterpretation of the data

as well as possible bias. Instead, the chat program ensured that the interviewees

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expressed their feelings and opinions themselves in print. Although there were

twelve questions in the interview guide so that the interviewer could focus on the

predetermined topics, there was no attempt to follow the exact order of the

questions.

The questionnaires were completed by the course participants, at the beginning of

every semester, mostly during the first class hour. The participants’ responses

provided the researcher with data on their backgrounds, and their needs as perceived

by themselves. This information about the participants enabled the researcher to

make revisions to the course based on the backgrounds, and needs of the new group

of participants. Additionally, at the end of each semester, generally during the last

class hour, the unstructured questionnaires including open-ended questions were

administered by the researcher to collect in-depth, qualitative feedback on various

aspects of the course. The two questionnaires administered at the beginning and the

end of the semester were designed in such a way as to enable the researcher to

compare and cross-examine their respective items.

As mentioned earlier, the compilation of the Learner Abstract Corpus took three

years. Some of these learner abstracts were handwritten, and therefore typing 100

abstracts up for corpus compilation also took time. The Target Abstract Corpus had

to be very carefully compiled due to considerations related to size, content, and

representativeness. A further issue was discarding the html entities in the data

collected from the World Wide Web. Once the data were collected from the

interviews and the questionnaires, and the corpora compiled, the analysis process

could be initiated.

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3.7 Methods for Data Analysis

“Action research studies provide teacher researchers with data that can be used

formatively and summatively. That is, much of the qualitative data collected during

the study can be used to positively affect teaching throughout the study” (Mills,

2000, p. 97). In this action research study, the results of the data analysis were

constantly employed in the development of the pedagogic corpus, and accordingly,

the components of the pedagogic corpus were simultaneously revised in line with

the findings.

Seliger and Shohamy define data analysis as “sifting, organizing, summarizing, and

synthesizing the data so as to arrive at the results and conclusions of the research”

(1989, p. 201). Hitchcock and Hughes describe it as “the ways in which the

researcher moves from a description of what is the case to an explanation of why

what is the case is the case” (1989, p. 295).

They hold that:

analysis involves discovering and deriving patterns in the data, looking for
general orientations in the data and, in short, trying to sort out what the data
are about, why and what kinds of things can be said about them. (Hitchcock
and Hughes, 1989, p. 295)

Therefore, data analysis is of extreme significance as it “becomes the product of all

the considerations involved in the design and planning of the research” (Seliger and

Shohamy, 1989, p. 201). Yildirim and Simsek suggest that the process of data

analysis is not simple even for researchers with experience. The reason for this is

every research study is unique, and the methods of analysis in one cannot be

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precisely replicated in another study. Thus, each study requires new approaches to

the issue of data analysis. The researcher is expected to draw a plan for the unique

research study through the exploration of existing analysis methods, and determine

the ones relevant to the research design as well as to the nature of the collected data

(1999, p. 156).

In the same way as data collection, in data analysis too “alternatives can be mixed to

create eclectic designs, like customizing an architectural plan to tastefully integrate

modern, postmodern, and traditional elements, …” (Patton, 2002, p. 248). Seliger

and Shohamy share the same opinion on the issue. They emphasize that as with data

collection, a variety of techniques are possible for analyzing data. They further state

that “the selection of a data analysis technique will depend mainly on the nature of

the research problem, the design chosen to investigate it, and the type of data

collected” (1989, p. 201). Hence, the value of data analysis depends on the extent of

its valid relationship with the other components of the research (Seliger and

Shohamy, 1989, p. 201).

In this study, multiple data collection instruments produced diverse data. The

research problem, the research design and the collected data therefore necessitated

not only diverse data analysis instruments, but also corresponding varied procedures.

The following section therefore presents the analysis procedures for the interviews,

questionnaires, and the two corpora in three separate sections.

3.7.1 Analysis Procedure for Interviews

The interviews with the instructors who had previously taught ENGL501 were

conducted through MSN chat, due to the reasons stated earlier in this chapter.

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Therefore, there was no need to transcribe the interviews, as they were already in

print. During the interviews, the interview guide was used to elicit data on the

predetermined topics. As the two instructors were interviewed, the use of the guide

enabled the interview process and the revealed data to be ‘systematic and

comparable’ (Yildirim and Simsek, 1999, p. 95).

In qualitative data analysis, the most important considerations are describing the

data, and ensuring the emergence of themes (Yildirim and Simsek, 1999, p. 158).

The qualitative data collected through the interviews were analyzed by utilizing

‘content analysis’ to be able to categorize and thematize. The main aim of content

analysis, according to Yildirim and Simsek, is to access the relationships and themes

that can explain the collected data (1999, p. 162). Therefore, what is being done

through content analysis is to bring together similar data under certain concepts and

themes, and then organize and interpret the data in a manner the reader can

understand (Yildirim and Simsek, 1999, p. 162). Content analysis, Patton holds, “is

used to refer to any qualitative data reduction and sense-making effort that takes a

volume of qualitative material and attempts to identify core consistencies and

meanings” (2002, p. 453). In that sense, it requires inductive analysis which

“involves discovering patterns, themes, and categories in one’s data”, since

“findings emerge out of the data, through the analyst’s interactions with the data”

(Patton, 2002, p. 453).

The twelve questions in the interview guide (Appendix C) allowed for the two

interviewees to reflect on the experiences they had with the ENGL501 participants

during the time they taught the course. The abundant qualitative data collected

therefore required reduction and categorization. As Yildirim and Simsek recommend

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(1999, p. 163), first the researcher tried to identify the common patterns in the data

by recognizing key words. Then, the relationship among these common patterns was

explored, and these were classified under four major themes, namely ‘student

profiles’, ‘problems faced by the participants’, ‘the value and usefulness of the

existing course’, and ‘suggestions for the improvement of the course’.

3.7.2 Analysis Procedure for Questionnaires

As mentioned earlier, the questionnaires administered to the participants made use of

mostly open-type questions, with the exception of the last closed-type section in the

pre-course questionnaire which required the participants to mark the relevant boxes

(Appendix D). In the post-course questionnaire, most of the questions were again

open-type, with some closed-type questions that required quantitative analysis.

Therefore, on the whole, the questionnaires produced rich qualitative data, hence

necessitating the utilization of ‘content analysis’ to reduce the data to a manageable

size, identify patterns, and categorize them into meaningful themes.

The pre-course questionnaire included eight and the post-course questionnaire nine

open ended questions respectively. Parallel questions were included to enable

comparison. As the questionnaires were administered to 100 participants, the

qualitative data generated were very large. Therefore, the data were first tabulated,

and the common patterns identified. The categorization of these patterns produced

three themes that were also suitable for a comparison with the interview results. The

emerging themes were ‘the participants’ specific problems in producing written

work in English’, ‘the effectiveness of the course’, and ‘the participants’ suggestions

for the improvement of the course’. Yildirim and Simsek (1999, p. 176) note that

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quotations are used in describing, exemplifying, interpreting data in content

analysis. In this study, participants’ significant contributions were used as quotations

during the description, exemplification, interpretation of the data in the data analysis

chapter.

3.7.3 Corpus Analysis Methodology

Corpus analysis incorporates both quantitative and qualitative data analysis

techniques. The corpus-based approach is empirical, “analyzing the actual patterns

of use in natural texts”, and relies on quantitative as well as qualitative analytical

techniques (Biber et al., 1998, p. 4). Biber et al. point out that one important

consideration for corpus-based approaches is that the analyses should go beyond

simple counts of linguistic features, and include qualitative, functional

interpretations of quantitative patterns (Biber et al., 1998, pp. 4-5). Hunston

similarly draws attention to the fact that a corpus provides evidence in the form of

many examples which can only be interpreted by intuition (2002, p. 23). Intuition is

very important, according to Hunston (2002, p. 2), in “extrapolating important

generalizations from a mass of specific information in a corpus” (p. 22).

This study fits into the corpus-informed approach defined by McCarthy, as the

corpora were designed and built with applied linguistic questions in mind, their

output filtered and organized, and employed as a tool for what the teacher researcher

wanted to achieve. As an example to this third approach, he gives the example of

extracting lexico-grammatical information from a corpus (McCarthy, 2001, p. 138).

Accordingly, it is relevant to define this study as a ‘corpus-informed’ study, as the

research necessitated the identification of the lexico-grammatical patterns, used for

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fulfilling the sub-moves and moves in thesis writing, to be exploited in the

construction of a comprehensive pedagogic corpus.

Like all data sources, a corpus cannot accomplish anything unless it is analyzed.

Corpus access software can re-arrange corpora, it allows observations of various

kinds to be made and provides a new perspective on language (Hunston, 2002, p. 3).

Corpus access software packages, which are employed in corpus analysis, manage

data in three ways: in terms of frequency, phraseology, and collocation (Hunston,

2002, p. 3). It is possible to arrange words in a corpus in terms of their frequency,

and to compare different corpora regarding their frequency lists with the aim of

identifying their differences that can be later studied in greater detail (Hunston,

2002, pp. 3-5). This, according to Hunston, is especially valuable in the comparison

of specialized corpora, where generally a smaller, specialized corpus is compared

with a larger, more general one so that the keywords, “words which are significantly

more frequent in one corpus than another” are identified (Hunston, 2002, pp. 67-68).

One example given is a study by Sutarsyah et al. where a corpus of Economics texts

is compared with a corpus of general academic English to identify the keywords in

the Economics corpus. The study revealed that some words like price, cost, demand,

firm, supply, occurred more frequently in the Economics corpus (1994, cited in

Hunston, p. 68). Frequency counts can also give valuable information on the

frequencies of lexical and grammar words in different corpora (Hunston, 2002, p. 3)

as well as frequencies of categories of linguistic items (e.g. present and past tenses)

across registers (Hunston, 2002, p. 8).

Phraseology can be observed through concordance lines, which are lines that “bring

together many instances of use of a word or phrase, allowing the user to observe

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regularities in use that tend to remain unobserved when the same words or phrases

are met in their normal contexts” (Hunston, 2002, p. 9). Through phraseology,

differences between easily confused words can be observed through the wealth of

evidence provided by concordance lines (Hunston, 2002, p. 12). Concordance lines

can be presented alphabetically or in groups selected and arranged to show a

particular language behaviour (Hunston, 2002, p. 38). Therefore, it can be said that

concordance lines can be used to observe how words behave (Hunston, 2002, pp.

39-41).

Through concordance lines, it is possible to observe the ‘central and typical’,

meaning distinctions, meaning and pattern, and detail (Hunston, 2002, p. 42).

Although a corpus cannot be used to establish what is impossible or possible in a

language, it provides information about ‘central and typical usage’. Typicality

involves “the most frequent meanings or collocates or phraseology of an individual

word or phrase” (Hunston, 2002, p. 42). Centrality, on the other hand, “can be

applied to categories of things rather than to individual words” (p. 43). For example,

although present progressive can be used for the present, the future, or no specific

time, the central use is for the present time. A corpus serves an important purpose

here as the prototypical (what is felt to be typical) may not be the most frequent

(Hunston, 2002, pp. 43-44).

Corpus exploration, by allowing comparative analysis, makes it possible to observe

differences in meaning and use of near-synonyms, something which cannot be

achieved through dictionaries as they handle words separately (Hunston, 2002, p.

45). The meanings of words are closely related to their co-text and are

“distinguished by the patterns and phraseologies in which they typically occur”

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(Hunston, 2002, p. 46). Concordance lines can be divided into sets, each of which

exemplifies one meaning of a word. Hunston holds that “meaning and phraseology

are indistinguishable, and the concordance lines show both” (p. 47). One important

problem with concordance lines is that they present information, they do not

interpret it, and “interpretation requires the insight and intuition of the observer” (p.

65).

The data in corpora can also be managed through the calculation of collocation, “the

statistical tendency of words to co-occur” (Hunston, 2002, p. 12) or “the tendency of

one word to attract another” (Hunston, 2002, p. 68). According to Hunston,

collocation “can indicate pairs of lexical items, … or the association between a

lexical word and its frequent grammatical environment”, the latter frequently called

‘colligation’ (p. 12). Sinclair, on the other hand, defines collocation as “the

occurrence of two or more words within a short space of each other in a text”, and

describes the ‘short space’ as “a maximum of four words intervening” (1991, p.

170).

In a corpus, collocation is calculated by software through taking a node word, “the

selected word appearing in the centre of the screen’, and counting the words

occurring within a particular span of the node word (Hunston, 2002, p. 69). Similar

to Sinclair, Hunston also defines this span as four words to the left and four words to

the right of the node word (p. 69). Collocational information can be useful in

summarizing the information found in the concordance lines, in highlighting the

different meanings of a word, therefore providing a semantic profile of the word,

and in obtaining a profile of the semantic field of a word. An example to the latter

can be that words related to money, such as dollar, money, tax, pound, can be

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categorized as a semantic field (Hunston, 2002, pp. 75-79). What a simple list of

collocations cannot show, however, is the association between meaning and

phraseology, which can only be obtained through the concordance lines (Hunston,

2002, pp. 76-77). In this study, in line with Hunston’s (2002) observations with

corpus analysis, the corpus data are managed in all the three ways; in terms of

frequency, phraseology, and collocation.

3.7.3.1 Corpus Analysis Tools

A variety of tools were utilized for corpus analysis in this study. Some of these tools

are computer-based, while some are web-based. The aim of this section, therefore, is

to introduce all the tools employed in this study. These tools can be listed as follows:

RANGE, FREQUENCY, Concordance, AntConc, and the British National Corpus

interface designed by Mark Davies from Brigham Young University of Utah, the

United States.

RANGE and FREQUENCY are both computer-based text analysis tools. They were

programmed by Alex Heatley, and designed by Paul Nation and Averil Coxhead of 

the School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, Victoria University, New 

Zealand. RANGE  is computer software used to compare the vocabulary of texts.

This software, which calculates the range of vocabulary in texts, provides a range or 

distribution   figure   (how   many   texts   the   word   occurs   in),   a   headword   frequency 

figure (the total number of times the actual headword type appears in all the texts), a 

family frequency figure (the total number of times the word and its family members 

occur in all the texts), and a frequency figure for each of the texts the word occurs in. 

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It can be used to find the coverage of a text by certain word lists, create word lists 

based on frequency and range, and to discover shared and unique vocabulary  in 

several   pieces   of   writing.   The   program   is   free   for   everyone   to   use   and   is 

downloadable   from  http://www.vuw.ac.nz/lals/staff/paul-nation/nation.aspx) and it

can operate on 32 different texts simultaneously.

The program can be used for multiple purposes. Firstly, it can be used to calculate

the coverage of a text by using wordlists such as the GSL (The General Service List)

and the AWL (The Academic Word List). It can also be employed to create own

wordlists based on range and frequency. Most importantly, it can be utilized to find

out common and distinctive vocabulary items in several pieces of writing. The

program is accompanied by three ready-made base lists. The first (BASEWRD1.txt) 

includes the most frequent 1000 words of English and the second (BASEWRD2.txt) 

includes   the   2nd  1000   most   frequent   words.   The   first   2000   words   come   from  A 

General Service List of English Words by Michael West (Longman, London 1953). 

The third (BASEWRD3.txt) includes 570 word families from The Academic Word 

List by Coxhead (2000). All of these base lists include the base forms of words and 

their   derived   forms.   For   instance,   the   headword  aid  has   the   following   family 

members:  aided,  aiding,  aids,   and  unaided 

/var/www/apps/scribd/scribd/tmp/scratch9/16849819.doc). As mentioned earlier, the 

program   can   be   used  to create own wordlists based on range and frequency.

Recently, Billuroglu and Neufeld (2005) have created their own BNL (Billuroglu-

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Neufeld List) wordlist, which is also available as a word list of the 2,709 most

common words in English that can be used with RANGE.

FREQUENCY is another program that also runs on a text file (.txt) to make a

frequency list of all the words in a single text. Unlike RANGE, it can only run one

text at a time. The output is an alphabetical list, or a frequency ordered list. It gives

the rank order of the words, their raw frequency and the cumulative percentage

frequency (/var/www/apps/scribd/scribd/tmp/scratch9/16849819.doc).

Concordance,   designed   by  Rob Watt, University of Dundee, Scotland, is a 

copyrighted computer­based program that can be used for evaluation purposes for 30 

days. However, a registration fee is paid to the author for longer use. In this program 

employed for the close study of texts, each word can be seen in its context and also 

located in the source text. Since words are given in and with their contexts, all the 

usages of any word in a text or body of writing can be compared, and insight into 

meaning and usage gained. Using this program, wordlists and word frequency lists 

can be created, full concordances can be created for texts of any size, collocation 

counts for each word, up to four words left and right, can be observed, concordance 

of each word in the source text can be seen by clicking on any word, a wordlist can 

be lemmatised by grouping chosen words together, and web concordances can be 

made and published on the web. A major advantage of web­concordances is that 

they are available to many users at the same time, which make them ideal for class­

based   activity   and   student­centred   learning.   Users   can   locate   every   word   in   the 

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source   text   and   can   see   how   it   is   used   within   its   context. 

(http://www.concordancesoftware.co.uk/) 

AntConc 3.2.1 was developed in 2007 by Lawrence Anthony from the School of

Science and Engineering of Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan. The earlier versions

of this computer-based software started out as a simple concordancing program, but

slowly progressed to become a useful text analysis tool. The program can run under

any windows environment including Win 98/Me/2000/NT and XP, and also

Macintosh OSX and Linux computers. The AntConc 3.2.1 includes multiple text

analysis tools, but only the ones utilized in this study are presented. The tools of

AntConc 3.2.1 used in this study are as follows: ‘Concordance’, ‘File View’,

‘Clusters’, and ‘Collocates’. The Concordance tool generates concordance lines (or

KWIC: key word in context) lines from one or more target texts chosen by the user.

At any time, a target file can be viewed in its original form using the File View tool.

The Clusters tool is used to generate an ordered list of clusters that appear around a

search term in the target files listed in the left frame of the main window. The

clusters can be ordered either by frequency or the start or end of the word. A user

can also select the minimum and maximum length (number of words) in each

cluster, and the minimum frequency of clusters displayed. It is also possible to select

if the search term always appears on the left or right of the cluster.

The Collocates tool is used to generate an ordered list of collocates that appear near

a search term in the target files listed in the left frame of the main window. The

collocates can be ordered either by frequency, frequency on the left or right of the

search term, or the start or end of the word. A user can also select the span of words

to the left and right of the search term in which to find collocates, and the minimum

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frequency of collocates displayed (http://www.antlab.sci.waseda.ac.jp/software/

READMEantconc3.2.1.txt).

The British National Corpus interface (http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc/) developed by

Mark Davies is a web-based tool that makes use of the 100-million-word BNC.

Words, phrases, lemmas (all forms of words, like sing or tall), wildcards (un*ly or

r?n*), and more complex searches such as un-X-ed adjectives or verb + any word +

a form of ground can be extracted from this tagged corpus. There are six macro

registers on the interface, and the frequency of a word or phrase can be observed in

all registers. Collocates can also be obtained through the interface. In addition, the

use of a word can be compared across registers. For instance, it is possible to obtain

information on the words and phrases which occur much more frequently in one

register than another, such as -ness words in poetry, adjectives in tabloid

newspapers, nouns in advertisements, or verbs in the slot ‘we * that’ in academic

writing. Semantically-oriented searches can also be carried out. For instance, the

most frequent nouns used with ‘small’ and ‘little’ can be compared. A very useful

facility is finding the frequency and distribution of synonyms of a word, and

comparing the frequency of synonyms in different registers. For example, the

synonyms of ‘strong’ can be compared in the ‘academic’ and ‘news’ registers

(Davies, 2004).

3.7.3.2 Corpus Analysis Procedures

The compiled corpora were thoroughly analyzed by utilizing the diverse tools

presented in the previous section. First, the two corpora were separately put through

the Frequency program to explore the most frequent words, as well as the

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cumulative percentage of individual words in the coverage of the corpora. Then, the

corpora were independently put through the Range program for three fundamental

reasons: firstly, to examine the range of occurrence of individual words in the four

sub-corpora in each corpus and explore the ones that were present in all the sub-

corpora; secondly, to determine whether the most frequent words in such academic

corpora actually came from the AWL, which claims to cover 85 % of any academic

text when used with the GSL; and finally, to test the validity of the claim made by

Billuroglu and Neufeld (2005), that separating the most frequent words as GSL and

AWL is problematic, as words acquire different meanings and have different uses

based on their contexts. In the next stage, the two corpora were separately analyzed

for collocations and clusters through the simultaneous use of Concordance and

AntConc 3.2.1. At this stage, the aim was to explore the lexico-grammatical patterns

used in the two corpora.

When the data pertaining to the LAC and the TAC were compared in terms of

frequency, range, phraseology, and collocation, the anticipated deficiencies in the

LAC were further revealed. Therefore, through the use of Range and Frequency, first

the most frequent 165 word families were extracted from the TAC. These 165 word

families later acted as key words for the qualitative analysis of the TAC, when

Concordance and AntConc 3.2.1 were used to extract the alternative lexico-

grammatical patterns employed in the fulfillment of sub-moves and moves in

specifically abstracts, and in theses in general. This exercise heavily relied on

intuition, and employed the functional dimension of linguistic features as a basis. It

also made use of the BNC interface to determine synonyms so that alternative

lexico-grammatical patterns to achieve the same functions, sub-moves, and moves

could be extracted from the corpus. Biber (1988) defines functions as

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“communicative purposes served by particular linguistic features in texts” (1988, p.

25), and refers to corpus analysis of a range of texts in the following way:

Strong co-occurrence patterns of linguistic features mark underlying


functional dimensions. Features do not randomly co-occur in texts. If certain
features consistently co-occur, then it is reasonable to look for an underlying
functional influence that encourages their use. (p. 13)

3.8 Moodle - a Virtual Learning Environment

Corpora and data-driven learning tasks necessitate a platform on which they can be

placed. The current study used Moodle as a virtual learning, or e-learning platform.

A virtual learning environment (VLE) can be described as “a collection of integrated

tools enabling the management of online learning, providing a delivery mechanism,

student tracking, assessment and access to resources". It is sometimes also referred

to as a ‘Managed Learning Environment’ (MLE), a ‘Course Management System’

(CMS), or a ‘Learning Management System’ (LMS) (IADT, 2007). These

environments are conducive to turning teaching and learning into an active, real life-

like process.

Through VLEs, the opportunities for collaboration and communication between the

teacher and students, as well as among students are maximized, allowing them to

engage with the course more actively at their own convenient time and place (IADT,

2007). A VLE not only makes students active, but also ‘actors’, since they are

“members and contributors of the social and information place” (Dillenbourg et al.,

2002, p. 5). Probably the most important advantage of virtual learning environments

is that they can combine heterogeneous technologies and multiple pedagogical

approaches. A variety of tools are used to support functions such as information,

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communication, collaboration, learning and management. Through the availability

of various tools, the teacher has the opportunity to decide which type of interaction

is suitable for which instructional and learning objective (Dillenbourg et al., 2002, p.

6).

Moodle is an open source, as opposed to commercial, VLE package developed by

Martin Dougiamas (Robb, 2004, p. 1). Moodle stands for Modular Object-Oriented

Dynamic Learning Environment (Liao, 2007, p. 1), and it is based on strong

pedagogic principles, namely ‘constructionism’, ‘constructivism’, and ‘social

constructivism’ (Philosophy, 2008).

Constructionism means that learning becomes effective when people construct

something for others to experience, in other words, we have a better understanding

of things when we try to explain them to others. A constructivist view asserts that

people create new knowledge as they interact with their environments. Social

constructivism, on the other hand, “extends constructivism into social settings,

wherein groups construct knowledge for one another, collaboratively creating a

small culture of shared artifacts with shared meanings” (Philosophy, 2008).

In an online course, “the activities and texts produced within the group as a whole

will help shape how each person behaves within that group” (Philosophy, 2008). In

short, with Moodle, the job of the teacher can change from being ‘the source of

knowledge’ to being an influence and a role model for class culture. Moodle enables

the teacher to connect with students in a personal way, to address their learning

needs, and also to moderate discussions and activities in such a way as to lead

students towards the goals collectively (Philosophy, 2008).

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Robb (2004) and Eldridge and Neufeld (2007) emphasize the variety of Moodle

modules. Robb states that “there are more features available than any one user is

likely to use” (2004, p. 1), and Eldridge and Neufeld (2007) stress the various

options and choices available with Moodle. The mode of input is only one of the

examples they give. They highlight the fact that input can be delivered in the form of

a ‘lesson’, or a ‘workshop’, through ‘locally designed materials’, or ‘links to the

World Wide Web’ (p. 21). Eldridge and Neufeld (2007), however, emphasize that the

revolutionary nature of Moodle and other virtual learning environments depends

more on what teachers do with them using their creativity within solid pedagogical

principles, than the technologies themselves (p. 25).

3.9 Limitations and Delimitations of the Study

As in all research studies, certain factors posed as limitations in this study. The

compilation of the corpus may have been a limitation as there might be an element

of chance in text collection (Hunston, 2002, p. 2). Therefore, the nature of the

compiled corpora determined the lexis, patterns and structures extracted from the

corpora. Another limitation is related to the nature of corpus work in general. Corpus

work reveals data about frequency, not about possibility. Descriptions of English are

considered to be shifting towards the typical and away from ‘notions of well-

formedness’ (Sinclair and Biber cited in Hunston, 2002). The fact that something is

commonly used cannot be evidence that it is acceptable. Therefore, the data obtained

from the corpora can only be referred to as ‘typical’, but not necessarily ‘well-

formed’.

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A further limitation is related to the pace of corpus studies. Corpus compilation and

specifically corpus analysis proceeds slowly. Hoey emphasizes that “corpus-based

work is slow and often painful … It can sometimes take half a day to complete an

analysis that will produce a single sentence or indeed a single cell in a table” (2005,

p. xii). Indeed, this study was limited by lack of uninterrupted time, and therefore,

the pace was relatively slow.

Corpus work is criticized for presenting “language out of its context” (Hunston,

2002, p. 23). To deal with this limitation, there is the “need for a corpus to be one

tool among many in the study of language” (Hunston, 2002, p. 23). Mishan offers

another solution to the problem. She suggests that instead of looking to the

authenticity of the source text, i.e, corpus, the aim should be “its authentication by

the learner, which arises out of the involvement of the learner with the material, via

the task” (2004, p. 219). This study was also limited by the issue of de-

contextualized language, and hence used multiple tools for both data collection and

analysis, and also incorporated data-driven learning (DDL) activities to overcome

this limitation of corpus studies.

However, the study also has some delimitations. The study made use of two corpora

and the range of lexico-structural patterns extracted was wider. The use of

comprehensive data involving two corpora, and the analysis of these corpora using a

variety of computer-based and web-based tools had a positive impact on both the

findings and the outcomes. The use of abstracts in the compilation of the two

corpora is also a delimitation, as abstracts are short texts that can be used as whole

texts. The use of short and whole texts is an advantage in corpus design. If long texts

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are used in a corpus, “the peculiarities of an individual style or topic may

occasionally show through into the generalities” (Sinclair, 1991, p. 19).

Another delimitation is the truly international participant population. Graduate

candidates involved in the study were of different nationalities and from different

backgrounds. Only about 40% of the participants were Turkish speaking, and the

remaining 60% were speakers of other languages. “Inclusion of texts written by a

variety of writers helps neutralize bias that may result from the idiosyncratic style of

one writer, and increases the number of lexical items in the corpus” (Atkins et al.,

Sinclair, Sutarsyah et al., cited in Coxhead, 2000, p. 215). It was assumed that the

diverse participant population would contribute to the richness and breadth of the

pertinent data.

A further delimitation is the element of collaboration in the study. The participants

engaged in activities and corpus-informed tasks in a supportive atmosphere, both in

class and in the virtual learning environment, where they have time and space for

reflection, experimentation and discovery. Another delimitation is the researcher’s

status. During the process of providing the participants with more effective support

for thesis writing, the researcher was also writing a thesis, and therefore was able to

combine the insider-emic and the outsider-etic perspectives coined by Pike in 1954

(cited in Patton, 2002, p. 84) and incorporate these perspectives into the research

process. The researcher’s status had a two-fold positive impact on the research in

progress. Firstly, the researcher, going through the same process, could easily

empathize with the participants, and understand their problems better. Secondly, the

researcher had the chance to focus on additional problems she herself encountered

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during all the different stages of doing research, and writing a thesis, and integrate

the experiences in the form of tasks into the pedagogic corpus.

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CHAPTER IV

DATA ANALYSIS

The present study collected abundant data in accordance with the research agenda.

The research questions that steered the research were addressed consecutively in this

chapter:

Research Question 1: What are the major lexico-structural patterns identified in

the Learner Abstract Corpus (LAC)?

This section presents sample work from the learner abstract corpus after the analysis

of the interviews with the previous course instructors, and the feedback received

from the post-graduate students through the needs analysis questionnaires and the

end-of-the-semester feedback reports. The first section focuses on the problem, as

perceived by the previous course instructors, the students themselves and the

researcher. In the second section, through the use of the computer software

introduced in chapter 3, the LAC is analyzed in terms of the lexico-structural

patterns, demonstrating the deficiencies in the Learner Abstract Corpus.

Research Question 2: What are the major lexico-structural patterns identified in

the Target Abstract Corpus (TAC)?

The TAC is closely examined in terms of the target lexico-structural patterns.

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Research Question 3: How does the LAC relate to the TAC?

The analysis of the two corpora provides significant insights into the deficiencies of

the post-graduate candidates’ written performance, and the target patterns required in

advanced post-graduate studies in fulfilling moves such as stating the aim, and

identifying the research gap.

Research Question 4: What does the cross-examination of the two corpora

necessitate in terms of the comprehensive pedagogic corpus design?

The formerly analyzed and interpreted data are exploited to improve the current

instructional materials and evolve a more comprehensive pedagogic corpus

incorporating corpus data and related on-line tasks, taking into account the ultimate

objective of action research, which is “effecting positive changes … on educational

practices … and improving student outcomes and the lives of those involved”

(Mills, 2000, p. 6).

4.1 Analysis of the preliminary data

The researcher has been teaching ENGL501 (presently Advanced Thesis Writing)

since the 2004-2005 academic year, and observing the language deficiencies of the

post-graduate candidates who are expected to report their research in coherent and

appropriate manner. Some pertinent background data were therefore collected from

the previous course instructors and the participants themselves to gain deeper insight

into the problem. An examination of a small sample of the participants’ writing was

also conducted by three experienced writing instructors and a qualified IELTS

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examiner to profile the students’ writing at both course entry and exit points using

the IELTS (International English Language Testing System) criteria

(http://www.ielts.org).

4.1.1 Interviews with EFL 501 (ENGL501) course instructors

The interviews (see Appendix G and Appendix H) with the two previous course

instructors, who were also involved in the design in the period of their instruction,

were held with the aim of eliciting their perceptions and observations regarding the

post-graduate candidates’ written performance. The interviews aimed at finding out

the two instructors’ views on the students’ common problems with the use of the

English language in an academic environment. The two instructors’ suggestions for

the revision of the course to provide better support for the course participants were

also elicited through the interview.

Four major themes emerged from the content analysis of the interviews with the

previous course instructors: Student profiles, the participants’ problems with the

language, the value and usefulness of the existing course, and suggestions for the

improvement of the course. As regards the first theme, student profiles, both

instructors reported that the student population was quite diverse not only in terms

of the nationalities and departmental backgrounds, but also the language levels. As

well as participants with very high, almost native-like language levels, there were

those at the pre-intermediate, and in some cases at the elementary level in the target

language. According to one of the respondents, some participants needed “some

very basic training in English”. With respect to nationalities, although most

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participants were reported to be Turkish-speaking, the rate of foreign students taking

the course was on the rise.

Both course instructors stated that they observed serious problems with the use of

English in an academic environment. One in fact expressed this opinion saying that

“a number do have serious academic writing problems for students at post-graduate

level”. Although both instructors taught two or more groups throughout the years,

they said they could safely generalize the problems, and reported areas of difficulty

related to vocabulary, coherence, grammar, organization, and elaboration of ideas.

One of the interviewees elaborated on these problems, saying that the most serious

problem is ‘lexis and language problems’, because “it is the most difficult problem

to solve in the short-term”. Expanding on the ‘lexis’ problem, the interviewee said:

The participants’ lexical range is not very high, which can lead their work to
be quite repetitive, and their accuracy breaks down, because their knowledge
of the grammar of individual items is weak, e.g. accompanying prepositions,
and their sense of collocations is limited.

The respondent also emphasized that the participants’ sense of ‘synonymy’ and ‘the

need for variety in writing’ is quite limited. An important point regarding

‘insufficient lexical knowledge’ was also highlighted as follows:

this deficiency leads to a problem with nuances, e.g that 'claim' implies a
somewhat critical view on the part of the writer, whereas 'As X states' tends
to indicate support; this problem with nuance also leads to problems in such
areas as hedging, making exaggerated claims for their own research.

With respect to the value and usefulness of the course, the interviewees stated that

the course was extremely useful and valuable, as the participants were given ‘real’

academic support. They also reported that the participants themselves were

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motivated, willing and highly appreciative of the course, as they were aware that

they needed help with their writing. They also emphasized that the feedback from

the departments as well as the participants themselves was proof that the course

definitely had a positive impact on the participants’ use of the academic language.

The previous course instructors felt that although the course was useful and

valuable, they would make some revisions to it if they taught it again. The first

interviewee stressed the need for presenting excerpts from authentic theses as

models. The second interviewee also commented on the need to provide more

exposure to ‘models’, as “good models provide the skeletons and building blocks of

good writing”. There should also be focus on a sense of genre, organization and

audience. In fact, one of the respondents said that there should be “prior focus on the

logical organization of ideas within the conventions of the given genre”. More use of

dictionaries, the introduction of thesaurus type work, and identification of

collocations and chunks as the key feature of fluent writing were also emphasized.

The course instructors also focused on the importance of presenting writing as a

process, and adopting a process approach to writing.

4.1.2 Needs Analysis Questionnaires and End-of-the-semester Feedback

Questionnaires administered to course participants

The needs analysis questionnaires were administered at the beginning of each

semester to raise the participants’ awareness of academic writing and the course, as

well as to elicit their self-perceived needs. A similar questionnaire was designed and

employed at the end of the semester, so that feedback on the course could be collated

and used to improve the course, as well as so that the participants’ responses before

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and after taking the course could be compared and contrasted. As some questions

were parallel in the two questionnaires to allow for comparison, they are also

analyzed together to ensure a comprehensive understanding of the profiles and needs

of the course participants before and after the course, as well as evaluate the

effectiveness of the course as perceived by the course participants.

ENGL501, as introduced earlier, was initially designed to provide general academic

language support for Master’s and PhD candidates and prepare them for ENGL502,

Thesis Writing course offered by a colleague. In time, acting upon the feedback

received from the departments and the participants themselves, the two courses were

merged to provide academic language support for specifically thesis writing. When

the participants were asked what kinds of writing they needed to do in English, they

singled out thesis and research paper writing followed by writing articles for

publication. This need was raised by such a vast majority of the participants through

four semesters that it led to the fusion of the two courses and the development of the

existing course, which has been on offer for the last four semesters as the Advanced

Thesis Writing course (ENGL501).

The three main themes that emerged from the content analysis of the questionnaires

administered at the beginning and the end of the semester can be categorized as the

participants’ specific problems in producing written work in English, the

effectiveness of the course, and the participants’ suggestions for the improvement of

the course. The first theme, the difficulties the participants felt they faced when

writing in English, deserved special attention as these difficulties were taken into

consideration in the revision of the course, and the construction of the

comprehensive pedagogic corpus. Before taking the course, the majority of the

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participants felt that poor vocabulary created the most serious difficulty in producing

their own texts. They emphasized not being able to use different words with similar

meanings, and therefore resorting to repeating the same words. A participant voiced

this as “Writing with a rich vocabulary. Using various similar meaning [sic] words. I

need to improve technical and academic vocabulary.”

Another almost equally important reported problem was concerned with grammar

and sentence structure, length, and complexity. This seems to be consistent with the

point that the most significant problem that needs to be dealt with is lexico-grammar

in meaning creation. A few participants also mentioned difficulties with developing

ideas, drafting, outlining, introducing, and concluding, but these macro-structure

problems were reported much less than those related to the ability of creating the

intended meaning. Upon the completion of the course, although much fewer people

expanded on their problems, 85% of the problems mentioned were either lexical or

grammatical in nature. One participant emphasized the widely-held belief that

“Writing is the most difficult human being`s [sic] activity. It will remain a difficult

task forever and for everyone.” Although at the beginning of the semester not even

one participant talked about concepts like collocations and appropriacy, as they were

obviously not familiar with such nuances, at the end of the semester quite a number

of the participants mentioned related problems. One of them said:

The difficulties that I still encounter in my written English are in terms of


appropriacy of the vocabulary due to sometimes confusing the formal and
the informal language. Also I need to know more synonyms and antonyms.
Another difficulty in my written English is the misuse of collocations.

A very significant theme emerging from the analysis of the questionnaires is the

effectiveness of the course as perceived by the course participants. This theme is

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exemplified through the responses of the participants to different questions in the

questionnaires. The first of these questions was related to the language levels of the

participants as perceived by themselves before and after taking the course. The

respondents were asked to rate their English language skills (global, reading,

listening, writing, speaking) as excellent, good, fair or poor. Before taking the

course, the majority of the participants rated their overall language level, and their

reading, listening and speaking skills as good. The only skill that the majority rated

as fair was the writing skill. After taking the course, however, the respondents rated

all the language skills as good, and there was not a single person who thought their

writing skill was in the fair category. One respondent feels that the course

contributed to the improvement of his/her language skills and says “The course gave

me an opportunity to improve my English by enhancing my vocabulary to include

[sic] more academic words and phrases.” Another respondent refers specifically to

the contribution of the course to the writing skill by saying “It helped me to build

confidence and great interest in writing.”

Another question that provided data on the effectiveness of the course was when the

respondents were asked directly if they had benefited from the course. Of the 58

respondents who chose to respond to this question, 57 answered in the affirmative

and 1 in the negative. The respondent who said he did not benefit from the course

said there was ‘insufficient and unrelated homework’. The positive feedback

included such comments as: “The course has helped me tremendously in improving

my writing skills and taught me how to communicate more clearly”, “Now, I can

write my own sentences without plagiarism [sic]”, “Now after this course I have

self-confidence to start writing even by [sic] mistakes. Guidance of you [sic], read

the books [sic], search in the internet [sic] and the site (lexical) help me in the way

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[sic]”, “I can claim that this course has been the most beneficial course during my

graduate studies for academic writing purposes”.

Before taking the course, 45% of the respondents checked their written work by

giving it to a more competent reader in the English language, followed by 34% who

used Microsoft Word tools for spelling and grammar. 28% said they read their

written work over and over again and revised it, and 18% consulted reference books

and the Internet. 8% mentioned looking at well-written samples and benefiting from

them, and 1% paid someone to edit his work. One respondent gave this very

interesting answer: “I never trust whatever sentence I write that`s why I have always

tried to copy from other people`s work or use their structure [sic] that’s why now in

my thesis I have difficulty expressing my own ideas.”

Upon completion of the course, 28% referred to Word grammar and spell check,

22% said they used the Lexical Tutor website introduced during the course to check

their written work, 10% mentioned getting feedback from the instructor, 8% said

they used the course material, 7% said they gave their work to someone else to

check., and 4% said they used the Word Thesaurus to find synonyms. Some

responses were: “I am using ‘Academic Word List’ book and I use

http://132.208.224.131 (vocabulary profile) web site for checking my written work”,

“The first tool for checking written work is course lecture notes. The second tool is

some websites which were introduced by the instructor and the third and the most

important one is the teacher herself”, “Previously, I had just used MS Word editor

and Google to check my writing. Now I know how can [sic] I use lextutor website.

It`s more reliable than Google and other tools”, “I compare my notebook, lecture

notes and what the teacher says about my written work. Yes, this course gave me

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new technique, system and procedure for writing”. The responses appear to be

indicating that after taking the course, the respondents felt more confident about

their written work, used more varied resources to check their work, and relied less

on other people to check it for them.

The participants were also asked about what other contribution, if at all, the course

made. The majority mentioned language improvement, followed by benefits of the

classroom sessions (self-confidence, interaction with peers), and a deeper

understanding of what research/thesis writing involves. A few participants also

referred to the contribution of the course to their knowledge of writing conventions,

such as quoting, paraphrasing and referencing. One respondent expressed his ideas

in the following way: “The most important help of this course is; I can say that I

know how can [sic] I write my thesis. I didn`t know about writing skills, format of a

thesis. I can criticize a thesis. I can see what`s wrong with the thesis.”

To raise the participants’ awareness of some key concepts in writing, a list was

provided at the beginning of the semester and the participants were asked to mark

the concepts they were familiar with. The same list, with minor changes, was again

included in the questionnaire at the end of the semester to observe how effective the

course was in contributing to the participants’ awareness of these key concepts.

Table 4.1 below provides a comparison:

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Table 4.1

Comparison of responses regarding familiarity with important concepts in


writing

Frequency of positive responses:


Terms Beginning End
of semester of semester
Wordiness 5 11
Cohesion 11 13
Coherence 11 15
Process writing 11 34
Drafting 22 63
Revising 18 61
Editing 22 61
Appropriacy of vocabulary 3 44
Collocations (words that go together) 5 53
Citing ( referencing ) sources 14 56
Avoiding plagiarism 14 68
Quoting, paraphrasing, summarizing 22 68
Bibliographies 22 57
Format of thesis 20 68
Accuracy of language 17 56
Punctuation 19 59
Formal/Informal Language (not asked) 69

As can be observed from the table, almost all the concepts indicated a high level of

familiarity at the end of the semester when compared with the beginning of the

course. Especially noteworthy is the fact that the participants’ awareness of

plagiarism and of the ways of avoiding it through quotes, and paraphrases seemed to

have greatly increased after taking the course. Moreover, initially while only 5 of the

students had a conception of ‘collocations’, and 3 of ‘appropriacy of vocabulary’,

the number of the students with the awareness of these concepts increased to 53 and

44, respectively, at the end of the semester

When asked if they would advise a friend to take the course, 71 out of 72

participants responded in the affirmative. Some interesting answers included:

“Definitely yes, because most of the students have difficulty in writing thesis. Also

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most of them have problems in citing sources”, “Yes, it is a very useful course that

[sic] I can advise my friends and also my teachers as well”, “Definitely. Academic

writing without such course [sic] might be a nightmare”, “Definitely. Course

empowers one to write and use English appropriately”, and “Yes, for sure. To excel

his writing abilities as well as his English knowledge”.

The last theme emerging from the analysis of the questionnaires is the participants’

suggestions towards the improvement of the course. The majority of the respondents

said they were satisfied with all the aspects of the course, but there were also a few

suggestions. These included integrating more materials and more challenging

assignments into the course, compiling the materials into a textbook, making the

course compulsory to all post-graduate students, having smaller class sizes and

homogenous groups, providing more language work, setting stricter deadlines and

finally opening more courses like this one. The participants were asked if they

would suggest the addition or deletion of anything related to the course. Although

there were not many proposed changes, some respondents mentioned making the

course compulsory and credited, making attendance compulsory, increasing the

course hours, including more language work and more assignments with feedback,

and opening more specialized courses (IELTS and TOEFL preparation). A

respondent referred to the need for more specialized courses in the following way:

I think this course is well [sic] enough as a starting point for all university
student [sic]. I suggest to continue [sic] this valuable work with more
specialized topics such as writing scientific articles, conference and
journal papers. (bolded by the researcher) Considering the effort needed to
arrange these kind of activities and the number of people who may attend
[sic]. It may be more applicable in form of workshops, short seminar, etc …
However, I think such efforts are needed to improve and encourage research
in our university.

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These three major themes that emerged from the analysis of the questionnaires are

noteworthy in that they reflect the participants’ voices. These voices are extremely

significant, and were taken into account in the construction of the pedagogic corpus,

and the revision of the course that employs a ‘corpus-informed approach’

(McCarthy, 2001).

4.1.3 A sample of participants’ writing profiles

In order to gain another perspective on the post-graduate students’ written

performance at both course entry and exit points, a representative sample of 19

pieces of writing were profiled by four independent writing instructors, one of

whom was a qualified IELTS examiner with 10 years of experience in examining.

The reason why IELTS was employed was that this exam is used world-wide for

evaluating academic performance, and set by numerous educational institutions as

an entrance requirement for undergraduate and post-graduate programs

(http://www.ielts.org).

The samples of writing were graded according to the IELTS writing band descriptors

on a nine-band scale. The participants pre-course texts revealed a wide range of

writing levels, from 3 at the bottom end to 8 at the top end, with an average of

approximately 5.5 – below the level normally required by universities as entrance

level for post-graduate study. These findings seem to corroborate the data gathered

through the questionnaires and interviews regarding the language level of the

participants. Towards the course completion, however, the post-graduate candidates’

texts exhibited an average of 6.1, ranging between 4 and 8. This is noteworthy as a

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shift of half an IELTS band over the duration of a 50-60 hour course would

generally be considered substantive.

4.1.4 Cross-reference of the Findings from the Interviews and the

Questionnaires

The findings from the interviews with the course instructors and those from the

questionnaires administered to the course participants were compared. Two common

themes emerged from the cross-reference. These were the difficulties faced by the

participants, and perceptions as regards the usefulness of the course.

The course instructors reported that the participants had the most serious difficulties

with vocabulary, grammar, coherence, organization, and the elaboration of ideas.

However, lexis was singled out as the most serious problem. Limited lexical range

resulting in the repetition of the same words, and insufficient knowledge of the

grammar of the individual words leading to the use of wrong collocates and

colligates were emphasized. Similarly, poor vocabulary and insufficient knowledge

of synonyms that caused the repetition of the same words were mentioned as the

highest ranking difficulties by the participants. Parallel to the instructors’

observations, the fact that the participants also emphasized grammar and

collocations as serious difficulties is interesting.

As regards the usefulness of the course, both the instructors and the participants held

that the course definitely provides academic support. One post-graduate student

expressed this quite strongly saying that thesis writing without such a course would

be a nightmare. The instructors believed that the course had a positive impact on the

academic writing skills of the participants. Likewise, the participants reported that

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they felt more confident about academic writing after taking the course. The

different contributing factors mentioned by the course participants were: awareness

of plagiarism and knowledge of the means of avoiding it, tools they could use to

improve their writing skills, lecture notes and class discussions, exposure to more

academic words and phrases, feedback from the instructor, and critical analysis of

authentic samples.

4.1.5 Sample work from the LAC and some preliminary assumptions

In this part, two abstracts from the LAC (1 from the Sciences, and 1 from the Social

Sciences sub-corpus) are presented so that some preliminary assumptions can be

made, and so that the problem that led the researcher to carry out this research can

be better observed.

Sample 1

Statistical process control, which is one of the quality control methods, have been used

since the World War 2. It takes an important place for manufacturers to deal with the

quality and the cost of their products. While manufacturing, it was a problem to find

where and how the mistakes occurs. By using SPC, it stops being a problem. In this

thesis, improving product quality in a pulp mill using statistical process control is issued.

Critical pulp quality parameters like freeness and brightness are chosen to apply SPC.

Data are collected by taking samples once in each hour and a software package is used

to combine data and have X and MR charts. Too many journals, papers and articles are

examined. After all these works, some ‘out-of-control’ points occurred, but the process

was analyzed and found to be in process control. On the other hand, some

recommendations are made. The company may improve its pulp mill by using more

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technological equipments. It may require a high investment first, but by this way, the cost

of production will be reduced.

Sample 2

Media affects society in a wrong way. It has lots of benefits for society, such as, it

broadcasts news to inform people, it entertains people when they return their home from

workplace, it lets us to learn each other etc. However it also damages the society

especially the children. The paper tried to explain affects of mass medium on children in

three categories. The first is to document the power of mass medium (especially TV). It is

the most reliable source because of the visual images. So that everyone spend the time in

front of the television to entertain and to inform. Therefore children are affected about to

watch it. Hence they start to watch television every time. Second, television is not limited

itself to make profit. For that reason they give horror movies and sex movies. They only

write that children should not watch it but it is not enough. Third, television reshapes the

identities. Such as most of the children wants to be like Tarkan, Madonna or Julia

Roberts, whose are the famous people in the world. Finally, Media affects children but it

is not absolute. Its affect on the children cannot be generalized. But as I mentioned

before, almost all over the world is watched television, therefore their affects are very

common.

It can be observed from these two samples that the participants in this study were

likely to have problems with grammar, vocabulary, cohesion and coherence, unity,

register, and so on. Although they had acceptable vocabulary knowledge, this was at

the individual word level, which led to problems in using vocabulary productively.

Lack of knowledge of collocations and colligations and insufficient practice in

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lexico-grammar are bound to lead to problems which, in some cases, may cause total

communication breakdown.

An example sentence from sample 1 is as follows: “After all these works, some ‘out-

of-control’ points occurred, but the process was analyzed and found to be in process

control.” In this sentence, the insufficient knowledge of the verb ‘occur’ has led the

student to use it with ‘points’. Can points occur? What are ‘out-of-control points’?

Another problem is to do with the word ‘work’. The writer of the abstract uses is in

the plural and says ‘after all these works’. Does the student mean ‘after these steps

are followed’? As can be observed, communication breaks down. It is very difficult

for the reader to make sense of what the writer is trying to convey.

An example sentence from sample 2 is: “Second, television is not limited itself to

make profit.” This writer is aware that ‘profit’ collocates with ‘make’. However, the

student either does not know the meaning of ‘limit oneself’ and has used it quite by

chance, or has learnt it wrongly. There is serious communication breakdown here as

only a reader with the same mother tongue as the writer can predict what the

message is. These examples will be expanded once the LAC is analyzed in detail.

4.2 Analysis of the Corpus Evidence

This section presents the analysis of the data from the two corpora compiled for this
research.

4.2.1 Analysis of the LAC

In this section, the major lexico-structural patterns in the learner abstract corpus

(LAC) are identified and examined in detail. The LAC was comprised of 100 learner

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abstracts written by the ENGL501 participants over a period of 6 semesters and is

composed of 21,575 tokens and 3,453 types. Compared to the 174,093-word TAC,

the target abstract corpus compiled from the World Wide Web, the learner abstract

corpus is small, as the compilation relied solely on the number of the students taking

the course and submitting an abstract each semester. The breakdown of the LAC into

its four sub-corpora is as follows:

Table 4.2

The breakdown of the LAC into its 4 sub-corpora

Arts &
Sciences Social sciences Architecture Total:
Humanities
6,859 9,256 5,195 265 21,575

The LAC was first put through the ‘frequency’ program

(http://www.vuw.ac.nz/lals/staff/paul-nation/nation.aspx) to identify the frequencies

in the whole corpus. The ‘Frequency’ program does not reveal word families and

treats the data so as to create output based on individual words (tokens). Neither

does it provide the range of words in the 4 main domains. However, the output

offers cumulative percentages, which is very useful in determining which words

together make up what percentage of the whole corpus. The analysis showed that the

most common 50 words in the LAC make up 42.79% of the whole corpus (21,575

words in total). Of these 50, only 8 words are content words, which means that the

remaining 42 words are function words. The most frequent word is ‘the’ which

occurs 1,543 times and covers 7.15% of the LAC. The first six words that occur in

this corpus are ‘the, of, and, in, to, is’. This finding is consistent with that from the

1967 study of Kucera and Francis, who found that in written English, simple

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grammatical morphemes, the, of, and, to, a/an, in, that, is, was, and he are the most

frequent words (cited in Hudson, 2000, p. 63).

According to Hatch and Brown (1995), nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are

considered content words as they carry content meanings, whereas function words

are pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions and determiners which carry grammatical

meanings. Affixes can be added to content words and they can be modified.

However, function words are affixlike in function and affixes cannot be added to

them (p. 234). In the later stages of the present study, when collocations and

common phrases were examined, function words took back their place since,

without them, it would be impossible to express meanings appropriately. However,

at this stage, the analysis looked at the most common content words in the corpus.

Some critical decisions had to be made during the filtering of the function words.

As pronouns, prepositions, auxiliary verbs which belong to the closed category of

words are considered function words, at this stage they were filtered from the

corpus. Conjunctions are also treated as function words (Hatch and Brown, 1995, p.

234) although they certainly carry meaning, and are vital cohesive devices in a text.

At this stage, though, words like ‘as’, ‘thus’, and ‘although’ were filtered, since there

are some words like ‘since’ and ‘as’ which may be used either as connecting devices

or function as prepositions. Another problem was the case of ‘have’ and ‘do’ and

their related word forms. These words are so common that they had to be treated as

function words. However, they re-emerged in later stages when lexico-grammatical

items were extracted from the corpus. Since the aim of the analysis was not to

produce a list of the most common words in academic abstracts, they were excluded.

However, the focus being on collocations, colligations, and lexico-grammatical

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patterns, these words were initially considered grammatical words. Another

problematic case included such items as ‘which’, ‘where’, ‘these’, ‘both’, ‘such’ etc.

Although these words refer to other words and therefore carry semantic meaning in

context, when not in context they had to be treated as function words. Proper nouns,

acronyms, abbreviations, numbers, and chemical symbols were also filtered.

As there are an enormous number of content words and a limited number of function

words in languages, not surprisingly, after the first fifty or so words, the filtering

process got very slow as most words were content words. There were some

problems though. For example, when the word ‘mark’ appeared, it could have been a

proper noun, or ‘mark’ as a verb or a noun, so it was included. Previously, it was

mentioned that conjunctions would not be treated as content words. However,

although ‘consequence’ is a noun and therefore a content word, and therefore

included, there is the possibility that in context it functions as part of the conjunction

‘as a consequence’.

Taking into account the belief that the most commonly used 2,000 words are

necessary for a learner in an academic environment and that the 2,000 word families

in the General Service List and the 570-word -Academic Word List together

constitute 86% of the academic corpus (Coxhead, 2000, p. 214), it was felt

necessary to explore the LAC in terms of wordlists. The analysis revealed that

67.24% of the top 50 words (39 out of 58) in the LAC came from the GSL, and

approximately 24% from the AWL (14 out of 58). Abstracts are highly academic in

nature, and for pedagogic purposes, one might be inclined to focus on the AWL

(Academic Word List) entirely and take for granted that students are in control of the

first 2,000 words. However, as exhibited by the data and the percentages, most GSL

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words carry academic meanings when used together with other words in academic

texts. Relying solely on the AWL, and assuming that the students at any level have

mastered the GSL would deprive them of the opportunity to add these very frequent

words to their academic vocabulary knowledge. The next 50 content words needed

to be analyzed to see if most of these words also came from the GSL, and then

compare the results with those from the TAC in the subsequent stages of the

analysis.

In the same way as the top 50 content words in the LAC, 65.79% (37 out of 58) of

the second 50 content words were from the GSL, followed by 25.86% from the

AWL. For example, a word which is in the top 100 content words in the LAC,

‘term’, is in the GSL list, and it is a commonly used word to refer to school

semesters; ‘summer term’ and ‘winter term’. However, in academic texts ‘term’ is

usually used to refer to an expression, or a phrase, and the collocations as well as the

use of the word in an academic context is different. Treating the GSL and the AWL

as distinct constructs and focusing on them separately and for different purposes

could lead to serious gaps in the learners’ knowledge of the most frequent words in

English. In order to explore the distribution of the GSL, the AWL, and the off-list

words in the LAC more clearly, it was necessary to consider the LAC as a whole:

Table 4.3

The distribution in the LAC in terms of the GSL and the AWL

WORD LIST TOKENS/% TYPES/% FAMILIES


one (GSL1) 15489/71.79 1393/40.34 712
two (GSL2) 1196/ 5.54 395/11.44 246
three (AWL) 2793/12.95 750/21.72 388
not in the lists (off-list) 2097/ 9.72 915/26.50 Not Applicable
Total 21575 3453 1346

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The table shows that the post-graduate students used quite a high percentage of word

types from the GSL1 (40.34%) When the token coverage is considered, this

percentage is much higher (71.79%). This means that the students employed words

which are in the top 1,000 word list quite frequently. It was mentioned earlier that

most of the words in the GSL are very frequently used in academic writing, and

what makes a word academic is more to do with its collocates. The post-graduate

candidates’ use of words from the AWL was also quite high; 21.72% in terms of type

coverage and 12.95% as regards token coverage. Considering that the AWL

comprises 570 word families in total, the students’ use of 388 families from the

AWL is quite significant. However, caution needs to be exercised here. The

candidates used the 388 word families out of the 570 word families in the AWL, but

did they use them accurately? In the same vein, was their use of the GSL words

accurate and appropriate?

Billuroğlu and Neufeld (2005), thinking that the separation of the GSL and the AWL

is not valid, as there are words in the GSL which are very commonly used in the

academic world, and words in the AWL which can very comfortably be used outside

the academic circles, compiled the BNL (Billuroğlu Neufeld List), which they claim

to be more representative of any written text. They used the the GSL headwords and

word family members (Lextutor, 1,000 families; Lextutor, 2,000 families; Dickins,

Extended version of a general service list of English words), the AWL headwords

(Lextutor, AWL headwords) and most frequently occurring word family member

(Lextutor, AWL sublists), the first 2,000 words of the Brown corpus (Edict, The first

2000 most frequent words from the Brown Corpus), the first 5,000 words of the

British National Corpus (Kilgarriff, Lemmatized BNC frequency lists), the revised

version of the GSL (Bauman, About the GSL), the Longman Wordwise commonly

146
used words (Longman, 2003), and the Longman Defining Vocabulary (Kennaway,

The Longman defining vocabulary). Their list comprises 2,709 words and the words

are classified into 6 bands (plus one band-0- for the function words) according to the

number of the lists in which they occur, with band ‘1’ comprising the most frequent

words. Their list, they claim, has a higher coverage of any given written text than the

GSL and the AWL used together. The LAC was also put through the BNL

vocabulary profiler to test this claim. Table 4.4 illustrates the distribution of the

words in the LAC using the BNL.

Table 4.4

The distribution in the LAC in terms of the BNL

WORD LIST TOKENS/% TYPES/% FAMILIES


One (function words) 9289/43.05 130/ 3.76 86
Two 5828/27.01 1073/31.07 519
Three 1462/ 6.78 458/13.26 238
Four 1176/ 5.45 316/ 9.15 172
Five 797/ 3.69 259/ 7.50 154
Six 968/ 4.49 313/ 9.06 159
Seven 289/ 1.34 102/ 2.95 68
not in the lists 1766/ 8.19 802/23.23 Not Applicable
Total 21,575 3,453 1,396

As indeed can be seen from the table above, while the combined GSL and the AWL

token coverage of the LAC is about 90%, that of the BNL is around 92%. This may

not be a major difference. However, the significant issue is that treating GSL and

AWL separately, and focusing solely on the AWL in academic writing classes, may

cause serious consequences and may deprive learners of valuable learning

opportunities. The BNL does not make this distinction and treats all the most

frequent words in the same list. Therefore, considering lexis on the basis of word

families in all six BNL bands would ensure that the students get exposed to those

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words which are very common, but acquire a different meaning in an academic

context.

So far, the frequency and range of use of the GSL, the AWL, and the BNL words in

the LAC was investigated. However, the fact that a piece of writing reveals the use

of a high percentage of academic words, or less common words does not mean that

the writing produced can successfully convey the writer’s intended messages. The

use of a word does not necessarily mean the accurate and appropriate use of it. The

data from the LAC revealed that the post-graduate candidates’ use of the English

language in the academic context was not always coherent and appropriate,

especially at the lexico-structural level. It is very important, at this point, to

emphasize that “the learning of vocabulary, …, is not just a question of learning the

‘semantic properties’ of items, but also their ‘syntactic properties’” (Corder, 1973, p.

279-280). The post-graduate candidates’ problem with lexis and grammar was

reported as the top difficulty by the course instructors, as well as by the participants

themselves.

Identifying incorrect uses of language is an important pedagogic consideration, since

“whilst the nature and quality of mistakes a learner makes provide no direct measure

of his knowledge of the language, it is probably the most important source of

information about the nature of his knowledge” (Corder, 1973, p. 257). According to

Corder (1973), describing and classifying learners’ errors give us information about

what learners still need to learn, and which language features are causing them

problems (p. 257). The analysis of errors is the most useful for teachers, due to the

fact that errors provide them with data regarding the effectiveness of teaching

materials and teaching techniques, as well as which parts of the syllabus have been

insufficiently learnt, and need to be focused on further (Corder, 1973, p. 265).

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Errors can be described once what the learner is trying to say can be interpreted. In

the case of a shared mother tongue, and if the learner is available, the teacher can

ask the learner to “express his intentions in his mother tongue, and then translate his

utterance into the target language”. This is known as ‘authoritative interpretation’, as

the utterance is authoritatively reconstructed into an acceptable form, and “its

appropriateness is guaranteed by the translation” (Corder, 1973, p. 274). In

situations where the learner is absent, however, what he intended to say is inferred

“from his utterance, its context and whatever we know about him and his knowledge

of the world and the target language”. This is called a ‘plausible interpretation’ and

“the corresponding reconstruction only a plausible reconstruction”. However, there

are sometimes instances “when the utterance is so incoherent that no interpretation

of any sort can be achieved” (Corder, 1973, p. 274).

Errors can be described at the most superficial level “in terms of the physical

difference between the learner’s utterance and the reconstructed version”. Four

categories can be mentioned for differences of this kind: “omission of some required

element; addition of some unnecessary or incorrect element; selection of an

incorrect element; misordering of elements” (Corder, 1973, p. 277). A deeper

description can be achieved through “assigning the items involved to the different

linguistic levels: orthographic/phonological, syntactic, and lexico-semantic”

(Corder, 1973, p. 278). A learner may use a correct semantic item, but choose its

wrong grammatical form, or a correct semantic item used in its correct grammatical

form may be spelt wrongly.

149
Table 4.5

Matrix for the classification of errors

Phonological/
Grammatical Lexical
orthographical
Omission
Addition
Selection
Ordering
(Corder, 1973, p. 278)

The errors of the post-graduate candidates’ were analysed and described using

Corder’s (1973) matrix for the classification of errors. This description was of great

significance for the later stages of this research study, in the construction of the

pedagogic corpus and the design of relevant tasks. It should be emphasized here that

the LAC was very rich in errors, and thus only some of them are exemplified here.

The most frequent content word in the LAC, ‘study’, occurs 128 times. The

examples given include the use of the item ‘study’ both as a verb and a noun. As

Table 4.6 below shows, the majority of errors were of syntactic and lexico-semantic

nature, and some required elements were omitted, incorrect elements were selected,

some redundant elements were added, and some elements were misordered. It needs

to be strongly emphasized here that ‘study’ is a GSL1 word, in other words, one of

the most common 1000 words in English. One might assume that students at this

level would not be expected to make mistakes with a GSL1 word. However, as

mentioned earlier, the use of words in academia may be quite different from that in

spoken discourse, or fiction, and thus treating the GSL words as ‘given’, and

focusing on the AWL words exclusively may result in gaps in the students’

knowledge.

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Table 4.6

Description of errors- ‘study’

Plausible reconstruction
Data from the LAC Description of the error
by the researcher
This study was conducted -Omission of a required
This study applied in North
in North Cyprus, and the element / syntactic
Cyprus and the results can be
results can be different in -Selection of an incorrect
different in other countries.’
other countries element / lexico-semantic
Elements are thought to be study
individually, within application in
Elements are thought to be -Syntactic / Inflectional
a building and the influence
studied individually ….. affix
through the neighborhood
buildings
In this thesis, the aim of the study
is to understand the meaning of -Addition of some
buildings through their form, unnecessary element /
This study aims to explore
space and functional lexico-semantic
the …
organizations and relationships in -Selection of an incorrect
the Persepolis complex and the element / lexico-semantic
cultural values behind that.
This study is to examine the
relationship between emotional
problems, alcohol and drug
The objective of this study -Omission of a required
consumption and academic
is to examine … element / lexico-semantic
performance among Eastern
Mediterranean University’s
students (EMU).
-Selection of an incorrect
The architecture of
A study of various cultures’ element / Addition of
various cultures in relation
architecture and relation to the some unnecessary element
to the climate and the
climate and principles of / lexico-semantic
principles of sustainability
sustainability will be analyzed. -Misordering of elements /
will be examined.
syntactic
Through the reflection of study
about marketing communication
-Misordering of elements /
role on alcohol consumption Plausible interpretation
syntactic
offers different perspective about not possible.
-Coherence problem
evaluation of its role and effects
on alcohol consumption.

‘Research’ is the second most frequent content word in the LAC. There can be no

doubt that the post-graduate candidates, who are deeply involved in research, know

the meaning of ‘research’ very well. Yet, as can be seen in Table 4.7, they have not

mastered the lexico-structural use of the word in an academic context. It can be said

151
that although they knew the word semantically, they seemed not to have learnt the

‘grammar’ of the word ‘research’.

Table 4.7

Description of errors - ‘research’

Plausible reconstruction
Data from the LAC Description of the error
by the researcher
the buildings …… will be
Secondly, the buildings which are
the main focus of this
restored contrary to the Venice -Selection of an incorrect
research / This research
charter articles will be the result element / lexico-semantic
will focus on the buildings
of this research.
which …
A comparative research is
prepared in order to achieving the
background of house owners,
-Selection of an incorrect
searching the rules of housing
This comparative research element / lexico-semantic
sites, looking throw city life and
study is conducted in -Omission of a required
comparing the life of housing site
order to … element / lexico-semantic
with comparing two different
characteristics of two sites, which
are existed already, in different
time periods.
The online survey and Internet
research is going to use in order -Omission of a required
to examine role of marketing Plausible interpretation element / syntactic
communication tools in three not possible. -Selection of an incorrect
different countries such as element / lexico-semantic
America,..
-Selection of an incorrect
element / lexico-semantic
Studying climatological factors
…….so many research / syntactic
which are affecting hydrologic
studies / so much -Addition of some
cycle was the main concern of so
research. redundant element /
many research and studies.
lexico-semantic (research
and studies)

The analysis of the data from the interviews with the previous course instructors, the

pre- and post- questionnaires from the students, the profiles of the participants’

written work, the sample student work, and the LAC revealed that the post-graduate

candidates were facing difficulties especially in creating meanings in a language that

was not their own. Therefore, it seemed crucial to compile a parallel corpus of the

152
work of post-graduate students in English-speaking countries as a next step, in order

to observe how they used lexico-grammatical patterns to fulfil moves such as

identifying the research gap required in abstracts and theses. Their written

performance in terms of fulfilling the required moves was then compared with that

of the non-native post-graduate students studying and living in a non-English

speaking environment.

4.2.2 Analysis of the Target Abstract Corpus (the TAC)

In this section, the major lexico-structural patterns in the TAC are identified and

examined in detail. The target corpus is referred to as the TAC (Target Abstract

Corpus), as it is composed of theses abstracts that were the source of the target

lexico-structural patterns in this research. The abstracts in the TAC, all published on

the World Wide Web, were also produced by students, not ‘experts’. Flowerdew

(2000) draws attention to the importance of providing good ‘apprentice’ models

rather than ‘expert’ generic models, since expert models are more difficult to

replicate due to the likely communicative and linguistic deficiencies of learners.

The TAC was compiled from 4 main domains, namely Sciences, Social Sciences,

Architecture and Arts and Humanities. Each domain included 150 thesis or

dissertation abstracts, a total of 600 abstracts altogether. The downloaded files had to

be filtered using ‘Concordance’ software to eliminate the html formatting of the data

as all abstracts were obtained from the World Wide Web. The breakdown of tokens

according to the 4 domains (sub-corpora) was as follows:

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Table 4.8

The breakdown of the TAC into its 4 sub-corpora

Arts &
Sciences Social Sciences Architecture Total:
Humanities
42,113 43,073 39,994 48,913 174,093

The table indicates that although the corpus was balanced in terms of the number of

abstracts, the Arts and Humanities sub-corpus had by far the highest number of

words. As the disciplines in the Arts and Humanities sub-corpus (Anthropology, Art

History, History, Language, Literature, Linguistics, Philosophy, Religion, Theology,

Psychology, Music, and Sociology) are dependent on verbal expression by nature,

this seems to be expected.

In the same way as the LAC, the TAC was put through the ‘frequency’ program

(http://www.vuw.ac.nz/lals/staff/paul-nation/nation.aspx) to identify the frequencies

in the whole corpus. The number of total tokens (individual words) in the TAC is

174,093, and the number of total types 15,425. The most frequent word in the TAC

is ‘the’. It occurs 12,550 times and accounts for 7.21 % of the whole corpus.

The analysis of the TAC demonstrated that 39.5 %, of the whole corpus was made

up of a mere 50 words. Of these 50 words, only 12 were content (lexical) words and

the others were all ‘function’ words. Hunston (2002, p. 3) discusses word

frequencies in corpora in detail and compares the first 50 words from three different

corpora, a corpus of politics dissertations, a corpus of materials science dissertations

and the 1998 Bank of English corpus, and she concludes that in the first 50,

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grammar words are more frequent than lexical words. In all the three corpora

compared, the first 6 most frequent words are the, of, to, and, a, and in. The TAC

findings are consistent with Hunston’s findings in that the first 6 most frequent

words in the TAC are the, of, and, to, in, and a, respectively.

In parallel with the analysis of the LAC, the function words in the TAC were then

filtered to provide a basis of comparison in the later stages of the data analysis. Of

the top 50 content words in the TAC, 60% (30 out of 50) come from the GSL,

followed by 34% (17 out of 50) from the AWL. It should again be emphasized that

60% is quite a high percentage, and very strongly confirms that some GSL words

acquire a different meaning and a different use when used in an academic context.

Not surprisingly, in the TAC, the most frequent content word was ‘study’ (a GSL

word) (667 times, 0.39%), as the corpus is highly academic in nature. There were

some subject-specific words occurring in the top 50 content words list. Some of

these were: architecture, architectural, social, cultural, political, etc. At this point

there was no need to filter these words since later in the research a word qualified

for inclusion in the target bank of lexico-structural items to achieve moves not only

in terms of frequency, but also with respect to the range of occurrence in the four

sub-corpora.

One interesting finding was the emergence of the word ‘new’ as the third most

frequent content word, occurring 377 times and the adjective ‘different’ occuring

172 times, as academic research, by definition, is expected to offer something ‘new’

and ‘different’ to the field. The analysis of the most frequent 50 content words also

indicated a high number of synonymous words used. For example, the top word

‘study’ may be frequently used interchangeably with the 2nd word ‘research’, the 6th

155
frequent word ‘thesis’, the 23rd most frequent word ‘dissertation’ and even the 11th

word ‘project’. Likewise, ‘analysis’, ‘data’, and ‘information’ are all useful content

words which may convey a similar message. As the analysis developed, these

relationships took better shape.

In the second top 50 list, 66.66% (34 out of 51) of the words were from the GSL,

and 29.41% (15 out of 51) from the AWL. Relations of synonymy can also be

observed in the second 50 list. When the British National Corpus

(http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc/) is consulted, for example, it can be seen that the words

‘significant’, ‘important’ and ‘major’, which all appeared on the second 50 list, can

be used as synonyms within an academic context. To get a better insight into the first

100 list, it was felt necessary to categorise the words according to their parts of

speech.

Table 4.9

The most frequent 100 content words in the TAC, categorized in terms of their
parts of speech

Nouns Verbs Adjectives Adverbs


STUDY / STUDIES STUDY / STUDIES NEW WELL
RESEARCH RESEARCH ONLY ONLY
DESIGN DESIGN CULTURAL
ANALYSIS DIFFERENT
THESIS PUBLIC
USE USE ECONOMIC
USED / USING ARCHITECTURAL
MODEL MODEL URBAN
DEVELOPMENT DEVELOPED POLITICAL
PROJECT / PROJECTS PROJECTS SIGNIFICANT
DATA IMPORTANT
SYSTEM / SYSTEMS SOCIAL
RESULTS RESULTS ARCHAEOLOGICAL
PROCESS / PROCESSES PROCESS / PROCESSES PARTICULAR
INFORMATION HIGH
WORK WORK VARIOUS
BASED LOCAL
DISSERTATION HUMAN
ARCHITECTURE HISTORICAL
TIME TIME MAJOR

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Nouns Verbs Adjectives Adverbs
CONSTRUCTION
BUILDING BUILDING
APPROACH APPROACH
PUBLIC
THEORY
CASE
WORLD
STUDENTS
ROLE
ENVIRONMENT
CHANGE / CHANGES CHANGE / CHANGES
HISTORY
CHAPTER
ORDER ORDER
PROVIDE / PROVIDES
CONTEXT
PEOPLE
MANAGEMENT
FRAMEWORK
STRUCTURE STRUCTURE
FACTORS
LANDSCAPE LANDSCAPE
TECHNOLOGY
FOUND
UNDERSTANDING UNDERSTANDING
SPACE
FORM FORM
GROUP GROUP
NATURE
RELATIONSHIP
EXAMINES
LEVEL LEVEL
PART PART
CULTURE
YEARS
CONTROL CONTROL
GOVERNMENT
EVIDENCE
POWER POWER
INCLUDING
PERFORMANCE
ISSUES ISSUES
PERIOD
PRACTICES PRACTICES (US)
METHODS
STATE STATE
ART
KNOWLEDGE
COMMUNITY
PROBLEM
SITE SITE
EDUCATION
LIFE
NUMBER NUMBER
AREAS

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The table indicates that most of the frequent words appearing in the target corpus

were nouns, followed by verbs, adjectives and adverbs. This would seem to suggest

that in academic discourse most meaning is conveyed through nouns. At this stage, it

is not clear whether some of the words were used as nouns or verbs, and therefore

these words were categorised as both nouns and verbs. However, the concordancing

program revealed the parts of speech in the future stages of the research in the

analysis of collocations, colligations, and lexico-structural patterns.

In order to examine the distribution of the GSL, the AWL, and the off-list words

used in the target corpus more clearly, it was necessary to look at the whole TAC

using RANGE.

Table 4.10

The distribution of the words in the TAC in terms of the GSL and the AWL

WORD LIST TOKENS/% TYPES/% FAMILIES


One (GSL 1) 113985/65.47 2658/17.23 938
Two (GSL 2) 8835/ 5.07 1208/ 7.83 575
Three (AWL) 25695/14.76 1992/12.91 564
not in the lists 25578/14.69 9567/62.02 Not Applicable
Total 174,093 15,425 2,077

As indicated in Table 4.10, the target corpus made up of 174,093 words showed

variations in terms of ‘types’ and ‘tokens’. While 65.47 % of the tokens came from

GSL 1, this was only 17.23% as regards types. This means that a low number of the

most frequent words were very commonly used. On the other hand, the words that

do not occur in any list made up 14.69% of the tokens but constituted 62.02 % of the

types. These words are less frequent words which do not occur among the 2,570

words covered by the GSL, and the AWL. 14.76% of the tokens came from the

Academic Word List. This is quite a high percentage but as the corpus is academic in

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nature, this is hardly surprising. In terms of types, these academic words constituted

12.91% of the whole target corpus. It should be stressed here yet again that some

GSL words acquire an academic meaning when used with certain other words in an

academic context, the “linguistic environment”, and especially the co-text, “the other

words on either side” (Sinclair, 1991, pp. 171-172).

The GSL and the AWL, if and when they are used together, are claimed to cover 85

to 90% of words (tokens) in academic text. Billuroglu & Neufeld (2005), as

mentioned earlier, claim that their list, the BNL, (Billuroglu & Neufeld List), is more

comprehensive and representative of the commonly used words in English. The list

claims to comprise 90 to 95% of tokens (not including proper nouns, acronyms or

abbreviations) in academic corpora (http://www.lextutor.ca/vp/tr/

BNL_Rationale.doc ). When the BNL was applied to the TAC, the following output

was obtained:

Table 4.11

The distribution of words in the TAC in terms of the BNL

WORD LIST TOKENS/% TYPES/% FAMILIES


BNL 1 (function words) 70794/40.66 163/ 1.06 91
BNL 2 38871/22.33 2049/13.28 636
BNL 3 11459/ 6.58 1141/ 7.40 416
BNL 4 10785/ 6.19 851/ 5.52 314
BNL 5 6781/ 3.90 796/ 5.16 305
BNL 6 9100/ 5.23 1004/ 6.51 281
BNL 7 2426/ 1.39 340/ 2.20 136
not in the lists 23877/13.72 9081/58.87 Not Applicable
Total 174093 15425 2179

As can be seen from the figures above, the BNL coverage of the target academic

corpus was higher than the GSL and the AWL combined together. Whereas the latter

covered 85.3 % of tokens and 37.98 % in terms of types, the BNL comprised 86.28

159
% of tokens and 41.13 % of word types. However, the percentage of off-list types

was still high (58.87 %). The coverage of text by the GSL and the AWL was 85 to

90 % of actual words (tokens) and that of the BNL was 90 to 95 %. Considering that

tokens are not equal to types and a word like ‘the’ is repeated 12,550 times, it is

worth exploring the off-list word list. One of the off-list words which occurred in all

the 4 sub-corpora and repeated 43 times in the TAC is ‘novel’. 28 out of these 43

times, ‘novel’ was used as an adjective meaning ‘new’, and mostly used together

with the nouns ‘approach’, ‘technique’ and ‘application’. If we relied solely on

word lists such as the GSL, the AWL and the BNL, the students might not be able to

encounter ‘novel’ and use it as an alternative to ‘new and original’ in their academic

writing. A search of the BNC in fact revealed that ‘novel’ appears 1,349 times in the

academic sub-corpus of the BNC, and used with nouns such as ‘problems’,

‘definition’, and ‘way’.

Another example is the ‘interview’ family. Although it is in the BNL band 5, this

family does not merit a place in the AWL. However, in academic writing, and

especially thesis writing, where research is reported, it is an extremely important

family in terms of methodological procedures. In the TAC, the family occurred 89

times as shown below:

160
Table 4.12

The frequency of occurrence of the ‘Interview’ family in the TAC

Arts & Social


Arch. Sciences
Sub- Total Humanitie Sciences
Off-list word Sub- Sub-
corpora Freq. s Sub- Sub-
corpus corpus
corpus corpus
INTERVIEW 3 14 3 8 0 3
INTERVIEWED 4 10 2 6 1 1
INTERVIEWEES 2 2 0 1 0 1
INTERVIEWERS 1 1 0 1 0 0
INTERVIEWS 4 62 8 19 9 26
89 13 35 10 31

The other off-list word families that occurred in all the four sub-corpora quite

frequently were ‘database’ (17 times), ‘era’ (17 times), ‘discourse’ (103 times), and

‘dissertation’ (204 times). Especially noteworthy were the last two families:

‘discourse’ and ‘dissertation’. As regards ‘dissertation’, it is interesting that such a

frequent word in the academic register could not qualify for the AWL, or the BNL.

Considering that this word can mostly be interchangeably used with ‘thesis’, it

would be unfair to deprive students writing their theses of a synonym. The

‘discourse’ family, on the other hand, exhibited meaningful data. Although the word

itself and the family members occurred in the Architecture, the Arts and Humanities,

and the Social Sciences sub-corpora, they did not occur in the Sciences sub-corpus

even once, possibly due to the non-verbal requirements of this domain.

The analysis so far seems to suggest very strongly that wordlists such as GSL, AWL,

and BNL have their pedagogic merits. Yet, caution needs to be exercised with them,

as there are also extremely significant off-list words employed by different genres

and sub-genres. Therefore, it can be said that while wordlists certainly facilitate

learning of vocabulary through progressively focusing on the most frequently used

161
words, they need to be supplemented by genre-based specialized vocabulary at

especially higher levels.

In this section, some words from the TAC were analysed in terms of the lexico-

grammatical patterns. The same words chosen for the LAC were focused on here as

well, and the examples presented were selected on the basis of the deficient patterns

in the LAC. As Table 4.13 shows, the examples indicated that the writers of the texts

in the TAC used the analysed words accurately, appropriately, and in a variety of

ways. Furthermore, the occurrence of less frequent words is easily observable.

Table 4.13

Lexico-grammatical patterns in the TAC- ‘study’, and ‘research’

Data from the TAC Comment


While such deviant trademarks do not seem
more likely to be abandoned or cancelled or
to expire, further study suggests that • Selection of a correct element / lexico-
trademarks that adhere most strictly to semantic
design norms are more likely to survive in
use over time.
This study presents a systematic approach
for doing the latter by identifying the ICTs, • Correct ordering of elements / syntactic
technology
• Use of a correct element / syntactic /
applications and key sectors that most
impact the internal digital divide in subject-verb agreement
developing countries.
The research is based on a model of systems • Selection of a correct element / lexico-
adoption as a continuous process, and with semantic
the choices and decisions taken at an early
• Correct ordering of elements / syntactic
stage with regard to technology having
significant effects on the adoption across • Use of a correct element / syntactic /
time. subject-verb agreement
This research is conducted as an effort to • Selection of a correct element / lexico-
demonstrate the usefulness of the system semantic
dynamics models on the construction • Use of a correct element / syntactic /
industry. subject-verb agreement

162
The analysis so far provided an outline of the LAC and the TAC compiled for this

study, and a rough profile of the writers in the two corpora. More comprehensive

data regarding competences and deficiencies were revealed when the two corpora

were compared and contrasted with each other.

4.2.3 Comparison of the LAC with the TAC

This section compares and contrasts the LAC with the TAC in terms of word

frequency, range, collocations, colligations and lexico-structural patterns in general.

This section is therefore of major significance, as the outcome of the analysis

formed the basis of the pedagogic corpus and the revised course.

It can be observed from the table (see Appendix I) that while the first 50 words of

the TAC made up 39.50% of the whole corpus, the percentage was higher for the

LAC, the first 50 words making up 42.79% of the whole corpus. This appears to

indicate that the writers in the LAC made more use of the same words more

frequently. Graph 4.1 displays the distribution of all the words in the two corpora

more clearly.

163
Graph 4.1: The LAC and the TAC – Cumulative Percentages

Graph 4.1 indicates a striking difference between the LAC and the TAC in terms of

coverage. As can be observed, the whole LAC is covered by approximately 3,400

different words. However, more than 15,000 different words make up the TAC,

making it clear that the range of vocabulary used by the writers of the TAC is almost

five times as wide as that of the post-graduate writers of the LAC. It should be

remembered at this stage, however, that the corpora are not of equal sizes, and more

meaningful data are revealed when an equal size sample of the TAC is compared

with the LAC in the later stages of the research.

The first ten words in both corpora were all function words, which is consistent with

the pertinent literature. The most frequently used content word in both corpora was

the same: ‘study’. This word was at number 17 in the LAC, and at number 20 in the

TAC. The second most frequent word in the two corpora was also the same,

‘research’, appearing at number 25 in the LAC and 32 in the TAC. There was no

164
observable difference between the LAC and the TAC in terms of the first 100 words.

Thus, it would be useful to compare the top 50 content words and then the second

most frequent 50 content words in the two corpora for more relevant data.

Table 4.14

Comparison of the top 50 content words in the LAC and the TAC

The LAC (21,575 words) The TAC (174,093 words)

Frequency
Frequency

Off-list

Off-list
GSL1

GSL2

GSL2
GSL1
AWL

AWL
Content Word Content Word

STUDY 128 * STUDY 667 *


RESEARCH 79 * RESEARCH 405 *
USED 71 * NEW 377 *
DESIGN 70 * ANALYSIS 335 *
DIFFERENT 70 * DESIGN 320 *
PEOPLE 65 * THESIS 317 *
QUALITY 64 * USE 289 *
ANALYSIS 58 * MODEL 283 *
BUILDINGS 44 * USED 282 *
PROBLEMS 44 * DEVELOPMENT 278 *
SYSTEM 43 * PROJECT 271 *
IMPORTANT 41 * SOCIAL 262 *
ARCHITECTURE 40 * DATA 256 *
METHODS 40 * SYSTEM 251 *
RESULTS 39 * RESULTS 243 *
USE 38 * USING 236 *
NEW 37 * PROCESS 235 *
TIME 37 * INFORMATION 227 *
DATA 36 * WORK 226 *
ORDER 35 * SYSTEMS 222 *
CONSTRUCTION 34 * BASED 220 *
CONCRETE 33 * CULTURAL 212 *
MEDIA 33 * DISSERTATION 205 *
THESIS 33 * ARCHITECTURE 190 *
WORLD 33 * STUDIES 189 *
MODEL 32 * TIME 188 *
BUILDING 31 * CONSTRUCTION 187 *
USING 31 * BUILDING 174 *
COUNTRIES 30 * DIFFERENT 172 *
MANAGEMENT 30 * APPROACH 171 *
PROJECT 30 * PUBLIC 158 *
WATER 30 * ECONOMIC 156 *
PRESENT 29 * THEORY 155 *
VALUE 28 * ARCHITECTURAL 152 *
INFORMATION 27 * URBAN 151 *
STUDENTS 27 * CASE 150 *

165
The LAC (21,575 words) The TAC (174,093 words)

Frequency
Frequency

Off-list

Off-list
GSL1

GSL2

GSL2
GSL1
AWL

AWL
Content Word Content Word

ALCOHOL 26 * DEVELOPED 148 *


VERNACULAR 26 * WORLD 148 *
FACTORS 25 * STUDENTS 147 *
LIFE 25 * WELL 146 *
METHOD 25 * ROLE 146 *
WAY 25 * ENVIRONMENT 144 *
BASED 24 * CHANGE 136 *
STUDIES 24 * HISTORY 136 *
NEEDS 23 * CHAPTER 135 *
CLIENT 22 * ORDER 134 *
COST 22 * PROVIDE 133 *
PART 22 * CONTEXT 131 *
SOCIETY 22 * PEOPLE 130 *
AIM 21 * POLITICAL 129 *
CITY 21 * PROJECTS 129 *

The data indicated that although the two lists included quite a number of common

words, 67.24% of the top 50 words in the LAC came from the GSL, and

approximately 24% from the AWL, whereas 60% of the top 50 content words in the

TAC came from the GSL, followed by 34% from the AWL. This means that the

post-graduate candidates taking ENGL501 made more use of the GSL and less of

the AWL. The data from the TAC, however, revealed that the writers of the TAC

made more use of academic words in their work, and used quite a number of

synonymous words evident in even the list of fifty words. ‘Study’, ‘research’,

‘thesis’, ‘dissertation’ and even ‘project’ can all be used to refer to some kind of

product in research. Two other synonymous threads that can be observed are

‘analysis / data / information’ and ‘model / design’. The use of synonymy occurred,

but at a lesser extent in the LAC. One noteworthy observation regarding the LAC is

that words like ‘process’, ‘theory’, ‘context’, and ‘framework’, which are very

166
important in describing the methodology in research, did not occur within the top 50

words.

Table 4.15

Comparison of the second top 50 content words in the LAC and the TAC

The LAC (21,575 words) The TAC (174,093 words)

Frequency
Frequency

Off-list

Off-list
GSL1

GSL2

GSL2
GSL1
AWL

AWL
Content Word Content Word

CULTURE 20 * MANAGEMENT 128 *


HIGH 20 * SIGNIFICANT 128 *
MUSIC 20 * IMPORTANT 124 *
PROCESS 20 * FRAMEWORK 124 *
RESULT 20 * STRUCTURE 124 *
STRUCTURES 20 * FACTORS 123 *
TELEVISION 20 * LANDSCAPE 123 *
BETTER 19 * TECHNOLOGY 122 *
CULTURAL 19 * FOUND 121 *
ELEMENTS 19 * CHANGES 119 *
FIND 19 * UNDERSTANDING 119 *
MAIN 19 * PROVIDES 118 *
PAPER 19 * SPACE 118 *
PROBLEM 19 * FORM 117 *
SECTOR 19 * GROUP 117 *
STRUCTURE 19 * NATURE 117 *
CONTROL 18 * RELATIONSHIP 117 *
EFFECTS 18 * EXAMINES 114 *
FORM 18 * LEVEL 113 *
GOVERNMENT 18 * PROCESSES 113 *
RELATIONSHIP 18 * PART 112 *
SYSTEMS 18 * ARCHAEOLOGICAL 109 *
TECHNIQUES 18 * CULTURE 108 *
APPLIED 17 * YEARS 107 *
ARCHITECTURAL 17 * CONTROL 105 *
CASE 17 * PARTICULAR 105 *
CONSUMPTION 17 * GOVERNMENT 103 *
COSTS 17 * EVIDENCE 103 *
DEVELOPMENT 17 * POWER 102 *
ECONOMY 17 * HIGH 100 *
INTERNET 17 * INCLUDING 100 *
MARKET 17 * VARIOUS 100 *
SOLUTION 17 * PERFORMANCE 100 *
WELL 17 * ISSUES 100 *
ATTENTION 16 * PERIOD 100 *
CARPET 16 * PRACTICES 98 *
DUE 16 * METHODS 98 *
ENVIRONMENT 16 * STATE 97 *

167
The LAC (21,575 words) The TAC (174,093 words)

Frequency
Frequency

Off-list

Off-list
GSL1

GSL2

GSL2
GSL1
AWL

AWL
Content Word Content Word

HAND 16 * ART 96 *
HISTORY 16 * KNOWLEDGE 96 *
LIKE 16 * LOCAL 95 *
MARKETING 16 * COMMUNITY 95 *
NUMBER 16 * PROBLEM 94 *
PERFORMANCE 16 * SITE 94 *
PERIOD 16 * EDUCATION 93 *
PRINCIPLES 16 * HUMAN 92 *
PROJECTS 16 * HISTORICAL 90 *
TERMS 16 * LIFE 90 *
TEXTBOOKS 16 * NUMBER 90 *
TRADE 16 * AREAS 90 *

In the LAC, 65.79% of the second 50 content words were from the GSL, followed

by 25.86% from the AWL. In the TAC, 66.66% of these words were from the GSL,

and 29.41% from the AWL. Again the percentage of the use of academic words was

higher in the TAC than in the LAC. However, as previously stated, some GSL words

gain academic meanings when used with certain other words in an academic

context.

Relations of synonymy could also be observed in the second 50 list. For example,

the synonymous words ‘significant’, ‘important’ and ‘major’ appeared on the TAC

second 50 list. The LAC second 50 most frequently used words list included two

very common words (‘television’ and ‘internet’) which are off-list, as the GSL was

compiled in 1953. The Billuroglu-Neufeld List (BNL), however, attempted to reflect

the nature of English according to the second half of the 20 th century, through

eliminating words like ‘shilling’ which are no longer common, and including words

like ‘television’, ‘internet’ which are in frequent use in the modern era. Having

looked at the top 100 words in the two corpora, it was also worthwhile to consider

168
the two corpora as a whole. RANGE software was used to observe the comparative

distribution of the GSL, the AWL, and the off-list words used in the LAC and the

TAC.

Table 4.16

Comparison of the LAC and TAC distribution- the GSL and the AWL

The LAC The TAC


FAMILIE FAMILIE
WORD LIST TOKENS/% TYPES/% TOKENS/% TYPES/%
S S
15489/71.7 113985/65.4 2658/17.2
one (GSL1) 9
1393/40.34 712
7 3
938
1196/ 8835/ 1208/
two (GSL2) 5.54
395/11.44 246
5.07 7.83
575
2793/12.9 25695/14.7 1992/12.9
three (AWL) 5
750/21.72 388
6 1
564

not in the lists 2097/


915/26.50 *NA
25578/14.6 9567/62.0
*NA
(off-list) 9.72 9 2
Total 21575 3453 1346 174093 15425 2077

*NA: Not Applicable The RANGE program (http://www.vuw.ac.nz/lals/staff/paul-nation/nation.aspx) cannot


calculate word families of off-list words as these words do not appear in any of the three lists. (General Service
List 1, General Service List 2 and Academic Word List)

The table indicates that the post-graduate candidates used the most common 1000

words (GSL 1) more frequently both in terms of types and tokens. Similarly, the

percentage of the next most common 1,000 words (GSL 2) was higher in the LAC.

This means that in the LAC the most common 2,000 words are more often used.

However, the writers in the TAC made more use of the word families in the GSL.

One interesting finding indicated by the above profile is that the post-graduate

students taking ENGL501 used quite a high percentage of academic word types.

However, careful scrutiny of the data revealed that the use of the academic words in

the LAC was restricted to only 388 families, whereas the writers of the TAC

exploited 564 families from the academic word list. If we consider that the total

number of word families in the AWL is 570, this is quite significant.

169
The types of words which do not appear in any of the three lists (the off-list words)

are much more frequent in the TAC (62.02%), as opposed to 26.50% in the LAC.

This may indicate that the writers in the LAC tend to use the most common words

more frequently, while the writers in the TAC exploit a variety of words. The table

thus suggests that the post-graduate writers involved in research in English-speaking

countries did not solely rely on the most commonly used 2,570 word families, but

instead made use of more sophisticated words that were not on any of the lists. This

is demonstrated by the fact that 62.02% of the types of words used in the TAC did

not appear in either the GSL or the AWL. The LAC and the TAC also need to be

compared with respect to the BNL, which is argued to have a higher coverage of any

given written text than the GSL and the AWL used together.

Table 4.17

Comparison of the LAC and the TAC distribution according to the BNL

The LAC The TAC


FAMILIE FAMILIE
WORD LIST TOKENS/% TYPES/% TOKENS/% TYPES/%
S S
70794/40.66 163/ 91
BNL 1** 9289/43.05 130/ 3.76 86
1.06
38871/22.33 2049/13.2 636
BNL 2 5828/27.01 1073/31.07 519
8
11459/ 6.58 1141/ 416
BNL 3 1462/ 6.78 458/13.26 238
7.40
10785/ 6.19 851/ 314
BNL 4 1176/ 5.45 316/ 9.15 172
5.52
6781/ 3.90 796/ 305
BNL 5 797/ 3.69 259/ 7.50 154
5.16
9100/ 5.23 1004/ 281
BNL 6 968/ 4.49 313/ 9.06 159
6.51
2426/ 1.39 340/ 136
BNL 7 289/ 1.34 102/ 2.95 68
2.20
not in the lists 1766/ 8.19 802/23.23 *NA 23877/13.72
9081/58.8
*NA
(off-list) 7
Total 21575 3453 1396 174093 15425 2179

*NA: The RANGE program (http://www.vuw.ac.nz/lals/staff/paul-nation/nation.aspx) cannot calculate word


families of off-list words as these words do not appear in any of the three lists. (General Service List 1, General
Service List 2 and Academic Word List)
**BNL1 – function words.

Table 4.17 shows that more words from both the LAC and the TAC appeared in the

seven sub-lists of the BNL, which is consistent with the claim. The LAC population

170
used 1,396 of the 2709 word families in the BNL as opposed to 2,179 word families

employed by the target population. The percentage of the off-list word types in the

TAC was still high when the BNL was used. It should be kept in mind that words

like ‘dissertation’, ‘discourse’, ‘encompass’, ‘interview’, ‘novel’, ‘manifest’ and

‘era’, which are abundant in the TAC, and which are commonly used in academic

texts, are all off-list words in the GSL and the AWL. Of these words, ‘interview’ and

‘novel’ are in the BNL, while ‘dissertation’, ‘discourse’, ‘encompass’, ‘manifest’ and

‘era’ are off-list. These words are quite important as ‘novel’ is a synonym for ‘new,

original’, ‘encompass’ for ‘include’, ‘manifest’ for ‘demonstrate, show’ and ‘era’ for

‘period’. It should be noted here that of these frequently used words, ‘discourse’

occurs only once in the LAC and ‘era’, ‘novel’, and ‘encompass’ none at all. It

seems obvious that, unlike the writers in the LAC, the TAC writers’ use of the

language goes beyond what is offered by wordlists. Insufficient lexico-grammatical

range resulting in difficulty for the post-graduate candidates in finding synonyms

when producing their own text was also confirmed by the data from the student

questionnaires, where the students complained that this deficiency caused them to

employ the same words repeatedly in their writing. Having identified that the TAC

writers’ lexico-structural range was beyond wordlists, it would be valuable to see

which of the most frequent off-list words in the TAC also occurred in the LAC.

Table 4.18

171
Comparison of the off-list word families in the TAC and the LAC

Word Family
FREQUENCY IN THE TAC FREQUENCY IN THE LAC
(only the headwords presented)
DISSERTATION 204 13
OBJECTIVES 18 2
NOVEL 45 0
COLLABORATE 44 2
CORRELATE 28 2
DEMOGRAPHY 31 2
ENTERPRISE 27 0
HYBRID 30 1
LANDSCAPE 146 9
LARGE-SCALE 23 0
LONG-TERM 25 3
MANIFEST 25 0
MOBILE 49 0
NEGOTIATE 40 0
QUANTITATIVE 49 10
QUESTIONNAIRE 28 13
REFERENCE 44 1
URBAN 151 5
REFORM 48 0
SPATIAL 67 1
SYNTHESIS 38 0

The table very clearly shows that the majority of the off-list words exploited by the

target population were almost non-existent in the LAC. This picture seems to

suggest that word lists need to be supplemented by data and genre-based lists of

words and lexico-grammatical patterns to widen and enrich the post-graduate

candidates’ range of productive knowledge and thus, use of lexico-grammar. If the

same example ‘novel’ is considered again, the data confirmed that the post-graduate

students did not use this word even once. Yet, ‘novel’ is a useful word which can be

used synonymously with ‘new’ and ‘original’, and the post-graduate candidates

taking ENGL501 would benefit from using such words in their theses. To examine

the lexico-grammatical performance of the post-graduate writers in the LAC and the

TAC, it is necessary to compare the two corpora in terms of collocations,

colligations, and lexico-grammatical patterns in general.

172
Table 4.19

Comparison of the TAC and the LAC – collocates of ‘study’ (one left, one right)

173
The TAC The LAC
Adjectives Verbs Adjectives Verbs
archaeological adds case aims
architectural addresses descriptive applied
Case aims/aimed documents argues
Cash-flow analyzes/analyzed experimenta attempts
close applies l based
comparative argues field can / could
comprehensive arises present consists
corpus-based assessed/assesses time develops
cross-cultural assumes examines
current attempts explores
detailed began focus
disciplined brings found
empirical claims has
ethnoarchaeological clarifies indicate /
ethnographic combines indicates
experimental compares investigates
exploratory complements is/was/are/wer
Field concludes e
further conducted/conducts offers
in-depth considered/considers preferred
independent consisted/consisting provides
intensive constitutes results
interdisciplinary contributes tries
longitudinal corroborates showed/shown
main covers suggest
original demonstrate/ will
pilot demonstrated/
preliminary demonstrates
present describes
previous determines
qualitative develops
research discerns
retrospective discusses
serious emphasizes
social employed
special encompass
enhances
establish/
established
examined/
examines
explores/explored
extends
failed
featured
fills
study (n) finds/found study (n)
focuses
had/has
illustrate
include/includes
indicated/indicates
initiated
investigated/
investigates
involving
lasting
may
measured

174
The table clearly indicates the difference of the range of vocabulary as regards

adjectival and verbal collocates of only one word, ‘study’. Both in terms of

adjectives and verbs used with ‘study’, the TAC was very rich and varied, achieving

different functions and moves. The collocation ‘study employed’ is most probably

used to talk about the methodological procedures, while ‘study reveals’ was

employed to report findings. In the same vein, ‘original study’, ‘pilot study’, and

‘interdisciplinary study’ have their specific functions, uses, and therefore messages.

Compared to the TAC, the data showed that the adjectival and verbal collocates of

‘study’ in the LAC lacked variety, and sophistication. In contrast to the 36 adjectives

used in the TAC to modify ‘study’, in the LAC these modifiers were only 7. The

difference in the range of the verbs used with ‘study’ in the two corpora was much

greater as can be seen in table 4.20. As regards the collocates of ‘studied’ in pre-

position, a similar difference can again be observed between the TAC and the LAC.

Table 4.20

Comparison of the TAC and the LAC – collocates of ‘studied’ (pre-position)

The LAC The TAC


is /was/be/were/are/been
has
not
also
be/ been/ was/ is
actively
has studied
carefully
not
commonly
previously
well
widely

175
According to Table 4.20, the TAC again exhibited wider variety in terms of

collocates of ‘studied’ in the pre-position. One striking difference, as can be seen

from the data, was how adverbs were commonly used to modify the participle form

of the verb ‘studied’ by the writers in the TAC. In the LAC, however, the participle

form, ‘studied’ was not modified by an adverb at all in pre-position. Therefore, it is

clear that relevant input and practice needs to be an essential component of the

pedagogic corpus, the construction of which is the ultimate aim of this study.

So far, the differences between the TAC and the LAC were explored at individual

word level, and in terms of the collocates of words. The following table compares

the lexical item ‘result’ in the TAC with the LAC at the lexico-grammatical level.

176
Table 4.21

Comparison of the TAC and the LAC – Lexico-grammatical patterns (result)

The LAC The TAC

the result will be …… As a result, (linking device)


as a result of ……. as a result of both …….
the result expected from …. can result in the …….
will be the result of this… were not only the result of … but also almost
certainly a consequence of ….
*if no result … can result from a ………
the result of the study will …… is often the most favorable result of ……..
*no special result could … as the unexpected result of ………..
*leads to very helpful result The result is a description of …….
*The result shown that … The principal result is that ……..
*to show the result of the is not so much a result of ….. as ……..
dissertation.
*were listed according to result A major result of this study
of the questionnaire. shows that ……
*According to question 7 result, One important result is the lack of ……….
participants agreed that …
As a result, … This last result has implications for …..ing
RESULT This result is surprising because the common
perception in the literature is that …….
This finding contradicts the expected result, which
is that …….
A 'case result format' presents the results of the
…..
There is a dual result.
Another result is the proposal for ………
This result is due mainly to
the ……, as opposed to …..
Conclusions result from published studies in ….;
from research conducted in the 1980s concerning
…….; and from experience in ……. that has been
in continual operation online since …….
…. and often result in ……
The result is a multiplicity of different and in some
cases contradictory….. approaches.
one interesting empirical result of the research was
that ………..
This result has broad implications for … research.
Table 4.21 needed to be analysed in detail, so that a clearer and more comprehensive

picture could be offered on the differences between the LAC and the TAC as regards

lexico-grammatical patterns employed by their corresponding populations. As the

data show, the writers of the LAC used the item ‘result’ in 13 different lexico-

grammatical patterns. Of these, 7 were used inaccurately. These inaccurate

realisations of the item were dealt with individually. The first pattern, ‘if no result’,

seemed to have no agent, and therefore did not convey the intended message. The

177
second pattern, ‘no special result could …’, was problematic as ‘special’ and ‘result’

are not good collocates, and this collocation does not occur even once in either the

1,007,000 word British National Corpus (BNC Written)

(http://www.lextutor.ca/concordancers/wwwassocwords.pl), or the 1,000,000 Brown

Corpus (http://www.lextutor.ca/concordancers/www assocwords.pl). The third

pattern, ‘leads to very helpful result’, was problematic in two ways. Firstly, the item

‘result’ either needs to have the determiner ‘a’, or needs to be plural ‘results’. The

second problem is that ‘helpful’ is not a common collocate of ‘result’. According to

the BNC Written, some of the collocates of ‘result’ in the pre-position are ‘main’,

‘major’, ‘inevitable’, ‘overall’, ‘probable’, ‘important’, ‘significant’, ‘powerful’,

‘direct’, ‘useful’, and ‘expected’ (http://www.lextutor.ca/concordancers

/wwwassocwords.pl).

Another inaccurate lexico-grammatical pattern was ‘The result shown that …’. In

spite of the fact that the GSL 1 word ‘show’ is very commonly used, and

encountered during the initial stages of language learning, the past tense of the verb

was inaccurately formed. ‘To show the result of the dissertation’ sounds odd, as

generally researchers discuss the result of the research or the study, but not of the

dissertation, or the thesis. Although it does not lead to the breakdown of

communication, another flawed lexico-grammatical structure was ‘were listed

according to result of the questionnaire’. A determiner (the), and the plural form of

‘result’ are necessary to make the message more comprehensible. The last pattern

that sounds unnatural was ‘according to question 7 result, participants agreed

that…’. The problem is related to the formation of the noun phrase ‘the results of

question 7’, or at least ‘question 7 results’. In some languages, including Turkish,

which is the mother tongue of 40% of the participants, noun phrases are formed by

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putting the head noun after the modifying noun. Thus, this inaccurate use may be

due to the first language influence for some post-graduate candidates.

When the lexico-grammatical patterns used by the writers of the TAC were

analysed, however, it could be observed that the target population used ‘result’ in a

range of structures, and as different parts of speech. The most striking difference

was that in the TAC, ‘result’ was used abundantly as a verb to show causal

relationships, ‘result in’ to refer to an effect, and ‘result from’ to indicate a cause.

This use was non-existent in the LAC. Another major dissimilarity was the use of

‘result’ in accurate and appropriate lexico-grammatical patterns in the TAC. One of

these was ‘a result having implications’, another was ‘a finding contradicting an

expected result’. The adjectives ‘favorable’, ‘principal’ and ‘unexpected’ were

accurately and appropriately used to modify ‘result’. Furthermore, in the TAC, the

word ‘result’ was employed with more complex structures such as ‘were not only the

result of … but also almost certainly a consequence of …. ‘, ‘The principal result is

that ……..’ and ‘This result is due mainly to the ……, as opposed to …..’.

The findings revealed by the analysis of the abundant data unquestionably point to

the fact that the abstracts in the LAC exhibit a more limited range of vocabulary, and an

apparently more limited productive knowledge of the collocations and colligations of

even relatively common items, resulting in difficulty for the writers in coherent and

appropriate academic text. Therefore, the last section of this chapter describes the

construction of the pedagogic corpus, and the integration of the corpus-informed

data and tasks focusing on the lexico-structural patterns required to achieve, with

accuracy and appropriacy, specific moves in abstracts, and in thesis writing in

general. The pedagogic corpus and its components are envisaged to enhance the

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learning outcomes, and to assist the non-native post-graduate candidates living in a

non-English speaking environment in producing coherent and appropriate academic

text.

4.2.3.1 Comparison of the LAC with an equal-sized TAC

The data analysis demonstrated that the post-graduate students’ written work

compiled in the LAC exhibited a more limited range of vocabulary, and an

apparently more limited productive knowledge of lexico-grammatical patterns

commonly used in thesis writing. Yet, one factor affecting the data might be that the

two corpora were not of equal size, 100 abstracts in the LAC as opposed to 600 in

the TAC. The rationale for having a larger TAC was to be able to derive as many

alternative lexico-grammatical patterns as possible for the fulfilment of sub-moves

and moves required in abstract writing, and thesis writing in general. It seemed

imperative, at this point, however, to reduce the TAC to the size of the LAC by

taking a random 25 abstracts from each sub-corpus in the TAC, making the two

corpora precisely equal in size (both comprising 100 abstracts). The objective is to

compare the lexical range of the two writer categories more objectively, and to

further substantiate the finding that there is in fact a gap between what the post-

graduate students can actually produce, and what they are expected to produce.

Graph 4.2 below compares the two parallel corpora composed of the work of post-

graduate EFL students writing theses in a non English-speaking country, and those

students writing them in English-speaking countries.

Graph 4.2: Comparison of the LAC with a relative sample of the TAC

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As can be observed, the graph clarifies the difference between the LAC and the

TAC, and further strengthens the existence of the already identified gap. The post-

graduate writers of the TAC used 5,206 different words in producing their abstracts,

in contrast to the 3,392 different words used by the post-graduate students studying

at the Eastern Mediterranean University. Considering that the two corpora were

exactly equal in size, in terms of the number of abstracts, these figures point to a

difference of 1,814 more words used in the TAC, which is a substantial disparity.

The examination of these two equal-sized corpora, in terms of the number of

abstracts, yielded information not only on the extent of the gap, but also the

composition of the gap. Graph 4.2 also shows the text coverage in the two corpora.

According to the graph, 95% of all the text produced in the LAC was covered by

2,311 words. In contrast, in the TAC, 3,798 different words made up 95% of the text.

More strikingly, in the LAC, a mere 500 different words were used to produce

72.24% of the text. If this figure is compared with the TAC, it is observed that 500

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words made up 63.87% of the text. All the data seem to substantiate the fact that the

non-native post-graduate students at EMU used the most common words of English

very frequently in writing their theses, and that their lexical range was quite limited,

compared with post-graduate students writing their theses in English-speaking

countries.

As for the word families used in the equal-sized corpora, a variation can yet again be

observed. It should be remembered at this point that the six content word bands of

the BNL are ordered according to the frequency of occurrence of word families,

band 1 including the most common ones. When the BNL word families were used

to compare the two corpora, it was clear that the writers in the TAC made more use

of the six content word families. The bar graph below provides comprehensive data

regarding this observation.

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Graph 4.3: Comparison of the LAC and the TAC in terms of BNL2709 word

families

According to Graph 4.3, the function words of English (BNL, Band 1) were used

equally in the two corpora. Similarly, the word families in Band 2 (the first band of

content words), which are the most frequently used word families in English, were

almost equal. After Band 3 (the second band of content words), however, the content

family words used in the LAC were consistently lower than those in the TAC.

Finally, when the totals are analyzed, it can be seen that the post-graduate students at

EMU used 200 fewer word families of the BNL. It is important to emphasize that

this difference was not in terms of word tokens, or word types, but word families.

Just to give an example, the family members, or the word types of the headword

‘amend’ in the sixth band are ‘amended’, ‘amending’, ‘amendment’, ‘amendments’,

and ‘amends’. The data can be analyzed even further to observe the difference in

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terms of the word types in these families. The bar graph below shows the broad

dissimilarity:

Graph 4.4: Comparison of the LAC and the TAC in terms of BNL2709 word

types

Graph 4.4 indicates that the disparity in terms of word types is even more

significant. From the first band of the BNL, 1,306 word types were used in the TAC,

as opposed to 1,124 word types in the LAC. The figures were all lower for the LAC

in all the six bands, and the gap gets wider, in each band considering that the number

of word types decreases as the bands go up. For instance, compared to the 504 word

families in Band 2, the number of families in Band 5 is 392, and in Band 6, 186. The

case of off-list words was also quite striking. The TAC included 1,843 off-list word

types, while in the LAC, the number of off-list word types was 697. This means that

the TAC includes more than twice as many word types as the LAC. Considering that

off-list words are less frequent and more specialized words, it can safely be

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concluded that the post-graduate students studying in English speaking countries

have a wider productive knowledge of less frequent, and more specialized words.

Graph 4.4 therefore confirms that the LAC is quite poor in terms of the types of

words employed, 3,453 word types in contrast to the 5,346 different types of words

in the TAC. The data from the two graphs (4.3 and 4.4) seem to suggest that the

problem of the post-graduate students studying at EMU stems from the insufficient

productive knowledge of the word types belonging to different families, and the

resulting inability to exploit these different types. This can be more clearly observed

in Table 4.22 below:

Table 4.22

Comparison of the LAC and the TAC in terms of BNL2709 bands and word
types

Types TAC LAC


one 134 133
two 1306 1124
three 583 464
four 462 349
five 406 274
six 477 317
seven 135 95
not in the
lists 1843 697
Total 5346 3453

As stated earlier, the use of different function words (Band 1) in the two corpora is

almost exactly the same. The discrepancy is observed in all the content word bands,

and the gap gets larger as the bands go up. If Band five is considered, for instance,

the figures show that 406 different words from this band are used in the TAC,

compared to 274 in the LAC. The analysis of the word types and the word families

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provides in-depth data on the words exploited in the TAC as opposed to the LAC. A

very good example is the case of the head word ‘constitute’. In the whole LAC, this

word is used only as ‘constituent’, whereas in the TAC, the following three types of

the word are utilized: ‘constituents’, ‘constitutes’, and ‘constitutive’. A list of all the

family headwords used in both corpora, together with the word types employed in

each corpus is provided in Appendix J.

The analysis of the equal-sized LAC and the TAC further substantiated the existence

of the gap. The post-graduate students’ written work compiled in the LAC exhibited

a more limited range of vocabulary, and a more limited productive knowledge of

lexico-grammatical patterns commonly used in thesis writing. The comparison of the

two corpora of equal size added further insights into the depth and composition of

the gap. One major finding was that the problem seemed to stem significantly from

the fact that the post-graduate students studying at EMU had insufficient knowledge

of the different types of words in each word family, or their knowledge of these

words did not extend to the productive level. The next section focuses on the

construction of a pedagogic corpus, which comprises various corpus-informed

components, that is envisaged to provide a lexico-grammatical roadmap and assist

the post-graduate students studying at EMU in thesis writing.

4.3 Constructing a Pedagogic Corpus for Thesis Writing

This section focuses on what the cross-examination of the two corpora necessitates

in terms of the comprehensive pedagogic corpus design. Therefore, this part

concentrates on the contribution of this research study to the research field.

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4.3.1 The development of the TAC (Target Abstract Corpus) Wordlist

The data from the LAC and the TAC, as well as the comparison of the LAC and the

TAC, reveal that the post-graduate writers of the LAC exploited a restricted range of

vocabulary in writing their thesis. In addition, although they generally know words

in isolation, they have problems using them together with other words accurately

and appropriately. In other words, they seem to be lacking lexico-structural

competence. The assumption is, therefore, that students at this level have prior

knowledge and should know the most common words in English, although

sometimes they are still not able to use some of these words accurately or

appropriately. This may be due to the fact that the use of quite a large number of

very commonly used words (e.g ‘study’, a GSL1 word) necessitates the company of

different words when used in academic texts. Taking this into account, some actions

were taken.

Firstly, one of the major differences between the TAC and the LAC was a quite wide

range of expression in the TAC as opposed to the restricted range in the LAC as

exhibited by the output of the quantitative as well as the qualitative analysis. Thus,

the pedagogic corpus needed to provide a variety of patterns to enable the post-

graduate students to express similar concepts in a variety of ways. At the same time,

the pedagogic corpus had to be fairly restricted and economical, as the teaching-

learning process is bound by space and time and the objective is to fulfill a set of

pre-defined learning objectives in a limited time frame. In addition, it needed to be

constructed on the basis of the most frequently communicated meanings in the TAC.

Teubert (2005) emphasizes the fact that corpus linguistics focuses on meaning and

adds that “meaning is what is being verbally communicated between the members of

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a discourse community” (p. 2). Moreover, the patterns also needed to be selected on

the basis that they were fundamental to the realization of specific strategies, tactics

or sub-moves that make up the required academic moves in abstract writing in

specific, and thesis writing in general.

As mentioned in the earlier sections of this study, abstracts, like other genres

reporting research, have an IMRD (Introduction-Method-Results-Discussion)

structure (Swales, 1990, p.181). What is significant is that these moves recur

throughout thesis and research writing in general. Therefore, abstracts act as a

miniature of the academic research genre as a whole, which makes them a powerful

and useful research and teaching device in general. A close look at thesis abstracts

reveals that the IMRD pattern in abstracts seems to have the following 4 moves and

some corresponding sub-moves to achieve the required moves:

• Introduction: An overview of the field/The establishment of a research gap


that justifies the need for the research to be conducted and its likely value
and significance to the field in general/A statement of aims and objectives;

• Method: The research methodology, data collection techniques, and


references to data;

• Results: The analysis of the results;

• Discussion: Conclusions, evaluation, implications, recommendations.

As stated, it was fundamental to the design of the AAC (Academic Abstract Corpus)

Bank of Moves that a limited bank of lexico-structural patterns was created that

would enable the post-graduate students to accomplish these moves in abstracts, and

in the reporting of research in general, coherently and appropriately. It was

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significant to ensure that the use of this limited bank of patterns would assist

students at the post-graduate level with thesis writing specifically, and academic

writing in general.

Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used for the analysis of the data in

the construction of the AAC Bank. For range and frequency, the RANGE software

(http://www.vuw.ac.nz/lals/staff/paul-nation/nation.aspx) was used. To analyze

collocations and colligations, word clusters, and lexico-structural patterns in general,

Concordance software (http://www.concordancesoftware.co.uk/)  and AntConc

(http://www.antlab.sci.waseda.ac.jp/software.html) were utilized. Additionally, some

decisions based on insights from the BNC (the British National Corpus),

(http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc) were made in the selection and categorization of the

data, which would eventually form the basis of the AAC Bank, the core of the

pedagogic corpus. Thus, the selection and the categorization of the data were carried

out fairly qualitatively. It should again be pointed out that one important

consideration for corpus-based approaches is that the analyses should go beyond

simple counts of linguistic features, and include qualitative, functional

interpretations of quantitative patterns (Biber et al., 1998, pp. 4-5). The construction

of the AAC Bank is described below step by step.

After the target corpus was quantitatively analyzed for frequency and range, a

number of filtering devices were employed to reduce the corpus to a manageable

size. Some of this work, such as the elimination of all function words, was carried

out automatically. Items also had to appear in all four sub-corpora to qualify for

inclusion, unless there was a valid reason to include them. Then, more qualitative

decisions had to be made regarding the membership of the words in the 4 major

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moves in the IMRD pattern. Keeping in mind that the ultimate aim was constructing

a pedagogic corpus as opposed to a research corpus whose reliability depends on the

wealth of data, the selection of words for the AAC Bank was made in the most

economical way possible. Therefore, the first step involved the identification of a

highly restricted but key set of individual word families used in abstract writing. The

behavior of these items then had to be examined in terms of collocations and

colligations to identify a key set of lexico-structural patterns used in abstract and

thesis writing. These patterns then had to be related to the moves involved in the

structure of abstracts, and the thesis as a whole. The final product had to be further

developed through comparison with the LAC, so that the final version would be

attending to the identified needs of the post-graduate candidates to the greatest

possible extent.

The selection of the most frequent words could have been easily carried out on the

basis of the word frequencies in the TAC. However, this would mean that the data

would be deprived of word family frequencies. The use of wordlists, on the other

hand, enables the observation of family frequencies in corpora. Furthermore, as

previously mentioned, some GSL words are very commonly used in academic texts,

and the separation of the most frequent words as GSL and AWL, despite its

convenience, may be problematic in the long run. Gilguin, Granger and Paquot

(2007, p. 324) point out that “Coxhead’s (2000) Academic Word List does not

include the 2,000 most common English words, with which non-native writers may

still have considerable difficulties, especially in cases where their use in academic

writing differs from their habitual use”. Paquot (2007) also challenges “the widely

used criterion of non-appearance in the GSL for the selection of EAP vocabulary”.

The selection, therefore, was based on the GSL and the AWL, so that data could be

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obtained on which GSL word families were used abundantly in academic texts, and

how.

The GSL 1 comprises the most frequent 1,000 words accounting for some 70%

(http://www.lextutor.ca/research) of all running text in English, and is composed of

the lexical items that appear in most genres of language use, and are most likely to

be known by an advanced group of students. GSL 1 and GSL 2 words are the ones

that advanced post-graduate students are most likely to have encountered, learned

and used. It is awareness of and exposure to less frequent words that is called for. In

academic environments, complex ideas are expressed in similarly rich and complex

language. Bearing this fact in mind, GSL I words could be eliminated automatically,

unless they were clearly fundamental to academic writing. It was also kept in mind

that subsequent analysis of colligations and collocations would bring back key

members of the family into the final output. Furthermore, once the basic keyword

list was established and organized according to a semantic basis dependent upon the

IMRD pattern in abstracts and theses in general, it would be necessary to review all

the lists once more to locate those items that performed a more or less synonymous

function.

The aim of constructing a pedagogic corpus is to provide advanced students with

authentic material that depends on semantic frequency, and that will offer them a

variety of alternative sophisticated patterns required in academic writing. Therefore,

categorization is necessary not in terms of frequency, but in terms of functions

realized by language in thesis writing. Nevertheless, as stated earlier, there are some

very common GSL 1 content words used in academic texts, and the ones that

occurred in the data frequently had to be included in the analysis.

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As the pedagogic corpus needed to be restricted and economical by nature to cater

for the needs of the students realistically, there had to be a cut-off point in the

selection of word families that would be the basis of the AAC Bank of moves.

Therefore, the GSL 1 word families that occurred in each of the four sub-corpora of

the TAC at least twenty times, and at least one hundred and fifty times in total

qualified for inclusion. Out of the 419 content word families in the GSL 1 list, this

procedure produced 46 (about 11 %) word families in the GSL 1 that survived the

filtering, and therefore formed a list of the 46 word families from the GSL I

fundamental to the construction of key moves in abstracts (Appendix K).

The GSL 2 words, the second 1,000 most common set of words in English, form a

considerably smaller proportion of running text in English. Therefore, the criteria for

inclusion were set at a lower level as these words occur at a generally lower level of

frequency in any text. The same procedure was followed and all those word families

that occurred at least fifty times in the TAC as a whole, and at least ten times in each

sub-corpus were included for further analysis. 13 word families emerged (Appendix

K).

The corpus which the AWL is based on extends beyond the boundaries of abstracts,

and comprises academic textbooks and research articles. The Academic Word List

was therefore expected to generate more keywords for inclusion than the GSL 2.

Setting up the selection criteria for the AWL at exactly the same level as for the GSL

2 (at least fifty times in the corpus as a whole and at least ten times in each sub-

corpus) indeed produced a more extended list of academic word families. The only

exception was the word family ‘objective’. This family occurred 40 times in the

data. However, during the analysis of the off-list words, it was observed that

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‘objectives’ was listed as an off-list word. This word was therefore included as

‘objectives’ occurred 18 times in the data, and together they occurred 58 times.

Consequently, 85 academic word families were drawn from the AWL (Appendix K).

Off-list words are words that do not appear in any of the frequency lists, and

therefore are less common in any text by definition. However, the fact that they are

less common should not mean that they are to be ignored or deleted. Prior analysis

of the two corpora revealed that some off-list words could occur in thesis abstracts

and theses in general quite frequently. The filtering was thus carried out on a more

generous basis. A word could be included on condition that it occurred at least 30

times in total with at least 5 occurrences in each sub-corpus, or a word merited entry

if there were at least 20 occurrences as a family, and at least one member of the

family occurred in all the 4 sub-corpora. As off-list words do not occur in families,

this procedure was carried out manually. There were some unexpected findings.

Firstly, ‘organizational’ and ‘organizers’ occurred as off-list, although ‘organize’ is a

GSL 1 word. In the same way, although ‘objective’ is an AWL word, ‘objectives’

appears off-list. The word ‘usage’ appears off-list, and not together with ‘use’ and

the word ‘technologies’ does not appear together with ‘technology’. It can be

speculated that in the past ‘technology’ was uncountable as you could follow the

breakthroughs more easily, but today because of all the innovations in each and

every branch of technology almost every day, the word has started to be used in the

plural. Once these words were identified, they were put in their respective families

in the GSL or the AWL in the lemmatiser for further analysis manually. One

exception is ‘large-scale’. Although it occurs 23 times, it was included as it was

perceived as a common and useful word in academic writing. 21 families of off-list

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words were included for further analysis, making the number of total word families

165 (Appendix K).

This analysis very broadly attempted to identify a set of word families that are

assumed to have a key role in the fulfillment of moves and sub-moves in thesis

abstracts. The outcome was a word family list comprising 165 items found most

frequently in thesis abstracts. At this stage, a broad classification of these items into

possible strategies, tactics, or sub-moves was necessary. However, before attempting

any classification, it would be useful to consider a randomly extracted abstract from

the TAC to observe how the IMRD pattern is actualized.

Table 4.23

The IMRD pattern in a randomly extracted abstract from the TAC

Title An Archaeological Analysis of Gender Roles in Ancient Non-


Literate Cultures of Eurasia
Country Australia
Ascription of sex to inhumed remains on the principle basis of grave-goods,
as distinct from anthropometric data, can be a vague process due to incipient
gender bias in interpretation. Cross-matching of anthropometrics with grave
goods can sometimes generate results that appear ambiguous or paradoxical
Introduction as they may not accord with preconceived relationships between gender roles
and sex. This reduces confidence in the demography of various
archaeologically-revealed cultures, especially those of Iron Age Europe, which
were erected on the basis of what we may now see as potentially flawed
analysis.
Comparative and contrasting analyses are made of contemporary and related
cultures to investigate gender role assumptions on a wide basis. Regarding
non-literate cultures, archaeologists have limited means to interpret the
relationships between sex and gender-roles, and these methods are
Method explored. The traditional outlook is assessed for functional bias in light of its
origins and perpetuation, and a new synthesis is proposed for ongoing
analysis. This synthesis includes strict application of refined anthropometric
methodology and the resolution of paradox by adoption of a revised
underlying hypothesis

Results A correlation is observed between use of the horse and a significant blurring
of gender role stereotypes, occurring in nomadic cultures whose legacy
persists to the present day. This is examined in light of the proposed new
synthesis for a consequential or coincidental relationship, the former being
apparent. It is found that gender role bias has played an uncomfortably large
part in Iron Age scholarship, and that outdated sociocultural assumptions
Discussion continue to foster an unstoppable view of elements of world history.

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Table 4.23 demonstrates that the IMRD moves are present in the randomly chosen

abstract. It is also worth examining the same abstract to observe which sub-moves

help to realize the four moves, although it is very difficult to draw a line between

them as there seem to be overlaps:

Table 4.24

The sub-moves of the IMRD pattern in a randomly extracted abstract (TAC)

Introduction
Setting the Ascription of sex to inhumed remains on the principle basis of grave-
goods, as distinct from anthropometric data, can be a vague process
context / due to incipient gender bias in interpretation.
background
Stating the Cross-matching of anthropometrics with grave goods can sometimes
generate results that appear ambiguous or paradoxical as they may
problem / not accord with preconceived relationships between gender roles and
opening a sex. This reduces confidence in the demography of various
research gap archaeologically-revealed cultures, especially those of Iron Age Europe,
which were erected on the basis of what we may now see as
potentially flawed analysis.
Statement of Comparative and contrasting analyses are made of contemporary and
related cultures to investigate gender role assumptions on a wide
the aim basis. Regarding non-literate cultures, archaeologists have limited
means to interpret the relationships between sex and gender-roles,
and these methods are explored.
Method
Methodology The traditional outlook is assessed for functional bias in light of its
origins and perpetuation, and a new synthesis is proposed for ongoing
used analysis. This synthesis includes strict application of refined
anthropometric methodology and the resolution of paradox by adoption
Hypothesis of a revised underlying hypothesis.
Results
Data analysis A correlation is observed between use of the horse and a significant
blurring of gender role stereotypes, occurring in nomadic cultures
Results whose legacy persists to the present day.

Significant This is examined in light of the proposed new synthesis for a


consequential or coincidental relationship, the former being apparent.
findings

Discussion
Filling the It is found that gender role bias has played an uncomfortably large
part in Iron Age scholarship, and that outdated sociocultural
research gap assumptions continue to foster an unstoppable view of elements of
by world history.
generalizing
the findings

195
The TAC offers plenty of data with which to analyze thesis abstracts in all the four

sub-corpora according both to moves and sub-moves. Randomly chosen abstracts

from the TAC were therefore analyzed with the following results:

Table 4.25

The moves, sub-moves, and examples from random abstracts (TAC)

196
FUNCTIONS/ SUB-
MOVE EXAMPLES
MOVES
-U.S. fisheries legislation requires
National Marine Fisheries Service
(NMFS) to attend to the critical social
and economic issues surrounding the
Introducing the Field definition and identification of fishing
communities, and to the effects that
changes to the physical environment and
regulatory decisions can have on such
communities.
-Some researchers have found that the
Referring to previous
influence of flowers promotes people
work in the field
positive emotions.
-This thesis posits the need to integrate
Opening up a Research
the design of landscape with the design
Gap
of architecture.
-The question of how to define Falun
Introduction
Gong is not just an academic issue; the
Stressing the value of
use of the cult label has been used to
and need for the Study
justify the persecution of practitioners in
China.
Stressing the challenge -The solution of linear systems is an
of the study ancient and inexhaustible problem.
-This thesis explores the integration,
Opening up new links
through ideas of reciprocity, of
and relationships
landscape and architecture.
-This dissertation is concerned with C*-
Giving an overview of algebras associated with boundary
the thesis actions obtained from graphs of
groups...
Specifying the -The intention is to demonstrate the
objectives and aims of usefulness of a pragmatic approach to
the thesis applied ethics
-Through research, analysis, design
Giving information experimentation and application, this
about research methods thesis demonstrates an integrated design
strategy...
Methodology -Research sites included Tampa,
Giving information
of the Study Washington D.C., and cyberspace…
about the research site
- The site is an abandoned rail yard
- The site and project were selected
Justifying choice of
because they offered a good opportunity
material and data
to explore the issues of designing...

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FUNCTIONS/ SUB-
MOVE EXAMPLES
MOVES
-My findings are contrary to the
Stressing the novelty of
allegations made by the Chinese
the findings (filling the
Government and Western anti-cultists in
research gap)
many ways.
- One important result is the lack of
Stressing the significant
persistent similarities or differences
results
between register domains.
Results
- Our major results can be grouped into
two categories: recognition of links
between substitution method
Categorizing the results calculations and well-known results in
other areas of mathematics, and the
development of novel algorithms to
exploit special structure.
- The results provide valuable insights
for landscape designers seeking to evoke
Implications particular emotions or designing
therapeutic environments for particular
patient groups.
- The thesis closes with an explanation
as to why progressive dispensationalism
Conclusion/Suggestions
Discussion is more compatible with amillennialism
than with premillennialism.
-The results suggest that multi-
dimensional analysis of stance is
Implications for further effective, and that further study of
study individual registers and dialects would
be fruitful. Application to other
functional areas is suggested.

It would be possible to conduct this process in even greater detail. For research

purposes, however, it is sufficient to note that a thesis abstract contains a number of

moves some of which seem to be more or less obligatory, and some more or less

optional depending on the specific field and institutional requirements. Each move

can be realized in a number of ways, and through a number of discourse functions,

or sub-moves. While certain lexico-structural patterns are more likely to appear

within certain moves, and beyond that within certain sub-moves, some others appear

in different places as integral parts of quite different moves and sub-moves. This is

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one obvious reason why a wordlist cannot be used as a detached mechanism with

which to teach academic writing. What is essential, then, is to analyze and describe

how key lexical items act in combination (i.e lexico-structurally) to perform certain

sub-moves, strategies or tactics which are the foundation of the specified moves.

The list which will be henceforward referred to as ‘the Target Abstract Corpus

(TAC) Wordlist’ (Appendix K) formed the basis of the AAC Bank (Academic

Abstract Corpus Bank) of lexico-structural items used to actualize sub-moves and

moves. The list, the bank, the two corpora, the in-class and online course materials

and accompanying tasks became the major components of the pedagogic corpus, in

line with the main aim of the study, which was to construct a pedagogic corpus

through incorporating corpus work into the advanced thesis writing course to assist

the post-graduate students involved in research and publication.

As revealed through the analysis of the data, the post-graduate students are restricted

by their range of vocabulary, and their productive knowledge of collocates and

lexico-grammatical patterns. Therefore, the syntagmatic and paradigmatic levels in

the construction of moves are analyzed, and a comprehensive bank of lexico-

structural patterns to achieve moves in abstracts, and thesis writing in general is

formed. Henry (2007) maintains that although a lot of research has been conducted

on identifying moves and their order in specific genres, rather less attention has been

paid to the presentation of key lexico-grammatical features of genres and moves.

Henry believes in the value of presenting computer-based, corpus analyses of

sentence level genre features to language learners, incorporating all the important

syntactic patterns with all possible paradigmatic and syntagmatic variations and

collocations found in each of the moves and strategies in a given genre. According

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to the results of his corpus study (Henry, 2007), the students exposed to the sentence

level genre features were able to produce more effective samples of the genre in

question. At this point, it is also worth recalling that according to Widdowson, the

syntagmatic and the paradigmatic mode of organization allows the generation of

infinite expressions from finite means and “is the essential source of the creativity

and flexibility …. of human language” (1996, p. 34).

As a first step, the TAC Wordlist (Appendix K) of 165 word families identified as

key in abstract writing in particular, and thesis writing in general were tentatively

put in different move categories. Some words such as thesis, data, structure, and

system were felt to be applicable to all moves, and were therefore classified as a

separate ‘All moves’ category. This tentative list proved to be very useful in the

construction of the AAC Bank, as words from the list were checked against the 100-

million-word BNC (British National Corpus, (http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc) for

synonyms in the academic register. Subsequent analysis of the TAC data was

therefore based upon a sound and solid foundation.

4.3.2 The development of the AAC (Academic Abstract Corpus) Bank of

Moves and Sub-moves

The AAC Bank of moves and sub-moves (see Appendix L) that was developed as

the central part of the pedagogic corpus was based on the four main moves in

abstracts, and in the reporting of research in general. These four moves, known as

the IMRD (Introduction-Methodology-Results-Discussion) moves (Swales, 1990,

p.181), help to organize the required information in a structured and meaningful

way. The discourse structure of an academic genre such as an abstract is

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undoubtedly very important. Yet, it is language that is essential in realizing the

moves. Many researchers and scholars draw attention to the key role played by

‘lexico-grammar’ in fulfilling generic moves (Flowerdew, 2000; Henry, 2007; Johns

et al., 2006), and sub-moves, also referred to as ‘strategies’ (Henry, 2007, p. 3) or

‘tactics’ (Henry, 2007, p. 7).

The main aim of developing the AAC Bank in this research was to provide a wealth

of lexico-structural patterns for the post-graduate students to coherently and

appropriately fulfill the moves that are called for in abstracts, and in their theses.

This study is pedagogic in nature, and the aim of the AAC Bank is to offer a

roadmap for the students. As the participants have access to the corpora (both the

TAC and the LAC) compiled by the researcher as well as larger corpora such as the

BNC (British National Corpus), they have the tools and the opportunity to apply the

Data-driven Learning principles and methodology, and go beyond what is offered to

them.

Earlier in this chapter, the methodology for the compilation of the TAC Wordlist was

described in detail, and the resulting 165 word families were tentatively categorized

into moves. This list, together with the synonym facility used for finding

semantically related words in the BNC (in this case, the academic sub-corpus of the

BNC) (http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc), was indeed very helpful in deciding which key

words to seek in the TAC. As expected, some words like ‘economy’ and

‘technology’, which are more common in some disciplines than others, did not occur

within the lexico-grammatical patterns reflecting the moves, although they occurred

frequently enough in the TAC to deserve a place in the TAC Wordlist itself. These

words and other words like these are emphasized in different ways in the materials.

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The AAC Bank of moves was developed by picking up the key words, accessing all

the semantically related words using the BNC, and searching the TAC for all the

lexico-grammatical realizations functioning in the construction of a particular move.

Therefore, frequencies were not a major consideration here, as the aim in the

building of the bank itself was to offer the post-graduate candidates enough varied

data to ensure more variety and flexibility in the creation of their texts, the lack of

which was the problem observed by the researcher and reported by the previous

course instructors as well as the participants themselves. Hence, high frequencies,

though not essential in the achievement of the major aim, are indicated in moves 2

and 3 for purposes of illustration, but are not emphasized in the other moves of the

AAC Bank, except for very significant ones.

Once these semantically related words, within their lexico-grammatical patterns,

were categorized into different moves and sub-moves, the data were organized in

tables. However, it is important to emphasize here that these tables are not

traditional substitution tables, but instead maps that are semantically organized

according to the move to be achieved. The post-graduate candidates, with the help of

relevant tasks, are directed and guided in using the AAC Bank, and accurately and

appropriately construct the required moves through using the lexico-grammatical

patterns compiled in the Bank.

The AAC Bank is composed of four sections representing the four moves in abstract

writing, and research writing in general. Each move in the AAC Bank is further

represented by its relevant sub-moves, some of which are necessary and some

optional. The nature of the research itself, together with the specific departmental

and institutional requirements, determines the inclusion and the ordering of these

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sub-moves in the abstract. However, considering that the abstract is a miniaturized

version of the thesis, it would not be wrong to say that all these sub-moves occur in

the actual thesis. In fact, referring to a research abstract, Bhatia (1993) states that “an

abstract, …, is a description or factual summary of the much longer report, and is

meant to give the reader an exact and concise knowledge of the full article” (p. 78).

In a similar vein, Salager-Mayer (1990) argues that in the abstract, the structuring of

the full paper should be reproduced, and the moves fundamental and obligatory ‘in

the process of scientific inquiry and patterns of thought’ reflected (cited in Hyland,

2004a, p. 64).

Bhatia (1993) holds that “in order to realize a particular communicative intention at

the level of a move, an individual writer may use different rhetorical strategies” (p.

30). These strategies, also referred to as ‘tactics’, ‘sub-moves’, or ‘steps’ (Hyland,

2004a, p. 47) therefore help the writer to fulfill a required move. Bhatia (1993)

describes the four moves in abstracts in the following way:

Introducing Purpose: This move gives a precise indication of the author’s


intention, thesis or hypothesis which forms the basis of the research being
reported. It may also include the goals or objectives of research or the
problem that the author wishes to tackle.
Describing Methodology: In this move the author gives a good indication of
the experimental design, including information of the data, procedures or
method(s) used and, if necessary, the scope of the research being reported.
Summarizing Results: This is an important aspect of abstracts where the
author mentions his observations and findings and also suggests solutions to
the problem, if any, posed in the first move.
Presenting Conclusions: This move is meant to interpret results and draw
inferences. It typically includes some indication of the implications and
applications of the present findings. (pp. 78-79)

It should be emphasized that most of the abstracts establish the field, or set the

background as the initial sub-move. As this sub-move is particularly subject-specific

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by nature, this is the only sub-move that is not represented in the AAC Bank of

Moves and Sub-moves.

4.3.2.1 Description of the AAC (Academic Abstract Corpus) Bank of Moves and

Sub-moves based on IMRD

It was emphasized in various sections of this study that a genre is made up of a

series of moves, each of which “is a distinctive communicative act designed to

achieve one main communicative function” (Hyland, 2004a, p. 47). Moves are

fulfilled through sub-moves, also referred to as ‘strategies’ (Bhatia, 1993), or ‘steps’

(Hyland, 2004a; Swales, 1990). According to Hyland, “both moves and steps may be

optional, embedded in others, repeated, and have constraints on the sequence in

which they generally occur” (2004a, p. 47). It can be understood from Hyland’s

statement that overlaps between sub-moves should not be unexpected.

Move 1: Introduction

Sub-move 1: Defining the Scope of the Study

The wealth of language derived from the TAC in the form of lexico-grammatical

patterns for only one sub-move, ‘scope’, is exceptionally rich, offering a wide range

of alternatives both syntagmatically and paradigmatically. The scope of the research

tells the reader what the area of focus is, and thus it is important to reflect on all the

aspects of the area the research is going to concentrate on, and the perspectives that

are going to be considered. Thus, the scope of the research defines the boundaries of

the study, and what the research has set out to do. It is important to note that some of

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the lexico-grammatical patterns used for defining ‘the scope of the research’ may

also be relevant to stating ‘the aim of the research’.

According to the data, at the paradigmatic level, the scope is defined by the

‘product’, such as ‘thesis’, ‘dissertation’ ‘project’, etc., followed by a verb which

draws the boundaries of the research, and describes what the research has set out to

do. Some of these verbs are ‘provides’, ‘explores’, ‘examines’ ‘outlines’, and it can

be observed that the present tense is used. At the syntagmatic level, according to the

data, various lexico-grammatical patterns are used in the TAC to define the scope. If

the verb ‘demonstrates’ is taken as an example, it can be observed that the verb is

used in three different ways in the TAC; it can be followed by a noun clause

including a wh- word like ‘how’, by a noun clause introducing a statement, or a

noun phrase. These examples are presented in full to provide a clearer understanding

of the scope of the research:

This study demonstrates how successive military leaders bolstered their


position in the capital by proactively assimilating and adopting established
symbols of traditional authority.
This research demonstrates that all stone raw materials in Sydney
archaeological assemblages are available in the Sydney region, mainly from
Tertiary and Quaternary gravel beds, and that these are widely scattered.
This research demonstrates the feasibility of mass production of integrated
optical and potentiometric sensors with CMOS circuitry on the same chip.

The first example informs the reader that the area of focus in the research is the

method used by military leaders to strengthen their position in the capital city of a

specific country. The scope gives enough information about the area of research. In

this case, a political or a sociological perspective is communicated to the reader. In

the second example, the study is of archaeological nature, and the focus is the sites

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where the raw materials of the Sydney archaeological sites are found. The third

example clearly comes from a study on computer engineering or a mechanical

engineering, and the scope of the study is whether it is possible to mass produce

integrated optical and potentiometric sensors with CMOS circuitry on the same chip.

These examples demonstrate that different lexico-structural patterns are available to

writers in communicating, in this case, the scope of their research study.

Sub-move 2: Identifying a Research Gap

This sub-move is an attempt of the researcher or the writer to “establish a niche for

about-to-be-presented research” (Swales, 1990, p. 154). It is possible to initiate this

step with ‘an adversative sentence connector’, like ‘however’, ‘nevertheless’, ‘yet’,

‘unfortunately’, and ‘but’, and these are used to ‘indicate a gap’ (Swales, 1990, p.

154). Swales argues that in indicating a research gap which the writer is intending to

fill through his/her research study, “the author does not counter-claim that the

previous work is hopelessly misguided, but rather ‘suffers from some limitations’”

(1990, p. 154). Linguistically, this sub-move may be realized through ‘negative or

quasi-negative quantifiers’, like ‘no’, ‘little’, ‘none’, ‘few’, or ‘lexical negation’,

through the use of such words as ‘fail’, ‘lack’, ‘overlook’, ‘misleading’, ‘limited’,

and ‘failure’ (Swales, 1990, pp. 154-155). A niche can also be established through a

‘direct or indirect question’, ‘expressed needs, desires, interests’, ‘logical

conclusions’, ‘contrastive comments’, or ‘problem-raising’ (Swales, 1990, p. 156).

The data extracted from the TAC reveal that, the most distinguishing characteristic

of this sub-move is indeed the use of negative and quasi-negative quantifiers such as

‘no’, ‘little’, ‘few’, lexical negation like ‘unclear’, ‘inadequacies’, and adversative

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sentence connectors, ‘however’, ‘although’ and ‘unfortunately’ being three cases in

point. When this language is accurately and appropriately exploited in lexico-

structural patterns as exemplified in Appendix L, a research gap is indicated, and a

niche, or a research gap (Swales, 1990), is created for the writer.

Sub-move 3: Filling the Research Gap

This sub-move serves a very important purpose, since it connects the present

research to the gap, thereby creating a conducive research space for the researcher.

This sub-move is typified by adjectives like ‘new’ and ‘first’, verbs like ‘extend’,

‘clarify’, ‘further’, ‘advance’, and nouns like ‘milestone’, and it usually follows the

‘gap’, thereby making the research as a whole necessary, meaningful and

worthwhile. As this sub-move is very closely linked to the previous sub-move

‘Identifying a research gap’, there may be overlaps between them in terms of the

language employed. Some examples where there are overlaps are:

Unlike previous studies that examine only …, this study also focuses on …
This thesis presents results for a broader … range than previously published
materials.

As can be seen from the first example, the first part focuses on the ‘research gap’

through the use of ‘unlike’, and ‘only’, while the second part informs the reader that

the research gap is to be filled through an additional aspect, or perspective (this

study also focuses on …). The second example makes use of lexical choices to

indicate the research gap as well as how the gap is to be filled (results for a broader

… range than previously published materials).

Sub-move 4: Stating the ‘aim’ or ‘purpose’ of the study

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This sub-move is most probably the most significant one in an abstract, and indeed

in the whole thesis, since the research gap, the methodology, the findings, the

conclusions, and the implications are all dependent on the main aim of the study.

This sub-move is the same as the third move of introductions, which Swales refers

to as ‘occupying the niche’ (1990, p. 159). The function is to turn the already

established ‘niche’ into a research space that rationalizes the present research. The

writer may indicate their main purpose or purposes, or describe what they regard as

the main aspects of their research (Swales, 1990, p. 159).

Four patterns for stating the aim emerged from the data, which would enable the

post-graduate writers to utilize alternative lexico-structural patterns for the aim in

different parts of the thesis. As noted earlier, some of the patterns in the ‘scope’ sub-

move are also relevant to the statement of the aim. The first pattern directly

announces to the reader that the ‘purpose’, ‘aim’, ‘objective’, ‘goal’, ‘intention’,

‘object’ or ‘intent’ of the thesis, or study is to be stated, and therefore the statement

begins with one of these words. The other three patterns initially foreground the

product of the research (thesis, dissertation, work, study, etc.), followed by a verb

denoting what the study set out to achieve (expand, explain, develop, address,

propose, investigate, etc.).

Move 2: Methodology

Perhaps the move which has the highest potential to include the most details is the

second move, ‘Methodology’. This move in the thesis abstract, and the

corresponding chapter in the actual thesis, incorporate information on the approach

and specific methods used together with the rationale, the research context, the

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participants or subjects, and the data collection and analysis tools. The purpose of

this move is to inform the reader about how the research was done, and why it was

done that way. Therefore, it “covers not only the methods used to collect and

analyze data, but also the theoretical framework that informs both the choice of

methods and the approach to interpreting the data, and relates all of these explicitly

to the research question(s) addressed in the thesis”

(http://www.monash.edu.au/lls/hdr/write/5.6.html). The initial analysis of this move

with the aim of forming a lexico-grammatical bank for sub-moves generated such

abundant data that they had to be trimmed and edited to a manageable size.

Sub-move 1: Presenting the methodology employed

The data from the TAC revealed that the most common three verbs to talk about the

methodology of the study are ‘use’, ‘utilize’, and ‘employ’. Both present and past

tenses are used in the active, although in the actual thesis, there seems to be more

past than present tenses to refer to the methodological procedures. Alternatively, the

passive may be employed to talk about the methodology adopted in the study.

According to the data, the researcher may also describe or justify the methodology

adopted, or may also choose to go into a lot of detail regarding the methodology

employed in the study.

Sub-move 2: Justifying the methodology employed

It is also important that the methodology adopted in the study is relevant to the

resolution of the problem that has led the researcher to conduct the current research.

Accordingly, some researchers may want to discuss the methodology in relation to

the problem, and present the theoretical framework justifying the choice of the

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approach and the methods used. As this sub-move is closely related to the previous

sub-move, ‘presenting the methodology’, there may be overlaps between these two

sub-moves.

The analysis revealed that the primary aim of an appropriate methodology in a

research study is to collect sufficient data. The word ‘data’ occurs in the TAC 268

times, which is a very high frequency. This should not be surprising, as the

significance of the research depends on its findings from data analysis and

interpretation. It would be therefore be valuable to consider the lexico-grammatical

realizations of this very common and important word in detail.

Table 4.26

Lexico-structural patterns of ‘data’

collected from / in is/ are analyzed for …


… was analyzed for …
gathered from … was analyzed using …
stored in … is censored …
obtained from … are identified …
used … is examined …
produced by … is incorporated into …
relating to … is passed onto …
DATA DATA
assessed by the … were sorted …
derived from … that conform to …
generated by / from to analyze income …
… to contribute to …
required to … to deviate from …
relevant to … to help build …
to simultaneously capture …
measuring … to test …

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Table 4.26 shows that although ‘data’ is a plural word, with ‘datum’ as the singular

form, the writers in the TAC used ‘data’ both in the singular and the plural. As can

be seen, ‘data’ is abundantly modified through relative clauses.

Sub-move 3: Describing the context

It is essential that sufficient information is offered to readers on the context, so that

they can clearly understand the setting, the conditions and circumstances that led to

the problem, and most importantly the problem itself. The researcher’s awareness of

the setting plays a vital role in designing the research, since what is relevant to one

context may not be so in another. This awareness can easily be observed from the

data (see Appendix L), as most of the examples for the pattern include ‘examining a

problem within the context of …’, or ‘within a wider context’.

An interesting finding is that while in the TAC, the ‘context’ family occurs 204 times

and ‘context’ itself 139 times, the whole family appears only 3 times in the LAC.

For this reason, in addition to the lexico-grammatical patterns derived from the TAC

to describe the context, it is worthwhile to extract the common verbs to talk about

the lexical item itself, independent of the sub-move.

Table 4.27

Verbs used to talk about the ‘context’

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creating a/an
suit The
build a new
describe The
lay out The
form The
identify The
represent The
complement The … context …
highlight the importance of The
construct a model within The
draw on examples from The
considered in The
interpreted in a /an
applied in The
discussed in The
influenced by The

Optional sub-move: Describing the variables

It should be emphasized that ‘describing the variables’ is an optional sub-move, as

variables are used in experimental studies in the Sciences. The data from the TAC

revealed that, ‘variables’ are mostly ‘analyzed’, ‘investigated’ or ‘tested’. The most

frequently used collocates of ‘variables’ in the pre-position are ‘dependent’ and

‘independent’. In qualitative studies, variables are not part of the research design,

and therefore this sub-move is not included in such studies.

Move 3: Results

In the ‘Results’ section, the research reports back the data analyzed and highlights

and summarizes the significant findings. Therefore, this section may be said to be

composed of ‘what the data / analyses / results / findings show’ and ‘what the data /

analyses / results / findings mean’. It should be taken into account that there may be

overlaps in the use of language in moves 3 (results) and 4 (discussion), as in the

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discussion / conclusion part as well, the writer may refer to the research findings,

results, or the data.

In scientific writing, when reporting what the results show, mean and how they can

be interpreted, in other words, in both Move 3 and Move 4, ‘hedges’ and ‘boosters’

are used. Hyland explains the reasons for the need to use these expressions of

‘doubt’ and ‘certainty’ in the following way:

One of the most important features of academic discourse is the way that
writers seek to modify the assertions that they make, toning down uncertain
and potentially risky claims, emphasizing what they believe to be correct,
and conveying appropriately collegial attitudes to readers. (2000, p. 179)

The examples he gives for ‘hedges’ are ‘might’, ‘probably’ and ‘seem’, and for

‘boosters’ ‘clearly’, obviously’ (Hyland, 2000) and ‘demonstrate’ (Hyland, 2005, p.

179). Hyland is of the opinion that these devices aid the work of academic people to

be accepted ‘by balancing conviction with caution’ (2000, p. 179). In another article,

Hyland further emphasizes the significance of these devices:

Both boosters and hedges represent a writer’s response to the potential


viewpoints of readers and an acknowledgement of disciplinary norms of
appropriate argument. They balance objective information, subjective
evaluation and inter-personal negotiation, and this can be a powerful factor
in gaining acceptance for claims. (2005, p. 180)

Sub-moves 1 and 2: ‘What the data show’ and ‘What the data mean’

The findings of this research are consistent with the literature, as it was observed

that the writers of the TAC made abundant use of hedges and boosters. The two very

important sub-moves fulfilling this move are ‘what the data show’, and ‘what the

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data mean’. Instead of separating these two sub-moves, it would be more convenient

to focus on the key words and the lexico-grammatical patterns used to fulfill them.

The first key word is ‘data’, and whether the data ‘show’ or ‘mean’ depends on the

verb used with it. For example, ‘showed that’ and ‘demonstrate’ fulfill the first sub-

move, whereas ‘implies’ and ‘suggests’ belong to the second sub-move. On the other

hand, ‘demonstrate’ is a ‘booster’, while ‘imply’ and ‘suggest’ are hedges.

Move 4: Discussion

In the ‘discussion’ move, and more generally speaking, in the last chapter of the

thesis ‘Conclusion’, the researcher summarizes the key findings, reports the

conclusions and discusses the contribution of the research to the field, considers the

implications of the study, and makes recommendations as suggested by the findings

of the research. The writer may also mention how the current research relates to the

existing research, and how it opens up gaps for further research.

In this move as well, ‘hedges’ such as ‘imply’ (13 times), ‘suggest’ (168 times),

‘tend’ (35 times), ‘seem’ (24 times), ‘appear’ (54 times), and modal verbs like

‘could’ (77 times) and ‘may’ (128 times), were used abundantly by the TAC writers.

Mostly the present tense is used, as can be observed from the data (Appendix L),

since there is the need to emphasize the current relevance of the research.

An interesting finding relating to especially Move 4 is the case of ‘suggest’. This

verb is widely used in this section as a hedging device, while at the same time it is

employed in making recommendations based on findings. It is therefore crucial that

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post-graduate students are provided with exposure and practice regarding the use of

this verb in the research context.

Sub-move 1: Describing the ‘key findings’

This sub-move appears to be fulfilled mostly through such key words as ‘imply’,

‘suggest’, ‘seem’, ‘appear’, ‘tend’ and ‘tendency’, all of which can be described as

‘hedges’. The researcher, in general, should be extremely cautious when describing

the key findings, and the use of these key words seems to protect the researcher from

making risky claims.

Sub-move 2: Relating the findings of the study to the existing research

This sub-move can be optional, as some researchers choose not to compare their

findings with those of previous research. However, this sub-move is quite

significant, as it signals that the researcher is well-read and well-informed about the

research field. The key words and phrases that are used to fulfill this sub-move are

‘consistent with / in agreement with previous research’, and ‘unlike / contrary to

previous research’, as can be observed from the data (See Appendix L).

Sub-move 3: Describing the ‘conclusions’

According to the data (see Appendix L), the most common key words that are used

to describe the conclusions are ‘conclude’ and ‘conclusions’. This sub-move can be

said to be almost typified by the use of the simple present tense, most probably due

to the need to focus on the current relevance of the research. While in ‘describing

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the findings’ hedges are used abundantly, in ‘describing the conclusions’, the writer

seems more comfortable.

Sub-move 4: Discussing the contributions of the study to the research field

The ‘contribution’ family, is used 127 times in the TAC to refer to the contributions

of the research. Every piece of research ideally should contribute to the field of

research by extending it, clarifying it, or by filling a gap. As the data indicate (see

Appendix L), the family members of ‘contribution’ fulfill this sub-move through

three patterns. The first is when ‘contribution’ is used as the subject (e.g. The key

contribution of this research is the use of …), as the object (e.g. The thesis makes a

theoretical contribution to the growing field of …), and as a verb ‘contribute’ (e.g.

Our findings contribute not only to … but also to …).

However, the ‘contribution’ family is not the sole means of talking about

contributions of the research. The data (see Appendix L) show how other verbs used

with ‘study’, ‘findings’, and ‘results’ are employed to denote ‘contribution’. Some of

these verbs are ‘provide’, ‘promote’, ‘validate’, ‘reinforce’, and ‘inconclusively

prove’. A very interesting finding related to this sub-move is the high frequency of

the use of the words ‘understanding’, ‘insight’, and ‘knowledge’, when talking about

the contribution of the study. Therefore, it would be useful to present a few

examples regarding the lexico-grammatical realizations of these words (see

Appendix L). These realizations, however, are quite varied, and the post-graduate

students should be encouraged to explore the TAC for further examples.

Sub-move 5: Making recommendations / suggestions based on the research

findings

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It is quite conventional to propose changes to the existing state of affairs based on

the findings of the research. In fact, in some cases these suggestions can be

important contributors to the field. The data (see Appendix L) show that three lexical

verbs (recommend, suggest, propose) are extensively utilized for this purpose.

However, apart from these lexical verbs, two modal verbs, ‘should’, and ‘must’ are

widely employed for the same purpose. The fact that ‘ought to’, which is a

commonly used modal that can be used interchangeably with ‘should’ in everyday

language, occurs only once in the TAC is quite interesting.

Sub-move 6: Discussing the Implications of the research

Implications are important as they confirm that the researcher is aware of how the

current research findings can or will impact the existing practice, or theory. Still, the

writer may sometimes discuss the implications of the study for further research. In

that case, there may be overlaps between this sub-move and the next one

‘suggestions for further research’.

This sub-move makes use of the lexical item ‘implication’ (see Appendix L). The

word is used as the ‘subject’ (implications regarding … are discussed), as well as the

‘object’ (this research has important implications for …). The most common

collocates of the word are ‘broad’, ‘important’, ‘practical’, ‘theoretical’, and

‘empirically grounded’.

Sub-move 7: Opening up new areas of research

Researchers have to draw boundaries for themselves so as to be able to exploit the

tools, and the data effectively, and to present meaningful findings. During the

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research process, and especially at the data analysis stage, the researcher will

observe that other avenues of research emerge. Being aware of these and opening up

research gaps for fellow researchers will benefit the field of study as a whole. The

TAC data (see Appendix L) indicate that the central lexical items for opening up

new areas of research are ‘future’, ‘further’, ‘recommendation’, and ‘suggestion’.

4.3.2.2 Significance of the AAC Bank of Moves and Sub-moves

The AAC Bank of moves and sub-moves extracted the most commonly used lexico-

structural patterns in the TAC to fulfill the moves and sub-moves in specifically

abstract, and thesis writing in general. This bank is envisaged to perform as a road

map for the non-native post-graduate candidates, and assist them in creating

meanings and conveying their intended messages coherently, and appropriately.

The AAC Bank is presented to the students in a table format in the Moodle glossary.

Moreover, accompanying tasks, both in-class and online, based on the lexico-

structural patterns in the AAC Bank of moves and sub-moves can help the students

acquire these structures, and employ them in their own texts.

The data, as already mentioned, are presented to the students in the e-learning

platform, Moodle, in tables. Yet, it is also possible to present the data in visual

format as a ‘word cloud’, which gives “greater prominence to words that appear

more frequently in the source text” (http://wordle.net/). The advantages of visual

representation are that, it is conspicuous, and the most frequent words are the most

prominent, and therefore easily detected. In addition, the lexico-grammatical

patterns can also be represented in a wordle. The wordle for the sub-move ‘scope of

the research’ is provided in figure 4.1 as a sample.

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Figure 4.1: Wordle of the AAC Bank, Move 1, sub-move: defining the scope

4.3.3 The Pedagogic Corpus

At this stage, it would be useful to recall how Hunston (2002) defines a pedagogic

corpus:

A corpus consisting of all the language a learner has been exposed to. For
most learners, their pedagogic corpus does not exist in physical form. If a
teacher or researcher does decide to collect a pedagogic corpus, it can consist
of all the course books, readers etc a learner has used, plus any tapes etc they
have heard. The term ‘pedagogic corpus’ is used by D. Willis (1993). A
pedagogic corpus can be used to collect together for the learner all instances
of a word or phrase they have come across in different contexts, for the
purpose of raising awareness. (2002, p. 16)

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An important aspect of this definition is that the pedagogic corpus involves all the

materials the learners have already been exposed to, and with the advanced students

in this study, this is impossible, as the post-graduate candidates are from totally

different backgrounds, and have not studied English in the same way using the same

materials. Willis provides a more comprehensive definition, and points out that a

pedagogic corpus involves the texts that the learners have encountered, or will

encounter (Willis, 2003, p. 165). He further states that “learners process a set of texts

to enable them to develop their own vocabulary and work out their own grammar of

the language”, and this set of texts can be described as a pedagogic corpus (Willis,

2003, p. 163). He emphasizes that it is one of the roles of the teacher or the course

designer to “highlight important features of the pedagogic corpus and to help

learners familiarize themselves with it” (p. 163). Willis further refers to tasks as

components of a pedagogic corpus (2003, p. 223).

In this study, the pedagogic corpus is constructed from:

• access to the two corpora (the LAC and the TAC);

• the web concordances of the two corpora available on Moodle;

• the in-class materials integrating corpus-informed data and tasks;

• various advanced academic writing resources, as well as larger corpora such


as the BNC;

• the online corpus-informed tasks that are designed to encourage students to


discover regular patterns in language themselves, and learn in a collaborative
manner on an e-learning platform founded on social constructivist principles;

• the TAC Wordlist of 165 key words;

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• a glossary of the AAC Bank of moves and sub-moves, offering alternative

lexico-grammatical patterns for fulfilling the required moves and sub-moves

in abstract, and thesis writing.

Willis (2003) considers the pedagogic corpus ‘as a valuable body of language’ and

emphasizes its value in the following way:

If we see the pedagogic corpus as central to syllabus and materials design,


we can go beyond the view of language learning as the accumulation of a
series of language forms. We can see learning as the learner’s growing
familiarity with a valuable body of language. This in turn encourages the
learner to take a positive view of learning. Learning is contextualized by the
communicative framework, it is communicative activity in the classroom
which enables learners to develop their own spontaneous communicative
repertoire, but the catalyst for this development is the exploration of text.
The learning processes of recognition and system building are important in
that they facilitate exploration and communication, but, important though
they are, they are simply facilitating processes, paving the way for real
language use. (p. 225)

The pedagogic corpus was constructed in this research study upon identifying that

“learners deviate from native speaker norms” (Keck, 2004, p. 98). Thus, the

constructed pedagogic corpus, with its multiple components, is anticipated to

minimize the gap between the identified and the desired performance levels, through

the exploitation of authentic texts, and corpus-informed tasks. Data-driven tasks

ensure maximum exposure to the authentic data and enable the students to observe

the use of language themselves, and become language researchers, or 'language

detectives' (Johns, 1997).

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4.3.3.1 Task Framework and Taxonomy

This section briefly outlines how the pedagogic corpus is used as a basis for the

teaching and learning of advanced academic thesis writing skills, most particularly

in terms of task design and taxonomy.

The students engaged in the advanced academic study of the type described in this

research have much in common in terms of the aims and discourse of the academic

community, and in terms of the moves and the language they require to be

successfully involved in that community. In fact, the pedagogic corpus, to a large

degree, resulted from identifying what students have in common in terms of what

they will need to write at an acceptable level, and the types of typical problems that

they encounter before they have reached that level. Despite these commonalities,

however, it is equally important to emphasize that these students are engaged in the

writing of their own theses, and therefore involved in a process that is individualized

and unique. As a result, there are some factors that need to be taken into

consideration in designing a task framework to provide a rationale for task design:

• Students’ general and academic English language proficiency level can vary

quite markedly. Groups of students at this level are usually heterogeneous.

• Students’ disciplinary areas and thesis topics may vary considerably, even

within the same discipline. To illustrate, within Civil Engineering, there are

different branches such as “Construction Materials, Geotechnical

Engineering, Hydraulic Engineering, Transportation

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Engineering and Structural Engineering”

(http://civil.emu.edu.tr/).

• Students may be at different stages of writing their theses. In terms of the

present course, for instance, some of the students have well advanced in their

research writing, while in other cases topic selection has not been finalized.

• Students’ aspirations for the future can vary. For some, the master’s thesis is

basically the peak of their academic career, and their main aim is to complete

their thesis, get their degree, and leave the university to find a good job.

However, for others who are pursuing a degree with the aim of finding a

place in the academic world, the thesis is a critical milestone in their

academic career, and mastery of advanced academic English is a crucial long

term skill that needs to be developed.

Swales (2004) refers to the aspirations of the majority of master’s students in the

following way, although he admits that there are exceptions:

For a majority of master’s students, the dissertation/thesis is the most


sustained and complex piece of academic writing (in any language) they will
undertake. As often as not, such students are uninterested in going on to
write for publication but rather are looking forward, once having completed
their fifty-to one-hundred-page documents, to entering or returning to a
professional career in teaching, nursing, business, and so on. (p. 99)

Thus, these individual differences suggest that some students may require formal

teaching - learning processes so that they can develop and acquire the language and

skills that will help them write a thesis at a later point, whereas others may require a

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more resource-driven environment where they can easily access and acquire

language that will be of immediate help to them in the writing process.

This heterogeneous group of students from different backgrounds, with different

aspirations, at differing language levels and at differing points of progression in their

theses cannot be expected to benefit from a systemized approach where everyone

does the same thing at the same time. The purpose of not only the formal instruction,

but also the introduction of a web-based interactive tool, Moodle, to a larger extent,

was not only to ‘teach’ academic writing skills per se, but also to ‘develop’ in

students academic writing awareness, provide them with a roadmap, through

exemplification and practice in the necessary skills, and thereby increase their self

confidence. It needs to be emphasized that high levels of discipline, autonomy, and

self-study are key in bringing such an individualized piece of work as a thesis to a

successful completion.

The limited hours of instruction (only 3 hours a week), combined with the post-

graduate candidates’ individual differences make it unrealistic and impractical to

deal with specific language problems. The task design, therefore, should be flexible,

and the tasks varied enough to cater for the needs, levels, aspirations of such a

heterogeneous group, so that the participants have the choice and the means to focus

on their individual and specific needs through different kinds of tasks in their own

time.

Taking all these factors into consideration, the tasks were designed to promote

awareness of the resources available, and to familiarize the students with the skills

and knowledge required to exploit these resources, so that they can build enough

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confidence to work individually on their theses. The approach to task design is data-

driven and exploratory, rather than didactic. The pedagogic corpus thus functions as

an open resource that students can exploit whenever, and however they like or need.

This golden opportunity is offered to the students through Moodle.

Moodle was first introduced to the course in the 2007-2008 Academic Year (see

Appendix M for screenshots of Moodle). The purpose of integrating Moodle into the

ENGL501 course was not only to provide a ‘host’ for the corpora, but also to

mediate between the individualized nature of thesis work, and collective learning

and psychological support work in a collaborative environment. Furthermore, a web-

based platform would offer the opportunity for the students to work at their own

pace, on activities of their own choice, and in their own time and place.

Before describing and exemplifying the tasks designed, the components of the

pedagogic corpus need to be recalled. The two corpora (the LAC and the TAC)

together with their web concordances, the in-class materials integrating corpus-

informed data and tasks, various advanced academic writing resources, as well as

access to larger corpora such as the BNC, the TAC Wordlist of 165 key words

extracted from the TAC, the AAC Bank of moves and sub-moves, and the online

corpus-informed tasks constitute the pedagogic corpus. Considering the wealth of

authentic data derived from the LAC and the TAC in hand, there should be tasks that

ensure their utilization to the fullest extent.

The LAC is also extensively exploited in task design, although the use of incorrect

forms for pedagogic purposes has a lot of critics. The opponents of using ‘incorrect

forms’ maintain that the learner might learn these forms. (Corder, 1973, p. 294).

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Corder (1973), however, is one of the supporters of the use of learner errors. He

believes that “there is a strong argument in favour of the controlled use of examples

of incorrect forms so long as these are correctly labeled as such” (Corder, 1973, pp.

293-294), and justifies his opinion in the following way:

Language learning is not parrot learning: we do not ‘learn’ or ‘practise’


examples. They are the data from which we induce the systems of the
language. Skill in correction of errors lies in the direction of exploiting the
incorrect forms produced by the learner in a controlled fashion. (p. 294)

The tasks designed for this course are essentially genre-based, data-driven, and

‘cyclical’ in nature. They are genre-based, since focus on generic moves and sub-

moves is an integral part of the course. Besides being genre-based, they are data-

driven, as they require the students to consult the data. The tasks are also cyclical, as

all parts of language are interrelated, and learning a new item requires relearning all

the other language items studied already (Corder, 1973, p. 265). With such a

heterogeneous group of students, at different language levels and with different

needs, it is inevitable to include tasks dealing with more basic elements of language,

as well as those that require higher level language competence. Lexis, collocations,

and lexico-grammar are particularly emphasized in tasks.

To ensure that the students can get maximum benefit from the abundant data,

‘corpus-based learning tasks’ (Keck, 2004, p. 93) are designed. These tasks can be

broadly grouped into two categories: teacher directed data-driven and student led

discovery learning tasks. The theory behind DDL is that students become ‘language

detectives’ (Johns, 1997, p. 101), “discovering facts about the language they are

learning for themselves, from authentic examples” (Hunston, 2002, p. 170). Teacher

directed data-driven tasks are therefore the ones that engage “learners in the analysis

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of concordance lines that have been selected, arranged, and possibly edited by the

teacher in order to draw learners’ attention to patterns of language use” (Keck, 2004,

p. 94). In this study, these tasks are designed by the teacher to draw attention, but as

the students are advanced, the data are not manipulated by the teacher.

In student led discovery learning tasks, on the other hand, students might “generate

their own concordance data, thus engaging in autonomous discovery learning”

(Keck, 2004, p. 94). Some of the advantages of student-led corpus analysis are that

“learners are in charge of their own learning, and thus motivation is increased”

(Aston, 2001, cited in Keck, 2004, p. 94), and “learners make ‘serendipitous’

discoveries about language use that, without the use of corpora, would not have been

possible” (Bernardini, 2001, cited in Keck, 2004, p. 94). The teacher directed data-

driven and student led discovery learning tasks designed for this course are

envisaged to help the students to acquire awareness of, or recognize language

patterns, be ‘language detectives’ (Johns, 1997, p. 101), explore the data, and make

their own discoveries, and eventually produce their own texts. The tasks which play

an indispensable role in the exploitation of the data are exemplified and described in

detail.

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Figure 4.2: A student-led discovery task (individual)

This task was designed upon identifying that the word ‘data’ was used by the

majority of the students frequently incorrectly. The aim is to get the students to

explore the use of the word ‘data’ in the BNC corpus. The students generate their

own concordance lines themselves and find the collocates of ‘data’. This task

requires them to explore the word in detail, as they are expected to find out whether

‘data’ is a singular or a plural word. They are also expected to pick, from the corpus,

three sentences that they think clearly expresses the meaning of the word. This task

is in the Moodle assignment module, which means that the students complete it

individually and submit it online. A sample student assignment is in Appendix N.

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Figure 4.3: A student-led discovery task (collaborative)

Task 2 was designed after a classroom session when it became clear that the post-

graduate students were not only overusing the linker ‘On the other hand’, but also

using it incorrectly, most of the time to mean ‘However’. This is again a student led

discovery learning task which requires the students to go to the BNC-Written

corpus, find some examples with both sentence connectors, and comment on why

one, and not the other is used in each situation. Unlike the first task, however, this

task is designed as a WIKI, which means that the students work collaboratively, and

edit each other’s work. The post-graduate students’ collaborative work can be

accessed at http://gemoodle.emu.edu.tr/mod/wiki/view.php?id=11061.

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Figure 4.4: A teacher directed data-driven task

At the beginning of the semester, during the initial classroom sessions, it became

clear that the post-graduate students learned English at an individual word level, and

had no conception of collocations, colligations, and lexico-grammatical patterns.

This task was thus designed to raise the students’ awareness of the need to know

collocations, colligations, and lexico-grammatical patterns to be able to produce a

word in writing. This is a teacher directed data-driven task, as the data (an abstract)

are provided and arranged by the teacher. The abstract is a PhD abstract from

Virginia Commonwealth University, and the sentences in the abstract are divided

into separate lexico-grammatical patterns. The students are expected to solve the

puzzle individually, and put the abstract back together by naturally considering the

meaning, but more importantly, by deciding what the next word can be. As can be

seen in the picture, option C is ‘to be largely stemmed’. The students will not be able

to decide on the next pattern unless they know that ‘stemmed’ is followed by ‘from’.

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Figure 4.5: An individual student-led discovery task

This task is an individual student-led discovery task. After the post-graduate students

analyze authentic thesis proposals both in class and on Moodle for two weeks, they

are expected to produce their first draft proposals. They submit this online, and also

get feedback online. They have the opportunity to submit their proposals three times,

for all of which they get feedback. The students have access to the TAC, the TAC

wordlist, the AAC Bank, larger corpora, and authentic proposal samples, and they

are encouraged to explore all these different resources in the process of producing

their proposal.

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Figure 4.6: A collaborative teacher directed data-driven task

This task is based on the LAC, and the data is purposefully selected and arranged by

the teacher. The students are encouraged to use the TAC, or the other corpora to

determine the source of the problem, and correct the incorrect statements one by

one. For example, the second statement is “Risk analysis never mentions what

exactly will happen in the future”. At a glance, this seems to be a perfectly formed

sentence, with a singular noun used with a singular verb. Furthermore, the noun

clause is accurately inserted into the sentence. However, the problem here is one of

‘appropriacy’, and an inanimate subject cannot possibly do something animate;

‘mention’. The task is designed as a discussion, and therefore requires collaboration.

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Figure 4.7: An individual teacher directed data-driven task

The data for this task also come from the LAC. The teacher, upon identifying

instances of the incorrect uses of ‘study’ in the LAC, arranged the data by providing

a correct alternative to accompany the incorrect uses. The students in this task are

provided with one correct and three incorrect uses of the word ‘study’, and the

incorrect use identified in the LAC is one of the alternatives. The students are

expected to choose the correct use, and consider why the other options are incorrect.

The task is designed as a ‘hot potato quiz’, which means that after the students

complete the quiz, they get immediate feedback and a score. The score is then

recorded on Moodle for the teacher’s reference.

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HOW MANY MAIN MOVES ARE THERE IN AN INTRODUCTION? The
following task may help you to answer this question.
Task 4: Name the moves and underline the important language the writer uses
to achieve the moves in the following introduction.
The introduction does not end here. However, the rest of the introduction
belongs to the 3rd move. Have you now decided what the moves are?
Move 1:
Move 2:
Move 3:
Task 8: Match the following moves with the relevant language.
Move  However, little information/attention/work/data/research ....
 However, few studies/investigations/researchers/attempts ....
_____  The research has tended to focus on ..., rather than on ....
 These studies have emphasised ..., as opposed to ....
 Although considerable research has been devoted to ... ,
rather less attention has been paid to ....
 The previous research ... has concentrated on ....

 So far, investigations have been confined to ...


Move  The increasing interest in ... has heightened the need for ....
 Of particular interest and complexity are ....
_____  Recently, there has been growing interest in ....
 The development of ... has led to the hope that....
 The .. has become a favourite topic for analysis ....
 The study of ... has become an important aspect of ....
 A central issue in ... is ....
 The ... has been extensively studied in recent years.

 Many recent studies have focused on ....


Move  The purpose of this paper is to ...
 The purpose of this investigation is to ...
_____  The aim of this paper is to ...
 This paper reports on the results obtained ....
 This study was designed to ...
 In this paper, we give results of ...
 In this paper, we argue that ....
 This paper argues that ....
 We have organized the rest of this paper in the following
way ....
 This paper is structured as follows ....

 The remainder of this paper is divided into five sections ....

Figure 4.8: An in-class teacher led data-driven task

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In this task, the data and the tasks are provided by the teacher to be used in the

classroom. The focus is the generic moves in thesis introductions, and thus an

authentic thesis introduction is used, and accompanying tasks designed. The task

requires the students to read the introduction individually, decide on the three

moves, discuss their decisions with their classmates, and come to an agreement.

Then they are required to match the alternative lexico-grammatical patterns provided

with the relevant moves.

Figure 4.9 below shows the number of times the individual data-driven learning

tasks in the Hot Potatoes module were attempted by the post-graduate students in the

2007-2008 Academic year, Spring semester.

Figure 4.9: Reports of hot potato quizzes

The post-graduate students who took ENGL501 in the 2007-2008 Spring term

reported that they found these tasks very beneficial, as they needed guidance on how

235
to use the corpora. It is interesting to note that the post-graduate students, who all

received their undergraduate degrees, and are architects, mechanical engineers, civil

engineers, economists, finance experts, became language detectives through

exposure to corpora, and data-driven learning activities.

4.3.3.2 The Pilot Implementation and Evaluation of the course- 2007-2008 Fall

Semester

The corpus-informed Advanced Thesis Writing course began to take shape in the

2007-2008 Fall semester, when the online component was gradually developed and

incorporated into the course, creating a virtual classroom for more interaction and

sharing beyond the 3 hours a week in class. This incorporation provided the

opportunity and the platform to introduce participants to the concepts of corpora,

genres, moves, as well as the philosophy behind e-learning platforms, that

knowledge is created collaboratively. Although the course in Fall 2007 was not a

pilot implementation, it was still evaluated, as some key concepts were introduced to

the participants for the first time. A total of 23 participants completed and submitted

an evaluation questionnaire online. The major findings are presented below.

Moodle incorporates a questionnaire module, which collates and tabulates the

questionnaire entries automatically. According to the analysis of the data, the course

was most useful in terms of developing academic study skills and knowledge of

academic conventions (4.7 on a 5 point scale), followed by developing knowledge of

thesis structure and format, improving academic writing skills and knowledge,

developing skills and knowledge of textual dynamics, developing academic

vocabulary knowledge and skills, developing awareness of the need and benefit of

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producing multiple drafts in academic writing, and developing skills in exploiting

computers as a study resource. When the participants were asked about the

contribution of the course to their writing skills, 12 out of 23 (52%) said their

writing skills were much improved, 9 out of 23 (39%) somewhat improved, and 2

out of 23 (9%) a little improved.

The questionnaire also inquired what the participants still found difficult about

writing in English. A participant, unknowingly, stated the aim and the research

agenda:

I think that although the course was very useful, it was about academic
writing in general and not specialized in my feild of study- as it is supposed
to be, because it is not possible to have different courses for different thesis
subjects of students. The thing that I need to do now is focussing on writing
in my feild of study by reading relevant subjects, learning specialized
vocabulary, and trying to write similar to them, by the aid of the knowledge I
have earned in this course.

The newly introduced on-line learning platform was also part of the evaluation. The

participants were asked about courses offered through Moodle. 91% of the

respondents stated that they would like to have more courses supported by Moodle

at the post-graduate level. The respondents reported that they benefited from Moodle

most in terms of being able to see what the teacher was asking them to do each week

(4.4 on a scale of 5), followed by learning independently, writing more in English,

feeling more confident about using computers, and seeing what their friends were

doing and saying and learning from their ideas. The fact that the participants ranked

collaboration among classmates the lowest may be due to the fact that this was the

first time they took an online platform supported course, and they were hesitant and

uncomfortable about sharing ideas.

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The participants also commented on the course in terms of content, teaching

materials, instructional methods, focus, and instructor. Most respondents reported

that, in general, they found the course satisfactory. One participant said “Best lecture

i had this semester”. The necessity of allocating more hours to the course and having

the course for two semesters was mentioned. One respondent had a very idealistic

suggestion:

To establish a collaborated work between the student, instructor, and the


supervisor. To customize the lecture through high interaction between the
student, instructor, and of course the supervisor to provide not only a guide
and feedback for writing (instructor) but also specialized advice on the topic
(supervisor).

The same respondent found this suggestion unrealistic later and said:

However, sounds challenging and even impossible, given the number of


applicants, it would bring about significant changes and a solid support to the
thesis in terms of both academic writing structure and specialized field
supervision. Hence, a superior work and higher motivation for publication.
(Thank you).

4.3.3.3 The Pilot Implementation and Evaluation of the course- 2007-2008

Spring Semester

The course was therefore first piloted as a corpus-informed genre-based course in

the 2007-2008 Academic Year, Spring Semester. The TAC (Target Abstract Corpus)

was put online in the form of web concordances, providing the opportunity for

participants to explore a word in the corpus to find out about its use and its lexico-

structural properties. The participants were also introduced to larger corpora and

vocabulary profiling and concordancing tools (www.lextutor.com) to raise

awareness of the importance of genre and register variation, as well as the value of

238
observing and exploring the context of a word for its accurate and appropriate use.

In addition, corpus-informed tasks and materials were developed and incorporated

into both the in-class materials and the on-line component of the course. These tasks

were designed to encourage the participants to explore the TAC and the other larger

corpora made available, and focus on lexico-structural patterns rather than isolated

vocabulary items. Due to the fact that corpora are stored on computers, most of the

newly designed tasks were put online to facilitate the exploration of these valuable

databanks.

In the 2007-2008 Academic year, Spring semester, 32 participants, all of whom were

doing their Master’s, took the course. Of these 12 were from Architecture, 7 from

Banking and Finance, 3 from Industrial Engineering, 3 from Economics, and 3 from

Communication and Media Studies, 2 from International Relations, 1 from Civil

Engineering, and 1 from Mechanical Engineering. As for nationalities, this group

was even more international than the previous groups, 14 from Iran, 7 from Cyprus,

2 from Iraq, and 1 person each from Cameroon, Nigeria, Albania, Kosovo, China,

Russia, Syria, and Jordan.

As in the previous years, pre- and post- questionnaires were administered at the

beginning and end of the course, so as to evaluate the participants’ perception of the

impact of the course on their progress. The online pre-course questionnaire included

17 and the online post-course questionnaire 31 questions on various aspects of the

course. The pre-course questionnaire was completed by thirty, and the post-course

questionnaire by twenty-five of the total thirty-two participants. These

questionnaires were analyzed together.

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Seven themes emerged from the content analysis of the data; these are ‘perceptions

of the importance of English in an English-medium university, especially for post-

graduate students’, ‘perceptions of the significance of the writing skill’, ‘methods of

checking / improving written work’, ‘the major difficulties in producing own texts’,

‘familiarity with the important concepts in writing’, ‘course-related opinions’, and

‘Moodle-related opinions’. The data analysis revealed that, at the end of the

semester, there was a significant increase in the respondents’ perceptions of the

importance of English, as can be seen from Table 4.28.

Table 4.28

Perceptions of the importance of English

To pursue a post-graduate degree in an English-medium University, one needs to


have:
Pre-course Questionnaire Post-course Questionnaire
(30 respondents) (25 respondents)
a high level of English 9 (30%) 9 (36%)
a satisfactory level of
21 (70%) 16 (64%)
English
a low level of English 0 0
The more challenging task in a post-graduate program in an English-medium
University is:
Pre-course Questionnaire Post-course Questionnaire
(30 respondents) (25 respondents)
dealing with the subject
matter (Architecture, 12 (40%) 8 (32%)
Business, etc.)
dealing with the
expression of ideas in 18 (60%) 17 (68%)
English

The first question on this theme was related to the level of English required to

pursue a post-graduate degree in an English-medium university. As opposed to the

30% of respondents who thought that a high level of English was required at the

beginning of the semester, the percentage rose to 36% in the post-course

240
questionnaire responses. The findings regarding the second question on this theme

were extremely significant. While 60% of the respondents thought dealing with the

expression of ideas in English was more challenging than dealing with the subject

matter before taking the course, this percentage rose to 68% at the end of the

semester. This may mean that the course raised the participants’ awareness of the

importance of coherent, and appropriate expression of ideas, and contributed to the

understanding that no matter how well one knows about the subject matter in hand,

the more demanding task is to convey this knowledge to the reader effectively.

The second theme that emerged is the perceptions of the respondents regarding the

importance of the writing skill in post-graduate programs. To this end, the

respondents were asked to rank ‘reading, writing, speaking, listening, vocabulary,

grammar’ in the order of importance. Before taking this course, the order of ranking

was ‘reading-writing-vocabulary / grammar-speaking-listening’. However, at the end

of the semester, the ‘writing’ skill ranked first, followed by ‘reading-vocabulary-

grammar-listening / speaking’. The findings appear to suggest that dealing with

advanced thesis writing for a semester raised the participants’ awareness of the

importance of the writing skill, and of the fact that there are a lot of factors

contributing to coherent and appropriate writing.

The course provides tools and resources to check and improve written work, so that

the participants can become their own editor. Before taking the course, using Word

tools, and self-checking by reading the produced text ranked top, both referred to

eleven times. Ten respondents said they asked a friend, or a teacher to check their

work. After taking the course, however, the respondents mentioned a wider variety

of tools and resources. Ten respondents reported that in addition to the Word tools,

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they benefited from corpus concordancers, the vocabulary profiler, and the TAC

(Target Abstract Corpus) in checking and improving their work. Five people

mentioned focusing on collocations, and three people on synonyms to improve their

work. One respondent said:

gemoodle is the best thing that help [sic] me to improve my written skill.
when i stuck [sic] i can check the corpus concordancer. i can search the
examples which relates [sic] chapter that im [sic] using in [sic] that moment.
it is the best thing in my master education that i met [sic] up to now

The respondents reported that after taking the course, they started using different

tools and resources to check and improve their work, and that they felt more

confident about writing. This confidence was expressed by a respondent so well:

i [sic] trust my self now, i believe that i can write and complete my thesis
because all my questions has [sic] answered. its not a big deal to complete
the thesis, but it was before. its aid [sic] to me, especially Moodle! its my
supervisor :)

The fourth theme that emerged was the participants’ major difficulties with writing

in English. As in the previous semesters, and as reported by the previous course

instructors in the interviews, the most common difficulty was related to

‘vocabulary’, both at the beginning and at the end of the semester. One respondent

expressed this difficulty in the following manner: “The most difficulty [sic] about

writing is vocabulary. Sometimes we know about our feeling, but because of the lack

of vocabulary, we cannot explain it to others”. The other difficulties mentioned are

shown in Table 4.29.

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Table 4.29

The major difficulties in writing

Area of difficulty Pre-course Q. Post-course Q.

What do you find most What do you still find


difficult about writing in most difficult about
English? Please give writing in English?
details. Please give details and
reasons.

Vocabulary 19 times 8 times


Grammar 12 times 4 times
Academic / formal language 5 times -
Quoting / paraphrasing - 4 times

As can be seen from the table, vocabulary and grammar posed as the greatest

difficulties in writing. As regards vocabulary, finding alternative words, and accurate

collocations were mentioned as being problematic, while using the passive was

singled out as a problem. Interestingly, the two very important skills in reporting

research, ‘quoting’, and ‘paraphrasing’ which were not mentioned at all at the

beginning of the semester were reported to be difficult at the end of the semester.

This may stem from the fact that some of the participants had no awareness of the

need to quote and paraphrase ethically to avoid plagiarism. In fact, it would not be

wrong to say that there were participants who found out about the meaning of

plagiarism when they took the course. For this reason, in the course syllabus, the

first two weeks are allocated to ‘academic ethics’, ‘avoiding plagiarism’, and

‘quoting, paraphrasing, referencing’.

Familiarity with some important concepts with writing was another theme that

emerged. At the beginning of the semester, the participants were given a list of

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important concepts in writing, to which they were going to be exposed during the

course, and were asked to choose the ones they were already familiar with. The

same list, with only one concept added, was included in the post-course

questionnaire. The rationale for presenting these was that familiarity and awareness

can be contributing factors to the skilful manipulation of these concepts in writing.

Table 4.30 demonstrates the results:

Table 4.30

Familiarity with some important concepts in writing

Concept Pre-course Post-course


Cohesion 23% 36%
coherence 33% 52%
process writing 33% 44%
drafting 63% 72%
revising 50% 48%
editing 43% 52%
academic vocabulary 43% 80%
collocations 13% 76%
avoiding plagiarism 60% 88%
quoting 67% 92%
paraphrasing 67% 92%
bibliographies/references 57% 84%
formal / informal language 60% 88%
hedging 3% 52%
moves not included 72%

The data indicate that the most dramatic increase occurred in the familiarity with the

concept of ‘collocations’, followed by ‘hedging’. The former concept plays a major

role in both speech and writing, while the latter is particularly important in academic

texts. The most familiar concepts in the pre-course questionnaire were ‘quoting,

paraphrasing, summarizing’ with 67%. It can be said that, on the whole, the course

succeeded in raising participants’ awareness of important concepts in writing. The

‘generic moves’ concept, which was not included in the pre-course questionnaire,

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was reported to be a familiar concept by 72% of the respondents. This is quite a

satisfactory result considering that the course adopts a genre-based approach to

instruction. To sum up, it can be said that the participants’ awareness of some

important concepts in writing, especially of academic vocabulary, collocations, and

hedging, improved significantly.

Another theme that emerged was the participants’ course-related opinions. The

respondents reported that the major contribution of the course was in terms of

‘improving academic writing skills and knowledge’, followed by ‘developing

knowledge of thesis structure and format’, ‘developing academic study skills and

knowledge of academic conventions’, ‘developing academic vocabulary knowledge

and skills’, ‘developing skills and knowledge of creation of text’, and ‘developing

awareness of the need and benefit of producing multiple drafts in writing’. Forty-

four percent of the respondents stated that upon completion of the course, their

writing skills were ‘much improved’, followed by forty percent who felt these skills

were ‘somewhat improved’. Therefore, it can be safely concluded that the majority

of the participants felt their writing skills benefited from the course.

The last theme that emerged from the pre- and post-course questionnaires was the

participants’ opinions regarding the e-learning platform, Moodle. At the beginning

of the semester, the participants talked about their first impressions of Moodle by

describing it as ‘excellent’, ‘interesting’, ‘exciting’, ‘very good’, and ‘great’. Some

respondents considered it from the ‘learning’ and ‘educational’ point of view, and

mentioned improvement in the quality of education, facilitating learning, and

focusing on the learners’ needs and expectations, which is in line with the

philosophy behind Moodle. One respondent simply said: “Very impressive. I wish

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our faculty had such a tool”. At the end of the semester, the participants thought that

‘class materials, tasks and activities’ were the most useful part of Moodle, followed

by ‘tools like TAC, Concordance, Vocabulary Profiler’, ‘outside resources and

materials’ and ‘on-line assignments’, and ‘quizzes’ and ‘discussion forums’. Sixty

percent of the respondents stated that they would like to have more courses

supported by Moodle at the post-graduate level. One respondent, talking about why

more courses should be supported by Moodle said: “we had too many courses at

postgraduate [sic] level but none of it [sic] were helpfull for our thesis. Moodle is

the only one course which is usefull for writing, improving and developing our

English in academic way [sic]”, and another commented “i [sic] think moodle is a

contemporary medium of academic communication and distribution of course

material”. Based on the comments of the course participants on various components

of the course as well as the findings from the questionnaire, it can be concluded that

the course was a fruitful learning experience for the majority of the participants.

4.4 Summary

This chapter presented the results of the data analysis in accordance with the

research design introduced in Chapter 3, Methodology. The abundant data which

were thoroughly analyzed led to significant findings, the broader implications and

applications of which are presented and discussed from a range of perspectives in

the final chapter.

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CHAPTER V

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

This study was motivated by the recognition of the language barriers facing non-

native post-graduate EFL students doing research, and writing their theses in an

English-medium university, in a non-English speaking country. The non-native post-

graduate students, who aspire to disseminate their research internationally, and get

accepted in the global academic discourse community, encounter problems in

producing coherent and appropriate academic texts. The findings suggest that the

problem stems from the considerable gap between the actual and the required

performance levels, especially in terms of the exploitation of different types of

words and lexico-grammatical patterns, as well as from the inability to develop

language competence from the receptive to the productive level.

5.1 Discussion

This problem is not unique to the Eastern Mediterranean University in Northern

Cyprus. The use of English as the language of instruction is widespread, and not

only in countries where English is the first language. The perceived importance of

English as a global language has led to many English medium universities being

established worldwide, it has enabled such universities to promote themselves as

international, and to compete with the English speaking countries in attracting

students. This trend, however, raises issues concerning language standards.

Difficulties with English can be particularly marked at the post-graduate level,

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where students may be involved in significant, and in some cases original research,

only to find themselves hindered by the difficulties they face in organizing and

expressing their ideas. This problem relates not only to the completion of their

coursework and theses, but also to the subsequent publication in the international

arena, where again English will often tend to be the required language. Additional

pressure is often exerted through “the increasing requirement imposed by many

university administrations around the world-and across many fields-for publications

to appear in major Anglophone peer-reviewed journals as prerequisites for faculty

recognition, advancement, and promotion,…” (Swales, 2004, p. 38). Mirahayuni

(2002) in her doctoral dissertation motivated by the scarcity of research activities by

Indonesian researchers explores the same issue:

For researchers to gain recognition in the wider research community, it is


necessary for them to be able to communicate in language(s) that reaches a
global readership. International dissemination of knowledge has become a
necessary part of communication among researchers and this has become
possible with the role of English as the most widely used international
language. (p. 313)

The current study has thus explored a problem that is not only common, but also

extremely critical to so many non-native writers around the world, and the

awareness of the significance of this problem has led to a growing body of research

in this area. However, until recently, most of these research studies focused on the

genre of research articles, and not as much on thesis writing. This study attempted to

contribute to the filling of this research gap, and add to the growing body of research

and knowledge, through constructing a pedagogic corpus with multiple components,

that would form the basis for a genre-based corpus-informed approach to academic

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writing pedagogy, and assist the non-native post-graduate students in reporting their

research.

This final chapter is thus organized as follows. After the aims, methods and the

major findings are briefly discussed, conclusions are drawn based on the research

findings, and in line with the relevant literature. Then, the implications and

applications of the conclusions are explored from various perspectives. The chapter

concludes with suggestions for further research in the field.

5.1.1 Aims and methods

The research study described set out to construct a pedagogic corpus incorporating a

range of corpus-informed components, and teacher-led data driven and learner-led

discovery tasks, to assist the non-native post-graduate students in producing

coherent and appropriate representation of their research. To this end, two corpora

were compiled and lexico-structurally analyzed: A target academic abstract corpus

(TAC) composed of thesis and dissertation abstracts from English medium

universities in English speaking countries, and a learner corpus of academic

abstracts (LAC) written by the post-graduate students studying at EMU. The

research sought answers to the following questions:

• What are the major lexico-structural patterns in the Learner Abstract Corpus

(LAC)?

• What are the major lexico-structural patterns in the Target Abstract Corpus

(TAC)?

• How does the LAC relate to the TAC?

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• What does the cross-examination of the two corpora necessitate in terms of

the comprehensive pedagogic corpus design?

The LAC comprised four sub-corpora consisting of a total of 100 abstracts produced

by the students who took the Advanced Thesis Writing course at the Eastern

Mediterranean University over a six-semester period. These abstracts were in the

process of being developed by the post-graduate students. The TAC was also

comprised of the same four sub-corpora (Architecture, Social sciences, Sciences,

and Arts and Humanities), each sub-corpus consisting of 150, a total of 600

abstracts. All the abstracts had been published on the World Wide Web, and were

completed at universities in English speaking countries, namely the UK, the USA,

Australia, New Zealand and Canada. The corpus was therefore constructed from the

completed work in a variety of countries, subject areas, and by a variety of post-

graduate students, most of whom are assumed to be native speakers of English. The

models that emerge from the target corpus, therefore, are not the 'expert' models of

experienced, native-speaker academics, but 'peer' models, models to which the post-

graduate students in this research, for example, might reasonably be expected to

aspire.

The rationale for compiling the corpora from thesis and dissertation abstracts was

not simply to improve understanding of the genre of abstract, but to exploit the

abstract as a kind of microcosm of the thesis itself, since the fundamental moves of

an abstract are more or less parallel to the chapters of the full thesis, with the

exception of the literature review. Thus, the abstract has the potential to provide an

extremely economical means of finding out a great deal about the whole thesis. A

secondary reason for the use of the genre of ‘abstracts’ was that abstracts do not

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generally include quotes and paraphrases, and therefore reveal the writer’s own

language. The reason for having two corpora, on the other hand, was to enable the

researcher to compare and identify the lexico-structural issues that needed

addressing, and provide the post-graduate students at EMU with an acceptable

standard of academic writing as that produced by post-graduate students in

universities in English-speaking countries.

The corpora were not of equal sizes. There were one hundred abstracts in the LAC

as opposed to the six hundred abstracts in the TAC. The size of the LAC was beyond

the researcher’s control, as it took her six semesters to compile the LAC. However,

the TAC was intentionally larger. The rationale for having a larger TAC was to be

able to extract sufficient data to compile a bank of lexico-structural patterns that

would provide comprehensive coverage of the relevant sub-moves and moves.

However, as the aim of the research was pedagogic, economy was also an important

consideration, since at a later point students would be using the corpus as a learning

resource. In the event, six hundred abstracts proved to be sufficient and yield

extensive data, and yet allow manageability. The compiled corpora were then

analyzed through a range of computer-based and web-based tools presented in the

third chapter, leading to the findings discussed in the following section.

5.1.2 Major findings

The post-graduate students studying at the Eastern Mediterranean University were

aware of the difficulties they faced with academic writing. What was even more

interesting, however, was the fact that in many cases, they independently identified

poor vocabulary as the major problem, echoing the insights of those instructors who

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had previously taught the course. This was further confirmed by the results of the

learner corpus analysis (LAC). The work compiled in the LAC exhibited extensive

use of higher frequency vocabulary, an obvious tendency for repetition of similar

items, and recurrent failure to use appropriate collocations and lexico-grammatical

patterns. Furthermore, the findings from the LAC pointed to a significantly

restricted range of not only individual words, but also frequently their lexico-

structural realizations. The TAC, on the other hand, revealed the use of a wide range

of lower frequency words, as well as extensive and varied lexico-grammatical

utilization of these items. Another finding was that in the TAC, around sixty percent

of the word types used were off-list words, which suggests that infrequent and more

sophisticated words were widely used.

The cross-reference of the two corpora produced significant results. The analysis of

LAC uncovered quite weak vocabulary, in comparison with the more sophisticated

language of the authors of the TAC. The abstracts in the TAC exhibited a much

wider active range of vocabulary than those written by the post-graduate candidates

at EMU. The weakness seemed to arise from the fact that the writers of the LAC

could not develop their receptive vocabulary knowledge to the productive level.

Compared with the post-graduate students in English-speaking countries who used

more infrequent items extensively, the post-graduate students in the institution

showed a marked preference for extremely frequent vocabulary items, and their

insufficient knowledge of collocates and lexico-grammatical patterns led to serious

errors, and consequently to incoherent written communication. To confirm that this

wide gap did not simply result from the unequal sizes of the two corpora, a random

twenty-five abstracts from each sub-corpus of the TAC were used to obtain a TAC of

equal size to the LAC. The findings from this analysis revealed the gap between the

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LAC and the TAC more conspicuously. In terms of the range of different words

used, the figures pointed to a difference of 1,814 more words used in the TAC, a

substantial difference, considering that both corpora were composed of exactly the

same number of abstracts. In addition to the extent, the composition of this

considerable gap was examined, and it was revealed that as opposed to the 3,798

different words making up 95% of the text in the TAC, only 2,311 words were used

to compose the same amount of text in the LAC. The figures and the percentages

provided further proof that the non-native post-graduate students at EMU used a

more limited range of words, compared with the post-graduate candidates writing

their theses in English-speaking countries. Therefore, the analysis of the equal-sized

corpora further substantiated the existence of the gap.

This gap can be typified by a more limited range of vocabulary, a more limited

productive knowledge of lexico-grammatical patterns commonly used in thesis

writing, inaccurate use of collocations and lexico-structural patterns, insufficient

knowledge of the different types of words in word families, and the inadequate

ability to extend the knowledge of these words to the productive level. Thus, the

cross-reference of the two corpora identified, and exemplified the deviation of the

actual from the desired output. This deviation, at times, led to communication

breakdowns. This finding is consistent with the literature. Howarth (1996) maintains

that if the lexico-grammatical form conforms to the norms of the register to the

anticipated degree, the reader's conscious attention is focused on meaning while the

form is processed subconsciously. “Phraseologically deviant forms disrupt such

processing, forcing the reader to analyse form and synthesise meaning from scratch”

(Howarth, 1996, p. 10).

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These findings necessitated immediate action in accordance with the research

agenda. It was of utmost necessity to categorize the data, and then make it accessible

in a form in which it could be exploited for teaching and learning purposes.

Therefore, the identified discrepancy between the actual and the desired output

initially led to the identification of the 165 word families that were of particular

significance in thesis writing. However, in addition to isolating the most frequent

content-based items used in the target corpus, it was essential to move beyond the

individual word or word family, focus on the syntactic properties of these significant

vocabulary items, and reveal how exactly these words were used in academic

writing. Corder (1973) emphasizes that learning vocabulary is not learning only the

semantic properties of items, but also their syntactic properties (pp. 279-280). The

need to focus on syntactic properties resulted in the qualitative analysis, and

subsequent categorization of the significant words within their lexico-grammatical

realizations. This further led to the classification of these patterns according to the

IMRD (Introduction-Methodology-Results-Discussion) moves (Swales, 1990), and

even more subtle sub-moves, the product of which was named the AAC Bank of

moves and sub-moves.

The AAC Bank was only one component of the comprehensive pedagogic corpus

constructed in accordance with the research agenda. A virtual learning environment,

Moodle, was integrated into the course, and online materials and tasks were created

to accompany the in-class materials and tasks. A taxonomy for tasks was generated,

and teacher-led data-driven tasks and student-led discovery tasks were produced.

The web concordances of the two corpora were also mounted on the ‘host’

environment, Moodle. Two glossaries were created for the TAC Wordlist, and the

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AAC Bank of Moves and Sub-moves. Hence, the construction of the comprehensive

pedagogic corpus was completed.

The newly designed course incorporating the pedagogic corpus was evaluated

through questionnaires in the 2007-2008 Academic year, Spring semester. In their

questionnaire reports, the course participants expressed very positive perceptions

about the TAC, the tasks, the materials, and the use of Moodle, in other words, the

components of the pedagogic corpus. A participant felt that he benefited so much

from the components of the pedagogic corpus, and the virtual learning environment

that he called Moodle his supervisor. Meanwhile, the course continues to be offered,

and the rich corpus data dictate the continuous production of new tasks.

5.2 Conclusions

In the light of the major findings of the research, it is possible to draw major

conclusions regarding wordlists, lexico-grammatical patterns and banks, semantic

frequency, the significance of generic information, a genre-based corpus-informed

data-driven approach to writing, the use of virtual learning environments, and most

significantly, the use of corpora.

5.2.1 Wordlists

The findings revealed that the majority of the most common words used in academic

abstracts do not come from the AWL, and that the use of GSL words as well as off-

list words is significantly high. A further finding was that the most frequent content

words in the two corpora were in fact the GSL words, which acquired a different

meaning and use in the academic text. Based on the findings, it can be concluded

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that the recent trend to base EAP classes and programs exclusively on the words in

the AWL can prove counter-productive, as such applications are bound to

disadvantage the learners through denying them the opportunity to encounter and

practice the GSL words which are frequently used in academic texts. The results of

this study, therefore, strongly support the research by Billuroglu and Neufeld (2005),

who argue that there is little convincing rationale for the division between the GSL

and the AWL in the first place. The results also suggest that the BNL (Billuroglu-

Neufeld List), with its unified perspective on commonly used words, would provide a

more meaningful approach to managing graded vocabulary development for receptive

purposes. The results of the current research also suggest that the designation of any

vocabulary item as ‘academic’ may be misleading, as a word’s connotation, or

‘semantic prosody’ is determined largely by its co-text, or surrounding environment

(Sinclair, 1991, p. 112; Stubbs, 1996, p. 173).

The discussion of wordlists leads to another conclusion that is drawn from this

research. As much as wordlists are useful for receptive vocabulary teaching-learning

purposes, they are not sufficient for productive vocabulary teaching-learning

purposes, unless supplemented, for the following reasons: The first reason is that

wordlists present the word families of each word in such a way that all the words in

a particular family are assumed to express the same meaning, display the same

features of use, and occur in the same contexts. However, just because words are in

the same family does not mean that they share the same use and meaning. Sinclair

(1991) disagrees with the grouping of words together based on the single criterion

that they are the different forms of the same word. He maintains that:

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It is now possible to compare the usage patterns of, for example, all the
forms of a verb, and from this to conclude that they are often very different
from one another. There is a good case for arguing that each distinct form is
potentially a distinct lexical unit, and that forms should only be conflated
into lemmas when their environments show a certain amount and type of
similarity. (Sinclair, 1991, pp. 7-8)

Referring to the same potential problem with word families, Hyland and Tse (2007)

maintain that “a vocabulary list must either avoid items with clearly different

meanings and dissimilar co-occurrence patterns, or these items must be taught

separately rather than as parts of families” (p. 243). They further cite Oakey (2003),

emphasizing that caution should be exercised regarding the issue, as in some

families, meanings and collocational environments change across each inflected and

derived word form (p. 243).

The fact that 62.02% of all the word types used in the TAC are off-list words is the

second reason why vocabulary teaching-learning for productive purposes cannot be

based entirely on wordlists. The frequent words offered by wordlists are the ones

that learners are most likely to encounter, learn and use. Especially in academic

environments where complex ideas are expressed in similarly complex and rich

language, the use of less frequent, more specialized words is called for. According to

Clanchy and Ballard (1992), “the academic writer makes frequent use of passive

forms of the verb, impersonal pronouns and phrases, qualifying words and phrases,

complex sentence structures, specialised vocabulary” (cited in Jordan, 1997, p. 244).

Further, “vocabulary choice is a strong indicator of whether the writer has adopted

the conventions of the relevant discourse community” (Nation, 2001, p. 178).

Therefore, wordlists are useful for understanding, or recognizing, but not producing

language, and total reliance on them would lead to the production of simple, and

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repetitive language. Hyland and Tse (2007), referring to the use of academic

vocabulary lists, emphasize that teaching such a vocabulary “… ignores important

differences in the collocational and semantic behaviour of words, and does not

correspond with the ways language is actually used in academic writing” (p. 237).

In line with Hyland and Tse’s (2007) opinion above, the finding that the writers in

the LAC exhibited the greatest difficulty with collocations, and lexico-grammatical

patterns leads to the third, and the most important reason why wordlists should be

treated with caution when language production is concerned. Hyland and Tse (2007)

maintain that “… vocabulary is more than individual words acting separately in a

discourse” (p. 251). Paquot (2007) also points out that the AWL may be of greater

value as a resource for receptive rather than productive teaching purposes, and

argues for a more phraseological approach to productive teaching. Wordlists treat

words as isolated items, and thus ignore the co-text.

This weakness is expressed by Carter and McCarthy (1988) as “the absence of

information on collocations and collocational frequencies” (p. 9). Knowing a word

means knowing a lot of other words that collocate with it. Especially for skills that

require production, this knowledge is essential to achieve fluency. Fluency in the

language will be promoted if, in addition to individual words, learners have a

knowledge of lexical chunks. Furthermore, focusing on the co-occuring words

contributes to the use of syntactic structures. Willis (2000) holds that “lexical

phrases fill the gap between grammar, on the one hand, and vocabulary on the other”

and adds that “they play a vital part in both speech and writing, contributing to the

ease, fluency and appropriacy with which someone speaks or writes” (p. 2).

According to Nattinger and DeCarrico (1992), this lexico-grammatical view presents

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a new potential in language teaching. These ‘strings of words’ are stored together in

our minds and are retrieved and used as a ‘pre-fabricated chunk’ either in exactly the

same way or with slight changes (cited in Willis, 2000, p.1). Hill (1999) also

considers the present view of language as being comprised, to a large extent, of

‘prefabricated chunks of lexis’ (p. 3).

5.2.2 Lexico-grammatical patterns and banks

Hill’s (1999) view of language paves the way to a major conclusion of this study.

The findings showed that one of the most serious difficulties of the post-graduate

students at EMU is the insufficient knowledge of, or the inability to accurately

employ collocations, and lexico-grammatical patterns in their writing. Lexis and

grammar are inseparable. The international conference exploring the theme of

''Exploring the Lexis-Grammar Interface'' organized by the English Department of

University of Hanover, Germany in 2006 invited proposals through the following

introduction:

Over the last two or three decades, research in corpus linguistics has shown
that lexis and grammar are closely interdependent. The conference aims to
bring together scholars with a common interest in aspects of lexis-grammar
co-selection in the English language. We aim to discuss empirical evidence
on the inseparability of lexis and grammar, and explore in what respects
these two parts that are often treated separately in linguistic description form
an organic whole. (Schulze & Römer, 2006)

Considering that it is extremely difficult for any lexis in isolation to be termed

specifically 'academic', that advanced language learners involved in the reporting of

research seem to be having the most difficulty with collocations and lexico-

grammatical patterns, and that lexis and grammar are inseparable, the conclusion

emerging from this research is pointing towards lexico-grammar. If researchers and

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practitioners wish to teach the nuances of academic prose, and assist learners in the

production of coherent and appropriate work, they need to identify the lexico-

structural patterns that are utilized in specific moves in different genres, and offer

this valuable resource to the service of their students. Hyland and Tse (2007) also

emphasize ‘concordances’ in addition to corpus-informed ‘lists’. They maintain that

“… corpus-informed lists and concordances can be used to help establish vocabulary

learning goals for EAP courses, design relevant teaching materials, and generally

target instruction more carefully” (p. 251). Based on the findings of a study

exploring the effect of corpora on writing competence, Yoon (2008) concludes that

focus on lexical and grammatical aspects is essential in L2 writing pedagogy.

5.2.3 Semantic frequency: Moves and Sub-moves

The conclusion regarding the need for focusing on lexico-grammatical patterns for

productive skills leads to a further conclusion: that the categorization of lexico-

grammatical patterns should be based on purpose, in other words, moves and sub-

moves. It is semantic frequency that is called for, since in all genres, there are certain

functions to fulfill, certain messages to convey, and “meaning is what is being

verbally communicated between the members of a discourse community” (Teubert,

2005, p. 2). Categorization, therefore, needs to be based on the analysis of how words

can be used together, as well as which words can be used instead of each other, in order

to achieve the specified moves for the required purposes. Such work is painstaking,

and whatever is produced is bound to be necessarily incomplete given the almost

infinite variations of language. However, it is inevitable that such semantic

categorization will assist writers in the production of coherent and appropriate text

to some degree. This study concludes that lexico-grammatical banks of language

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organized according to the generic moves provide a very rich resource for student

writers in deciding what vocabulary to use, how to use it (through lexico-structural

patterns), when to use it, and also for what purpose (through moves, and specifically

sub-moves).

5.2.4 Generic versus discipline-specific lexico-grammatical patterns

Emphasizing the importance of disciplinary variation, Hyland and Tse (2007)

recommend that in EAP classes, “teachers help students develop a more restricted,

discipline-based lexical repertoire” (p. 235). “As teachers”, they say, “we have to

recognize that students in different fields will require different ways of using

language and so we cannot depend on a list of academic vocabulary” (Hyland and

Tse, 2007, p. 249). The conclusions drawn from the current study are not consistent

with the claims made by Hyland and Tse (2007). Academic texts from different

fields certainly exhibit linguistic variation, but on the other hand, genres cut across

subject fields, and moves and many of their lexico-structural realizations are defined

not only by the specific subject matter (e.g. architecture), but by the conventions of

the given genre (e.g. abstracts). Furthermore, in many institutions, advanced

academic writing is taught in cross-disciplinary classes, and it is of utmost necessity

to establish, especially for pedagogic purposes, the nature of cross-field generalities

in academic writing. The analysis of the sub-corpora shows that the cross-

disciplinary nature of moves and functions leads to the use of lexico-structural

patterns that are extremely similar in widely different fields. McCarthy and O’Dell

(2008) advise students that:

specialist terms are often relatively easy to master – they will be explained
and taught as you study the subject… However, it is the more general words

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used for discussing ideas and research and for talking and writing about
academic work that you need to be fully familiar with in order to feel
comfortable in an academic environment. (p. 6)

Hunston also points out that “for many writers who are expert in their own field, …

it is not the technical terminology, but what might be called the terminology of

rhetoric that causes problems” (2002, p. 135). Another factor that should be kept in

mind before attempting to base EAP programs on discipline-specific vocabulary is

learner and learning variation. Differences in entry levels of students can be very

marked, and it is likely that learners who have not mastered the general lexico-

structural building blocks of the language will struggle with both general and

specific academic English courses. Therefore, this study concludes that EAP

practitioners dealing with classes of students from different academic fields would

benefit more from lists and banks that identify generic lexico-structural

commonalities, rather than from those that emphasize disciplinary variation.

Eldridge (2008) does not disregard the validity and use of more specialized lists, but

emphasizes that general academic lists are necessary for the subsequent production

of more specialized lists (p. 112). He points out the important fact that the

discipline-specific language is already emphasized by the subject specialist, and thus

“the EAP specialist might therefore still be used in helping with the scaffolding”

(2008, p. 112). A post-graduate student expresses the need for this ‘scaffolding’ very

well:

I think that although the course was very useful, it was about academic
writing in general and not specialized in my field [sic] of study- as it is
supposed to be, because it is not possible to have different courses for
different thesis subjects of students. The thing that I need to do now is
focusing [sic] on writing in my field [sic] of study by reading relevant

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subjects, learning specialized vocabulary, and trying to write similar to them,
by the aid of the knowledge I have earned in this course.

5.2.5 A genre-based corpus-informed data-driven lexico-grammatical

approach to thesis writing

Although the original Advanced Thesis Writing course always emphasized the

isolation, identification and use of key lexico-structural patterns, it was neither based

on corpus data, nor did it make use of data-driven learning activities. The

compilation and the analysis of the two corpora, as well as the use of concordancing

tools, enabled the researcher to ensure the exploitation of the authentic data, through

designing data-driven learning (DDL) tasks at different levels, with various aims,

and in differing modes (individual or collaborative).

The generic move structure, IMRD, representative of abstracts and other genres

reporting research (Swales, 1990), on the other hand, made it possible to categorize

the data according to the basic moves in theses abstracts, which are parallel, at least

to some extent, with the chapters and sections of a thesis. Therefore, the lexico-

structural patterns used to fulfill the important moves and sub-moves were

identified, offering the post-graduate students not only guidance in terms of the

structuring of information (generic moves), but also as regards the relevant language

to accomplish the moves (lexico-structural patterns). For students at higher levels,

and for those learning a language for specific purposes, the knowledge of genres is

as necessary as text creation skills, as each genre has its own discourse structure,

style, content and linguistic patterns (Swales, 1990, p. 58). The conclusion of this

study is therefore that corpus-informed, data-driven, genre-based approaches to

writing with a lexico-grammatical focus offer a comprehensive methodology in

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assisting writers in the organization of information in a text, as well as the coherent

and appropriate expression of ideas (see Appendix O for Teachers’ Notes).

This conclusion is consistent with the literature. Flowerdew (2000), based on her

research findings, concludes that providing exercises to familiarize students with the

key organizational aspects of the genre is “the starting point for helping students to

acquire competence in a particular genre” and this product-based knowledge should

be accompanied by a process approach to writing (2000, p. 375). Recent research by

Charles (2007) also supports the conclusion of the present research. Having

reconciled corpus investigation with genre-based pedagogy, Charles concludes that

“it is the combination of the two approaches that provides the enriched input

necessary for students to make the connection between general rhetorical purposes

and specific lexico-grammatical choices” (2007, p. 289). She further emphasizes

that “in moving from discourse to corpus, the class moves from studying what texts

do, to investigating how they do it” (Charles, 2007, 300).

5.2.6 Virtual learning environments

It is a significant conclusion of this research that virtual learning environments like

Moodle empower learners and promote exploratory learning and autonomy.

Computer Mediated Communication, according to Zane and Collins (1995),

“promotes a type of interaction that is often lacking in the traditional teacher-based

classroom. It allows learners the freedom to explore alternative pathways - to find

and develop their own style of learning” (p. 3). Realistically, language classes

include a wide range of students from different backgrounds, at different levels, and

with different needs. Moodle is a community building platform (Philosophy, 2008),

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and offers far more through its underlying constructivist and social constructivist

principles. It helps the teacher to:

focus on the experiences that would be best for learning from the learner's
point of view, rather than just publishing and assessing the information you
think they need to know. It can also help you realise how each participant in
a course can be a teacher as well as a learner. Your job as a 'teacher' can
change from being 'the source of knowledge' to being an influencer and role
model of class culture, connecting with students in a personal way that
addresses their own learning needs, and moderating discussions and
activities in a way that collectively leads students towards the learning goals
of the class. (Philosophy, 2008)

The virtual learning platform, Moodle, integrated into the Thesis Writing Course in

this study, is the host to the pedagogic corpus, with its multiple components. The

corpus-informed tasks are of different types, with different aims, and at different

levels. Students have the opportunity to determine what they need, and choose to

engage in individual or collaborative tasks. This collaborative environment offered

by Moodle also facilitates the construction of knowledge. Before the introduction of

Moodle into the course, the participants inquired whether the teacher would support

them with their writing-related problems after they finished the course. After the

introduction of Moodle, the only concern the participants have is whether they will

be able to access Moodle after they have completed the course. It is observable that

the lack of self-confidence the participants have in their writing abilities when they

first take the course gradually decreases towards the end of the semester. Echoing

one of the course participants, Moodle becomes their ‘supervisor’, and they feel safe

with its existence.

Provided that the course design is based on sound pedagogic aims, the virtual

learning environment provided by Moodle promotes the pedagogical principles

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embodied in the European Language Portfolio (ELP), mainly in terms of learner-

centered classroom practices (p. 6), self-directed collaborative learning (p. 5),

learner autonomy (p. 5), communicative intercultural competence (p. 9),

differentiated learning (Kohonen, 2000, p. 10), the importance of input that is

‘functional’, “containing information that the learner would like to know”, and

‘realistic’, “the sort of language utterances that the learner is likely to encounter later

in real-life situations” (Westhoff, 1999, p. 41). All of these principles, as discussed in

chapter 4, are integrated into the pedagogic corpus through the virtual learning

platform. There can be no doubt, therefore, that virtual learning environments with

so much focus on and consideration of learners and learning, are bound to make a

positive impact on the learning experiences and outcomes.

5.2.7 The use of Corpora

The most major conclusions that can be drawn from this research are related to the

use of corpora. The use of corpora started to be popular in the 1990s. Keck (2004)

states that “since the early 1990s, researchers have become increasingly interested in

applying the findings of corpus studies to language teaching” (p. 84). The

conventional practice has been researchers compiling and analysing corpora, and

integrating the resulting data into teaching materials, regardless of what the

practitioner thinks in terms of their usefulness (McCarthy, 2008, p. 565). Gabrielatos

(2005) also thinks that although “electronic language corpora, and their attendant

computer software, are proving increasingly influential in language teaching as

sources of language descriptions and pedagogical materials, … few teachers are

clear about their nature or their relevance to language teaching” (p. 1). Nowadays,

thanks to technological developments, the use, as well as the compilation and

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analysis of corpora, is not in the monopoly of researchers who may not be

practitioners.

McCarthy (2008) holds that “teachers should be central stakeholders in the corpus

revolution” (p. 565). This study is an example of how a teacher can be a central

stakeholder in the corpus revolution, compiling and analyzing corpora, integrating

findings into the materials, as well as observing the impact of materials and tasks on

learning. More importantly, this study is an example of how learners can also be

central stakeholders in the corpus revolution. Gabrielatos (2005) maintains that

learners should also be involved in language investigations with the assistance and

guidance of the teachers. It is noteworthy that the post-graduate students in this

study are able to carry out their investigations through the use of not only the TAC,

but also larger corpora like the BNC, and the Brown Corpus.

This research exploited both learner and target corpora to construct a pedagogic

corpus with multiple components, which formed the basis for a genre-based corpus-

informed approach to academic writing pedagogy. It would have been possible to

make use of only a target corpus and design a teaching / learning program based on

it. However, the use of learner corpora provides concrete evidence on learners’

language problems. The use of learner corpora has become widespread in EAP in

recent years. Gilguin et al. (2007, p. 323) are strong supporters of the use of learner

corpora in EAP research, and criticize the fact that “the overwhelming majority of

corpus-based EAP studies are exclusively based on native corpora”. Milton and

Tsang (1991) also advocate the use of learner corpora as they provide evidence that

quantifies students’ problems in written expression (cited in Gilguin et al., 2007, p.

322). Flowerdew (2001), meanwhile, emphasizes that “insights gleaned from learner

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corpora need to be employed to complement those from expert corpora for syllabus

and materials design” (cited in Gilguin et al., 2007, p. 322).

This study has concluded that learner corpora are extremely valuable in that they not

only provide teachers with information about the language level and problems of

their students, but also learners themselves with data about what they lack, and

therefore what they need, in order to compete in the academic world. The basic

principles of such an approach do not only apply to post-graduate students involved

in reporting their research, but can potentially be exploited in any language

teaching-learning situation. The comparison of any specified learner corpora with

any type of specified target corpora could provide the simple equation that ‘what one

needs to know’ minus ‘what one already knows’ equals ‘what one needs to learn’.

Corder (1973) maintains that describing and classifying learners’ errors give us

information about what learners still need to learn (p. 257).

This study also concluded that quantitative and qualitative analysis should

complement each other in corpus analysis to accomplish especially pedagogic goals.

Without qualitative analysis, the results of this study would have been figures,

percentages, and tables. It is questionable whether, or to what extent, such data

would be of any use to post-graduate students involved in writing their theses. In

corpus analysis, Hunston (2002) holds, there is “the need to move between

quantitative information, which can alert the user to potential points of interest, and

qualitative information, which is needed to provide explanation of those points” (p.

212). Similarly, Biber et al. (1998) maintain that corpus analyses should go beyond

simple counts of linguistic features, and include qualitative, functional

interpretations of quantitative patterns (pp. 4-5). A study like Hyland’s (2000)

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analyzing hedges and boosters in academic texts would have been impossible to

conduct without qualitative analysis of corpora.

A further conclusion of this study in terms of the use of corpora is that, although it

may sometimes be perceived as a limitation, small corpora are valuable for

pedagogic purposes, as they are easier to analyse, exploit, and base materials and

tasks on. Small specialized corpora are useful when they are designed for specific

groups of learners, and specific domains. Mudraya (2006) advocates the use of

small corpora for language learning and teaching. She states that such corpora “…

can be more useful as they are designed to represent the specific part of the language

under investigation and are tailored to address the aspects of the language relevant to

the needs of the learner” (p. 237). Hunston (2002), similarly, states that “relatively

small but highly specialized corpora can be used in certain situations, for example in

describing the language of specific discourse communities or in comparing native-

speaker and non-native-speaker usage” (p. 212). Corpora designed for pedagogic

purposes “unlike corpora designed for research purposes, … , while useful for

language description, are also intended to inform language teaching in specific

instructional settings. The corpus, then, is carefully designed to represent the

domains of use most relevant to the learner population” (Keck, 2004, p. 90).

A final conclusion that can be drawn from the use of corpora in this dissertation is

that it decreases reliance on native speaker intuition, empowers both the teacher and

the learner, promotes the self-confidence of both, and as mentioned earlier, reduces

the dependence of the learner on the teacher, provided that learners are trained in

how and when to use corpora. Corpora can potentially become learners’ best

companion. The availability of corpora increases their confidence, and decreases

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their reliance on ‘more proficient’ others. Lee and Swales (2006) hold that with a

corpus approach to language, the authority for language standards is ‘decentered’, as

this approach allows non-native speakers “a chance to make their own discoveries

about what is ‘done’ in the language, instead of relying on native-speaker intuitions

or grammar/style books” (p. 69).

In a similar vein, Gabrielatos (2005) maintains that:

The use of corpora in language teaching has helped redefine learner and
teacher roles. It has reinforced learner-centred methodologies, and facilitated
a further step away from the conception of teachers as sources of knowledge
and providers of input, towards one of teachers as guides and facilitators, or
even co-researchers. Corpus use has also introduced the need for learners and
teachers to acquire new skills, and has placed increased emphasis on the
necessity for teachers to develop their awareness of the language they teach.
Finally, corpus-based research and teaching has the potential to empower
non-native teachers and researchers, since native speaker introspection is no
longer considered the one infallible source of insights into language structure
and use. (p. 27)

In her article titled “Will Corpus linguistics revolutionize grammar teaching in the

21st century?”, Conrad (2000) claims that corpus-based studies have the potential to

revolutionize grammar teaching through providing register-specific descriptions of

English grammar, shifting the emphasis from structural accuracy to appropriate use

of structures, and most importantly, incorporating grammar teaching with

vocabulary teaching (p. 549). The use of corpora seems to have great potential to

revolutionize many more aspects of teaching, and other language-related domains.

This great potential is likely to be highly influential for a long period of time. As

McCarthy (2008) says, “The corpus revolution is here to stay” (p. 573).

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5.3 Implications

5.3.1 Teachers and Teacher Education

For practitioners wishing to make use of this work, a few words of caution may be

required. The learner corpus was deliberately limited to the work of students taking

the researcher's own thesis writing course, and the composition of the sub-corpora in

the LAC was dictated accordingly. Obviously, a replication of this procedure with a

different group of learners, even in the same institution, would produce different

results. However, given the widespread and global nature of English medium

education and the production of theses and publications written in English by

researchers for whom English is not the first language, it is also suggested that a

replication of this procedure with many groups of learners would be likely to lead to

results which are at least markedly similar in many ways, and which support this

undertaking. The research has yielded a bank of genre-based lexico-structural items

that are of general utility to EAP teachers, and particularly those working at the

postgraduate level. For those practitioners who feel that their circumstances are

somewhat more rarified, or indeed dissimilar to those faced by the researcher, what

is made available here is an innovative method that enables analysis and

categorization for practical and pedagogic purposes.

With the developments in computer technology, it is now possible for teachers to

conduct their own corpus-based research. Even the use of corpora, let alone the

compilation and analysis of it, requires certain skills to be acquired. However, “to

date, relatively little attention has been given in teacher education programmes to

the growing influence of corpora and the skills of evaluating and using corpora”

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(McCarthy, 2008, p. 563). With the use of corpora getting more and more

widespread, teacher education programs should integrate modules with special focus

on how teachers can compile, analyze, and exploit corpora. As already stated,

McCarthy (2008) claims that the corpus revolution is “here to stay, and teacher

education cannot afford to sideline it” (p. 573).

5.3.2 Students

No individual student embarks on a course of study at exactly the same level as any

other student, and the distance and route to be traveled between the ‘actual level’ and

the ‘required level’ is in each case unique. Each individual thesis is also unique in

that the post-graduate student is struggling to produce an original piece of work.

Additionally, students are from different subject areas and disciplines. Hence, the

pedagogic materials and tasks need to be flexible. It seems essential therefore that

the lexico-structural bank of moves and sub-moves created in this research is used as

an open-ended resource bank, and not as an imposition on groups of students from

different subject areas. In fact, probably just as important as the categorized lexico-

structural patterns, is the use of corpora in raising students’ language awareness and

promoting independent learning. It is hoped, therefore, that the corpora are not only

used as tools for teaching and learning, but also as resources that can be used in the

writing process itself, in the same way that a student might make use of a dictionary

or thesaurus.

5.3.3 Software Applications and Virtual Learning Environments

As the pedagogic corpus evolved, progressively greater use was made of the fast-

developing Moodle software application. The General Education department where

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the researcher works is the pioneering department at EMU integrating Moodle into

its language instruction. The introduction of the software at the institution is recent,

and not all the facilities it offers have been fully exploited to date. However time has

been sufficient to make substantial developments in this regard, as well as gain an

appreciation of what else it can offer.

As an interactive (or Web 2.0) based course design application based on social

constructivist principles, Moodle offers a number of features of relevance to this

project. Firstly, it enables a course to be fully designed and implemented through the

Web, making it possible for students to use as a resource for both individual and

collective study. It can also be used and shaped as required by individual teachers as

both a pedagogic resource and as a means of communication with learners, both

individually and collectively.

Furthermore, Moodle is able to serve as a basic resource centre. In this study, both

the TAC and the LAC can be accessed through Moodle, allowing the post-graduate

students privileged access into the web concordances of the two corpora, and the

concordances it generates, using the Concordance software package (Watt, 2004).

This enables the students to check the use, the frequency and full contexts of all the

items in the corpora. Once the students have acquired an understanding of the major

moves and functions in thesis and academic writing, they have a powerful tool on

their desktop that they can exploit according to their individual needs. Moodle also

has a powerful glossary feature that enables key items to be highlighted wherever

and whenever they appear on the site and then linked into the glossary itself. The

glossary can be exploited to provide a summary of details of key vocabulary in

addition to lexico-structural patterns. Other features that can be used through or with

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Moodle include gap-filling and matching software such as HOT POTATOES and

collaborative editing software like WIKI. The facility for online submission and

return of assignments also offers significant pedagogic benefits.

To conclude, this research has generically categorized the language used in thesis

writing for pedagogic purposes. However, what Moodle does is to enable these

categories to be organized and presented to both teachers and learners in an

accessible style. This is extremely significant considering the size of the data.

It should be emphasized, however, that Moodle is only a software application, “Like

all technology, the Moodle, in itself, is not that revolutionary. What teachers do with

it, given the autonomy to let them follow their creativity within solid pedagogical

principles, can be” (Eldridge and Neufeld, 2007, p. 25). Yet, at present, using

technology has become so widespread that Dudeney (2008) claims that “'technology

will not replace teachers, but teachers who use technology will replace those who

don’t”.

5.3.4 The Use of Vocabulary Profiling Software

It should also be emphasized that the vocabulary profiling software both initiated

and made a critical contribution to this study. This study was initially motivated by

the compilation of the AWL, and the free vocabulary profiling tools made available

on Tom Cobb’s Compleat Lexical Tutor website. Both RANGE and the Vocabulary

Profilers (VP) have been integral to the implementation of this project. Therefore,

the use of vocabulary profiling tools as a standard day-to-day practice for both

teachers and students is recommended. As part of a related study, Hancioglu and

Eldridge (2007) attempted to show how VP tools may be used by teachers to analyse

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texts and make reliable decisions on which vocabulary to teach at what point in the

teaching-learning process. It may also be added that vocabulary profiling tools

enable the analysis not only of the authentic academic text, but of student work in

either 'complete' or draft form. The basic VP tools offer a quick and economical way

of analyzing and comparing the vocabulary profiles of any text. Besides, they are

very easy to operate. The use of these tools is strongly recommended not only for

teachers, but also for students in the process of constructing texts.

5.4 Implications for further research

As in all research, this study has also been restricted largely by issues of practicality,

economy, and, as traditional, time. Considering the scope of the current study as

well as the limitations, a number of suggestions can be made as to how future

research can fruitfully build on the insights gained from the conclusions, and the

implications of this research.

The research project has been limited to some extent by the selected sub-corpora, as

they were of unequal sizes beyond the researcher’s control. Therefore, researchers

and practitioners making use of the data, and the discussion need to be aware that

the data from the learner corpus is not based on equally-distributed sub-corpora.

Since the basic structure of the abstract, as well as the emerging lexico-structural

patterns cut across fields, it is unlikely that this omission is of major significance,

although wider and equal coverage would have been preferable. Hence, practitioners

who are involved in the teaching of academic English in specific subject areas could

conduct follow-up research by compiling corpora from their specific fields. The

275
growing collection of learner corpora available for academic use can also be

exploited in this respect.

The use of abstracts as the basis for the study has produced detailed insights into the

functioning of the thesis as a whole. Compilation and analysis of much larger and

more extensive corpora of Master’s and Doctoral theses is a valuable route that can

be followed in future research.

A further approach that would certainly be of significance would be to construct

sub-corpora of individual moves, and analyze these corpora separately to extract the

lexico-grammatical patterns representative of each move and sub-move. This would

undoubtedly be a time-consuming exercise, as not only moves often overlap at the

phrasal and sentential levels, but also some lexico-grammatical patterns are multi-

functional. Nevertheless, such an approach would certainly constitute an ideal

follow-up to the work described here, and is highly recommended for future

researchers, particularly those with access to the technology that can facilitate the

process of tagging the moves.

This study focused on identifying the lexis and lexico-grammatical patterns used for

fulfilling thesis moves and functions that cut across different disciplines. An

alternative approach to analysis could certainly be to focus on deriving wordlists and

lexico-structural banks from specific fields, and sub-fields, as recommended by

researchers such as Hyland and Tse (2007).

The learner population of the learner corpus in this research is of different linguistic

backgrounds. A follow-up study could comfortably aim at separating the corpus into

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sub-corpora based on linguistic backgrounds, and using error analysis to analyze and

determine the cross-linguistic differences.

An obvious route that could be taken as a follow-up to this research would be to

carry out a longitudinal study to determine the impact of the pedagogic corpus on

the participants’ text creation skills over time. However, as the present ENGL501

Thesis Writing Course is a semester-based course, issues of time and feasibility

could pose as serious limitations to such a research study.

As with all work of this nature, there have certainly been limitations, errors and

omissions of various types in this research. Yet, it is hoped and indeed believed that

the work described here may be of substantial assistance to those engaged in the

teaching and learning of thesis writing in particular, and academic writing in general.

5.5 The Final Word

This study has most importantly demonstrated how corpora can be exploited by

practitioners for pedagogic purposes. Painstaking as corpora analysis may be, the

data provided and the opportunities offered are so great that the hard work becomes

worthwhile. This research has also indicated that wordlists with a unified

perspective, such as the BNL, can comfortably be used for setting targets for

students, and for determining their receptive level, ‘the extent to which students

understand language’ (Kohonen, 2000, p. 10). However, for students to ‘make

themselves understood’ (Kohonen, 2000, p. 10), in other words, for production

purposes, wordlists need to be supplemented. At especially post-graduate levels,

where students are expected to be aware of generic features, the study has concluded

that lexico-structural banks of moves and sub-moves can help students in producing

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coherent and appropriate text. This study has also shown how available software and

technologies may be harnessed in helping learners use data-driven learning

techniques as a fundamental method of improving the level of their academic

writing skills. Another important conclusion of this study is that virtual learning

environments provide extensive learning opportunities and experiences for their

users.

This research was motivated by the difficulties that the post-graduate students at the

Eastern Mediterranean University in Northern Cyprus faced in writing their theses,

and therefore the final voice should be theirs:

Before the class, my idea was no matter how hard I try, I can not write well
because good writing only belongs to native speakers, but now, I feel that I
only need sufficient work and practice in order to write well.

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APPENDICES

APPENDIX A:

EFL 501 Course Description

EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN UNIVERSITY


SCHOOL OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES
ACADEMIC YEAR 2004-2005
SPRING SEMESTER

Course Code and Title: EFL 501 Advanced Writing I

Instructor: Extension: Office: E-mail:


Nilgun HANCIOGLU 1070 SFLA 313
nilgun.hancioglu@emu.edu.tr

Class Hours: Can be arranged by negotiation with the participants (any day
between 14.30-17.30 or 15.30-18.30)

Office Hours: To be announced in class by the instructor

Course Description:
EFL 501, offered by the SFL, is a non-credit course aimed at developing the
academic and professional writing skills of MA/MS candidates. During the course,
participants will have the chance to analyze the grammar and lexis of authentic
academic texts. Participants will then be invited to produce their own work and will
be encouraged to recognize their own problems with the use of the language and
find solutions to those problems. At the same time, attention will be paid to devices
that make a piece of writing coherent and cohesive. The emphasis will be on trying
to produce texts where ideas are unified through certain cohesive devices and sound
reasoning.

Participants who would like to take this course should not have entered the thesis
writing stage yet. Those MA/MS candidates who have already started their thesis are
advised to enroll on EFL 502.

It is essential that participants to these courses have at least a good intermediate


level of English.

Course Assessment Procedures:

This is a non-credit course. However, participants should expect to submit for


formal assessment a portfolio of their own written work. Some of this work will be

292
done in class, and some will be done outside class. The exact content of these
submissions will be discussed during the course. The portfolio will be made up of a
number of short pieces of work. In order to achieve a satisfactory grade, candidates
will be expected to attend classes, and complete written tasks as required.

Plagiarism:
This is intentionally failing to give credit to sources used in writing, regardless of
whether they are published or unpublished. Plagiarism is a disciplinary issue and
will be dealt with accordingly.

Weeks Date Classwork


1 1-5 March • Introduction/Overview of the Course/Lexical Tutor
• Unit 1: Introducing
2 8-12 • Unit 2: Narrating and Reporting
March
3 15-19 • Unit 2: Narrating and Reporting (cont.)
March
4 22-26 • Unit 3: Paraphrasing, Summarising, Quoting and
March Synthesising
5 29 March – • Unit 4: Describing Processes and Developments
2 April
6 5-9 April • Unit 5: Giving Examples
7 12-16 April • Unit 6: Generalizing
8 19-23 April
23 April • Mid-term Exam Week
National
Holiday
9 26-30 April • Unit 7: Classifying and Categorising
10 3-7 May • Unit 7: Classifying and Categorising (cont.)
11 10-14 May • Unit 8: Cause and Effect
12 17-21 May • Unit 8: Cause and Effect (cont.)
19 May
National
Holiday
13 24-28 May • Unit 9: Comparing and Contrasting
14 31 May – 4 • Unit 10: Defining
June
15 7-8 June • Unit 11: Interpreting Data (Tables, Graphs, Charts)
16 11-18 June • Final Exam Week
17 21-26 June • Final Exam Week
This is a tentative course outline, subject to revision or adjustment as and if required.

293
APPENDIX B:

ENGL501 Course Description

EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN UNIVERSITY


COURSE OUTLINE

COURSE CODE ENGL501 COURSE LEVEL Post-graduate


COURSE TITLE Advanced Thesis Writing
COURSE TYPE Post-graduate elective
LECTURER(S) Nilgun Hancioglu
CREDIT VALUE Non-credit ECTS VALUE 6
PREREQUISITES None
COREQUISITES None
DURATION OF COURSE One Semester
WEB LINK http://gemoodle.emu.edu.tr/
CATALOGUE DESCRIPTION
ENGL501 is a post-graduate academic English course. The purpose of this course is to develop
the academic writing skills of MA/MS and Ph.D. candidates. The prime focus will be on examining
authentic academic texts, and analysing such elements as structure, lexis, and style in theses and
dissertations. Participants will then be invited to exploit this detailed understanding of textual
dynamics in their own writing and helped to produce work that is accurate, concise, and
appropriate.

AIMS & OBJECTIVES


The aims of ENGL501 are:
o To improve and develop academic writing skills and knowledge.
o To improve and develop academic study skills and knowledge of academic conventions.
o To improve and develop knowledge of thesis structure and format.
o To develop skills and knowledge of textual dynamics.
o To systematically develop academic vocabulary knowledge and skills.
o To develop awareness of potential problems in academic writing.
o To furnish with knowledge and strategies for dealing with problems in academic writing
o To develop awareness of the need and benefit of producing multiple drafts in academic
writing with the aim of improving the structure, lexis and style of own text and bringing it to
a satisfactory level which would be accepted by the academic discourse community.
o To develop skills in exploiting computers both as a study resource and as a tool for
producing professionally presented work.
GENERAL LEARNING OUTCOMES (COMPETENCES)
On successful completion of this course, all students will have developed knowledge and
understanding of:
o Thesis structure and format.
o Discourse and style of academic writing.
o Organizational structure of theses.
o English grammatical structure, functions and discourse patterns.
o Accurate and appropriate use of academic vocabulary.
o The importance and value of drafting, revising and editing written work.

On successful completion of this course, all students will have developed their skills in:
o Planning the steps of research.
o Placing research data in different sections of a thesis.
o Planning, drafting and writing a thesis proposal, introduction, literature review,
methodology and abstract in the appropriate format, organizational structure and style.
o Conforming to academic conventions in writing their thesis.

On successful completion of this course, all students will have developed their appreciation

294
of and respect for values and attitudes regarding the issues of:
o Academic honesty and the issue of plagiarism.

LEARNING / TEACHING METHOD


There are three class hours per week. Lessons are not lecture-based, although obviously there is
some formal teacher input. For the most part though, participants should be expected to take
active part in class discussions related to and dependent upon examining authentic academic
texts, and analysing such elements as structure, lexis, and style, especially in theses and
dissertations. Participants are then invited to exploit this detailed understanding of textual
dynamics in their own writing and helped to produce work that is accurate, concise, and
appropriate.
In addition to the three class hours per week, there is also a complementary web-based interactive
e-learning platform, Moodle, which provides the participants with maximum exposure to more
tasks, materials, and interaction with peers. In addition, this platform enables constant
communication between the participants and the instructor.
Students are also expected to make use of the instructor’s office hours. Since this course is aimed
at improving academic writing skills, participants should expect to spend a lot of time outside the
classroom, writing and bringing their written work to a satisfactory level.
ASSIGNMENTS
o Participants are expected to work on parts of their thesis, which they can later expand.
ATTENDANCE
• Though this is a non-credit course, attendance is compulsory as the completion of the
assignments is closely linked to the input provided in class and class discussions. A
student not attending 50% of the classes and not submitting the required
assignments in a portfolio on time will receive an Unsatisfactory grade.

MATERIALS/TOOLS
Materials and tasks designed / compiled by the course instructor.
Interactive e-learning platform
INDICATIVE BASIC READING LIST
None
EXTENDED READING LIST
Academic texts (theses, research articles)
SEMESTER OFFERED
Fall and Spring Semester

CONTENT & SCHEDULE


Time of classes for 2008-2009 Fall Semester.
Group 1: Thursday 13.30-16.30
Group 2: Tuesday 13.30-16.30

The following is a tentative course schedule, and it may be subject to change if and when required.

295
WEEK DATE TOPICS
1 6-10 Oct. Introduction to the Course and Requirements
2 13-17 Oct Introduction to the Course and Requirements
Introduction to Moodle-Interactive e-learning platform
Student Profiles
Diagnostic Writing Exercise (CELF / IELTS criteria)
Discussions on writing
3 20-24 Oct Lab session
• Thesis structure
• Microsoft word tools
• Moodle
4 27 Oct-31 • Avoiding Plagiarism
Oct • Quoting/paraphrasing/bibliographies
(29th Oct.
Holiday)
5 3-7 Nov • Quoting/paraphrasing/bibliographies (contd)

6 10-14 Nov • Writing Research (Thesis) Proposals

7 17-21 Nov • Writing Research (Thesis) Proposals (contd)

8 24-27 Nov • Writing Introductions 1

9 Nov 28- • MIDTERM EXAMS


Dec 6

10 8-12 Dec • RELIGIOUS HOLIDAY

11 15-19 Dec • Writing Introductions II

12 22-26 Dec • Literature review chapter

13 29 Dec-3 • Methodology Chapter


Jan
(1st Jan.
holiday)
14 5-9 Jan • Data Analysis and Conclusion Chapters

15 12-16 Jan • Abstracts

16 19-22 Jan • End-of-semester evaluation


• End-of-semester in-class writing
17 26 Jan-10 • FINAL EXAMS
Feb

296
APPENDIX C:

Interview Guide

1. Do you think that EFL 501 is a necessary course for post-graduate students?
Why/Why not?

2. How long have you taught this course?

3. Could you please describe your experiences?

4. Could you please talk a little bit about the student profiles?

5. Can you talk a little bit about these students’ problems?

6. Were the problems specific to one group only?

7. What were the most common problems faced by these students?

8. What do you think could be done to reduce the problems these students face?

9. Do you think the EFL 501 course you were teaching suited the needs of these
students?

10. Did you observe any concrete developments in these students’ use of the
language at the end of the course? If so, mostly in terms of what?

11. Would you teach this course in the same way and using the same approach and
materials if you taught it again? If not, what changes/additions/deletions would
you make?

12. Some faculties have made this course a compulsory course for their post-
graduate students? How do you feel about this?

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APPENDIX D:

Needs Analysis Questionnaire

EFL 501-Advanced Writing 1


2004-2005 Academic Year

STUDENT PROFILE QUESTIONNAIRE

Name:
Student number:
Department:
Stage in post-
graduate study:
e-mail:
How would you rate your English as a whole, in terms of knowledge of the
language, vocabulary, reading, writing, speaking and listening? Excellent? Good?
Fair? Poor?

What kinds of writing do you need to do in English?

How would you rate your writing in English? Excellent? Good? Fair? Poor?

What do you find most difficult about writing in English? Please give details.

How do you check your written work?

What have you done up to now to improve your writing skills? What has helped you
most?How?

Do you use any resources to help you with your writing (the internet, self-study
books, dictionaries, etc,..)? Which ones?

Do you write in hand or do you word-process your documents (including your first
drafts)? Which one is more practical, time-saving and useful for you and why?

298
How familiar are you with the following terms in writing? Put a tick next to the ones
you are very familiar with and a cross next to the ones you have never heard of.

Wordiness
Cohesion
Coherence
Process writing
Drafting
Revising
Editing
Appropriacy of lexis
Collocations
Rhetorical styles
Genres
Register
Citing sources
Avoiding plagiarism
Quoting, paraphrasing, summarizing
Bibliographies
Format
Accuracy of language
Punctuation

299
APPENDIX E:

Course Evaluation Questionnaire

EFL 501-Advanced Writing 1


2004-2005 Academic Year/Spring Semester
END-OF-SEMESTER FEEDBACK FORM

Name:
Student number:
Department:
Stage in post-
graduate study:

How would you now rate your English as a whole, in terms of knowledge of the
language, vocabulary, reading, grammar? Excellent? Good? Fair? Poor? Has the
course benefited you in this respect? If so, how?

How would you now rate your writing in English? Excellent? Good? Fair? Poor?
Has the course benefited you in this respect? If so, how?

What do you still find most difficult about writing in English? Please give details
and, if possible, reasons.

How do you now check your written work? Do you use any tools? Has the course
benefited you in this respect? If so, how? Give details, please.

Do you now use any resources to help you with your writing (the internet, self-study
books, dictionaries, etc,..)? Has the course benefited you in this respect? If so, how?
Give details please.

In what other ways, if any, has the course benefited you?

300
Do you have any other comments about the course in terms of content, teaching
materials, instructional methods, focus, etc?

Would you advise a friend to take this course? Why/Why not?

What changes/additions/deletions would you suggest and why?

How familiar are you now with the following terms in writing? Put a tick next to the ones
you are very familiar with and a cross next to the ones you have not heard of.
Wordiness
Cohesion
Coherence
Process writing
Drafting
Revising
Editing
Appropriacy of lexis
Collocations (words that go together)
Citing sources
Avoiding plagiarism
Quoting, paraphrasing, summarizing
Bibliographies
Format
Accuracy of language
Punctuation
Formal/informal language

301
APPENDIX F:

List of Abstracts

Algebra
1. C(star)-algebras for boundary actions of Abelian-by-cyclic groups
ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
2) The X-Legion: A compiler-approach to exploit locality and portability of divide-and-conquer
algorithms
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE/ PhD, 2005
3) Cohomological methods for determining numerical invariants of algebras and modules
RUTGERS THE STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW JERSEY - NEW BRUNSWICK/ PhD, 2005
Accounting
1. Economic liberalization and its impact on civil war, 1870—2000
STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK AT BINGHAMTON/ PhD, 2005
2. The influence of leadership on the motivation of virtual teams
NORTHCENTRAL UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
3. The influence of evaluative reactions to attribute frames and accounting data on capital
budgeting decisions
VIRGINIA POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE AND STATE UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
4. The economic, financial accounting and governance determinants of synthetic lease financing
THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
5. On labor force participation of married women: The case of the United States since 1959
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA/ PhD, 2005
6. An integrated systems approach to macroeconomic modeling: Stock-flow consistent
accounting
and the dynamics of interaction between the real and financial economy
NEW SCHOOL UNIVERSITY, PhD, 2005
7. Implications of alternative emission trading plans
MCMASTER UNIVERSITY (CANADA)/ PhD, 2005
8. The restructuring and fragility of the Mexican financial system
NEW SCHOOL UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
9. Does the extent of compliance with international accounting standards affect information
asymmetry?
OKLAHOMA STATE UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
10. Convertible debt proceeds: Allocation methods and evidence of market valuation
MISSISSIPPI STATE UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
11. Pension accounting and the public interest
UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY (CANADA)/ PhD, 2005
12. Introducing an ethical dimension into the earnings management decision
VIRGINIA COMMONWEALTH UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
Anthropology
1) Fishing-Dependent Communities on the Gulf Coast of Florida: Their Identification, Recent
Decline and Present Resilience/ University of South Florida - Tampa, FL, MA, 2003
2) Falun Gong in the United States: An Ethnographic Study/ University of South Florida -
Tampa, FL, MA, 2003
3) Dostoevsky's Conception of Man: Its Impact on Philosophical Anthropology/ The
Pennsylvania State University, PhD, 1997
4) Impurity and Death: A Japanese Perspective/ San Francisco State University - San Francisco
USA, MA, 2002
5) Osteometric Assessment of 20th Century Skeletons from Thailand and Hong Kong/ Florida
Atlantic University, MA, 1997
Archaeology
1) An Archaeological Analysis of Gender Roles in Ancient Non-Literate Cultures of Eurasia/
Flinders University, Australia, MA, 2004

302
2) Bioarchaeology of the St. Mary's Free Ground Burials: Reconstruction of Colonial South
Australian Lifeways/ University of Adelaide, Adelaide, PhD, 2004
3) The Blokemuseum: Motor Museums and Their Visitors/ Flinders University, PhD, 2004
4) Place as Occupational Histories: Towards an Understanding of Deflated Surface Artefact
Distributions in the West Darling, New South Wales, Australia/ University of Auckland,
Auckland, New Zealand, PhD, 2004
5) Investigations Towards a Late Holocene Archaeology of Aboriginal Lifeways on the
Southern Curtis Coast, Australia/ University of Queensland, PhD, 2004
6) Site Unseen: Archaeology, Cultural Resource Management, Planning and Predictive
Modelling in the Melbourne Metropolitan Area/ La Trobe University, Australia, PhD, 2003
7) "Of More Than Usual Interest": A Bioarchaeological Analysis of Ancient Aboriginal
Skeletal Material from Southeastern South Australia/ Flinders University, Adelaide, PhD,
2003
8) Numerous Indications: The Archaeology of Regional Aboriginal Behaviour in Northwest
Central Queensland/ University of New England, Austr. PhD, 2003
9) Knowledge, Power and Voice: An Investigation of Indigenous South Australian Perspectives
of Archaeology/ Flinders University, PhD, 2003
10) Agate and Carnelian Beads and the Dynamics of Social Complexity in Iron Age Mainland
Southeast Asia/ University of New England, Armidale, PhD, 2003
11) The Archaeology and Socioeconomy of the Gunditjmara: A Landscape Analysis from
Southwest Victoria, Australia/ Flinders University, PhD, 2002
12) Beyond the Divide: A New Geo-Archaeology of Aboriginal Stone Artefact Scatters in
Western NSW, Australia/ Macquarie University, PhD, 2002
13) Ngarranggani, Ngamungamu, Jalanijarra: 'Lost Places', Recursiveness and Hybridity at Old
Lamboo Pastoral Station, Southeast Kimberley, WA/ University of Western Australia, PhD,
2002
14) Inland Pilbara Archaeology: A Study of Variation in Aboriginal Occupation Over Time and
Space on the Hamersley Plateau/ University of Western Australia, MA, 2002
15) A Space of Their Own: Nineteenth Century Lunatic Asylums in Britain, South Australia and
Tasmania/ Flinders University, PhD, 2002
16) Deep Structures: An Examination of Deliberate Watercraft Abandonment in Australia
Flinders University, PhD, 2002
17) Late Holocene Indigenous Economies of the Tropical Australian Coast: An Archaeological
Study of the Darwin Region/ Northern Territory University, PhD, 2001
18) Database Design, Archaeological Classification and Geographic Information Systems: A
Case Study from Southeast Queensland/ University of Queensland, PhD, 2001
19) Continuity and Change: A Late Holocene and Post Contact History of Aboriginal
Environmental Interaction and Vegetation Process from the Keep River Region, Northern
Territory, University of Wollongong, PhD, 2000
20) Palaeo-Environmental Change and the Persistence of Human Occupation in South-Western
Australian Forests/ University Western Australia, PhD, 2000
21) The Archaeology of Body Modification: Identifying Symbolic Behaviour Through Usewear
and Residues on Flaked Stone Tools/ University of Queensland, PhD, 2000
22) Station Camps: The Ethnoarchaeology of Cultural Change in the Post-Contact Period in the
South-East Kimberley Region of Western Australia/ Flinders University, PhD, 2000
23) Squatting Landscapes in South-Eastern Australia (1820-1895)/ University of Sydney, PhD,
2000
24) Here and There: Links Between Stone Sources and Aboriginal Archaeological Sites in
Sydney, Australia/ University of Sydney, MA, 1999
25) Past Aboriginal Hunter-Gatherer Economy and Territorial Organisation in Coastal Districts
of Western Australia's Lower South-West/ University of Western Australia, PhD, 1999
26) 'Intended Solely for their Greater Comfort and Happiness': Historical Archaeology,
Paternalism and the Peel Island Lazaret/ University of Queensland, PhD, 1999
27) Dependent Colonies: The Importation of Material Culture and the Establishment of a
Consumer Society in Australia Before 1850/ Flinders University, PhD, 1999
28) Microdebitage and the Archaeology of Rock Art: An Experimental Approach/ University of
Sydney, MSc, 1999
29) Wangala Time, Wangala Law: Hunter-Gatherer Settlement Patterns in a Sub-Humid to Semi-
Arid Environment/ La Trobe University, Austr., PhD, 1997

303
30) The Importance of Quartz in Stone Artefact Assemblages: A Technological Analysis of Five
Aboriginal Sites of the Coonabarabran/Warrumbungle Region/ University of New England,
Armidale, MA, 1996
31) SS Xantho: Towards a New Perspective. An Integrated Approach to the Maritime
Archaeology and Conservation of an Iron Steamship Wreck/ James Cook University of
North Queensland, PhD, 1996
32) Accommodating the Destitute: An Historical and Archaeological Consideration of the
Destitute Asylum of Adelaide/ Flinders University of South Australia, MA, 1996
33) Situating Style: An Ethnoarchaeological Study of Social and Material Context in an
Australian Aboriginal Artistic System/ University of New England, Austr.,PhD, 1994
Architecture/ Urban-regional planning/ Landscape Architecture
1) Reciprocity and Mutualism: The Integration of Landscape and Architecture in the
Reclamation of the Former Cornfields Rail Yard. California State Polytechnic University.
2) The Creativity Experience: Examining the Design Process in Landscape Architecture .
California State Polytechnic University.
3) Emotional Responses to Flowering Landscapes. California State Polytechnic
University.
4) Tree Ordinances: Public Opinion Survey Examining Issues of Functionality and
5) Aesthetics in Del Mar, California. California State Polytechnic University.
Increasing the Acceptability of Urban Nature Through Effective Cues to Care: A Study of
the Lower Arroyo Seco Natural Park, Pasadena, California. California State Polytechnic
University.
6) Anxiety and Situational Stress in Medical Oncology Patients: An Environmental Study of
Landscape Views in Treatment Room Settings. California State Polytechnic University.
7) Communicating the Value of Landscape Architecture. California State Polytechnic
University.
8) Unnatural Nature: Eight Artists Look at Southern California. California State Polytechnic
University.
9) Landscape Water Conservation: Toward a Community Education Strategy for the Helix
Water District. California State Polytechnic University.
10) Environmental Innovation in Residential Subdivision Design: An Investigation in Orange
County, California. California State Polytechnic University.
11) A Study of Human Factors Related to Food Production in Regenerative Agriculture: A
Design of a Preliminary Labor Model at the Institute for Regenerative Studies. California
State Polytechnic University.
12) Rainforest Conservation and Agricultural Development: Conflict and Compatibility in Baja
Talamanca, Costa Rica. California State Polytechnic University.
13) Ecosystematic Stormwater and Flood Management Practices for Southern California.
California State Polytechnic University.
14) Guidelines for Water Conservation, Including Integrated Computer Systems for Measuring,
Designing and Managing Water Use in the Landscape. California State Polytechnic
University
15) The Community for Regenerative Studies: An Investigation into the Human Role in the
Environment. California State Polytechnic University.
16) Renewable Energy Systems: An Integrated Approach to Environmental Design. California
State Polytechnic University
17) The Value of Complexity in Environmental Design. California State Polytechnic University.
18) Reclamation Techniques for Western Surface Coal Mining. California State Polytechnic
University.
19) The Gardens of Edward Huntsman-Trout. California State Polytechnic University.
20) Shopping Centers: Behavioral Archetypes and Design Synthesis. California State
Polytechnic University.
21) Providing Landscape Architect Design Services for the Average Homeowner. California
State Polytechnic University
22) Comparative River Basin Planning: A Historiographical Method for the Analysis of
Regional Planning in America and China. California State Polytechnic University.
23) Power, Identity, and the Rise of Modern Architecture from Siam to Thailand- University of
Colorado - Denver, CO, USA

304
24) The First World War, Britain, and modern design: The social use of architecture in inter-war
Birmingham (England) AUBURN UNIVERSITY
25) Automatic building extraction for three-dimensional terrain reconstruction using image
interpretation techniques UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES (AUSTRALIA)
26) Shaping sacred space: Toward an evangelical theology of church architecture TRINITY
EVANGELICAL DIVINITY SCHOOL
27) Becoming indigenous: A mosaic of house and home UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY
28) Boston's 'three-decker menace': The buildings, the builders and the dwellers, 1870s--1930
(Massachusetts) BOSTON UNIVERSITY
29) Hybrid sketching: A new middle ground between 2- and 3-D, PhD, MIT, 2005
30) Building negotiation: Architecture and sociopolitical transformation at Chau Hiix, Lamanai,
and Altun Ha, Belize/ Indiana University, 2005
31) Reading in three dimensions: Architectural biography from Harriet Beecher Stowe to Edith
Wharton (Henry James, William Dean Howells), Boston University, 2005
32) Do the original elements by Kevin Lynch on community design apply today with New
Urbanism? (Alabama)/ Mississipi State University, 2005
33) Participatory virtual preservation: A human-centered digital media procedure for
architectural history inquiry/ Harvard University, 2005
34) Architecture that embodies the symbolic nature of good leadership and promotes productive
collaboration between women's international organizations. WILL: Women's International
Leadership League/ UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, COLLEGE PARK, MArch 2005
35) Music on the edge: An addition to the music conservatory of Tolima, Colombia/ MArch,
UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, COLLEGE PARK, 2005
36) The sustainable development of urban 'scrap sites'/ MArch, CARLETON UNIVERSITY
(CANADA), 2005
37) View out of a window: Visual preferences of dually diagnosed adolescents residing in group
homes/ OKLAHOMA STATE UNIVERSITY, MS, 2005
38) 'Fairy habitations of the mimic city': Sacred Victorian cottages at Chester Heights Camp
Meeting/ UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE (WINTERTHUR PROGRAM), MA, 2005
39) 'The real idealism of history': Historical consciousness, commemoration, and Johannes
Brahms's 'years of study' (Germany)/ COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, PhD, 2005
40) The politics of architecture: Suor Domenica da Paradiso and her convent of la Crocetta in
post-Savonarolan Florence (Italy)/ RUTGERS THE STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW
JERSEY - NEW BRUNSWICK, PhD, 2005
41) Transforming Early Gothic form: The Cistercian church of Pontigny, Saint-Martin at
Chablis, and northern Burgundian architecture (France)/ UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA,
SANTA BARBARA, PhD, 2005
42) Physical-social capital: Towards a critical design praxis for communities of place (Texas) /
UNIVERSITY OF GUELPH (CANADA), PhD, 2005
43) Simplified building energy analysis tool for architects/ ILLINOIS INSTITUTE OF
TECHNOLOGY, PhD, 2005
44) Relevant attributes in assessment for design features of indoor games halls: The application
of importance-performance analysis/ INDIANA UNIVERSITY, 2005
45) The life story of the Cemberlitas Hamam: From bath to tourist attraction (Turkey)/
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA, PhD, 2005
46) An archaeology of the fragment: The transition from the antique fragment to the historical
fragment in French architecture between 1750 and 1850/ UNIVERSITY OF
PENNSYLVANIA, PhD, 2005
47) An architectural history of grand opera houses: Constructing cultural identity in urban
America from 1850 to the Great Depression/ RUTGERS THE STATE UNIVERSITY OF
NEW JERSEY - NEW BRUNSWICK, PhD, 2005
48) Formalizing the informal city: Designing for development in a Peruvian shantytown/
UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, COLLEGE PARK, MArch, 2005
49) The politics of style: Building, builders, and the creation of federal Boston (Massachusetts,
Charles Bullfinch)/ UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST, PhD, 2005
50) Re-weaving the urban fabric: A new midtown residential neighborhood in Newport News,
Virginia/ UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, COLLEGE PARK MArch, 2005
51) Constructing process models from distributed design activity/ CARNEGIE MELLON
UNIVERSITY, PhD, 2005

305
52) Re-constructing the Counter Reformation: Women architectural patrons in Rome and the
case of Camilla Peretti (Italy)/ THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL
HILL, PhD, 2005
53) The Romanesque Cathedral of Saint Mary at Lincoln and the image of reform (England)/
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, PhD, 2005
54) A culinary school in San Mateo, California/ UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, COLLEGE
PARK, MArch, 2005
55) The architecture of Maxentius: A study in architectural design and urban planning in early
fourth-century Rome (Marcus Aurelius Valerius Maxentius, Emperor of Rome, Roman
Empire)/ UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, PhD, 2005
56) Squaring the circle: The regulating lines of Claude Bragdon's Theosophic architecture/
VIRGINIA POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE AND STATE UNIVERSITY, PhD, 2005
57) Homeowning: An exploration of the possession and personalization of the American Dream/
RICE UNIVERSITY, MArch, 2005
58) Home as investment: Housing markets and cultures of urban change in Houston (Texas)/
RICE UNIVERSITY, PhD, 2005
59) Imaginary figures of death and life in the architecture of Grandjean de Montigny (Auguste
Henri Victor Grandjean de Montigny, France, Brazil)/ UNIVERSITY OF
PENNSYLVANIA, PhD, 2005
60) Professional sacrifice: Architects, ethics and advertising/ OPEN UNIVERSITY (UNITED
KINGDOM), PhD, 2005
61) Shifting archi(text)ure: Notes on a discourse/ RICE UNIVERSITY, MArch, 2005
62) Dovetail Ranch at Ajo Valley/ RICE UNIVERSITY, MArch, 2005
63) Balancing on transit: Redevelopment of the Southern Pacific Railyards Sacramento,
California/ UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, COLLEGE PARK, MArch, 2005
64) A new deal for progress: The 1933 Chicago World's Fair (Illinois)/ UNIVERSITY OF
ILLINOIS AT CHICAGO, PhD, 2005
65) Entertainment of the most beautiful kind: The house of William and Harriet Aiken, 1833—
1860/ UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE (WINTERTHUR PROGRAM), MA, 2005
66) Architecture as a catalyst for organizational change: Facilitating a person-centered approach
to care in an adult/dementia day center/ THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN –
MILWAUKEE, PhD, 2005
67) Master planning the State University of New York for real estate development: A case study/
MS, 2005, STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK COL. OF ENVIRONMENTAL
SCIENCE & FORESTRY
68) The effect of the interaction of architecture, culture, and nature on well-being and
spirituality/ UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY (CANADA), PhD, 2005
69) Cultivat(ing) modernities: The Society for National Heritage, political propaganda, and
public architecture in twentieth-century Iran/ MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF
TECHNOLOGY, PhD, 2005
70) Architecture and social complexity in the Late Ubaid Period: A study of the built
environment of Degirmentepe in East Anatolia (Turkey)/ UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA,
LOS ANGELES, PhD, 2005
71) Leberecht Migge (1881--1935) and the modern garden in Germany/ UNIVERSITY OF
PENNSYLVANIA, PhD, 2005
72) Spatial narratives, commemorative practices and the building project: New urban
foundations in Upper Syro-Mesopotamia during the Early Iron Age/ UNIVERSITY OF
PENNSYLVANIA, PhD, 2005
73) BIOcity/ RICE UNIVERSITY, MArch, 2005
74) Architecture, ritual and identity in the cathedral of Saint-Etienne and the abbey of Saint-
Germain in Auxerre, France/ BROWN UNIVERSITY, PhD, 2005
75) Constructions of public space, Singapore/ HARVARD UNIVERSITY, 2005
76) Regionalism and universality on the Big Muddy: A trail of pavilions along the Mississippi
River/ UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, COLLEGE PARK, MArch, 2005
77) Weaving place and object: A new Martin Luther King community library (Washington,
D.C.)/ UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, COLLEGE PARK, MArch, 2005
78) Felt PET: A material research project/ RICE UNIVERSITY, MArch, 2005
79) Dislocations and relocations: The built environments of Japanese American internment/
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA BARBARA, PhD, 2005

306
80) Operative topography: An agent for place-making in the age of globalization/ UNIVERSITY
OF FLORIDA, PhD, 2005
81) Public spaces, public transit and accessibility for the blind: What Portland, Oregon has to
teach us/ MORGAN STATE UNIVERSITY, MLA, 2005
82) Rivalry and representation: Regionalist architecture and the road to the 1937 Paris
Exposition (France)/ UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA, PhD, 2005
83) Open space for the underclass: New York's small parks (1880--1915)/ UNIVERSITY OF
PENNSYLVANIA, PhD, 2005
84) An XML initiative of transferring architectural information to the construction site based on
the BIM object concept/ ILLINOIS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, PhD, 2005
85) Leopold Eidlitz: Becoming an American architect/ UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA,
PhD, 2005
86) Building in the air: Aspects of the aerial imagination in modern Italian architecture (Franco
Albini, Edoardo Persico, Alberto Sartoris)/ UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, PhD,
2005
87) Art, architecture and politics in Mewar, 1628--1710 (India)/ UNIVERSITY OF
MINNESOTA, PhD, 2005
88) The effects of sculpture in a university public space: An empirical study of user behavior/
MISSISSIPPI STATE UNIVERSITY, MLA, 2005
89) Healing the circulatory wound/ RICE UNIVERSITY, MArch, 2005
90) Fear as a cultural phenomenon in Thailand with special reference to the spatial relations of
domestic architecture/ OPEN UNIVERSITY (UNITED KINGDOM), PhD, 2005
91) Systems aesthetics: Architectural theory at the University of Cambridge, 1960--1975
(Massachusetts, Peter Eisenman, Lionel March, Leslie Martin, Christopher Alexander)/
HARVARD UNIVERSITY, PhD, 2005
92) Exploring the effects of local development regulations on ecological landscape structure/
TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY, PhD, 2005
93) Requirements management interface to building product models/ STANFORD
UNIVERSITY, PhD, 2005
94) Towards a draped architecture: An examination of theatricality, virtuosity, and ambiguity in
the recent works of Frank O. Gehry, and others/ UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, PhD,
2005
95) Historic building documentation in the United States, 1933--2000. The Historic American
Buildings Survey: A case study/ TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY, PhD, 2005
96) A meta-language for systems architecting/ MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF
TECHNOLOGY, PhD, 2005
97) Regio: Leon Battista Alberti and the theory of region in architecture (Italy)/ UNIVERSITY
OF PENNSYLVANIA, PhD, 2005
98) Eco-metropolis: Tourism of the urban ecology/ RICE UNIVERSITY, MArch, 2005
99) Tower typewriter and trademark: Architects, designers and the corporate utopia, 1956--1964
(Gordon Bunshaft, Eero Saarinen, Henry Dreyfuss, Florence Knoll, Eliot Noyes)/ NEW
YORK UNIVERSITY, PhD, 2005
100)The snake that swallowed an egg: A network of parks for Houston's wasted spaces (Texas)/
RICE UNIVERSITY, MArch, 2005
101)Grand Theater Square - Shanghai (China)/ UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, COLLEGE
PARK, MArch, 2005
102)PHARM_STAD: Fieldworks for Somkhele (South Africa)/ RICE UNIVERSITY, MArch,
2005
103)Border crossings/ RICE UNIVERSITY, MArch, 2005
104)Personalization and its place in the New Urbanism/UNIVERSITY OF LOUISVILLE, PhD,
2005
105)The veneration of St. Benedict in medieval Rome: Parish architecture, monumental imagery,
and local devotion (Italy)/ UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, PhD, 2005
106)Functionalism with ornament: Modernist architectural discourse in Hermann Broch's 'Die
Schlafwandler'/ WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY, PhD, 2005
107)The power of fame: Stowe and its uses (England, Alexander Pope, Samuel Richardson, Earl
Temple, George Grenville, William Pitt)/ WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY, PhD, 2005
108)Modernity and memory: The politics of architecture in Hungary and East Germany after the
Second World War/ PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, PhD, 2005

307
109)Assessing mold risks in buildings under uncertainty/ GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF
TECHNOLOGY, PhD, 2005
110)Alfred Muller and Galveston's late nineteenth-century architectural style (Texas)/
UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON-CLEAR LAKE, MA, 2005
111)Park space (Texas)/ RICE UNIVERSITY, MArch, 2005
112)Like and like/ RICE UNIVERSITY, Houston, MArch, 2005
113)Building stories: Literature and architecture in early modern England (Anne Clifford,
Countess of Pembroke, Sir Henry Wotton, Ben Jonson, John Stow, George Herbert)/
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES., PhD, 2005
114)The Alhambra in comparative perspective: Towards a definition of palace-cities (Spain,
Palestine, France)/ BOSTON UNIVERSITY, PhD, 2005
115)Architecture in mind: Hegel's history of architecture and its place in the 'Philosophy of Fine
Art' (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel)/ UNIVERSITY OF ESSEX (UNITED KINGDOM),
PhD, 2005
116)Technically symbolic: The significance of schema and Claude Bragdon's Sinbad drawings in
'The Frozen Fountain'/ UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, PhD, 2005
117)Green fabric: An urban center for Virginia's wine culture (Virginia)/ UNIVERSITY OF
MARYLAND, COLLEGE PARK, MArch, 2005
118)Decision-making framework for the selection and design of shading devices/ VIRGINIA
POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE AND STATE UNIVERSITY, PhD, 2005
119)Permeable walls and place recognition in Henry Klumb's architecture of social concern
(Puerto Rico)/ UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, PhD, 2005
120)A quantification of proportionality aesthetics in morphological design/ UNIVERSITY OF
MICHIGAN, PhD, 2005
121)Tall building form generation by parametric design process/ ILLINOIS INSTITUTE OF
TECHNOLOGY, PhD, 2005
122)Conceptual design tools for architects/ HARVARD UNIVERSITY 2005
123)Maximizing the benefits of courtroom POEs in design decision support and academic
inquiry through a unified conceptual model/ GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY,
PhD, 2005
124)The side stage: A critical cultural awareness forum in Washington, D.C./ UNIVERSITY OF
MARYLAND, COLLEGE PARK, MArch, 2005
125)The essence of architecture: August Schmarsow's theory of space/ UNIVERSITY OF
PENNSYLVANIA, PhD, 2005
126)The First World War, Britain, and modern design: The social use of architecture in inter-war
Birmingham (England)/ AUBURN UNIVERSITY, PhD, 2005
127)Niche life/ RICE UNIVERSITY, MArch, 2005
128)An investigation of methods for reducing the use of non-renewable energy resources for
housing in Thailand/ TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY, PhD, 2005
129)The comfort consciousness/ RICE UNIVERSITY, MArch, 2005
130)A case study of cost overruns in a Thai condominium project/ TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY,
PhD, 2005
131)Technik und Kultur: The German architectural discourse on iron, 1890—1918/ NEW YORK
UNIVERSITY, PhD, 2005
132)At home in postwar France: The design and construction of domestic space, 1945—1975/
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY, PhD, 2005
133)Italian modern architecture and the vernacular tradition: The aesthetics of morality/
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO (CANADA), PhD, 2005
134)Extreme spatial experience apparatus altering the perception of space through computer-
mediated movement/ UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES, PhD, 2005
135)Technology and elderly people: Design methodology for interactive communication in later
life/ CARLETON UNIVERSITY (CANADA), MArch, 2005
136)Hybrid housing/ RICE UNIVERSITY, MArch 2005
137)An analysis of the American outdoor sport facility: Developing an ideal type on the
evolution of professional baseball and football structures/ THE OHIO STATE
UNIVERSITY, PhD, 2005
138)Albert Mayer, architect and town planner: The case for a total professional/ NEW YORK
UNIVERSITY, PhD, 2005
139)Fat City (a post-movement manifesto)/ RICE UNIVERSITY, MArch 2005

308
140)Ventilation drying and the performance of the exterior membrane in building enclosure
systems/ THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY, PhD, 2005
141)Urban metamorphosis and change in central Asian cities after the Arab invasions/
GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, PhD, 2005
142)Facade-poche: The performative representation of thickened window-walls in the works of
Marcel Breuer, Richard Neutra, and Jose Luis Sert/ UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA,
PhD, 2005
143)Reading Ashikaga history in the urban landscape: Kyoto in the early Muromachi period,
1336--1467 (Japan)/ PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, PhD, 2005
144)Johannes Baader and the demise of Wilhelmine culture: Architecture, Dada, and social
critique, 1875—1920/ NEW YORK UNIVERSITY, PhD, 2005
145)Study of natural ventilation design by integrating the multi-zone model with CFD
simulation/ MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, PhD, 2005
146)'I am not a decorator': Florence Knoll, the Knoll Planning Unit, and the making of the
modern office/ UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE (WINTERTHUR PROGRAM), MA, 2005
147)Art and the conventual life in Renaissance Venice: The Monastery Church of Santa Caterina
de' Sacchi (Italy)/ PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, PhD, 2005
148)Architecture in the manner of Giovanni Battista Piranesi: Ornamental excess and the
apotropaic function of grotesque representations (Italy)/ UNIVERSITY OF
PENNSYLVANIA, PhD, 2005
149)Technology as 'praxis of inquiry' in architectural design:
Adaptability/modulation/emergence/ CARLETON UNIVERSITY (CANADA), MArch
2005
150)Spaces of illusion, artifice and play: From the nineteenth century to the themed
environment/ UNIVERSITY OF ESSEX (UNITED KINGDOM), PhD, 2005
Art History
1) Architecture and Ideology: The National Gallery of Canada (A Reading of the Architecture
Using Feminist and Postmodernist Theory) Joan Acland 1989, Canada
2) Closed Systems: Alexandra Luke, Hortense Gordon and the Canadian Art History Canon,
Janice Anderson, 1995
3) H. Mabel May (1877-1971) - The Montreal Years: 1909-1938, Karen Antaki, 1992
4) The Sculpture of Anne Kahane, Sylvia A. Antoniou, 1992
5) The Beaver Hall Group and its Place in the Montreal Art Milieu and the Nationalist
Network, Susan Avon, 1994
6) The Stained Glass War Memorial Windows of Charles William Kelsey, Shirley May Baird
7) Furs in Fashion as Illustrated in the Photo-Portraiture of William Notman in the 1860s, Jana
Bara, 1986
8) William Notman's Portraits of Children, Katharine J. Borcoman, 1991
9) William Brymner ( 1855 - 1925 ) The Artist in Retrospect, Janet Grace Mills Braide, 1979
10) Photography, Immigration, and Canadianism: 1896-1921, Anna Maria Carlevaris, 1992
11) William H. Eagar: "Sensibilities of No Common Order" Alexandra E. Carter, 1979
12) Case Study: Michel Foucault, Critical Modernism, and Writing on the Visual Arts in English
Canada, Timothy D. Clark, 1991
13) Jock Macdonald: The Search for the Universal Truth in Nature, Allison J. Colborne, 1992
14) The Church of St. Andrew and St. Paul, Montreal: An Architectural History 1805-1932, and
Catalogue of Memorials, Sandra M. Coley, 1993
15) Janvier and Morrisseau: Transcending a Canadian Discourse, Curtis J. Collins, 1994
16) Modernism meets the farm: Precisionist paintings and photographs of vernacular
architecture, 1915--1940 (Charles Sheeler, Georgia O'Keeffe), CITY UNIVERSITY OF
NEW YORK, 2005
17) Clothing the corps: How the avant-garde and the Ballets Russes fashioned the modern body,
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, 2005
18) 'Against an epoch': Boston moderns, 1880--1905 (Massachusetts, F. Holland Day, Louise
Imogen Guiney, Ralph Adams), BOSTON COLLEGE, 2005
19) Perceptions of Native American art: American sculpture and earthworks (Isamu Noguchi,
James Pierce, Michael Heizer, Michelle Stuart), RUTGERS THE STATE UNIVERSITY OF
NEW JERSEY - NEW BRUNSWICK, 2005

309
Biological Sciences
1) Pragmatism and Human Genetic Engineering/ Vanderbilt University - Nashville, Tennessee
– USA, PhD, 1994
2) Ecological Study of the Role of Highly Processed Milk, Meat and Vegetable Oil in Prostate
Cancer Causation/ Clayton College of Natural Health, Birmingham, USA, 2005
3) Population genetics and evolutionary history of some deep-sea demersal fishes from the
Azores-North Atlantic (Helicolenus dactylopterus, Beryx splendens)/ UNIVERSITY OF
SOUTHAMPTON (UNITED KINGDOM)/ PhD, 2005
4) Monolayer protected gold clusters: Application to biology/ STANFORD UNIVERSITY/
PhD, 2005
5) Factors underlying the interactions between people and wildlife in the Argentine Chaco/
THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA/ PhD, 2005
6) Flexibility in the light reactions of photosynthesis/ WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY/
PhD, 2005
7) Mapping protein functional epitopes using phage display: Applications for streptavidin,
HIV-1 Vif, and a terpene cyclase/ UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE/ PhD, 2005
8) DNA hybridization: Fundamental studies and applications in directed assembly/
MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY/ PhD, 2005
9) A systems biology approach to understanding cellular dynamics during HIV-1 infection and
progression to AIDS/ UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN/ PhD, 2005
10) Chemical and cell biological approaches to study ER stress-induced apoptosis/ HARVARD
UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
11) Breeding biology and ecology of Great Tinamous: Female joint-nesting, extra-pair paternity
and natural history/ CORNELL UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
12) Systematics of the megadiverse superfamily Gelechioidea (Insecta: Lepidoptera)/ THE
OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
13) Molecular markers of outcome in prostate cancer/ UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH
WALES (AUSTRALIA)/ PhD, 2005
Business Administration
1) Improved Forecast Accuracy in Airline Revenue Management by Unconstraining Demand
Estimates from Censored Data/ Rutgers University, Newark, NJ USA, PhD, 2001
2) Towards Improved Project Management Practice: Uncovering the evidence for effective
practices through empirical research/ Leeds Metropolitan University, UK, PhD, 2000
3) Electronic Marketing: Advantages and Disadvantages/ Saint Regis University - Wilmington,
USA, PhD, 2004
4) Model for the Evaluation of Project Funding in Emerging Markets/ Columbia Pacific
University, PhD, 2000
5) Is Total Quality Management Enough For Competitive Advantage? Realities in
Organizations Implementing Change Initiatives: with Examples from the United States and
the Developing World/ University of Hull, United Kingdom, MBA, 1999
6) Publicly Funded School Voucher Programs: A Policy Analysis/ DePaul University, Chicago,
Illinois, USA, MS, 2001
7) Violence in the Workplace: Preparation, Prevention and Response/ Columbia Southern
University, MS, 2002
8) Inside Chinese Organizations: An Empirical Study of Business Practices in China/ Oxford
University, Said Business School, PhD, 1998
9) An empirical study on the state of the purchasing function within small and medium-sized
business enterprises/ THE GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
10) Does insider trading predict the future stock return?/ CORNELL UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
11) A decision model for technology assessment to reduce the internal digital divide in emerging
economies (Case: Costa Rica)/ PORTLAND STATE UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
12) Higher education and entrepreneurship: The relation between college educational
background and all business success in Texas/ UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS/ PhD,
2005
13) Relationship-specific motives and cultural values in the crossborder franchisor-franchisee
relationship from the Puerto Rican franchisee's perspective/ THE GEORGE WASHINGTON
UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
14) Essays on the spatial distribution of population and employment/ THE UNIVERSITY OF
CHICAGO/ PhD, 2005

310
15) Consumer expectations of quality in Master of Business Administration programs: A
comparison between face-to-face learning and Web-delivered distance learning in schools of
business/ ALLIANT INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY, SAN DIEGO/ 2005
16) Psychological ownership in complex technology/ BENEDICTINE UNIVERSITY/ PhD,
2005
17) Corporate governance and financial reporting credibility/ NORTHWESTERN
UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
18) Product capital model: Modeling the value of design to corporate performance/ STANFORD
UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
19) Regulations, foreign presence, and efficiency of local firms: A multiple country study in
commercial banking/ UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA/ PhD, 2005
20) Catalog creative design and consumer demand: A spatial distance-metric approach/ THE
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO/ PhD, 2005
Chemistry
1) Multiply aromatic clusters via ab initio genetic algorithm/ UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY/
PhD,- 2005
2) Sol-gel zirconia- and titania-based surface-bonded hybrid organic-inorganic coatings for
sample preconcentration and analysis via capillary microextraction in hyphenation with gas
chromatography (CME-GC)/ UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA/ PhD, 2005
3) Reaction mechanisms for catalytic partial oxidation systems: Application to ethylene
epoxidation/ MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY/ PhD, 2005
4) Ionic liquids: Synthesis, solvation interactions, chromatographic characteristics, and micelle
formation/ IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
5) Chemistry of beta-ester radicals: Evidence supporting ion pair processes/ UNIVERSITY OF
ILLINOIS AT CHICAGO/ PhD, 2005
6) Electromagnetic excitation of high frequency acoustic shear waves for the study of
interfacial biochemical phenomena/ UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO (CANADA)/ PhD, 2005
7) Using the metal-ligand interaction to construct complex supramolecular polymer
architectures/ CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
8) Evolution of chemical composition along river drainage networks (Puerto Rico, Nepal)/
UNIVERSITY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE/ PhD, 2005
9) Characterization and mechanistic study of oxygen-iron intermediates in mononuclear
nonheme model systems/ UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA/ PhD, 2005
10) Chemistry of tetradecacarbonyltetraosmium/ SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY (CANADA)/
PhD, 2005
Communications
1) On the Interactions of News Media, Interpersonal Communication, Opinion Formation, and
Participation: Deliberative Democracy and the Public Sphere/ University of Pennsylvania,
PhD, 1997
2) Cross-Cultural Content Analysis of Advertising from the United States and India/ University
of Southern Mississippi, U.S., PhD, 1996
3) Getting By: Race and Parasocial Interaction in a Television Situation Comedy/ University of
Kentucky, U.S.A., PhD, 1994
4) An Examination of the Theory of the Commodity and its Application to Critical Media
Studies/ Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, MA, 1996
5) The Invisible Farm: The worldwide decline of farm news and agricultural journalism
training/ Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, MA, 1996
6) Student Perceptions of Rules for Classroom Interaction/ Louisiana State U, MA, 1992
7) The Questioning Behavior of Males And Females in an Undergraduate Language Class/
Indiana University of Pennsylvania, USA, PhD, 1997
8) Cultural Democracy: The Way Festivals Affect Society/ Queen Margaret University College,
Edinburgh, United Kingdom, MSc, 2002
9) On-line Virtual Museums: An Application of an On-line VR Museum for the Parthenon
Marbles: Internet: A Means of Cultural Repatriation/ University of York, United Kingdom,
MSc, 2002
10) Copyright, A Property of Communication, A Link Between Creativity and Control/
School of Communication, Simon Fraser University Can. 2004

311
11) Acting in the Name of Culture? The Participation of Organized Labour in the
Canadian Broadcasting Policy Process/ Communication and Culture, Ryerson
University, Can. 2005
12) There I Was, 250 Miles Away From My Groom: A Genealogy of Media Weddings/
Université de Montréal, 2005
13) The popular reception of new information and communication technologies in Niger/
SOUTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY AT CARBONDALE/ PhD, 2005
14) From the serialized story to the reality show: A theoretical approach to models of reading
and consuming about fiction and reality (Spanish text)/ THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA/
PhD, 2005
15) African-American women's reception, influence and utility of television content: An
exploratory qualitative analysis/ LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY AND
AGRICULTURAL & MECHANICAL COLLEGE/ PhD, 2005
16) The cultural politics of housing in a capitalist society: Representations of homelessness in
contemporary American newspapers/ INDIANA UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
17) Crime content and media economics: Gendered practices and sensational stories, 1950—
2000/ UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO (CANADA)/ PhD, 2005
Computer Science
1) The ALISA Shape Module: Adaptive Shape Recognition using a Radial Feature Token/
George Washington University, Washington DC, USA, PhD, 2002
2) R² - Heaps with Suspended Relaxation for Manipulating Priority Queues and a New
Algorithm for Reweighting Graphs/ University of Colorado Boulder, Colorado, USA, PhD,
1995
3) Beautiful Mates: Applying Principles of Beauty to Computer Chess Heuristics/ University of
Sussex, MSc, 1997
4) Distributed Programming in Ada with Protected Objects/ University of Alabama in
Huntsville, MS, 1998
5) Success Factors Among Community College Students in an Online Learning Environment/
Nova Southeastern University, U.S.A., PhD, 2000
6) A Spare Capacity Planning Methodology for Wide Area Survivable Networks/ University of
Pittsburgh, PhD, 1999
7) A Reactive Approach to Comprehensive Global Garbage Detection/ University of Dublin,
Trinity College, Ireland, PhD, 1998
8) Experience-Based Language Acquisition: A Computational Model of Human Language
Acquisition/ Louisiana State University, PhD, 2002
9) Application of Scheduling Theory to Spacecraft Constellations/ Florida Institute of
Technology, Melbourne, Florida U.S., MS, 2000
10) Context Mediation among Knowledge Discovery Components/ University of Ulster – UK,
PhD, 2004
11) A Machine Translation Approach to Cross Language Text Retrieval/ University of Glasgow,
Glasgow, United Kingdom, MSc, 1997
Demography
1) Population dynamics, health, and labor migration in Micronesia during the Japanese
occupation, 1919—1945/ PRINCETON UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
2) Essays in economics of the family: Incorporating cohabitation/ UNIVERSITY OF
WASHINGTON/ PhD, 2005
3) Women's lives through women's wills in the Spanish and Mexican borderlands, 1750--1846
(Texas, New Mexico)/ SOUTHERN METHODIST UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
Economics
1) Essays on Genetic Evolution and Economics/ Harvard University - Cambridge MA, USA,
PhD, 1997
2) Pricing, Demand Analysis and Simulation: An Application to a Water Utility/ University of
Sydney, Australia, PhD, 1998
3) The Role Of Multinational Companies In The Middle East: The Case Of Saudi Arabia/
University of Westminster, London, United Kingdom, PhD, 2002
4) Power and Control in Chinese Private Enterprises: Organizational Design in the Taiwanese
Media Industry/ London School of Economics and Political Science, MSc, 1995
5) Role of the Auditor General in Public Accountability - Some Issues/ University of New
England, MSc, 1991

312
6) The Impact of Japanese Investment on the New Town of Milton Keynes/ Leeds University
Business School, MA, 1996
7) Two Essays in Finance: Market Response to Catastrophic Losses on the Insurance Industry
and Return on Investment of the University of Illinois to the State of Illinois Treasury/
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, PhD, 1996
8) The limits of equality: An economic analysis of the Israeli Kibbutz/ NORTHWESTERN
UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
9) Essays on market design and strategic interaction/ CORNELL UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
10) Essays in environmental economics/ HARVARD UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
11) Long-run effects of E.P.A. designations of Superfund sites on housing values in Houston
(Texas) UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON/ PhD, 2005
12) Three essays on the economics of natural disasters (Ontario)/ UNIVERSITY OF GUELPH
(CANADA)/ PhD, 2005
13) Electronic commerce in business-to-business procurement: The effects on organizations/
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN/PhD, 2005
14) Two essays on selection models and one essay on income inequality in rural China/
BOSTON COLLEGE/ PhD, 2005
15) Essays on development and finance/ MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF
TECHNOLOGY/ PhD, 2005
16) Applied papers in public policy (New York)/ THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA/ PhD,
2005
17) Essays on the behavioral effects of tax policy/ THE UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE/ PhD,
2005
18) Growth and distributional effects of trade liberalization and alternative free trade
agreements: A macro-micro analysis with an application to Egypt/ THE GEORGE
WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
19) Essays on corporate governance/ UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA/ PhD, 2005
20) Implications of expanding bank powers into securities activities: Section 20 subsidiaries/
TEMPLE UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
Education
1) Differential Effects of a Multiple Intelligences Curriculum on Student Performance/ Harvard
University - Cambridge MA, USA., 2000
2) Cracking the Glass Ceiling: Factors Influencing Women's Attainment of Senior Executive
Positions/ Colorado State University, PhD, 1994
3) Online Distance Education:Historical Perspective and Practical Application/ American
Coastline University, PhD, 1997
4) Hong, Luoluo, Redefining Babes, Booze and Brawls: Men Against Violence -- Towards A
New Masculinity/ Louisiana State University, PhD, 1998
5) The Impact of Adventure-Based Training on Team Cohesion and Psychological Skills
Development in Elite Sporting Teams/ University of Wollongong - Wollongong, Australia,
PhD, 2002
6) Elemental Movement: A Somatic Approach to Movement Education/ Lesley University;
Cambridge, Massachusetts USA, MS, 2001
7) Alcohol and the Chosen Few: Organizational Reproduction in an Addictive System/ Indiana
University, PhD, 1995
8) Primary Education in Ecuador's Chota Valley: Reflections on Education and Social
Reproduction in the Development Era/ University of Denver, U.S.A., MA, 2000
9) An Ethnographic Study of a Special Education School: The Harris-Hillman Story/
Vanderbilt U, PhD, 1996
10) Instructional Technology, Motivation, Attitudes and Behaviors:An Investigation of At-Risk
Learners in the Middle School General Music Classroom/ Nova Southeastern University -
Fort Lauderdale, Florida, PhD, 2003
11) The Voices of Amerasians: Ethnicity, Identity, and Empowerment in Interracial Japanese
Americans/ Harvard University - Cambridge MA, USA, 1986
12) Cameroonian teachers' perceptions of culture, education, and mathematics/ The University
of Oklahoma, PhD, 2005
13) Buddhism and education in Burma: Varying conditions for a social ethos in the path to
'nibbana'/ PRINCETON UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
14) Recasting Alaska Native students: Success, failure and identity/ STANFORD
UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005

313
15) Strong to serve: The Alliance High School of Kikuyu, Kenya/ YALE UNIVERSITY/ PhD,
2005
16) The figured worlds of Mexican teens in Kentucky: Identity and educational decision
making/ UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY/ PhD, 2005
17) 'It just opens your eyes up': The impact of African American Studies courses on students in a
university setting/ TEMPLE UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
18) The effects of intercollegiate athletics success on private giving to athletic and academic
programs at National Collegiate Athletic Association institutions/ UNIVERSITY OF
OREGON/ PhD, 2005
19) Bayesian expert systems and multi-agent modeling for learner-centric Web-based education/
MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY/ PhD, 2005
20) ProgrammingLand: An automated system for computer science education/ NORTH
DAKOTA STATE UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
Engineering
1) Use of Activity-Based Costing in The Public Sector- MIT
2) Enabling Organizational Strategy through Effective Capital Programming-MIT
3) Financial Engineering For BOT Infrastructure Projects-MIT
4) Globalization of Construction and Real Estate Companines through Mergers and
Acquisitions-MIT
5) Capital Budgeting for Tren Urbano Extensions-MIT
6) Neurocontrol of a Cantilever Beam-MIT
7) Financing and Ownership Structures in International Project Finance-MIT
8) Stadium Financing a Case Study of the Stade de France-MIT
9) Effective Use of Integration Mechanisms for Complex Projects: An Empirical Analysis of
Building Projects-MIT
10) Risk Management in Toll Road Concessions-MIT
11) Real Option Approach to Investments in Electricity Generating Capacity-MIT
12) Collaborative Negotiation Methodology for an Innovative Procured, Multi-Cultural and
Multi-Phase Projects-MIT
13) Effective Partnering in an Innovative Procurred, Multi-Cultural Project-MIT
14) Portfolio Management and Deferred Maintenance at Universities-MIT
15) Risk Management in BOT Project-MIT
16) Bot In China: Opportunities And Challenges For Foreign Firms-MIT
17) Structural Assessment of Pile Supported Piers-MIT
18) Design Strategies for New and Renovation Construction that Increase the Capacity of
Buildings to Accommodate Change-MIT
19) System Dynamic Models for Construction Projects-MIT
20) The Climate Change Debate and Its Implications for Megacities-MIT
21) A Robust Planing and Control Methodology for Design-Build Fast-Track Civil Engineering
and Architectural Projects-MIT
22) Project Delivery and Planning Strategies for Public Owners-MIT
23) Risk in Global Infrastructure Project Financing-MIT
24) Framework to Assess a Facility's Capability to Accommodate Change: Application to
Renovated Buildings-MIT
25) Strategic Visitor & Ferry Management Plan: Boston Harbor Islands National Park Area-MIT
26) Simulation to Assess Plumbing and Fire Protection Systems-MIT
27) Adaptively Prestressed Concrete Structures-MIT
28) Management Systems for Infrastructure-MIT
29) Valuing Project Risk and Flexibity in Mining Resource Development-MIT
30) Innovative Design Approaches For Adaptable Multi-Unit Housing-MIT
31) Robust Control of Cost Impact on Fast-Tracking Building Construction Projects-MIT
32) Opportunities Created by Information Technology for the Executive in the Engineering and
Construction Industry-MIT
33) Multi-Organizational Project Teams and Construction Innovation: The Role of the General
Contractor and Construction Manager-MIT
34) Inter-Firm Collaboration in The Implementation of Structural Innovations in Building
Construction-MIT
35) The Entrepreneurial Process in Construction and Real Estate Ventures-MIT
36) Operational, Aesthetic, and Construction Process Performance for Innovative Passive and
Active Solar Building Components for Residential Building-MIT

314
37) Environment and Infrastructure Development in Mega-Cities: The Case of Shanghai, China-
MIT
38) State of the Art Review of Methodologies for Dispute Avoidance and Resolution in Large
Scale Engineering Systems-MIT
39) AFramework For Strategic Thinking In The Global Market For Large-Scale Japanese
Construction Firms-MIT
40) Effect of Delivery Systems on Collaborative Negotiations for Large Scale Infrastructure
Projects-MIT
41) Taiwan's Industrial Structural Change and Its Implication on Energy Intensity-MIT
42) Infrastructure Management for Tren Urbano-MIT
43) Transport Development: Impact Study of the London-Stockholm Corridor-MIT
44) Controlling Interfaces: A Key to Project Success-MIT
45) Dynamic Planning and Control Methodology for Large-Scale Concurrent Construction
Projects-MIT
46) Stages in Project Financing: A Comparative Analysis of Independent Power Projects in
Three Developing Countries India, Indonesia, and Peru-MIT
47) Three-Tiered Procurement Framework for U.S. Navy Waterfront Facilities-MIT
48) Technology and Policy for Removal of Sulfur from Fuel-MIT
49) Integrated Approach for the Analysis and Management of Urban Relocation and
Infrastructure Development Projects: The Case of Southwestern Suburbs of Beirut,
Lebanon-MIT
50) Managing the Development of the Real Estate Portfolios of State Transportation Authorities
in the Boston Area-MIT
51) Study of Firm's Behavior in the B2B E-Business Regime-MIT
52) Economic Modeling of Urban Pollution and Climate Policy Interactions-MIT
53) The future of the Port Of Beirut-MIT
54) Environmental Liability, Policy and Technology in Real Estate Development-MIT
55) Private Risk-MIT
56) Agent-Based Techniques For National Infrastructure Simulation-MIT
57) Transit Oriented Development Strategy: Guangzhou Case Study-MIT
58) Improved Capital Programming Powered By GASB 34 Compliance: A Case Study From
Winchester, MA-MIT
59) Green Development: Creating Incentives for Developers-MIT
60) Strategy for Penetrating Engineering & Construction Markets In Southeast Asia for
Singapore through BOT Contract-MIT
61) Methodology for Achieving GASB 34 Modified Approach Compliance Using U.S. Navy
"Smart Base" Facility Management Practices-MIT
62) Fundamental Analysis and Conceptual Model for Corporate Strategy in Global Engineering
and Construction Markets-MIT
63) Comparative Analysis of Energy Consumption Trends in Cohousing and Alternate Housing
Arrangements-MIT
64) Outsourcing Transportation Infrastructure Maintenance: a theoretical approach with
application to JR East-MIT
65) Overseas Projects Financed by International Institutions for Japanese Construction Firms-
MIT
66) Lean Enterprise in the Construction Industry-MIT
67) The Valuation of Construction Companies-MIT
68) A Study of the Naval Construction Force Project Material Supply Chain-MIT
69) Application of Lean Enterprise Concept to Construction Firms in Japan-MIT
70) Validation of the Project Definition Rating Index (PDRI) for MIT Building Projects-MIT
71) High fidelity miniaturized antennas and filters for wireless applications- The University of
Michigan
72) An algorithm for selection of power supply systems for mems devices- The University of
Michigan
73) Microthermoelectric cooler- The University of Michigan
74) Remotely-powered wireless monitoring systems- The University of Michigan
75) Mixed-signal circuit design issues in nanoscale PD-SOI- The University of Michigan
76) A wireless microsystem for neural stimulating microprobes- The University of Michigan

315
77) The integration of potentiometric and optical chemical sensor arrays- The University of
Michigan
78) Low-voltage and low-power, deep-submicron analog circuits for single-chip, mixed-signal
microinstrumentation systems- The University of Michigan
79) CMOS-integrated liquid chemical microdetection systems- The University of Michigan
80) Monolithic and top-down clock synthesis wıth micromachined radio frequency reference-
The University of Michigan
81) Microfluidic biochemical analysis system with electro-osmotic pump and thermally
responsive polymer valve- The University of Michigan
82) MEMS angular rate and angular acceleration sensors with CMOS switched capacitor signal
conditioning- The University of Michigan
83) Silicon recording arrays with integrated circuitry for in-vivo neural data compression- The
University of Michigan
84) Digital circuit design techniques for low-leakage silicon-on-insulator (SOI) CMOS
technologies- The University of Michigan
85) Thin-film technologies for hermetic and vacuum packaging of MEMS- The University of
Michigan
86) Microfabricated voltammetric neuro-arrays for use in-vitro- The University of Michigan
87) Investigations of brain-machine interface system-control exploiting local field potential
oscillations in motor cortex- The University of Michigan
88) Techniques for thermal and pneumatic programming of column selectivity and methods for
reducing the impact of extra-column band broadening on system performance- The
University of Michigan
89) A wireless microsystem for multichannel neural recording microprobes- The University of
Michigan
90) Control of Sensory Perception for Discrete Event Systems- Australian National University
91) Terrain Aided Localisation of Autonomous Vehicles in Unstructured Environments- The
University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia
92) A Preliminary Study of the Structural Dynamic Behavior of the NASA Manned Spacecraft
Center (MSC) Centrifuge- Madison University - Madison, USA
Geography
1) Modeling Carbon Fluxes, Net Primary Production, and Light Utilization in Boreal Forest
Stands, PhD, University of Maryland, 1996
2) Dendroarchaeological and contextual investigations of remote log structures in Jasper,
Banff, and Kootenay National Parks, Canada (Alberta, British Columbia),UNIVERSITY OF
VICTORIA (CANADA), 2004, MSc
3) Walden: A sacred geography (Massachusetts, Henry David Thoreau)/ ANTIOCH NEW
ENGLAND GRADUATE SCHOOL/ PhD, 2005
4) Urban-regional clusters and the mutual fund industry in the United States/ STATE
UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK AT BUFFALO/ PhD, 2005
5) The Tunica miracle, sin and savior in America's Ethiopia: A poverty and social impact
analysis of casino gaming in Tunica, Mississippi/ THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE
UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
History
1) 'Men and Women of Their Own Kind': Historians and Antebellum Reform/ George Mason
University - Fairfax, Virginia, USA, MA, 2001
2) The Nature of Resistance in South Carolina's Works Progress Administration Ex-Slave
Narratives/ University of Toledo - Ohio – USA, MA, 1990
3) Chemawa Indian Boarding School: The First One Hundred Years, 1880 to 1980/ Dartmouth
College, MA, 1997
4) 'The Atlas of Independency': The ideas of John Owen (1616--1683) in the North Atlantic
Christian world/ KANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
5) 'With eyes before and behind': Time, rhetoric, and the vision of medieval history (England,
William of Newburgh, Henry of Huntingdon, Matthew Paris, Geoffrey of Monmouth)/ THE
GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
6) 'Almighty God created the races': Theologies of marriage and race in anti-miscegenation
cases, 1865—1967/ THE CLAREMONT GRADUATE UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005

316
7) 'An American type': The Kikuchi diaries, a cultural biography (1941--1947) (Charles
Kikuchi)/ HARVARD UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
Information Technology/ Information Systems
1) Communication of Information Technology Project Sponsors and Managers in Buyer-Seller
Relationships/ Brunel University - Uxbridge, UK, PhD, 2003
2) A full-scale semantic content-based model for interactive multimedia information systems/
LSE (London School of Economics), PhD, 1997
3) Making Sense of Mobile ICT-Enabled Trading in Fast Moving Financial Markets as
Volatility-Control Ambivalence: Case Study on the Organisation of Off-Premises Foreign
Exchange at a Middle-East Bank/ LSE, 2005
4) Supporting Design Understanding in Evolutionary Prototyping: An Application of Change
Theory and Semiotics/ LSE, 1997
5) Global Practices and Local Interests: Implementing Information Technology-Based Change
in a Developing Country Context/ LSE, 2000
6) Risk Perception, Trust and Credibility: A Case in Internet Banking/ LSE, 2000
7) The Role of Information Systems Evaluation across an Extended System Life Cycle/ LSE,
1996
8) Formality and Informality in Internal Control Systems: A Comparative Study of Control in
Different Social and Cultural Environments in a Global Bank/ LSE, 2002
9) Information Systems and Organisational Change: The Case of Flexible Specialisation in
Cyprus/ LSE, 1999
10) The Challenges in Assimilating E-business in Large Established Organizations: A
Structurational Examination of the E-Business Development at an American Auto
Manufacturer/ LSE, 2004
11) Making Sense of Emergent Properties in IT Enabled Call Centre Operations: An Interpretive
Systems Analysis Approach/LSE, 2003
12) Using Precedents to Identify Top Management Fraud: the Study of a Case-Based Learning
and Reasoning Model/ LSE, 1996
13) Integrating On-line Learning Technologies into Higher Education: A Case Study of Two UK
Universities/ LSE, 2004
14) Interpreting the Management of Information Systems Security/ LSE, 1995
15) Interpreting The Implementation Of Integrated Packaged Software: The Case Of Enterprise
Resource Planning/ LSE, 2005
16) Signs and Signals: The Conception of Communication in U.S. Telecommunications
Rhetoric/ LSE, 2001
17) The Interplay of Institutional Forces behind Higher ICT Education in India/ LSE, 2005
18) Evaluating Organsational Privacy Policy Implementation/ LSE, 2004
19) Making Sense of Knowledge Creation Processes: The Case of a Greek Petrochemical
Company/ LSE, 2005
20) The Strategic Dimensions of Information Systems Capability: Case Studies in a Developing
Country Context/ LSE, 1996
21) Computers and the Family: A Study of Technology in the Domestic Sphere/ LSE, 2000
22) Learning Technology in Higher Education: A Structurational Perspective on Technology
Mediated Learning Practices/ LSE, 2005
23) The Role of Information Systems in Islamic Banking: An Ethnographic Study/ LSE, 2005
24) India’s Information Technology Industry: Adapting to Globalisation and Policy Change in
the 1990s/ LSE, 1997
25) The Impact of Using DSS for National Debt Management/ LSE, 1998
26) Explanation in Information Systems: A Design Rationale Approach/ LSE, 2002
27) Regulating the Technological Actor: How Governments Tried to Transform the Technology
and the Market for Cryptography and the Implications for the Regulation of Information and
Communications Technologies/ LSE, 2003
28) Group Interaction and the Learning Process through Computer Conferencing/ LSE, 2002
29) The Social Epistemology of Open Source Software Development: The Linux Case Study/
LSE
30) Information Technology as Ontology: a Phenomenological Investigation into Information
Technology and Strategy In-the-World/ LSE, 2002

317
31) Transaction Cost Applications in Information Systems: Explicating Institutions' Influences
on Governance/ LSE, 2000
32) Knowledge, Development and Technology: Internet Use among Voluntary-sector AIDS
Organisations in KwaZulu-Natal/ LSE, 2005
33) Emerging Work Practices of ICT-Enabled Mobile Professionals/ LSE, 2003
34) Banking and Innovation: The Case of Payment Systems Modernisation in Thailand/ LSE,
1999
35) Telehealth And Information Society: A Critical Study of Emerging Concepts in Policy and
Practice/ LSE, 2001
36) The Transformation of IT Governance: A Neo-Institutional Interpretation/ LSE, 2005
37) Temporal Implications of Information Systems in Organisational Work: An Exploratory
Study/ LSE, 1997
38) Initiating System Innovation: a Technological Frames Analysis of the Origins of Groupware
Projects/ LSE, 2000
Language/ Literature/ Linguistics
1) The Publishing History of Aubrey Beardsley's Compositions for Oscar Wilde's Salomé/
Marquette University - Milwaukee, Wisconsin – USA, PhD, 1995
2) Diary as Fiction:Dostoevskyís Notes from Underground and Turgenevís Diary of a
Superfluous Man/ Boston College, U.S., MA, 2000
3) A Computational Phonology of Russian/ University of Oxford – UK, PhD, 2000
4) The Publishing History of Aubrey Beardsley's Compositions for Oscar Wilde's Salomé/
Marquette University - Milwaukee, Wisconsin – USA, PhD, 1995
5) La Novela de las Transnacionales: Hacia Una Nueva Clasificación/ The University of
Alabama Tuscaloosa, USA, PhD, 2001
6) Yasukuni Shrine and the Constraints on the Discourses of Nationalism in Twentieth-Century
Japan/ U of Kansas, MA, 1996
7) J. Henry Shorthouse, "The Author of John Inglesant" (with reference to T. S. Eliot and C. G.
Jung)/ University of London, England, PhD, 1995
8) Cinematic Techniques in the Prose Fiction of Beatriz Guido/ Michigan State University,
USA, PhD, 1974
9) Fictionality and Reality in Narrative Discourse: A Reading of Four Contemporary
Taiwanese Writers/ University of Washington, Seattle, U.S., PhD, 1990
10) The Plays of Christopher Marlowe and George Peele: Rhetoric and Renaissance Sensibility/
University of Aberdeen, Scotland, PhD, 1999
11) Master Players in a Fixed Game: An Extra-Literary History of Twentieth Century African-
American Authors/ University of Michigan, PhD, 2001
12) Hawthorne's The Marble Faun: A Re-appraisal/ California State University, San Diego, MA,
1972
13) Julien Gracq and the art of anachronism: Thematic, intertextual and aesthetic parallels with
the fin de siecle (France)/ Columbia University, PhD, 2005
14) American modernism and Depression documentary/ University of Pennsylvania, PhD, 2005
15) American regionalist modernism: Willa Cather, William Faulkner, Oscar Zeta Acosta, and
Sandra Cisneros/ New York University, PhD, 2005
16) The aesthetics of resistance: Modernism and antifascism/ Indiana University, PhD, 2005
17) 'Far out past': Hemingway, manhood, and modernism (Ernest Hemingway)/ The College of
William and Mary, PhD, 2005
18) The poetics of Terayama Shuji (Japan)/ Yale University, PhD, 2005
19) Can Anyone Say What is Reasonable?": Promoting, accommodating to, and resisting elite
rhetorical inquiry in a high-school classroom/ Georgetown University, 1998
20) A Coherence-Based Approach to the Interpretation of Non-Sentential Utterances in
Dialogue/ University of Edinburgh
21) A Comparative Analysis of Thai and English Contrastive Discourse Markers: With a
discussion of the pedagogical implications/ Boston University, 1999
22) A Contrastive Study of Syntactic Relations, Cohesion, and Punctuation as Markers of
Rhetorical Organization in Arabic and English Narrative Texts, University of Exeter,
1993
23) A Corpus Linguistic Analysis of Phraseology and Collocation in the Register of Current
European Union Administrative French/ University of St. Andrews, 2002

318
24) A Corpus-Based Analysis of Simultaneous Speech in English Conversation/ Victoria
University of Wellington, 1997
25) A Corpus-Based Discourse Analysis of the Bei-Construction in Chinese Written Discourse:
A study with special reference to the be-passive in English/ Ball State University ,
Department of English, 2005
26) A Critical Discourse Analysis of University ESL Classrooms: Power and accommodation/
Arizona State University , Department of English, 2003
27) A Data-Driven Methodology for Motivating a Set of Coherence Relations/ University of
Edinburgh , School of Informatics, 1996
28) A Discourse Analysis of the Interview Process in a Private Social Service Setting/
University of Georgia , Linguistics Program, 1999
29) A Government Approach to Finnish-English Intrasentential Code-switching/ University of
Southern California , Department of Linguistics, 1994
30) A Sociopragmatic Approach to the Use of Meta-Discourse Features in Effective Non-Native
and Native speaker Composition Writing/ University of South Carolina , Program
in Linguistics, 2001
31) Antonymy and Semantic Range in English/ Northwestern University , Department
of Linguistics, 1997
32) Corpus Linguistics, Contextual Collocation and ESP Syllabus Design: A text analysis
approach to the study of medical research articles/ University of Birmingham ,
School of English
33) Informalization in UK General Election Propaganda: 1964-1997/ University of Leeds ,
School of English, 2002
34) Lexical Vagueness in Student Writing/ University of Cambridge , Research Centre
for English and Applied Linguistics, 2003
35) Passive Prototypes, Topicality and Conceptual Space/ University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill , Department of Linguistics, 2004
36) Patterns of Stance in English/ Northern Arizona University , Applied Linguistics,
2000
37) Politeness in Cypriot Greek: A frame-based approach/ University of Cambridge ,
Department of Linguistics, 2001
38) Pronunciation Modeling in Speech Synthesis/ University of Pennsylvania ,
Department of Linguistics, 1998
39) Recurrent Features of Translation in Canada: A corpus-based Study/ University of
Ottawa , Department of Computational Linguistics, 2004
40) Situation-Based Intonation Pattern Distribution in a Corpus of American English/
University of Washington , Linguistics, 2005
Maths
1) Some Notes on the Theory of Hilbert Spaces of Analytic Functions on the Unit Disc/
University of California at Berkeley, PhD, 1994
2) Some Notes on Game Bounds/ University of California at Berkeley, MA, 1991
3) Radiative Transfer Using Boltzmann Transport Theory/ Chicago State University Chicago,
USA, MSc, 1998
4) Affine Lie algebras, vertex operator algebras and combinatorial identities/ NORTH
CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
5) Learning, adaptation and optimization: The nonnegative Boltzmann machine and the
tunneling salesman algorithm/ PRINCETON UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
6) Boundary regularity for conformally compact Einstein metrics in even dimensions/
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON/ PhD, 2005
7) Generalized Tate cohomology/ UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY/ PhD, 2005
8) Morphlets: A multiscale representation for diffeomorphisms/ HARVARD UNIVERSITY/
PhD, 2005
9) Computational improvements in the substitution method for bounding percolation
thresholds/ THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
10) Assessment practices in grade 9 academic and applied mathematics/ QUEEN'S
UNIVERSITY AT KINGSTON (CANADA)/ Med, 2005

319
11) Mathematics: Liminal perspectives from those living on the margin/ THE OHIO STATE
UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
12) A conflict in values: The dilemma of equity, diversity, and participation in higher
mathematics/ UNIVERSITY OF MONTANA/ PhD, 2005
Music
1) New Tonality: An examination of the style with analyses of James Hopkins' 'Songs of
Eternity', Paul Moravec's 'Songs of Love and War', and an original composition/ University
of Northern Colorado, 2005
2) Musical poetics and political ideology in the work of Luigi Nono (Italy)/ PhD, Yale
University, 2005
3) A pioneering twentieth-century African-American musician: The choral works of George T.
Walker/ THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
4) Use of time and spatial form in String Quartet No. 2 by Charles Ives (with Original
composition)/ UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN/ PhD, 2005
5) Twentieth-century flesh on an eighteenth-century skeleton: An analysis of George Walker's
'Poeme for Violin and Orchestra'/ MORGAN STATE UNIVERSITY/ MA, 2005
Philosophy/ Religion/ Theology
1) Augustine, Manichaeism and the Good/ University of Ottawa and St. Paul University,
Canada, PhD, 1996
2) Overcoming Women's Subordination in the Igbo African Culture and in the Catholic Church:
Envisioning an Inclusive Theology with Reference to Women/ Graduate Theological
Foundation, Indiana, USA, PhD, 2001
3) Does God Change?: Reconciling the Immutable God with the God of Love/ Sydney College
of Divinity - Sydney, Australia, MA, 1998
4) The Pretribulation Rapture Doctrine and the Progressive Dispensational System: Are They
Compatible?/ Regent College - Vancouver, Canada, MA, 2003
5) Origen of Alexandria and St. Maximus the Confessor: An Analysis and Critical Evaluation
of Their Eschatological Doctrines/ St. Elias School of Orthodox Theology Seward, NE,
USA, PhD, 2004
6) The Authenticity of the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares and Its Interpretation/
Westminster College in collaboration with Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, England, PhD, 1991
7) Sermons, Systems and Strategies: The Geographic Strategies of the Methodist Episcopal
Church in its Expansion into New York State, 1788 – 1810/ Syracuse University, Syracuse,
New York, USA, PhD, 1988
8) Nichiren's Nationalism: A Buddhist Rhetoric of a Shinto Teaching/ Univ of Hawaii at
Manoa, USA, MA, 1992
9) Conduct and Behavior as Determinants for the Afterlife: Comparison of the Judgments of
the Dead in Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece/ Florida State University, USA, PhD, 2000
10) The Process of the Cosmos: Philosophical Theology and Cosmology/ Flinders University of
South Australia, PhD, 1998
11) Canon 1096 on Ignorance with Application to Tribunal and Pastoral Practice/ Saint Paul
University, University of Ottawa, Canada, PhD, 2001
Physics
1) Electronic and Optical Properties of Semiconductors: A Study Based on the Empirical Tight
Binding Model/ Worcester Polytechnic Institute, PhD, 1993
2) The Manufacture of High Temperature Superconducting Tapes and Films/ University of
Southampton, U.K., PhD, 1996
3) An Improved Form for the Electrostatic Interactions of Polyelectrolytes in Solution and its
Implications for the Analysis of QELSS Experiments on Sodium Dodecyl Sulfate and Cetyl
Trimethyl Ammonium Bromide Solutions/ Worcester Polytechnic Institute, PhD, 1997
4) Development of the COAMPS adjoint mesoscale modeling system for assimilating
microwave radiances within hurricanes/ THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
5) Application of effective field theory to density functional theory for finite systems/ THE
OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
6) Cold nitric oxide molecules from a Stark guide/ THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA/
PhD, 2005
7) A precision measurement of the top quark mass/ BOSTON UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
8) NMR investigations of hydrogen occupation and mobility in palladium and ettringite/
WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005

320
9) Numerical simulation of a single emitter colloid thruster in pure droplet cone-jet mode/
MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY/ PhD, 2005
10) Searching for new physics: Contributions to LEP and the LHC/ THE UNIVERSITY OF
WISCONSIN – MADISON/ PhD, 2005
Political Science
1) Terrorist Groups Are Aligning To Conduct Global Terrorism
Breyer State University - Kamiah Idaho – USA, 2003
2) The New World Order
An Economic Global Regime
California State University, U.S, 1994
3) Johnson, McNamara, and the Birth of SALT and the ABM Treaty 1963-1969
Kings College, London, 1996
4) Institutional Change in the Horn of Africa
The allocation of property rights and implications for development
University of California, Los Angeles, 1995
5) UK Aid Policy and Practice 1974-90
An Analysis of the Poverty-Focus, Gender-Consciousness and Environmental Sensitivity of
British Official Aid
University of Liverpool, United Kingdom, 1994
6) Party Mobilization, Class and Ethnicity
The Case of Hawaii, 1930 to 1964
Indiana University, 1996
7) Africa and the Democratic Option
A Quest for Effectiveness and Legitimacy in Governance
Clark-Atlanta University - Atlanta, Ga. U.S.A, 1992
8) The Politics of Transnational Television
Beyond the Cultural Imperialism Question
Clark-Atlanta University - Atlanta, Ga. U.S.A, 1994
9) Democratic Peace
In the Spectrum of Conflicts in Sub-Saharan Africa
University of Bradford Bradford/England, 2000
10) Regional integration and the challenge of economic development: The case of the Common
Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA)/ RUTGERS THE STATE
UNIVERSITY OF NEW JERSEY – NEWARK/ PhD, 2005
11) The phenomenology of courage (Plato, Herodotus, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Alexis de
Tocqueville)/ GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
12) Interjurisdictional competition and urban area fragmentation/ UNIVERSITY OF
MARYLAND, COLLEGE PARK/ PhD, 2005
13) Essays on political and economic attitudes/ COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
14) Making a global commodity: The production of markets and cotton in Egypt, Turkey, and
the United States/ NEW YORK UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
15) Authoritarian order as an equilibrium outcome of distributional battles in politics: The logic
of war and political collusion in 19th and 20th century Mexico/ STANFORD
UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
Psychology
1) Repressive defensiveness in masters level psychology students: Implications for practice/
Tennessee State University, PhD 2004
2) A cross-discipline evaluation of clinical skills, knowledge base, and approaches to treatment
in a psychiatric emergency, Tennessee State University PhD 2004
3) The master's tools...maori development inside pakeha psychology. MA, Hamilton:
University of Waikato. New Zealand(1994).
4) Cultural safety within Clinical Psychology: A Maori perspective. MA. Hamilton: University
of Waikato 1997
5) The learning preferences of Maori university students - cooperative, competitive,
individualistic or intra-ethnic. MA. Hamilton: University of Waikato. 1991
6) A scale to measure motivation and behaviour in psychological experiments, 1972
7) Are we a violent society? Waikato University Psychology students' perceptions of violent
crime and sentencing. 2004
8) Proactive lucidity: Superconsciousness, creativity, and the virtually real. 2004

321
9) Place attachment and traditional place: An examination of the land, identity and wellbeing
relationship between Ngai Te Ahi and Hairini Marae. 2003
10) Client and caregiver perceptions of prodromal symptoms of relapse of schizophrenia in
Aotearoa University of Waikato 2002
11) Hazard Perception and headway: The influences of drivers' perception skills on their car
following behaviour. University of Waikato 2001.
12) Maori Identity within Whanau University of Waikato 1996
13) A Comparison of Two Approaches of Symbolic Modeling and Self-Efficacy/ Indiana State
University, U.S., PhD, 1999
14) Parental Alienation Syndrome in Court Referred Custody Cases/ Northcentral University,
Prescott, Arizona, PhD, 2001
15) Juvenile Firesetting: An Exploratory Analysis/ Indiana University, USA, PhD, 2000
16) A Study of the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) with Japanese Subjects/ Southern
California University for Professional Studies, PhD, 1998
17) Aching to Age/ Barrington University, Des Moines, Iowa, 1999
18) Paradox Lost and Paradox Regained: An Object Relations Analysis of Two Flannery
O'Connor Mother-Child Dyads/ The San Francisco School of Psychology, U.S., PhD, 1999
19) Shades of Community and Conflict: Biracial Adults of African-American and Jewish-
American Heritages/ The Wright Institute: Berkeley, California, PhD, 1998
20) The Impact of an Anti-Bullying Program on the Prevalence of Bullying in Junior and Senior
High School/ North Central University, Prescott, Arizona, US, PhD, 2000
21) Cognitive, Contextual, and Personality Factors in Wife Abuse/ Kansas State University,
PhD, 1995
Sociology
1) Farmers' Rural Community Attachment-A Structural Symbolic Interactionist Explanation/
South Dakota State University - Brookings, SD USA, PhD, 2002
2) Towards the Formation of a Sustainable South Florida-An Analysis of Conflict Resolution
and Consensus Building in the South Florida Ecosystem Restoration Initiative/ Florida
International University, Miami, Florida, USA, 1999, PhD
3) Reframing the Attitude-Behavior Debate:The Case of Meat-Abstinence in Vegetarian
Student Cooperatives/ University of Michigan, MS, 1995
4) The Politics of Death: A Sociological Analysis of Revolutionary Communication/
University of Colorado, PhD, 1974
5) Sex differences in rape reporting/ Iowa State University, MS, 1995
6) NHS Complaints Managers: A Study of the Conflicts and Tensions in their Role/ London
School of Economics and Political Science, University of London, London, UK, PhD,
2004
7) Women in Transition: Discourses of Menopause/ University of Windsor, Windsor,
Ontario, Canada, MA, 2002
8) Student Perceptions of Rules for Classroom Interaction/ Louisiana State University, MA,
1992
9) Modernisation and social development in Saudi Arabia: An exploratory study of the
attitudes of students at King Abdul Aziz University towards individual modernity/ PhD,
University of Essex (United Kingdom), 2005
10) Transnational networks and community-based organizations: The dynamics of AIDS
activism in Tijuana and Mexico City (Mexico)/ UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN
DIEGO/ PhD, 2005
11) Innovation, imitation, legitimacy and deviance in the design of graphical trademarks in the
United States, 1884—2003/ THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA/ PhD, 2005
12) Faculty perceptions of academic freedom at a metropolitan university: A case study/
VIRGINIA COMMONWEALTH UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
13) Why neighborhoods matter: Structural and cultural influences on adolescents in poor
communities (Massachusetts)/ HARVARD UNIVERSITY/ PhD, 2005
Town Planning
1)Locating the Slovenian nation: Competing folkloristic, state planning, and local
constructions of the Trnovo neighborhood, 1895—1989/ University of Pennsylvania, PhD,
2005

322
323
APPENDIX G:

Interview 1

Interviewee says:
slm!
Interviewer says:
Hello ----, are you there?
Interviewee says:
yes hello!
Interviewer says:
Everything OK? Shall we start?
Interviewee says:
yes - let's
Interviewer says:
First of all, how do you feel about EFL501 as a graduate course?
Interviewee says:
very useful to students who are about to start their thesis
Interviewer says:
Can you elaborate a bit on this usefulness?
Interviewee says:
most of the students prior to taking this course had been away from English for a
while. This course gave them a chance to reacquaint with for example grammar,
vocabulary and most importanty writing skills such as orga
Interviewee says:
inzation, detailing, etc. Most of the time most were not familiar with functions
necessary in specific genres in this case thesis writing.
Interviewer says:
I know that you've taught this course to 2 different groups. Could you please talk
a bit about the student profiles?
Interviewee says:
Focusing on these specific functions enable students to approach thesis writing
more confidently; they feel safe knowing when to use the right type of language
in the right place. Again most of these students had not any training in academic
writing and being introduced to academic writing conventions gave them the
chance to express themselves in a style and manner acceptable acceptable in an
acad
Interviewee says:
emic environment.
Interviewer says:
I know that you've taught this course to 2 different groups. Could you please talk
a bit about the student profiles?
Interviewee says:
The first group were mainly students at intermediate level (as in Prep) who
struggled quite a bit in expressing themselves in writing and they had major
grammar problems. The second group had a variety of students. Some were
native-like students who only needed to learn about style and academic writing

324
conventions. Few others were more advanced (upper intermediate) and they had a
variety of proble
Interviewee says:
'ms such grammar, vocabulary and elaboration of ideas. And the rest was of basic
level; they needed some very basic training in English.
Interviewer says:
I can see that there was a variety of students and levels within and among these
groups. So are we in a position to say that the problems were specific to one
group only? Or can we talk about some common problems? If so, can you please
list the most most common problems faced?
Interviewee says:
common problems - vocabulary, coherence, grammar, organization and
alaboration of ideas
Interviewee says:
elaboration of ideas
Interviewer says:
What do you think could be done to reduce the problems these students face?
Interviewer says:
What more?
Interviewee says:
practice practice & practice in writing and definitely more exposure to Engish
throughout their academic career. And of course guidance in dealing with
problems specific to each individual. Being exposed to excerpts from published
thesis could be very useful too.
Interviewer says:
Do you think the EFL501 course you were teaching suited the needs of these
students?
Interviewee says:
within the limited time - yes
Interviewer says:
Did you observe any concrete developments in these students' use of the
language at the end of the course? Mostly in terms of what?
Interviewee says:
yes - mostly better and more formal word choice. It seemed that students paid
closer attention to use of correct grammar, expressed ideas more coherently and
used academic writing conventions more accurately.
Interviewer says:
Thanks for your patience....Just a couple of more questions....Would you teach
this course in the same way and using the same approach and materials if you
taught it again? If not, what changes/additions/deletions would you make and
why?
Interviewee says:
I would change the reading materials which set models for students. would chose
more authentic texts e.g. excerpts from published thesis. would still focus on
teaching functions and the students would be introduced to them through the
formentioned authentic texts. Instead of asking students to do separate writing
homework for each function, I would try to encourage them to produce texts with
appr
Interviewee says:
opriate functions throughout the semester which would all fit different sections of

325
a standard work of thesis e.g. introduction, conclusion, abstract, etc. The amount
of work they produce - I would not change that.
Interviewer says:
I don't understand the last bit.....'the amount of work they produce'??
Interviewee says:
they had to do writing homework each week. And each homework - some
students had to rewrite it twice or more.
Interviewer says:
I see, but you would ask this work to be more in the context of parts of a thesis?
I'm just checking my own comprehension ))))
Interviewee says:
Yes of course.
Interviewer says:
Last question....Some faculties have recently made this course a compulsory
course for their graduate students. How do you feel about this?
Interviewee says:
I think all the other ones should do the same
Interviewer says:
---------, thanks a lot. I really appreciate it. I'm hoping to transfer the course back
to you next semester with some improvements.
Interviewee says:
Wish could have helped more. U know I am more of a morning person - I hope
my answers have been sufficient. Would love to see the improvements you have
made.
Interviewer says:
Take care!!!!!Thanks a lot. Have a good night's sleep.
Interviewee says:
No problem Nilgun. I have enjoy
Interviewee says:
ed it. Sleep well and have a good Sunday. See you soon.
Interviewee says:
And oh yes please let me know about the DVD...
Interviewer says:
Definitely, iyi geceler

326
APPENDIX H:

Interview 2

Interviewee says:
Hi we are ready, are you?
Interviewer says:
Please disregard the last 502 course that you have taught while answering the
questions
Interviewee says:
ok
Interviewer says:
With how many different groups have you taught EFL 502, previously 501?
Interviewee says:
Oh dear, I've failed on the first item. I don't know, but I must have taught this
course six to eight times, I should think.
Interviewer says:
Could you describe globally your experiences with these groups of students
Interviewee says:
On the whole, the students have been willing, motivated, aware that they need
help with their writing. There have been some excellent students, but a number do
have serious academic writing problems for students at postgraduate level.
Interviewer says:
Could you please talk a little bit about the student profiles, in terms of
backgrounds, nationalities, levels, post graduate studies and anything else you
think is worth mentioning
Interviewee says:
They have mostly been masters students, with more recently a growing number
of phd students; nationalities have varied, with the majority being Turkish
speaking. But again more recently, there has been an increase in foreign students
from Iran, Palestine, Eritrea, and Algeria to name just four. Their fields of study
have varied from year to year according really to the emphasis and importance...
Interviewee says:
...given to this course in departments. Architecture, Economics, and
Communications have been particularly common... Academically, the foreign
students academic and linguistic background has tended to be stronger than the
Turkish speakers, though there have been exceptions.
Interviewer says:
your last comment....What's the reason for this do you think?
Interviewee says:
I can't answer that factually, but I suspect the taking of post-graduate courses for
our Turkish-speakers has become somewhat ritualised, and that the economic
pressure on departments to accept students to take courses even when their level
of achievement is not particularly high is quite marked...
Interviewee says:

327
It may also be that the foreign students are more of an 'elite' group in their own
countries, and we are getting better students from the top range only, whereas
with the local students we enjoy the 'whole range'.
Interviewer says:
You mentioned some students having serious academic writing problems. Were
the problems specific to some groups or can you generalise? What were the most
common problems faced by these students in writing? Can you please try to rank
the problematic areas starting with the most serious?
Interviewee says:
OK...I think I can probably safely generalise...
Interviewee says:
1) Lack of preparedness, meaning they are writing too early without a clear idea
of where they are going.
Interviewee says:
2) Lexis and language problems, particularly the former. In fact, please rank this
as number one, because it is the most difficult problem to solve in the short-term,
whereas preparedness and organisational issues can be dealt with rather more
easily. Specifically: their lexical range is not very high, which can lead their work
to be quite repetitive, and their accuracy breaks down, because...
Interviewee says:
...their knowledge of the grammar of individual items is weak, e.g. accompanying
prepositions, and their sense of collocations is limited.
Interviewee says:
4) The limited lexis can make lexical chains quite problematic, as their sense of
synonymy and the need for variety in writing is quite limited.
Interviewee says:
5) Similarly, this leads to problem with nuances, e.g that 'claim' implies a
somewhat critical view on the part of the writer, whereas 'As X states' tends to
indicate support; This problem with nuance also leads to problems in such areas
as hedging, making exaggerated claims for their own research and so on.
Interviewee says:
Structural problems also exist and are marked by a limited range of competence,
but do not present such a great problem in the writing process.
Interviewer says:
Can you clarify/exemplify the structural problems?
Interviewee says:
Yes, there are still marked performance errors with active / passive, with relative
clauses, reduction, positioning and appropriacy of discourse markers, and more
basic areas with tense and agreement. Prepositions are always a problem, and in
fact one real area in English where even very good students struggle is in fact the
use of articles
Interviewer says:
What do you think are some solutions to these concrete problems that you have
mentioned?
Interviewee says:
1) More language work before they reach these critical postgraduate writing
phases, based in my view on extended reading.
Interviewee says:
2) A more systematic approach to lexis, starting with receptive vocabulary
instruction and then moving into productive vocabulary production.

328
Interviewee says:
3) More use of dictionaries, the introduction of thesaurus type work, and
identification of collocations and chunks as the key feature of fluent writing.
Interviewee says:
4) More work on pre-writing activities, more exposure to models
Interviewee says:
5) Less emphasis on formal grammar, as such problems can normally be dealt
with fairly easily at the process stage.
Interviewee says:
6) More confidence, by asking students to write more but in smaller and shorter
doses and to do so at speed.
Interviewee says:
7) More awareness that writing is a process, and less obsession with producing
'mistake-free' work as a first draft.
Interviewee says:
8) A sense of genre, organisation, and audience.
Interviewee says:
Many of these issues could be better dealt with by altering our approach to the
teaching of reading, to introduce and deal with these issues.
Interviewer says:
Your 501 course has now become 502. Do you mean that there should also be
more language focus in the new 501that Sezgi and I are teaching? Maybe there
should be more collaboration between 501 and 502 in course design?
Interviewee says:
Lexically, I am sure that one can never do enough with these students, but
language-wise, I am not sure. I think we have to recognise the difference between
'learned' errors and 'performance' areas. The latter can pretty much by dealt with
by a process approach, with the former, it becomes a question of error frequency,
and the effects those errors have on meaning.
Interviewee says:
Otherwise courses with limited hours inevitably have to prioritise.
Interviewer says:
Do you think that the original 501 (now 502) that you have been teaching suits
the needs of these learners? Is it adequate in terms of materials and approach? Or
do you feel that changes/additions/deletions are necessary?
Interviewee says:
I think it has represented a practical and economical approach to the problem that
was originally faced. Good writers are good writers because they have absorbed
language from written text, which is why I believe in the long run, students have
to be exposed to models, and be trained to analyse these models in discoursal
terms. In other words students at this point in their education and if ...
Interviewee says:
... they are to develop independent skills to deal with their language problems
must become critical thinkers about and critical observers of language...
Interviewee says:
Good models provide the skeletons and building blocks of good writing, and
writing of this type is just as much formulaic as it is creative, a fact that
academics are probably simply too immodest to admit. But once you accept the
concept of collocation, and particularly chunking, I think there is little choice but
to accept this

329
Interviewer says:
Teaching the 502 course as it is now, have you been observing concrete
developments in these students' language use at the end of the semester? If yes,
mostly in terms of which area/s?
Interviewee says:
Yes, I think so. The beauty of this lexical approach is its simplicity; What might
one day have been viewed of as plagiarism, is simply in fact the acquired skill of
'observing language' and recognising that formulaic and semi-formulaic, fixed
and semi-fixed expressions make up the body of a text, and that creativity and
originality is not dependent on them...
Interviewee says:
The students ceratinly acquire and make use of the language once they have
identified the necessary chunks, and the progress they make is quite noticeable in
a way that I can't say I have observed with more structure-based approaches to
language teaching. Process-wise, it also makes complete sense to me that the
prior focus to all of this is logical organisation of ideas within the conventions...
Interviewee says:
...of the given genre
Interviewer says:
This semester for the first time you had students who had already taken 501
before 502? Any noticeable differences? Mostly in terms of what?
Interviewee says:
Definitely! Their sense of organisation was much more marked, and their sense
and understanding of language functions was very much in place, so much so that
elements of the course became redundant. In past years a solely structural
understanding of language, and a fixation with grammar and grammar errors
would be very noticeable at the beginning of the programme.
Interviewer says:
Some faculties have made these two courses compulsory. How do you feel about
this?
Interviewee says:
I presume they have their reasons, but I would prefer them to be 'placed' in 501,
or 502, or neither, according to an independent assessment of their level, either
conducted by us, or through an IELTS score. It seems like something of a blanket
approach to the issue to me, though it hasn't yet caused any serious problems in
practice.
Interviewer says:
Last question. You mentioned that some elements of 502 became redundant as
these students had taken 501.
Interviewee says:
yes
Interviewer says:
What's the solution?
Interviewee says:
I remember work I used to do in identifying and using structures that realise such
functions as 'compare and contrast', 'cause and effect', and even basic work with
relative clauses, and so on, as typical examples. It's not a problem basically,
because once I'm aware of it, I can simply omit that work and move on. I
wouldn't use the word solution, because this is not actually a problem, but rather
Interviewee says:

330
a bonus, wouldn't you say?
Interviewer says:
Yes, I agree but what about these ideas? Collaboration between the designers of
these two courses so that different elements are focused on, merging the two
courses together and offering only one comprehensive course or accepting
students on 501 or 502 or both or neither according to their language abilities as
you have already mentioned?
Interviewee says:
Yes, it would make perfect sense right now to sit down with the two course
programmes and overview them as a whole, now that these issues have emerged
this semester. Maybe we could meet f2f somewhere?
Interviewer says:
One very final question!!!!!
Interviewee says:
I'm ready!
Interviewer says:
Are you happy about the existence of these courses? Do you think that they are
doing good service to postgraduate students? And do you feel that they
themselves appreciate this support?
Interviewee says:
Yes, definitely. Never at any point have I felt I was wasting my time, or that this
was a service that wasn't educationally useful. A very fine job - and I think the
reactions and feedback and invitations you have received are a great testimony to
what has been set up in the new 501 (ie by you...). My experience is that the
students do appreciate the work, and some of them express their...
Interviewee says:
appreciation to a very high degree. They feel in fact very often that the real
academic support they are getting is from us...
Interviewee says:
final final final question?
Interviewer says:
Thank you very much for your time and your very useful ideas and contributions.
I deeply appreciate it.

331
APPENDIX I:

Comparison of the top 50 words in the LAC and the TAC

The LAC-21,575 words The TAC-174,093 words


Cum.
Word Type Frequency Cum. Percent Word Type Frequency Percent
I. THE 1543 7.15 THE 12550 7.21
OF 1023 11.89 OF 8631 12.17
AND 754 15.39 AND 6783 16.06
IN 595 18.15 TO 4261 18.51
TO 569 20.78 IN 4223 20.94
IS 450 22.87 A 3699 23.06
A 331 24.4 IS 1904 24.15
THIS 247 25.55 THAT 1872 25.23
THAT 220 26.57 THIS 1664 26.19
10. FOR 216 27.57 FOR 1582 27.09
ARE 202 28.51 AS 1426 27.91
ON 164 29.27 WITH 1145 28.57
BE 153 29.97 ARE 1113 29.21
IT 141 30.63 ON 1080 29.83
WITH 134 31.25 BY 990 30.40
AS 131 31.86 AN 968 30.96
STUDY 128 32.45 S 894 31.47
BY 114 32.98 FROM 749 31.90
WHICH 99 33.44 BE 684 32.29
20. HAVE 89 33.85 STUDY 669 32.68
THESE 87 34.25 IT 631 33.04
FROM 83 34.64 WAS 630 33.40
HAS 82 35.02 WHICH 609 33.75
S 80 35.39 THESE 603 34.10
RESEARCH 79 35.75 THEIR 560 34.42
THEIR 78 36.12 WERE 517 34.72
WILL 73 36.45 HAVE 476 34.99
NOT 71 36.78 HAS 426 35.23
OR 71 37.11 AT 425 35.48
30. USED 71 37.44 OR 417 35.72
DESIGN 70 37.77 BETWEEN 414 35.96
DIFFERENT 70 38.09 RESEARCH 411 36.19
BEEN 69 38.41 NEW 382 36.41
PEOPLE 65 38.71 ITS 371 36.62
QUALITY 64 39.01 NOT 363 36.83

332
WERE 64 39.3 ALSO 349 37.03
CAN 63 39.6 ANALYSIS 343 37.23
AN 62 39.88 I 340 37.43
THEY 62 40.17 THESIS 331 37.62
40. WAS 59 40.44 CAN 330 37.81
ANALYSIS 58 40.71 MORE 326 37.99
ALSO 55 40.97 DESIGN 322 38.18
ONE 54 41.22 BEEN 293 38.35
SOME 54 41.47 MODEL 293 38.51
MOST 52 41.71 USE 292 38.68
THERE 49 41.94 THROUGH 290 38.85
OTHER 48 42.16 DEVELOPMENT 285 39.01
ABOUT 46 42.37 THEY 284 39.18
ITS 45 42.58 USED 284 39.34
50. ALL 44 42.79 PROJECT 281 39.50

333
APPENDIX J:

Family Headwords and Word Types used in the LAC and the TAC

Family
(HW) in
Actual LAC word tokens Actual TAC word tokens
both LAC
and TAC
absorb absorb absorbed, absorption
accept unacceptable, accepted accept, acceptability
access accessibility access, accessible
accurate inaccurately accuracy, accurate, accurately
acknowled
ge acknowledge acknowledging
adapt adapting, adaptation, adaptive adapt
add added, additions add, adding, additive, adds
administer administering, administrative administered, administrator
advertise advertisers, advertisement ads
adverse adverse adversely
age ages aged
agent agent agencies, agency
aggregate aggregates aggregation
aid unaided aid
air air airy
align align alignment
alter alter alteration, altered
amount amounted amounts
analyse analysts analytic, analytically, analyzes
answer answered answering
thesis theses antithesis
any anymore, anyone anything
appear appeared appears
argue arguments argue, argued, arguing, argument
arise arising arise, arises, arose
arrive arrive, arrives arrived
articulate articulation articulate, articulates
ask asks ask, asked, asking
attain attainment attain
attract attract, attracting attracted, attractiveness
automobile auto automobile
award award awards
bank banks banking
begin begin, beginnings began, begins
bird birds bird
blind blind blindness
bond bonds bond, bonding
boom boomed boom
bear bearing born, borne
branch branches branching

334
Family
(HW) in
Actual LAC word tokens Actual TAC word tokens
both LAC
and TAC
bring bring brings
build builders builds
capacity capacity capacities
carry carry, carries carrier, carrying
cast casting cast
causal causality causal
censor censorship censored
centre centre, centered centers, centred
chance chances chance
cheap cheap cheaply
circumstan
ce circumstance circumstances
civilise civilization civilized
claim claiming claimed, claims
classify classifying, classified classifications, classify
column columns column
combine combinations combines
commerce commerce, commercials commercially
commissio
n commissioning, commissions commission
complete completed complete
conception, conceptions,
concept conceptual conceptualizes
confidence confident confidence
consequen
tial consequentially consequential
consequen
t consequent consequently
conserve conserved conservationist, conserve
consist consists consisted, consisting
constitute constituent constituents, constitutes, constitutive
constrain constrains constrained
construct constructions constructs
consume consumes consuming
controlled, controller, controllers,
control controlling controls
convert converter conversion
cope coping cope
correct correct, correctness corrected, correction
couple couple coupling
course courses course
cover covered coverage, covering
create creativity, creators, recreating creations
curve curves curve
cycle cycle, cyclic cycling
dam dams dam
database database databases
decide undecided decided
decrease decreases, decreasing decreased

335
Family
(HW) in
Actual LAC word tokens Actual TAC word tokens
both LAC
and TAC
define definitions defines
degrade degrading degraded
demograph
y demographics demography
department departmental department
depend dependencies depended, dependent, depending
depict depicting depicts
depress depression depressed, depressing
detect detecting detected
determine determining, deterministic determinations, determinism
develop developmental developers
disease diseased diseases
distinct distinctive distinction, distinctly
distribute distribute distributional
document documenting documentation, documented
door indoor, outdoor doors
doctor doctor dr
drama dramatically dramatic
drastic drastically drastic
drive drive, drivers driver
east eastern east
economy economy, economical, economists economics
educate educated educate, educators
elastic inelastic elasticity
elect elections elect, election
eliminate eliminate eliminated, eliminating
emotion emotion emotions
employees, employers, unemployed,
employ unemployment employ, employee
enforce enforcing enforcement
engage engaged engage, engagement, engaging
ensure ensure, ensures ensured
equip equipped equipment
equivalent equivalent equivalence
establish establishing establish, establishes
exceed exceeding exceed, exceeds
excess excess excessive
excite excitation excitement, exciting
exhibit exhibits exhibited, exhibition
expense expensive, expenditure, expenditures expenses
explain explanation explaining
exploit exploited, exploiting exploits
explore exploring exploration
export exporting export
extend extensively extends, extensions
fail fail, fails failing
fall fall falls
fashion fashionable fashion

336
Family
(HW) in
Actual LAC word tokens Actual TAC word tokens
both LAC
and TAC
feed feed fed, feeders
fight fight fighting
figure figured figures
finance finance, financed financially
fiscal fiscal fiscally
fix fixing fixed
fluctuate fluctuations fluctuated, fluctuating
follow follows follow, followed
force forced, forces force
founded founded founder
friend friendly friendship, friendships
fulfil fulfillment fulfil, fulfilled
gain gained gains
gather gather gathering
generate generations generative
geography geography, geographically geographic, geographies
globe globalized globalization, globe
go goes gone
govern governing, governed gov, governmental, governor
graduate graduates, graduation graduate
graphic graphic, graphical graphically
hard hardened hardworking
harmony harmony harmonious
heat heating heats
help helpful helped
she she her
hold holder, holding hold, holdings
hospital hospitals hospital
hot hot hotly
human humanity humanism, humans
hypotheses, hypothesised,
hypothesis hypothetical hypothesized
impose impose, imposed imposing
impress impressive impression
pure pure impurities, impurity
incorporate incorporation inc
incentive incentive incentives
complete completed incomplete
incorporated, incorporates,
incorporate incorporation incorporating
independe
nt independence independent, independently
indicate indications indicative
induce induce induced
initiate initiated initiation
institute instituted institution, institutional
interact interactive interactionist, interactions
depend dependencies interdependence

337
Family
(HW) in
Actual LAC word tokens Actual TAC word tokens
both LAC
and TAC
value valuation invaluable
vary variants, varies invariably
invest investors invest
investigate investigative investigating
involve involved involvement
joint joints joint
judge judgement judgments
keep keeps keeping
know knowing knowledgeable
lack lacking, lacks lacked
lag lagging lagged
last lasting, lasts lastly
lay laid lays
lead misleading leader, leadership
learn learnt learned, learners, learns
limit limitations, limiting limits
link link linking
list listed list
localisation, localised, localization,
local locals localized, locally
loss loss losses
low lows lowering
maintain maintains maintain, maintained
manage manage, managing manager, managerial
map mapping maps
mathemati
cs mathematical math
matter matter matters
maximise maximize, maximized maximization
meaning meanings meant
measure measure measurements, measuring
mechanic mechanical mechanics
mechanise mechanization mechanistic
memory memory, memorize memories
metre meter meters, metric
minimise minimize, minimizes, minimized minimization
understand understood misunderstanding
model modeled modeling
moment moment momentary
mrs ms mrs
nation nationals, nationality nation, nationally, nationwide
near nearly neared, nearer
new renewing newly
normal normal, normalized normally
obstruct obstructs obstruction
occupation occupations occupation, occupational
occupy occupancy occupied
occur occurrence occurring

338
Family
(HW) in
Actual LAC word tokens Actual TAC word tokens
both LAC
and TAC
organize organized organizers, organizes
origin originality origin, originated, origins
oscillate oscillating oscillation, oscillator
panel panels panel
par pars par
parent parent parents
particle particles particle
partner partners, partnerships partner
pass passes passing
patron patrons, patronizing patron
pattern pattern patterns
perceive perceiving perceives
percent percentage percent
perform performer performing
permanent permanence permanent
phenomen
ology petroleum phenomenology
photograph photography, photos photographs
place placement places
play player, playing, plays played
politic politic, politician, politicians politically
portfolio portfolios portfolio
posit posit posits
power powerful powers
precise precise precision
predict predict predictable, predicted, predictors
prepare prepare, preparation, prepared preparatory
preserve preservation preserved
pressure pressured pressure
prevent prevention preventing
profit profit, profitable profitably, profits
programme programmes programmed
progress progressively progress
project projection projected
promote promotion, promotions promote, promotes, promotional
proportion proportion, proportions proportional
prove proved, proving proven, proves
purchase purchased, purchases purchasing
pure pure purity
purpose purposeful purposely
pursue pursue pursuing
rate rating rated
react reacted react, reaction, reactive
realise realize realizes
reason reasons reasonably, reasoned
recognize recognize, recognizes recognition
combine combinations recombination
construct constructions reconstructed, reconstructing,

339
Family
(HW) in
Actual LAC word tokens Actual TAC word tokens
both LAC
and TAC
reconstructs
define definitions redefines
distribute distribute redistribution
refine refinery refined, refinements, refining
reflect reflection reflections, reflective
register registered register
regulate regulate regulation, regulatory
reinforce reinforcement reinforced
relax relax relaxation, relaxed
rely reliably, relying relies, rely
remain remaining remain, remained, remains
remove removal remove, removed, removes
new renewing renewed
represent representatives, representing representation, representational
require requirement requires, requiring
research researches researched
use usable reuse
revise revising revision
right right rightly
routine routine routinely
rule rules rule
scenario scenario scenarios
schedule scheduling scheduled
science scientifically sciences, scientific, scientists
seem seemed seemingly, seems
segment segments segmentation
conduct conducting, conductivity semiconductor, semiconductors
send sending sent
separated, separately, separates,
separate separating separations
sequence sequence sequences
serve servant servants, served, serves
share share, shares shared
shore shores shore
sick sick sickness
side side, sides sided
similar similarity similarly
sketch sketch, sketching sketches
slide sliding slides
solve solving solved
son son sons
special special specialization
specific specifications specifically, specificity
split splits split
square sq square, squares
stable instability, stabilized stabilizing, stable
statistic statistic statistically
story stories story

340
Family
(HW) in
Actual LAC word tokens Actual TAC word tokens
both LAC
and TAC
style stylish styled, stylistic
routine routine subroutine
succeed succeeded successfully
suffer suffered, suffering, suffers suffer
supply suppliers supplies
technical technically technical
tend tendency tend, tended, tends
theme thematically themes
threat threats threat
tolerate tolerance tolerant
travel traveling travel, traveling
tremendou
s tremendously tremendous
attract attract, attracting unattractive
avoid avoided unavoidable
balance balances, balanced unbalanced
clear clearing unclear
comfort comfortable uncomfortably
control controlling uncontrolled
cover covered uncover, uncovered
understand understood understands
stable instability, stabilized unstable
update updated update
utilise utilize utilisation, utilization, utilizes
vary variants, varies variance, varied, varying
visual visually visualization
weak weakness, weaknesses weakly
wish wishes wish
yield yield yielded

341
APPENDIX K:

The TAC Wordlist - 165 Word Families selected for further analysis

Words from GSL 1

BASE ONE FAMILIES RANGE TYFREQ FAFREQ F1 F2 F3 F4


1 APPLY 4 17 202 31 24 104 43
2 BASE 4 12 327 51 84 96 96
3 BUILD 4 23 342 222 32 64 24
4 CASE 4 153 188 31 27 52 78
5 CHANGE 4 140 315 60 81 67 107
6 CHARACTER 4 15 160 35 45 46 34
7 CONSIDER 4 19 167 48 51 27 41
8 DESCRIBE 4 39 155 36 51 41 27
9 DEVELOP 4 59 621 152 106 219 144
10 DIFFERENCE 4 12 302 47 104 83 68
11 EFFECT 4 70 254 36 45 69 104
12 FIND 4 44 286 40 75 53 118
13 FORM 4 117 220 67 76 35 42
14 GROUP 4 117 193 24 65 33 71
15 HIGH 4 101 226 21 41 76 88
16 IMPORTANT 4 126 190 52 61 25 52
17 INCLUDE 4 58 243 59 54 73 57
18 INCREASE 4 45 168 33 22 48 65
19 KNOW 4 13 161 20 38 44 59
20 LARGE 4 91 172 33 34 58 47
21 LEVEL 4 115 175 20 47 48 60
22 MAKE 4 57 195 48 43 35 69
23 NATURE 4 117 189 65 59 28 37
24 NEED 4 80 169 48 20 60 41
25 NEW 4 382 392 133 82 116 61
26 ORGANIZE 4 4 199 20 44 18 117
27 PART 4 113 164 38 46 49 31
28 PARTICULAR 4 106 155 30 51 30 44
29 PRESENT 4 88 269 47 86 84 52
30 PROBLEM 4 98 166 24 27 70 45
31 PRODUCT 4 46 160 42 28 37 53
32 PROPOSE 4 22 161 43 29 63 26
33 PROVIDE 4 137 365 78 80 95 112
34 RELATION 4 43 405 94 127 60 124
35 RESULT 4 76 363 55 91 114 103
36 SHOW 4 89 218 36 65 56 61
37 STATE 4 98 199 52 31 45 71
38 STUDY 4 669 919 174 270 153 322
39 SUGGEST 4 50 161 21 65 22 53
40 SYSTEM 4 262 530 112 48 222 148
41 TIME 4 190 219 35 68 59 57
42 UNDERSTAND 4 52 206 53 57 28 68
43 USE 4 292 930 187 213 284 246
44 VALUE 4 68 170 37 26 50 57

342
45 WELL 4 148 150 42 34 37 37
46 WORK 4 228 344 96 125 49 74

Words from GSL 2

BASE TWO FAMILIES RANGE TYFREQ FAFREQ F1 F2 F3 F4


1 AIM 4 37 86 16 28 16 26
2 COLLECT 4 4 100 30 21 13 36
3 COMBINE 4 7 77 21 19 19 18
4 COMPARE 4 11 152 29 49 49 25
5 CRITIC 4 3 101 21 34 22 24
6 DISCUSS 4 14 130 26 38 28 38
7 EXAMINING 4 24 303 73 101 33 96
8 EXPLORE 4 37 177 57 48 26 46
9 GOVERN 4 1 144 14 34 48 48
1
0 IMPROVE 4 46 133 25 14 67 27
11 INFORM 4 8 256 36 44 48 128
1
2 MANAGE 4 10 214 25 35 75 79
1
3 MODEL 4 293 444 72 87 139 146

Words from the AWL

BASE THREE FAMILIES RANGE TYFREQ FAFREQ F1 F2 F3 F4


1 ANALYSE 4 8 568 75 193 132 168
2 DESIGN 4 322 469 286 46 87 50
3 RESEARCH 4 411 441 78 111 64 188
4 PROJECT 4 281 424 90 30 245 59
5 PROCESS 4 241 372 87 62 128 95
6 CULTURE 4 108 358 95 142 26 95
7 THESIS 4 331 331 53 112 106 60
8 CONSTRUCT 4 14 310 86 37 161 26
9 THEORY 4 155 293 46 70 46 131
1
0 ENVIRONMENT 4 151 289 108 54 76 51
11 IDENTIFY 4 62 288 63 135 55 35
1
2 METHOD 4 86 287 44 62 112 69
1
3 STRUCTURE 4 127 267 61 63 78 65
1
4 DATA 4 262 262 31 62 77 92
1
5 ECONOMY 4 37 245 30 28 47 140
1
6 APPROACH 4 174 238 43 57 72 66
1
7 CREATE 4 48 219 79 48 39 53
1
8 SIGNIFICANT 4 132 212 33 66 35 78
1 STRATEGY 4 67 184 34 27 78 45

343
9
2
0 INVESTIGATE 4 31 183 35 70 26 52
2
1 ROLE 4 147 182 46 51 19 66
2
2 VARY 4 14 182 15 77 39 51
2
3 CONTEXT 4 131 181 40 65 31 45
2
4 AREA 4 86 180 40 59 50 31
2
5 SITE 4 94 177 58 75 30 14
2
6 REGION 4 86 173 49 89 17 18
2
7 FOCUS 4 77 172 42 44 30 56
2
8 CHAPTER 4 135 171 42 64 30 35
2
9 TECHNOLOGY 4 124 167 28 15 30 94
3
0 CONCEPT 4 65 152 45 38 27 42
3
1 RESPOND 4 10 150 32 46 30 42
3
2 COMMUNITY 4 95 147 58 44 13 32
3
3 FRAMEWORK 4 134 145 17 31 52 45
3
4 TRADITION 4 31 145 55 46 17 27
3
5 SPECIFIC 4 75 144 28 36 38 42
3
6 COMPLEX 4 77 136 34 30 38 34
3
7 TECHNIQUE 4 44 134 30 28 60 16
3
8 FUNCTION 4 59 131 34 30 41 26
3
9 ISSUE 4 27 130 34 35 18 43
4
0 DEMONSTRATE 4 43 130 30 37 44 19
4
1 INTERACT 4 10 129 25 18 45 41
4
2 IMPACT 4 90 127 16 20 32 59
4
3 CONTRIBUTE 4 24 127 36 38 21 32
4
4 INSTITUTE 4 8 123 26 19 17 61
4
5 INDICATE 4 48 121 15 49 12 45
4
6 INDIVIDUAL 4 79 120 18 39 13 50
4
7 REQUIRE 4 18 119 37 17 43 22
4
8 PERCEIVE 4 6 116 30 42 16 28

344
4
9 FINAL 4 37 116 28 24 37 27
5
0 SELECT 4 10 115 26 28 34 27
5
1 DEFINE 4 28 115 24 44 29 18
5
2 MAJOR 4 96 112 19 26 34 33
5
3 DYNAMIC 4 60 106 17 19 40 30
5
4 PARTICIPATE 4 6 105 18 28 22 37
5
5 LOCATE 4 4 102 28 40 16 18
5
6 ACHIEVE 4 29 101 12 19 45 25
5
7 ASSESS 4 21 101 19 29 32 21
5
8 EVALUATE 4 21 100 13 12 40 35
5
9 CONCLUDE 4 10 99 14 37 15 33
6
0 POTENTIAL 4 86 96 17 17 43 19
6
1 SOURCE 4 35 92 18 32 25 17
6
2 ESTABLISH 4 23 91 25 37 13 16
6
3 INVOLVE 4 8 90 19 21 23 27
6
4 REVEAL 4 20 90 26 33 11 20
6
5 UTILISE 4 0 87 10 16 38 23
6
6 ASPECT 4 6 85 25 23 17 20
6
7 CONSIST 4 2 81 12 24 17 28
6
8 RESOURCE 4 29 81 10 26 20 25
6
9 NETWORK 4 42 81 15 23 33 10
7
0 MAINTAIN 4 17 79 15 18 26 20
7
1 RANGE 4 57 79 13 27 29 10
7
2 AFFECT 4 29 77 11 19 14 33
7
3 SIMILAR 4 47 74 19 30 12 13
7
4 COMPONENT 4 26 72 17 13 23 19
7
5 CONSUME 4 3 70 10 11 30 19
7
6 ELEMENT 4 13 70 27 23 10 10
7
7 CHALLENGE 4 23 69 21 12 23 13
7 OCCUR 4 21 67 12 27 17 11

345
8
7
9 LINK 4 23 65 17 14 15 19
8
0 DIMENSION 4 15 65 14 22 12 17
8
1 APPROPRIATE 4 45 64 19 17 12 16
8
2 AUTHOR 4 40 61 13 24 10 14
8
3 ALTERNATIVE 4 37 60 16 10 22 12
8
4 SUSTAIN 4 9 52 19 10 11 12
8
5 OBJECTIVE 4 38 40 5 12 16 7

Off-list Words

TYPE RANGE FREQ F1 F2 F3 F4


1 DISSERTATION 4 204 72 48 16 68
2 INTERVIEWS 4 62 8 19 9 26
INTERVIEW 3 14 3 8 0 3
INTERVIEWED 4 10 2 6 1 1
INTERVIEWEES 2 2 0 1 0 1
INTERVIEWERS 1 1 0 1 0 0
FAMILY
OCCURRENCES: 89
***3 ORGANIZATIONAL 4 53 5 12 8 28
ORGANIZERS 2 3 2 1 0 0
FAMILY
OCCURRENCES: 56
***4 OBJECTIVES 4 18 2 1 10 5
5 NOVEL 4 45 5 13 21 6
6 COLLABORATE 1 1 0 0 0 1
COLLABORATED 2 2 1 1 0 0
COLLABORATION 4 21 2 5 10 4
COLLABORATIONS 1 1 1 0 0 0
COLLABORATIVE 4 16 3 3 6 4
COLLABORATIVELY 1 1 1 0 0 0
COLLABORATOR 1 1 1 0 0 0
COLLABORATORS 1 1 0 0 1 0
FAMILY
OCCURRENCES: 44
7 CORRELATE 1 2 0 2 0 0
CORRELATED 2 5 0 0 4 1
CORRELATION 4 17 1 2 5 9
CORRELATIONAL 1 1 0 0 1 0
CORRELATIONS 3 3 1 1 0 1
FAMILY
OCCURRENCES: 28
8 DEMOGRAPHER 1 1 0 1 0 0
DEMOGRAPHIC 4 1 8 2 7
DEMOGRAPHICS 3 18 0 2 3 1
DEMOGRAPHY 2 6 0 1 0 5
FAMILY 6
OCCURRENCES: 31
9 ENTERPRISE 4 24 6 2 9 7

346
ENTERPRISES 1 3 0 0 0 0
FAMILY
OCCURRENCES: 27
10 HYBRID 4 19 12 3 3 1
HYBRIDISATION 1 1 0 0 1 0
HYBRIDIZATION 2 8 1 0 7 0
HYBRIDIZING 1 1 0 0 1 0
HYBRIDS 1 1 1 0 0 0
FAMILY
OCCURRENCES: 30
11 LANDSCAPE 4 123 91 28 1 3
LANDSCAPED 1 1 1 0 0 0
LANDSCAPES 2 21 11 10 0 0
LANDSCAPING 1 1 1 0 0 0
FAMILY
OCCURRENCES: 146
12 LARGE-SCALE 4 23 6 5 10 2
13 LONG-TERM 4 25 5 6 10 4
14 MANIFEST 2 2 1 0 0 1
MANIFESTATION 2 5 3 2 0 0
MANIFESTATIONS 2 6 3 0 0 3
MANIFESTED 4 6 2 1 2 1
MANIFESTING 2 2 1 0 1 0
MANIFESTS 2 4 1 3 0 0
FAMILY
OCCURRENCES: 25
15 MOBILE 3 24 0 4 4 16
MOBILISATION 2 2 0 1 0 1
MOBILITY 4 22 3 3 3 13
MOBILIZATION 1 1 0 0 0 1
FAMILY
OCCURRENCES: 49
16 NEGOTIATE 3 6 2 2 0 2
NEGOTIATED 1 1 0 0 0 1
NEGOTIATES 1 1 0 1 0 0
NEGOTIATING 3 4 0 1 1 2
NEGOTIATION 4 18 2 2 11 3
NEGOTIATIONS 3 10 0 1 4 5
FAMILY
OCCURRENCES: 40
17 QUANTIFIABLE 1 2 2 0 0 0
QUANTIFICATION 1 5 5 0 0 0
QUANTIFIED QUANTIFY 3 4 2 1 1 0
QUANTIFYING 4 8 1 1 3 3
QUANTITATIVE 2 2 0 0 1 1
QUANTITATIVELY 4 22 1 6 5 10
FAMILY 3 6 0 1 2 3
OCCURRENCES: 49
18 QUESTIONAIRE 1 2 0 2 0 0
QUESTIONNAIRE 4 20 4 5 4 7
QUESTIONNAIRES 2 6 0 3 0 3
FAMILY
OCCURRENCES: 28
19 REFERENCE 4 31 4 11 11 5
REFERENCED 1 1 0 0 1 0
REFERENCES 3 4 1 2 1 0
REFERENCING 1 1 1 0 0 0
REFERENT 2 3 0 2 0 1
REFERENTIAL 1 1 0 1 0 0

347
REFERENTS 1 3 0 3 0 0
FAMILY
OCCURRENCES: 44
20 URBAN 4 151 118 4 22 7
21 REFORM REFORMATION 4 22 12 2 1 7
REFORMED REFORMER 1 1 1 0 0 0
REFORMERS 2 4 1 3 0 0
REFORMING 1 1 0 1 0 0
REFORMIST 2 5 3 2 0 0
REFORMISTS REFORMS 1 1 0 0 0 1
FAMILY 1 3 3 0 0 0
OCCURRENCES: 48 1 1 1 0 0 0
3 10 1 0 1 8
22 SPATIAL 4 63 27 23 3 10
SPATIALITY SPATIALLY 1 1 1 0 0 0
FAMILY 3 3 0 1 1 1
OCCURRENCES: 67
23 SYNTHESES SYNTHESIS 1 2 0 0 2 0
SYNTHESISE 4 25 6 7 8 4
SYNTHESISED 1 1 0 1 0 0
SYNTHESIZE 1 1 0 1 0 0
SYNTHESIZED 2 2 1 1 0 0
SYNTHESIZER 1 1 0 0 1 0
FAMILY 2 6 0 2 4 0
OCCURRENCES: 38
***24 USAGE 4 11 2 2 4 3
***25 TECHNOLOGIES 4 59 13 3 16 27

*** These words are placed together with their families by the researcher for further analysis.

348
APPENDIX L:

THE AAC BANK OF MOVES AND SUB-MOVES BASED ON IMRD

MOVE 1: INTRODUCTION

Sub-move 1: Defining the Scope of the Study

349
The scope of the research
provides(120)
an overview of …
study (274) examines(114) the relationship between …
how …
thesis (231) explores (59) the importance of …
the ways in which …
dissertation (134) how …
This shows(52) how …
research (116) that …
presents (51) a qualitative investigation of …
work (29) focuses (43) on the development of …
(35)
demonstrates how …
paper (15) that …
the emergence of …
project (14) proposes(34) to determine …
that …
investigation (11) a new design of …
the integration of …
report (5) investigates (30) the impact of …
offers (30) alternatives / suggestions …
research study (3)
attempts to identify …
inquiry (2) to establish …

that …
argues (27) for the need to …

the theory and methods of a …


describes approach …

is based on a synthesis of …
upon results obtained from …

represents(24) a means of understanding …

considers (23)
a series of … who / which …

(23)
seeks
to offer strategies …

(21)
traces the evolution of …
the development of …
develops (21)
a systematic methodology to …

the risks of …
(20)
identifies

the role of …

350
Sub-move 2: Identifying a Research Gap

-Previous research has not adequately explained why …


-Previous research highlights a need for …
-Previous research is unclear about …
-Previous studies have demonstrated the feasibility of …, however, … still require further
investigation
-Previous attempts to identify … relied on data from ... Inadequacies in the data often
resulted in ...
-Although the importance of the topic of the … is evidenced through …, studies on this
topic are scarce.
-Although there have been many studies on … in recent years, there is no comprehensive
study of …
-Although researchers have devoted much attention to …, they have devoted little attention
to …
-Although … has been proposed before as a solution, little serious investigation has been
undertaken into …
-Although studies have discussed the importance of …, few have actually focused on …
-Although overlooked in the … domain, …
-Unlike previous … studies, …
-Unlike previous studies that examine only …, …
-Unlike previous work, …
-However, no attempt so far could be found to …
-However, no … research has been undertaken on …
-However, little research has been conducted to …
-However, little empirical research has studied the impact of … on the …
-However, little research has been directed at ….
-Despite such noteworthy efforts, however, few scholars have investigated …
-Despite the importance of the subject, no full ... exists.
-Despite evidence that …, researchers still understand relatively little about …
-… yet ironically no serious study has been done on ….
-… yet no … is available.
-Yet, little has been done on …
-… yet an in-depth analysis of … does not exist.
- Little research has been done on …
- Little research in ….. had previously focused on the …
- Since there is no agreed and established method for …
- Since little …… research has been conducted in …, …
-… the previous … research, which generally only acknowledges that …
-… to clarify previous research
-… which has not been the subject of previous study.
-… the disparate findings of previous research.
- … previously under-explored territory.
-… a previously unstudied / understudied / unexamined…
-… the unexplored problem of …
-… that have not been previously studied.
-… hitherto unexamined … materials…
-… broader … range than previously published materials.
-… largely unexplored.
-No comprehensive study of the … exists to date.
-There is no published evidence that …
-To date, however, no research exists on …
-Unfortunately, very little experimental data exists that demonstrates …

351
-One area of investigation that has received little critical attention, however, is …
-A challenge that has received relatively little attention is …
- This … has received little attention in … research.
- The number of studies in … is very few as opposed to other areas such as …
- Many scholars have failed to ...

Sub-move 3: Filling the Research Gap

-Where previous research has often focused on …, this research targeted …


-Previous attempts to identify … relied on data from ... Inadequacies in the data often
resulted in ... This research demonstrates that …
-Unlike previous … studies, this research explicitly takes into account …
-Unlike previous studies that examine only …, this study also focuses on …
-Unlike previous work, the current study considered the …
-This study extends the previous … research, which …
-This study seeks to go further by …
-This study combines … evidence to contribute to an ongoing effort to … advance …
and reveal previously under-explored territory.
- The current study seeks to clarify previous research. This is the first study to use ...
- In presenting …, this dissertation brings to light a previously unstudied phase of …
- This text marks a little milestone in the …
- This thesis presents results for a broader … range than previously published
materials.
- This research represents one of a few studies to explore how …, and offers a new
theoretical framework to explain …
-The purpose of this study is to provide the first … that have not been previously
studied.
- The motivation for this study arises from previously unexamined phenomena
-Unfortunately, very little experimental data exists that demonstrates … Therefore, one of
the objectives of this study conducted was …
-A broad range of literature has been reviewed and it was found that little research in … had
previously focused on the ... As such, this research presents a new area in … study.
- Despite such noteworthy efforts, however, few scholars have investigated … in any
comprehensive fashion. Thus, the dissertation examines …
- Based on previously unexamined ….., my dissertation emphasizes the …
- Although studies have discussed …, few have actually focused on … The overall aim of
this study, therefore, is to increase understanding of why and how …, and what results are
achieved.
-I emphasize two previously understudied mechanisms of …
-In this paper, we focus on the unexplored problem of … and examine methods to
study how …

Sub-move 4: Stating the ‘aim’ or ‘purpose’ of the study


Pattern 1

provide (137)
study (274) examine (69)
purpose (s) determine (68)
(82) thesis (231) identify (62)
develop (59)
aim (s) (45) dissertation (134) understand (52)
improve (45)

352
objective / s research (116) increase (45)
(32) demonstrate (43)
work (29) analyse / analyze
THE goal (s) (23) OF IS TO (39)
THIS paper (15) describe (39)
intention (10) explore (37)
project (14) investigate (31)
object (4) make (29)
investigation (11) contribute (24)
intent (4) reduce (23)
report (5) enhance (23)
propose (22)
research study evaluate (21)
(3) integrate (19)
apply (17)
inquiry (2
present (16)
design (15)
compare (11)
extend (7)

353
Pattern 2

-address those concerns over …


-answer two questions: …
-answer some of the most fundamental
questions of why and how …
-bridge the knowledge gap in …
-clarify the challenges faced in …
STUDY (274) -contribute to the growing body of
scholarship on …
THESIS (231) -demonstrate the … role played by …
-develop a discourse on how …
DISSERTATION -document and interpret this …
(134) -enlarge the role of …
-establish a ……
RESEARCH (116) -examine the engagement between …
and …
WORK (29) SEEKS (22) -examine the issue of … with reference
AIMS (16) to …
THIS PAPER (15) ATTEMPTS TO -explain the types of …
(11) -explain why …….
PROJECT (14) TRIES (3) -expand … theories …
INTENDS -explicate the concept of …
INVESTIGATION (1) -formalize, and define a common ground
(11) for …
-formulate consensus through …
REPORT (5) -further our understanding of …
-go further by …
RESEARCH -identify the linkages between … and …
STUDY (3) about …
-identify the most significant influences
INQUIRY (2) on …
-illuminate how and why …
-make sense of and provide insight into

-offer strategies for …
-offer a theoretical foundation for the
concept of …
-provide an answer to ...
-provide information and analysis that
would …
-understand the interaction between …

Pattern 3

354
analyze the current …
argue that …
be the first comprehensive analysis to bring
STUDY (274) together …
THESIS (231) contribute to the …
DISSERTATION demonstrate that …
THIS (134) WILL discuss the …
RESEARCH examine the …
(116) explore the validity of the …
PAPER (15) illustrate the way that …
investigate two different approaches to …
look at how …
propose to reconnect …
provide a greater understanding of …
show that …

Pattern 4

reconstructing …
STUDY
THIS PROJECT AIMS AT providing a framework that …
DISSERTATION
planning, developing, and revitalizing the …

MOVE 2: METHODOLOGY

Sub-move 1: Presenting the methodology employed

-utilized -a qualitative/quantitative
methodology (72)
This study -used

-employed

This thesis uses (12) -the … model -to study …


This
dissertation -a/an … approach /
This report utilizes (9) perspective / model /
This research technique / algorithm -to examine …
(7)
employs -to construct …
-to optimize …

355
-to determine the …
-to test the …
is used (289) -to direct …
are -to compute
Name of was utilized (22) -for the classification of the results
approach were -by different researchers.
/ method has/have been employed (20) -in this study / research.
/ tool can be -in the analysis.
-as a … device.
produces -… results.
-This methodology adopts -a/an … approach as the mode of
new inquiry.
-The applies to -a wider range of …
research provides -a … framework for …
-The
proposed
-The
resultant

The methodological design is a qualitative, historical- approach to


comparative …

Many are of the belief that the two methodologies compliment … and
researchers thereby strengthen the

Using a … method provides more ...


Drawing upon theories of mixed-method approach based on grounded theory and
…, this study uses a employing …
A multi-method is used with a quantitative
approach analysis of …, followed by a
qualitative analysis of …
Both the method and the model are used in the
development of …
A pluralistic research method combining a case study and a
field survey made up of a
questionnaire and interviews is
used to provide the necessary
data.
The research method followed is a multiple case
study analysis.
This method of analysis is applied to two
case studies of …
The research method is qualitative, using … to ...
The research applies the method of investigation in its original
phenomenological form as developed by …
The method sets the boundaries of the
research.
The method of qualitative research using …
thesis adopts a to …

356
Using a … approach, a second analysis focuses more
closely on …
A specially developed method of … is used to categorise the
….
A… method is used to determine …

357
Sub-move 2: Justifying the methodology employed

A pluralistic research is used to provide the necessary data.


method combining a case
study and a field survey
made up of a questionnaire
and interviews
This is used as a theoretical base for the
framework collection and analysis of data.
The research adopted an interpretive gather
approach using an information accompanied by
ethnographic case study other methods of data collection
technique to to have data triangulation.
Archival, historical and are used to locate the data within
ethnographic records … contexts and to reconstruct a
model of …
Based on the proposed are developed which allow the viewing or
framework, two interpreting of data … within
operations different contexts.
This research presents and reviews a providing the reader with data
significant number of new to …
and innovative ways to
promote …

-To pursue this problem, -I combined elements of … theory and … text


analysis.
-We address this problem -by designing and developing a … system …
-by formalizing a … specification which …
-This study explores this problem -using an approach derived from …
-Some … have this problem -by involving …
attempted to resolve
-Resolution of this problem -will require more detailed analysis of …

Sub-move 3: Describing the context

This examines the within the context of


dissertation problem of … …
This thesis documents the importance in a wider … context.
of …
This thesis is concerned with understanding … within the context of

The concepts are considered in the context
of … of …

Optional sub-move: Describing the variables


-Other variables such as … -are considered.
-Two independent variables
-Variables -were analyzed for …
-Frequencies of occurrence between these -were investigated.
variables -were tested
-Interactions between variables -contributed significantly.
-… variables -included …

358
MOVE 3: RESULTS

Sub-moves 1 and 2: What the data show / What the data mean

KEY WORD: DATA


The … -showed that -… lead to …
An analysis of -shows -support for this theory.
… that …
Preliminary a strong … differentiation
Results from between ….
an analysis of illustrates that … and … are intimately
… connected to …
This demonstrate a …, suggesting …
combination of provides an understanding of the …
… and … emphasize the complexity of the … by …
supported … hypotheses …
A review of … DATA provide highly suggestive evidence that
Analysis of the (from … / …
… obtained from …/ -that … was influenced by …
These derived from … / has revealed / -… themes relating to …
The results of produced by … / revealed -striking differences in …
the obtained using /
collected from /
Results from …
gathered from …) suggests the ability to …
using … … was as being …
-The … identified
-A thematic corroborates observations and
analysis of … definitions of …
-Analysis of… has implicated the …
The we can the … as well as …
Based on these determine
It appears the implies extensive …
The sufficient to support the basic hypotheses:
By analyzing evidence was
these found
My analysis confirmed virtually all of the research
of … hypotheses.
Through a set of
The empirical
results,
supported with
comprehensive
secondary

359
KEY WORDS: ANALYSIS / ANALYSES
found that … reduces the probability of …
indicates that …
indicated
shows / showed -that …
shows / has -support for …
shown
demonstrate -the utility of …
demonstrates -that …
demonstrated -the extent to which …
-A identifies significant differences in …
second revealed -several … characteristics …
set of analyses (pl.) reveals -significant / striking differences in …
(sing.) analysis (of …) -that …
-The (sing.) -a heavy bias towards …
results provide / -support that …
of the provided -a better understanding of the …
-The -an opportunity to gain insight into …
-Furthe suggested -that …
r suggests -similar increases in …
-The -benefits …
case implies extensive …
-An assists in considering the …
(sing.) contribute to the interpretation of …
-This underscores that …
(sing.) the importance of …
supported the notion …
-this finding
aids in the …

KEY WORDS: FINDINGS / RESULTS


indicate / indicated that …
illustrate -the duality of …
(The / these / -that …
experimental/ identified … key areas …
research / (clearly) confirm / -that …
three key) confirmed -the significant impact of …
FINDINGS -the hypothesis of this study.
-the validity of …
exhibited a…
(The / demonstrate -significant evidence of …
empirical / -that …
these / major) reinforce the role of …
RESULTS are that …
show that …
failed to achieve this outcome due to …
represent a … improvement in …
can be grouped into two categories:

360
MOVE 4: DISCUSSION

Sub-move 1: Describing the ‘key findings’

KEY WORDS: IMPLY / SUGGEST


The results imply … growth …
These … records imply that …
The rationale for this approach implies the need to …
My analysis of … data implies extensive…
The findings / analyses/ results/ suggest /s -that …
-there is no relationship …
-a link between …
-… principal conclusions.

KEY WORDS: SEEM / APPEAR


… factors seem strongly related to …
Differences in … seem related to …
The results seem to be dependent on …
The contribution of … does not seem to be significant.
to …
-context-dependent.
Some practices appear to be -positively related to …

… appeared immune to the influence of …


… appear to influence …
It appears that …
The patterns … appear to fit criteria supporting the
hypothesis of …
There appears to be no single …
… evidence suggests appear to be similar to one another.
that many …

KEY WORDS: TEND / TENDENCY


The patterns tend to reflect issues that
are connected to the relationship
between …
The results of tended to show no differences between … and
the … …
The findings tends to generate responses …
suggest that
the presence
of …
Evidence for tends to suggest that …

Research tendency for … to become …
findings
include a

361
Sub-move 2: Relating the findings of the study to already existing research

KEY WORDS: PAST / PREVIOUS


are consistent with past studies showing that …
The supported previous work conducted by …
findings are in agreement with previous research.
The
results

KEY WORD: PREVIOUS


Consistent previous research, the findings suggest that …
with
Unlike previous work, the current study considered …
Contrary to previous claims, the integration of …. does not …

Sub-move 3: Describing the ‘conclusions’


KEY WORDS: CONCLUDE / CONCLUSION

This study / dissertation / concludes -that …


thesis / -with …
investigation
It is concluded that …
The conclusions drawn from the indicate that …
analysis
A / The conclusion of this is that …
study
Several conclusions derive from the …
The primary / central are that…
conclusions of this
investigation
The conclusion reiterates that …
In conclusion, this study shows that …
Two main conclusions are derived.

Sub-move 4: Discussing the contributions of the study to the research field

KEY WORD: CONTRIBUTION


The key contribution of this research is the suggestion that the
use of …

The main contribution of this study is the support of …


The core contribution of this research concerns the provision of …
theoretical
The thesis’ contribution is twofold: practical and
theoretical
This contribution is to demonstrate …
dissertation’s
The first two contributions of this thesis introduce … techniques that …
There are contributions of the project: The first is …
three main
The main contributions of the thesis are 1) the development of
theoretical …

362
KEY WORD: CONTRIBUTION
-a significant contribution
This paper / -has methodological
thesis -makes -the following
principal contributions
-by extending
the …
The thesis makes a theoretical contribution -to the ongoing
a methodological debates about

-to the growing
field of …
This work is believed to be an important contribution to the
literature.

The represent a significant contribution to the field of


investigations …
reported in
this thesis

KEY WORD: CONTRIBUTE


The results contribute -to the international need to document and to
explore …
The research contributes -to the … debate about …
(therefore) -to an understanding of …
The research contributes -practical implications and insights into …
This piece of -to the development of …
research
The … analysis contributes -to the interpretation of …
Our findings contribute -not only to … but also to …
This and future may contribute -significantly to the understanding of …
work
This work contributes -new techniques for …

OTHER VERBS DENOTING ‘CONTRIBUTION’ / KEY WORD: STUDY


has increased our knowledge of …
constitutes a valid process for …
has resulted in … publications …
-the following benefits.
provided / provides -support for …
reconceptualizes or elaborates on, the systemic approach of … by …
The study or even modifies
should dispel some myths about …
promotes the application of …
validates the …
established -a … strategy to …
-that
produced a model of …

363
OTHER VERBS DENOTING ‘CONTRIBUTION’ / KEY WORDS: FINDINGS /
RESULTS
provided / provide -the knowledge needed to …
-a better understanding of …
(The / these / -highly suggestive evidence that …
experimental/ -new insights into …
research) have conclusively proven that …
findings offer the first empirical evidence for
establish that …
were used to establish a framework for …
(The / shed new light on …
empirical / reinforce the role of …
these / clearly confirmed -the effectiveness of
major) -the validity of
results open new prospects to improve
challenge … approaches to …

UNDERSTANDING / INSIGHT / KNOWLEDGE TO DENOTE ‘CONTRIBUTION’


The thesis makes a methodological to an understanding of …
contribution
This study contributes to an understanding of …
This dissertation provides a better understanding of …

This provides us with insight about how …


The new … offer a number of insights into …
innovative
The contributes insights into …
research
These findings provide the knowledge needed both to

This research contributes by increasing our knowledge of …

Sub-move 5: Making recommendations / suggestions based on the research findings

RECOMMENDATIONS: KEY WORDS: RECOMMEND /SUGGEST / PROPOSE


suggest / s -that a … approach to … is absolutely necessary
-a model for the …
It is recommended that a … should be …
is proposed that a … be added to…
is suggested
The findings suggest new approaches to …
This thesis makes some recommendations for …
This new … provides a unified set of that …
recommendations
This thesis / recommends that … the use of … be
study applied to …
The results are recommended to be applied to future …
projects …
This research proposed -that …
The current proposes -a … model to assist in …
study - a new perspective in …
-ideas that …
-the construction of …

364
RECOMMENDATIONS: KEY WORDS: RECOMMEND /SUGGEST / PROPOSE
Recommendations were outlined for improving …
-A series of is provided to …
recommendations
-Recommendations are provided to …
Recommendations for include …
further study
Based on the findings of are put forth to aid …
this research,
recommendations
Specific recommendations will be directed towards …
A … classification of … is proposed.
-as a way of …
A … scheme -which …
A new synthesis is proposed -for …
Methodological are suggested in order to …
improvements

RECOMMENDATIONS: KEY WORDS: MUST / SHOULD


The research findings must be interpreted in the light of …
The changes that … must be addressed and
simplified
Members of the … must work together and find a
team mutually agreeable …

This thesis concluded should apply … at the … level.


that …
We should work to provide … with …
The findings from this should not be generalized to define all …
study

Sub-move 6: Discussing the Implications of the research

‘IMPLICATIONS’- KEY WORD: IMPLICATION


Implications regarding … are discussed.
of this study for … are also considered.
of … range from …to …
are examined.
The implication for … is also analyzed.
One of this study is that …
implication would be that …
The main implications (of this research) are that …
practical
The wider
Other of the research findings relate to …
theoretical
implications
Practical regarding … are derived from the research
implications findings.

365
‘IMPLICATIONS’- KEY WORD: IMPLICATION
This research / has (important) implications for …
dissertation
The results / findings have (broad) implications for … research.
concludes implications for …
with
The study discusses (possible) implications (of for …
The research (the) …)
contributes (practical) implications into …
offers empirically grounded for …
implications

Sub-move 7: Opening up new areas of research

‘SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH’- KEY WORDS: FUTURE / FURTHER


This study offers suggestions for further research.
provides
Future research is recommended into …
Further on
Recommendations study include … methodologies …
on further
Suggestions for study are made.
further
The study emphasizes the need for further research.
Based on the suggestions were / are made for future research.
results,

366
APPENDIX M:

Screenshots of ENGL501 Moodle

367
APPENDIX N:

A student-led discovery task

Task 1- A student-led discovery task.


Data is plural; the singular of data is datum which is the record of a single
observation.
Data as noun:
• What are the relevant data?
• Pursuing it, he has logged 500,000 miles, suffered indescribable digestive
indignities, and meticulously collected physiological data on the health and
eating habits of 10,000 individuals, from Bantu tribesmen to Italian
contadini.
• For many of these unwed mothers, the data on their family life and early
childhood experiences revealed several indications and sources of their basic
mistrust of their parents in particular and of the world in general.
• In addition, the 1952 study collected comparable data from 4,585 students at
ten other colleges and universities scattered across the country: Dartmouth,
Harvard, Yale, Wesleyan, North Carolina, Fisk, Texas, and University of
California at Los Angeles, Wayne, and Michigan.
Data as an adjective
• The x ray data are consistent with particle sizes of 1000 A or greater
• Preliminary data from 1959 Eta give an average impact rate of **f for
masses larger than **f for about 1000 events in a 22-day period (LaGow and
Alexander, 1960).
• At the fifteenth magnitude, **f and at the twenty-fifth magnitude, **f These
extrapolated fluxes are about an order of magnitude less than the values from
the satellite data and the figures in Whipple's table.
Some Verbs used to talk about data
1. find out the data
2. analyze the data
3. figure out the data
4. express the data
5. provide the data
6. interpret the data
7. use the data
8. Determine the data of….
9. Measure the data from….
10. express the data in terms of physical quantities
3 sentences
1. From the resulting data the doctor can determine lung defects with hitherto
unknown accuracy and detail.
2. The selective and directional qualities of basic value-orientations are clearly
evident in these data :
3. The market for computers and other data -handling continues to expand at the
rate of about 30% annually, reaching some $450 million in 1960.

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APPENDIX O:

Teachers’ Notes for the Advanced Academic Thesis Writing Course

The current ENGL501 advanced academic thesis writing course adopts a genre-

based corpus-informed data-driven lexico-grammatical approach to thesis writing.

The course therefore focuses on the generic features of texts, makes use of the

corpora compiled and analyzed for this study as well as larger corpora, offers the

participants the opportunity to explore the corpus data through data-driven learning

activities, and pays special attention to how lexico-grammatical structures achieve

different language functions. The participants are constantly alerted to the fact that

fluency in productive skills is achieved through the knowledge of collocations and

lexico-grammatical structures.

The course has three contact hours a week, complemented by the online component

of the course on Moodle. Before the three contact hours each week, the participants’

prior knowledge of the section of the thesis to be focused on that week is elicited

through a discussion forum on Moodle. The participants share their ideas regarding

the sub-genre online in a collaborative environment. They are also encouraged to do

research regarding the sub-genre on the web, and provide the source for reference.

The discussion is generally structured in such a way as to encourage the participants

to consider the sub-sections of the sub-genre in question, and how they are

organized, thus focusing on the generic discourse structure. The thesis introduction

is given as a sample here.

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The first discussion forum on Moodle regarding thesis introductions is entitled

‘What is ‘CARS’?”. The participants are aware that CARS is related to thesis

introductions, so they make predictions about the meaning. As they are collaborating

with each other, they come up with ideas such as ‘Critical Analysis Research

System’, as well as more entertaining ones such as “Ferrari is the most famous

motor designer in the world because of its hi-quality and excellent design”. After

this initial discussion on thesis introductions, the in-class input materials are put

online on Moodle one or two days before the contact hours. The participants

continue their discussion in class, and find out that CARS stands for ‘Create A

Research Space’, and reflects the three moves in thesis introductions. The in-class

materials provide the participants with an authentic sample introduction, and a

variety of tasks ensure that the discourse structure of the thesis introduction is clear.

Focus on the organization is followed by work on language, how different moves

and sub-moves are achieved through lexico-grammatical structures. After an

intensive three hours in class, more samples of thesis introductions, links to good

outside sources, and online tasks focusing on organization and language are offered

to the participants on Moodle. Not only are data-driven learning tasks designed to

promote the exploitation of the corpora, the participants are encouraged to explore

the AAC Bank of moves and sub-moves for the relevant language. When enough

input, exposure, and practice tasks are provided, the participants are invited to

submit their first draft introductions online. The feedback from the course instructor

is in the form of suggestions, and guidance to sources, and by no means a

proofreading and correction exercise. After getting feedback, the participants write

their second drafts and submit them online to receive a second round of feedback

from the course instructor.

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