Adverb use and language proficiency in young learners’ writing

Abstract

Our research examines the use of general adverbs by learners across grades 5, 6, 9 and 10 in the International Corpus of Crosslinguistic Interlanguage (ICCI) by looking at whether this use increases with age. For our research we use data from the Polish, Spanish and Chinese components in the ICCI, in particular, those from the “food” and “money” topics. Our results show that general adverbs are more widely used as age increases. Statistically significant differences were found between grade 6 and 10 learners across all three L1 groups in terms of the frequency of use of general adverbs, which suggests that 10-graders integrate adverbs in their discourse in ways that differ from those in previous years. This study, together with Pérez-Paredes & Díez-Bedmar’s (2012), suggests that learners below grade 9 are more unlikely to use adverbs.

Actuallyin Nordic tweets

“…The multifunctionality and positional flexibility of discourse markers can pose a particular challenge for L2 speakers, and consequently the 'native'-like use of discourse markers can be considered one indicator of high proficiency in a given language (Sankoff et al, 1997;Pérez-Paredes & Sánchez-Tornel, 2014). Contrastive interlanguage studies of discourse markers show that advanced L2 speakers and writers are able to capture the nuances of discourse markers well and use them with 'native'-like precision, even if traces of first language influence remain; for the concept of interlanguage, see Selinker (1972) and for an overview of studies, see Müller (2005, pp.…”

“…According to Aijmer (2002), ‘native speakers’ use discourse markers ‘with great precision’ (p. 3), which means that subtle differences in sentence position and prosodic stress can alter the pragmatic meaning of a discourse marker, and as a result, even fairly advanced L2 speakers can inadvertently change the intended meaning of a sentence by using the inappropriate discourse marker or placing it in an unorthodox sentence position. The multifunctionality and positional flexibility of discourse markers can pose a particular challenge for L2 speakers, and consequently the ‘native’‐like use of discourse markers can be considered one indicator of high proficiency in a given language (Sankoff et al., 1997; Pérez‐Paredes & Sánchez‐Tornel, 2014). Contrastive interlanguage studies of discourse markers show that advanced L2 speakers and writers are able to capture the nuances of discourse markers well and use them with ‘native’‐like precision, even if traces of first language influence remain; for the concept of interlanguage, see Selinker (1972) and for an overview of studies, see Müller (2005, pp.…”

Computer-Mediated Communication for Course Delivery and Teaching Materials Development

“…The relative underuse of adverbs may be due to an apparent lack of familiarity in using anything but the most common adverbs: only four basic adverbs from the CLAWS-7 tagset (so, very, also, and too) were found in the top hundred wordlist. This is in line with previous research on adverb usage in learner writing, which suggests that learners often find adverbs problematic and tend to avoid them, especially at lower proficiency levels (Phillip, 2008;Pérez-Paredes & Sánchez-Tornel, 2014). While this is an area worthy of further investigation, in this study we chose to pay particular attention to the relative frequencies of verbs and pronouns.…”

Developing EFL Writing with Year 5 Pupils by Writing Summaries

“…In comparison with the Slovene pupils, most of the South Korean pupils in the study were 2-3 years older and had a much larger exposure to the English language than their Slovene counterparts. In another study, in which the participants were 5, 6, 8, and 9-graders (aged between 11 and 16) from different countries, Perez-Paredes and Sanchez-tornel (2014) established that chinese learners wrote the largest number of words per essay (99.9), followed by Polish (87.2) and Spanish students (75.1). comparing the two studies, Slovene Year 5 pupils wrote longer texts than any of the nations included in Perez-Paredes and Sanchez-tornel's ( 2014) research.…”