Syntactic and lexical development in an intensive English for Academic Purposes programme

Abstract

A B S T R A C TThis study investigates how the lexical and syntactic characteristics of L2 learners' academic writing change over the course of a one-month long intensive English for Academic Purposes (EAP) programme at a British university. The participants were asked to produce two argumentative essays, at the beginning and at the end of the EAP course, which were analyzed using measures that are theoretically motivated by previous research in corpus linguistics, systemic functional linguistics, and developmental child language acquisition. The results indicate improvements, with regard to lexical diversity, both for intermediate-level students who were preparing for undergraduate university studies in the UK and upper-intermediate level participants who were planning to continue their studies at postgraduate level. The academic argumentative texts of the students in the lower proficiency group also demonstrate development in noun-phrase complexity and in the use of genre-specific syntactic constructions. The findings suggest that despite no explicit focus on lexis and syntax in the EAP programme, by the end of the course the students' writing exhibited a developmentally more advanced repertoire of lexical and syntactic choices that are characteristic of expository texts in academic contexts.

Effects of Task Complexity on L2 Writing Behaviors and Linguistic Complexity

“…In a study examining links among these facets, Jarvis found that volume, evenness, and dispersion are highly correlated. In light of this, we decided to operationalize lexical diversity in terms of rarity, variability, and disparity, given that the participants in this study had to produce texts of the same length (see also Mazgutova & Kormos, ).…”

“…In a study examining links among these facets, Jarvis found that volume, evenness, and dispersion are highly correlated. In light of this, we decided to operationalize lexical diversity in terms of rarity, variability, and disparity, given that the participants in this study had to produce texts of the same length (see also Mazgutova & Kormos, 2015). Using Cobb's (2016) online Vocabprofiler, rarity was measured in terms of proportion of K1 and K2 words (K1 and K2 standing for the first thousand and the second thousand most frequently used words in the English language, respectively), proportion of academic words (Coxhead, 2000), and proportion of off-list words.…”

Lexical Complexity Development from Dynamic Systems Theory Perspective: Lexical Density, Diversity, and Sophistication

“…It has been recognized as an indicator, diagnostic, and a major parameter for L2 learning, teaching, and research (Bulte´ & Housen, 2014;Laufer, 1994;Wolfe-Quintero, Inagaki, & Kim, 1998). Many L2 academic writing studies have evaluated the scope to which these measures can be applied as reliable and valid determiners of learners' general language proficiency, particularly the quality of learners' writing performance, along with various criteria measures, including cohesion, coherence, organization, and discourse (Bulte´ & Housen, 2014;Mazgutova & Kormos, 2015). The findings concerning LC development are inconclusive.…”

Chinese University EFL Undergraduate Students’ Perceptions towards EGAP Reading and Writing Courses

“…As EGAP had been practiced continuously for several semesters to date, the present study aimed to examine how students perceived the teaching and learning of EGAP reading and writing courses in a highly prestigious university in Mainland China. (Afshar & Movassagh, 2016;Flowerdew, 1999;Harwood, 2014;Mazgutova & Kormos, 2015). For example, to probe how SymbalooEDU was used in a PLE (personal learning environment) platform to support L2 learners of EAP (English for academic purposes), Harwood (2014) administered a need survey and a feedback survey to 306 undergraduate and graduate students.…”

“…Most students believed they needed listening and speaking skills to take part in academic discussions, while teachers did not regard them as important needs. In order to examine the change of the lexical and syntactic characteristics in L2 learners' academic writing, Mazgutova and Kormos (2015) investigated two groups of EFL learners who took an intensive four-week course in the UK, with the first group consisting of 25 students of Chinese L1 background and the second group 14 undergraduate students whose English language proficiency was slightly lower than that of the former. Findings indicated that: (a) both groups of students demonstrated improvements in terms of lexical diversity; (b) as to syntax, the lower proficiency groups showed development with regard to the use of complex noun phrases and conditional clauses; (c) syntactic similarity was observed between both groups at the end of the course.…”