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Investigation of Lexical Bundles in Cameroonian Students' Dissertations

Prof. Daniel A. Nkemleke conducts a study on lexical bundles in students' dissertations focusing on controversy, data analysis, findings, and implications for academic writing and credibility. Explore the detailed research findings in this study.

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Investigation of Lexical Bundles in Cameroonian Students' Dissertations

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  1. A corpus-based study of lexical bundles in students‘ dissertations in Cameroon Prof Daniel A. Nkemleke Department of English Ecole Normale Supérieure University of Yaounde I

  2. Outline 1. Introduction 2. Objective 3. Controversy: status of lexical bundles 4. Data and methodology 5. Findings 6. Conclusion Prof. Daniel A. Nkemleke

  3. Introduction: Lexical bundles & academic discourse • (EAP) focus on a “thicker” description of language use in the academia (cf. Hyland 2006) • investigation of lexical bundles or recurrent multi-word expressions in academic registers (Biber 1999; Hyland 2004) • computer technology as enhancement of this practice (Biber 1988 pioneering work) Prof. Daniel A. Nkemleke

  4. 2. Objective • stimulate interest in a “novel approach” ?? • awareness-raising of the forms and functions of lexical bundles • Enhancement of students’ expertise in writing academic English and gaining disciplinary credibility Prof. Daniel A. Nkemleke

  5. 3. Controversy:Status of lexical bundles • Grounded in many studies: (Biber et al. 1999; Cortes 2004; Sinclair 1991; Stubbs & Barth 2003), but disagreements persist • Hyland (2008): ‘[lexical] bundles, extended collocations defined by their frequency of occurrence • They may include such strings as do you want to and I don’t know what. Prof. Daniel A. Nkemleke

  6. Controversy: Status, con‘t • cut-off point (3-,4-,5-words etc.) varies and depends on occurrence in texts • conservative approaches (cf. Hyland 2008; Biber 2006) set a minimum frequency of 20 times per million words and an occurrence in at least 10 % of texts Prof. Daniel A. Nkemleke

  7. Controversy: status, con‘t • Biber et al. (1999:994): reduction to combinations that recur at least 10 times per million words and across five or more texts • This is the view taken in this short survey Prof. Daniel A. Nkemleke

  8. 4. Data and methodology • 150 Student‘s dissertations (2007-2009) • 1,000,000 words count, excluding ‘theory parts‘ • Reliance on a group of already established expressions as a basis for comparison of current work (Hyland 2008 corpus of MA dissertations) Prof. Daniel A. Nkemleke

  9. 5. Findings: 3-wod bundles • in order to, in terms of, one of the, the use of, as well as, the number of, due to the, on the other, in this study, a number of, the fact that, most of the, there is a, according to the, the present study, part of the, the end of, the relationship between, in the following, the role of, some of the, as a result, it can be, based on the, the other hand • Total CamE: 17,182 BrE: 18,463 (diff. >BrE 1,281) Prof. Daniel A. Nkemleke

  10. 4-word bundles • on the other hand, at the same time, in the case of, the end of the, as well as the, at the end of, in terms of the, on the basis of, in the present study, is one of the, in the form of, the number of the, the result of the, the fact that the, as a result of, in relation to the, at the beginning of, with respect to the, the other hand the, the relationship between the, in the context of, can be used to, to the fact that, as shown in table/figure, it was found that • Total CamE: 4,978 BrE: (5,508) (diff. >BrE 530) Prof. Daniel A. Nkemleke

  11. 5-word bundles • on the other hand the, at the end of the, it should be noted that, it can be seen that, due to the fact that, at the beginning of the, may be due to the, it was found out that, to the fact that the, there are a number of, in the case of the, as a result of the, at the same time the, is one of the most, it is possible that the, one of the most important, play the important role in, can be seen as a, the result of this study, from the point of view, the point of view of, it can be observed that, this may be due to, an important role in the, in the form of a • Total CamE: 1,650 BrE: (1,445) (diff. > CamE 205) Prof. Daniel A. Nkemleke

  12. 6. Functional classification Prof. Daniel A. Nkemleke

  13. Text-oriented bundles • Text-oriented bundles: concerned with the organization of the text and its meaning as a message or argument • E.g. transition markers, structuring signals, resultative signals, framing signals, terms of reference Prof. Daniel A. Nkemleke

  14. Research-oriented bundles • Essentially help writers to structure their experiences of the real world of the text, helping reader identify location,procedure and to quantify facts, experiences etc. • E.g. ‘in the present study’, ‘in this work’, ‘the use of the’, ‘the purpose of the’, ‘most of the’, ‘many of the’ Prof. Daniel A. Nkemleke

  15. Participant-oriented bundles • Focus on the writer or reader of the text and include: • stance features (‘are likely to’) • Engagement features (‘can be seen as’) Prof. Daniel A. Nkemleke

  16. 6. Conclusion • Less use and less diversification of bundles in dissertations (BrE exceed CamE by a wide margin of 1,606 bundles) • Relevance of study:disciplinary-based literacy development essential • Disciplinary credibility enhanced ?? Prof. Daniel A. Nkemleke

  17. END THANK YOU FOR LISTENING ! Prof. Daniel A. Nkemleke

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