Transcript An investigation of genres of assessed writing in British HE

What can the
British Academic Written English (BAWE) Corpus
tell us about student development?
Signe Ebeling
Maria Leedham
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Outline
•
Introducing the British Academic Written
English Corpus
•
Case studies
1. Variation within and across disciplines
(lexical density)
2. Individual development (connectors)
•
Concluding remarks
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BAWE
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The Project
• 'An investigation of genres of assessed writing in British
Higher Education' - 3 year ESRC-funded project
• Collaboration between Oxford Brookes, Warwick and
Reading Universities
• End of project – December 2007
• The BAWE Corpus
• Assessed written assignments (student)
• Contextual data (student)
• Interview data (tutor)
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BAWE
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What is the BAWE Corpus?
• Collection of 3,000-3,500 student assignments at UG
and Masters level – all at 2:1 level (60% +)
• Four disciplinary groupings: Arts & Humanities, Life
Sciences, Physical Sciences, Social Sciences
• Aims to provide a database for use by researchers
who are investigating the nature of academic writing,
and also by tutors who are designing teaching and
assessment materials for their students
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BAWE
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Case Study 1
Variation within and across disciplines
Measuring lexical density
"Statistics can be used to estimate not only the
frequency of use of specific words, but also to
estimate the size of the vocabulary from which they
are drawn; hence, statistical evidence is relevant to
both style and competence." (Youmans 1990: 584)
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Type-token comparison
• Each wordfrom
(token)
in a text
is countedgroupings (AH, SS, LS, PS);
• Assignments
4 different
disciplinary
Each new vocabulary
word
(type)
recorded
• 5• assignments
from 1st year
UG
from iseach
discipline;
Total number
of tokens
is UG
computed
along
with the total number
• 5• assignments
from
3rd year
from each
discipline;
of types accumulated at some specific point in the text
• Recorded the number of types accumulated after 2000 tokens;
• Calculated the mean number of types in each year of study for each
discipline
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BAWE
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Type-token comparison across 4 UG disciplines
3y
ng
r
in
ee
rin
g
1y
E
ng
r
in
ee
rin
g
3y
P
sy
r
ch
ol
og
y
1y
P
r
sy
ch
ol
og
y
3y
r
E
H
LT
M
1y
r
H
LT
M
3y
r
ng
lis
h
E
E
ng
lis
h
1y
r
900
800
700
600
500
400
300
200
100
0
• Is the discipline (English) more language/vocabulary conscious?
• Does it encourage students to use more inventive language?
• Is there an element of creative writing involved?
• Also, English studies students may include more quotations from primary and
secondary sources.
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BAWE
BAWE and other studies compared
Finnegans "General"
Wake
English"*
Types
at 2000
tokens
1078
Learned &
Scientific
writing**
BAWE
(mean)
685
686
756
* 51 passages from 12 categories (Kucera & Francis as reported in Youmans)
** 8 samples (Kucera & Francis as reported in Youmans)
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BAWE
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Summary
• Difference within disciplines in the size of
vocabulary between 1st year and 3rd year students
• Similar difference across disciplines, with English
Studies using a more varied vocabulary
• The BAWE material coincides well with what has
been noted for academic writing in other studies
when it comes to lexical density
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BAWE
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Case Study 2: Individual development
(connectors)
• WS Tools showed that in 1st year English Studies essays
“however” is the most overused non subject-specific word
compared to 3rd year English Studies essays.
• This prompted us to focus on individual development in
connector usage from year 1 to year 3 and compare this with
published academic usage.
• We looked at three similar students (UG 3, English Studies,
female, early 20s) – DA, EM and EL.
• When the corpus is complete we can compare use of
connectors between English Studies and other disciplines.
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BAWE
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Connectors
• Quirk et al, Biber et al, and others define connectors
slightly differently.
• We are using the list of connectors in the academic
part of ICE-GB (International Corpus of English,
British sub-corpus), in line with Bolton et al. 2005.
• ‘Connectors’ thus includes conjuncts such as
‘however’ and co-ordinators such as ‘or’.
• We can compare the BAWE English students’ use of
connectors with the academic ICE-GB use.
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BAWE
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Function of Connectors
•
“The primary function of linking adverbials is to state the
speaker/writer’s perception of the relationship between two units of
discourse. “ (Biber et al. 1999:875)
• “Their [connectors’] main function is to facilitate the interpretation of
underlying relations in discourse and to resolve potential
ambiguities. Relations that can be inferred from the text do not
have to be marked explicitly, which means that a high frequency of
connectors in a text does not necessarily improve its cohesive
quality.”
(Altenberg & Tapper 1998: 80)
• “Conjuncts can also be overused. In theory we can insert as many
as we like into a sentence. In practice, this gives a rambling
impression it is wise to avoid:
And so, to sum up, in other words, I think that, all in all, we should
nevertheless look to the future…” (Crystal 2004:290)
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Comparison of BAWE and ICE connector usage
Connectors per
sentence
(multiplied by
1000)
ICE-GB
academic
ICE-GB
student
ICE-HK
student
BAWEEng
Year 1
BAWEEng
Year 3
BAWE Eng.
Total
107.8
159.9
239.6
215
224
220
•
English Studies students seem to overuse connectors compared to all the other
groups. These students all achieved 65% or higher for their essays.
•
616 sentences in BAWE-Eng corpus vs. 4500 in ICE-GB
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BAWE
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Top Five Connectors used in BAWE-Eng
120
100
80
ICE-GB ac.
BAWE year 1
BAWE year 3
60
40
20
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so
thus
yet
indeed
however
0
BAWE
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EM's overuse of 'indeed'
Indeed, the religious significance of his name can easily be assimilated to Adam in the
Garden of Eden. Accordingly, his employment as a carpenter is reminiscent of Jesus’
vocation. Similarly, his brother Seth is an insider due to his obliging ‘ benignant’ behaviour,
but Eliot is keen to highlight his inferiority in comparison to the muscular Adam by denoting
the prominent, which according to the science of phrenology that was introduced to Eliot by
George Combes, is a sign of weakness in a man. Their mother, Lisbeth, at times alienates
the readers through her constant fretting but this is overwhelmed by her enduring,’ which
links her to nature and therefore the community. Accordingly, her constant residence inside
the family home consolidates her status as an insider, as she never strays outside to
compromise or transgress her allotted social role.
Eliot juxtaposes Adam’s moral integrity with Arthur’s fickle nature to establish his
liminal status. Indeed, the religious connotations implicit in Adam’s name suggest that
Arthur’s betrayal of Adam is equivalent to Judas’ betrayal of Jesus. This suggestion is
supported by Arthur’s ‘absence’ at Thias Bede’s funeral. In his affair with Hetty, Arthur is
forced to meet her, neither on a farm nor on an estate, but on ‘the Chase,’ a liminal place
where they are free to explore their erotic desires without the condemnation of the
community. Indeed, Arthur must undergo a symbolic death during his fight with Adam in the
grove, to emerge understood but not forgiven by the community, for Eliot makes it clear to
the reader that ‘suggesting that Arthur is responsible for his actions and no malign fate is at
work. Valentine Cunningham agrees that ‘Here Eliot is seen to be exploring contemporary
thoughts on Determinism within her text. Indeed, Adam Bede was published the same year
as Charles Darwin’s influential bestseller The Origin of the Species.
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EM
per 1000 sentences
however
indeed
therefore
accordingly
so
other (1 each)
Year 1
78 sentences
Total : 385 (30)
115 (9)
Year 3
74 sentences
Total : 351 (26)
81 (6)
115 (9)
38 (3)
38 (3)
81 (6)
13 (1)
13 (1)
(0)
77 (6)
40 (3)
123 (9)
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DA
per 1000 sentences
Year 1:
84 sentences
Total: 143 (12)
Year 3:
136 sentences
Total: 162 (22)
however
71 (6)
29 (4)
yet
36 (3)
51 (7)
so
12 (1)
51 (7)
for example
12 (1)
7 (1)
and
12 (1)
(0)
but
(0)
15 (2)
thus
(0)
7 (1)
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EL
per 1000 sentences
however
in contrast,
Year 1:
84 sentences
Total: 131 (11)
119 (10)
12 (1)
Year 3:
160 sentences
Total: 219 (35)
50 (8)
(0)
indeed
thus
(0)
(0)
56 (9)
31 (5)
moreover,
furthermore,
on the other hand
(2 each)
(0)
38 (6)
other (1 each)
(0)
37 (7)
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Overuse of connectors?
• “overuse of connectors… is a prominent feature of
students’ writing generally”
(Bolton et al, 2005)
• students “use a considerably smaller number of
different connectors in their writing than professional
academics. As a result, … (students) tend to overuse
those connectors within their repertoire”.
(Bolton
et al, 2005)
• “connector usage… is closely connected with the
individual writer’s style and compositional technique”
(Altenberg and Tapper 1998:83)
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Summary
Findings
• BAWE English studies students use more connectors
than published academics
• However they also use a more limited range of
connectors
• Individual use of connectors varies in both number and
range
Possible reasons
• Connectors are salient features for students
• Students are writing to display their knowledge to tutors
• Maybe English Studies essays differ from others in the
use of connectors?
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Concluding Remarks
• The BAWE corpus will provide a unique collection of
early 21st century student texts
• The final corpus will contain over 3000 assignments
with over 8 million words
• Far greater comparisons will be possible both
between disciplines and between year groups
• This will be of use to subject academics, researchers
and teachers of writing
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References
•
•
•
•
•
Altenberg, B. and M. Tapper. 1998. The use of adverbial connectors in advanced
Swedish learners' written English. In S. Granger (Ed.), Learner English on Computer.
London: Addison Wesley Longman. 80-93
Biber, D., S. Johansson, G. Leech, S. Conrad, and E. Finegan. 1999. Longman
Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Harlow: Longman.
Bolton, K., G. Nelson and J. Hung. 2002. A corpus-based study of connectors in
student writing. Research from the International Corpus of English in Hong Kong
(ICE-HK). International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 7(2), 165-182.
Crystal, D. 2004. Making Sense of Grammar. Harlow: Pearson Longman.
Youmans, G. 1990. Measuring lexical style and competence: The Type Token
Vocabulary Curve. Style, 24, 584-599.
Websites
• British Academic Written English Corpus
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/go/bawe
• International Corpus of English
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/english-usage/ice/
• Vocabulary Management Profiles
http://www.missouri.edu/~youmansc/vmp/index.shtml
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