学习者书面语词丛分析.ppt

Martin Volk 学习者书面语词丛分析Cluster analysis of EFL learner‘s written language 王金铨 bfsuwjq@ Word clusters as a measure of the idiomaticity of learner language Hypothesis and methodology Procedures Data display and interpretation Word clusters Language is phrasal and textual. A word cluster is a group of words which follow each other in a text and they are words “which are found repeatedly in each other’s company.” (Scott，1998：manual). Some most often used similar terms: Multi-word units N-grams Recurrent word combinations Chunks Formulaic language Lexical bundles Prefabs Measuring the idiomaticity of learner language Based on previous studies, it is believed that the more proficient an L2 learner, the more formulaic language is used in her language. Such formulaicity makes his language more idiomatic and fluent. Measuring the idiomaticity of learner language Claims about the overall significance of formulaic language are made largely by assertion, and there is little empirical work to substantiate them (Schmitt Carter 2004). Word clusters from proficient L2 learners’ language = the measure of learner language idiomaticity. Hypothesis Word clusters frequently used in proficient L2 learners’ language can be used to measure the idiomaticity of other L2 learners’ language. Methodology 1/2 90 essays written by university students, with scores assigned by expert human raters; 30 best compositions were chosen from the 90; Most frequent 3- and 4-word clusters were extracted from the 30 best compositions; The remaining 60 texts were searched for the No. of word clusters found in the 30 best essays; Statistical analysis was then conducted to see whether the No. of word clusters contained in the 60 compositions correlates with essay scores. Methodology 2/2 Procedures (1/4) Cluster extraction Make an index of the 30 texts; Open the index file from the WordList Tool; Compute clusters (define cluster size = 3 and 4, frequency ≥ 4) respective