Phraseology In English Academic Writing

This study examines the use of one category of prefabricated language (restricted lexical collocations) in native and non-native academic English in the social sciences, in an attempt to throw light on a neglected aspect of learner competence. It first surveys the existing theoretical viewpoints on word combinations and then reviews experimental research into the psycholinguistic processing of prefabricated language, which suggest that the role of conventional expressions is to facilitate fluent production and rapid comprehension. A computer-based corpus of native academic writing is analysed to discover to what extent and how such collocations are used in formal written English. Conventionality of style, it is suggested, aids precision of expression, clearly a quality highly valued in academic argument. A corpus of non-native writing is then subjected to a similar analysis. While the collocational errors learners make do not on the whole seriously destroy intelligibility, they can lead to a lack of precision and obscure the clarity of expression required in academic communication. Pedagogical implications are then considered, and it is seen that for the most part published teaching materials have failed to recognize the nature of collocations in general and offer little help. The final part of the study examines the treatment of restricted collocations in both general and phraseological dictionaries for learners. These are evaluated on their selection and presentation of collocations shown by the preceding research to be problematic for advanced learners. The conclusion suggests that, for such learners, who are mostly studying the language independently, good reference works are needed in the form of specialist collocational dictionaries. The results of this research help to establish principles for the design of such dictionaries.

The PhraseBook for Writing Papers and Research gives you a bank of over 5000 words and phrases to help you write, present and publish in English. Phrases are divided into around 30 main sections, such as Introducing a Study, Arguing For and Against, Reviewing other Work, Summarizing and Conclusions. Writing Help sections give advice on university and research writing, helping you to avoid many common errors in English. Main chapters include Style, Spelling, Punctuation, Grammar, Vocabulary, Numbers and Time. The 4th edition also includes a University and Research Thesaurus to help you improve your academic vocabulary, as well as a Glossary of University and Research Terminology. The PhraseBook is used in more than 30 countries in subjects ranging from Medicine, Engineering, Science and Technology to Law, Business and Economics, Geography, History, Sociology, Psychology, Language and Education. Over 5000 words and phrases to help you write, present and publish in English Written by PhD authors Specially designed for non-native speakers Suitable for university and research writing from student to researcher and faculty level Includes most frequent words in academic English Exercises for individual and classroom use British and American English "This material, prepared by experienced editors, is certainly very useful" Photosynthetica Example phrases Introducing your work The study will begin by outlining... This study addresses a number of issues... The following section sets out... ...to examine the research problem in detail ...to shed light on a number of problem areas in current theory The paper presented here is based in part on an earlier study Arguing for and against This becomes clear when one examines... This lends weight to the argument that... Support for this interpretation comes from... While it may well be valid that..., this study argues the importance of... A serious drawback of this approach is... One of the prime failings of this theory or explanation is... Reviewing other work X takes little or no account of... There is little evidence to suggest that... The study offers only cursory examination of... X gives a detailed if not always tenable analysis of... The authors' claim that...is not well founded. X's explanation is not implausible, if not entirely satisfactory. Analysis and explanation If, for the sake of argument, we assume... One of the most obvious consequences of...is... Although it may well be true that..., it is important not to overlook... It is important to distinguish carefully between... The extent to which this reflects...is unclear. A more plausible explanation for or of...would... The reason for...is unknown, but...has been suggested by X as a possible factor. Summary and conclusions Concluding this section, we can say that... Chapter X draws together the main findings of the paper. A number of key issues have been addressed in this study. This study has highlighted a number of problem areas in existing theory. While the initial findings are promising, further research is necessary. The results of this study suggest a number of new avenues for research.

This book addresses the key role of phraseology in second language acquisition and instruction. It is divided into three main sections: Extracting and Describing Phraseological Units investigates the role played by native and learner corpora in the extraction and description of multiword units, two initial and crucial steps in informing language pedagogy; Learning Phraseological Units deals with the learning aspect, an oft-neglected yet essential dimension of phraseology in second/foreign language pedagogy, this section also addresses issues in new literacies; and Recording and Exploiting Phraseological Units focuses on pedagogical tools, notably monolingual and bilingual dictionaries and textbooks. This stimulating collection presents cutting edge research in the field and identifies major avenues for future theoretical and applied work. It is of particular relevance to researchers and teachers interested in the patterned nature of language.

This book addresses the key role of phraseology in second language acquisition and instruction. It is divided into three main sections: "Extracting and Describing Phraseological Units "investigates the role played by native and learner corpora in the extraction and description of multiword units, two initial and crucial steps in informing language pedagogy;" Learning Phraseological Units "deals with the learning aspect, an oft-neglected yet essential dimension of phraseology in second/foreign language pedagogy, this section also addresses issues in new literacies; and "Recording and Exploiting Phraseological Units" focuses on pedagogical tools, notably monolingual and bilingual dictionaries and textbooks. This stimulating collection presents cutting edge research in the field and identifies major avenues for future theoretical and applied work. It is of particular relevance to researchers and teachers interested in the patterned nature of language.

University students must cope with a bewildering array of registers, not only to learn academic content, but also to understand course expectations and requirements. While many previous studies have investigated academic writing, we know comparatively little about academic speech; and no linguistic study to date has investigated the range of academic and advising/management registers that students encounter. This book is a first step towards filling this gap. Based on analysis of the T2K-SWAL Corpus, the book describes university registers from several different perspectives, including: vocabularly patterns; the use of lexico-grammatical and syntactic features; the expression of stance; the use of extended collocations ('lexical bundles'); and a Multi-Dimensional analysis of the overall patterns of register variation. All linguistic patterns are interpreted in functional terms, resulting in an overall characterization of the typical kinds of language that students encounter in university registers: academic and non-academic; spoken and written.

Over the last twenty years phraseology has become an important field of pure and applied research in Western European and North American linguistics. In this book the world's leading specialists examine the crucial role played by ready-made word-combinations in language acquisition and adult language use. After a wide-ranging introduction, the book presents full, critical accounts of the main theoretical approaches, analyses the corpus data and phrase typology, and finally considers the application of phraseology to associated disciplines including lexicography, language learning, stylistics, and computational analysis. This is the first comprehensive and up-to-date account of the subject to be published in English.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the International Conference on Computational and Corpus-Based Phraseology, Europhras 2017, held in London, UK, in November 2017. The 31 full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions and are organized into the following thematic sessions: Phraseology in translation and contrastive studies, Lexicography and terminography, Exploitation of corpora in phraseological studies, Development of corpora for phraseological studies, Phraseology and language learning, Cognitive and cultural aspects of phraseology, Theoretical and descriptive approaches to phraseology, and Computational approaches to phraseology. The chapter 'Frequency Consolidation Among Word N-Grams' is available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license.

Academic vocabulary is in fashion, as witnessed by the increasing number of books published on the topic. In the first part of this book, Magali Paquot scrutinizes the concept of 'academic vocabulary' and proposes a corpus-driven procedure based on the criteria of keyness, range and evenness of distribution to select academic words that could be part of a common-core academic vocabulary syllabus. In the second part, the author offers a thorough analysis of academic vocabulary in the International Corpus of Learner English (ICLE) and describes the factors that account for learners' difficulties in academic writing. She then focuses on the role of corpora, and more particularly, learner corpora, in EAP material design. It is the first monograph in which Granger's (1996) Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis is used to compare 10 ICLE learner sub-corpora, in order to distinguish between linguistic features that are shared by learners from a wide range of mother tongue backgrounds and unique features that may be transfer-related.