Phraseology in Two Omani Undergraduate Civil Engineering Genres: The N of (the) N Pattern

Priya Mathew

Abstract


The study of phraseology with respect to continuous and discontinuous frames in academic writing has gathered increasing research attention over the past decade. Their prevalence in expert writing and the influence of discipline and genre on their frequency and type have led to studies that attempted to identify the most productive discontinuous frames. The aim of this study is to investigate the pattern the N of (the) N, a prolific pattern in expert academic writing, in two Omani corpora of undergraduate Civil Engineering genres, Case Studies (CS) and Methodology Recounts (MR). The two strands of inquiry involve 1) a comparison between the semantic noun categories of the first (N1) and second noun (N2) used in this pattern and; 2) the N1-N2 sequences in the pattern which realize specific discourse functions in these two genres. Strings belonging to this pattern were retrieved from the two corpora through the corpus interface, Sketch Engine. Findings indicate the prevalence of this frame in the two genres and genre influence on the choice of semantic noun categories. It was also found that the N1-N2 sequences in the pattern are used to realise distinct discourse functions in the two genres. This is one of the first corpus-based studies on university student writing in the Middle East and considering that English is the language of instruction and assessment in many of these countries, these findings have significant pedagogical implications. EFL students in such lingua franca contexts can be supported by a more discipline-specific approach. 


Keywords


Civil engineering; corpora; Omani undergraduates; p-frames

Full Text:

PDF

References


Ädel, A. & Erman, B. (2012). Recurrent word combinations in academic writing by native and non-native speakers of English: A lexical bundles approach. English for Specific Purposes, 31 (2), 81-92.

Altenberg, B. (1998). On the phraseology of spoken English: the evidence of recurrent word-combinations. In P. Cowie (Ed.), A Phraseology: Theory Analysis and Applications (pp. 101-122). Oxford University Press.

Artemeva, N. & Freedman, A. (2008). Rhetorical Genre Studies and Beyond. Inkshed Publications

Artemeva, N. (2009). Stories of becoming: A study of novice engineers learning genres of their profession’. In C. Bazerman, A. Bonini, & D. Figueiredo (Ed.), Genre in a Changing world. Perspectives on Writing (pp. 158-178). The WAC Clearinghouse and Parlor Press.

Biber, D. (2006). University Language: A Corpus-based Study of Spoken and Written registers. John Benjamins.

Biber, D. & Barbieri, F. (2007). Lexical bundles in university spoken and written register. English for Specific Purposes, 26 (3), 263-286.

Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S., & Finnegan, E. (1999) The Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Longman.

Blaikie, N. (2003). Analyzing Quantitative Data: From Description to Explanation. Sage.

Bolinger, D. (1976). Meaning and memory. Forum Linguisticum, 1, 1–14.

Byrd, P. & Coxhead, A. (2010). On the other hand: Lexical bundles in academic writing and in the teaching of EAP. University of Sydney Papers in TESOL, 5(5), 31-64.

Cheng, A. (2007). Transferring generic features and re-contextualizing genre awareness: Understanding writing performance in the ESP genre-based literacy framework. English for Specific Purposes, 26, 287–307.

Conrad, S. (2014). Expanding multi-dimensional analysis with qualitative research techniques. Multi-dimensional Analysis, 25, 273-95.

Conrad, S. (2017). A comparison of practitioner and student writing in civil engineering. Journal of Engineering Education, 106 (2), 191-217.

Conrad, S. & Biber, D. (2004). The frequency and use of lexical bundles in conversation and academic prose. Lexicographica, 20, 56-71.

Chen, Y.H. & Baker, P. (2010). Lexical bundles in L1 and L2 academic writing. Language Learning and Technology, 14 (2), 30-49.

Cunningham, K.J. (2017). A phraseological exploration of recent mathematics research articles through key phrase frames. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 25, 71-83.

Durrant, P. (2014). Discipline and level specificity in university students’ written vocabulary. Applied Linguistics, 35 (3), 328-356.

Ebeling, S. O. & Hasselgård, H. (2015). Learners' and native speakers' use of recurrent word-combinations across disciplines. Bergen Language and Linguistics Studies, 6, 87-106.

Firth, J. R. (1957) Papers in Linguistics. Oxford University Press.

Fletcher, W.H. (2020, January 2020). kfNgram. Information & Help. kfNgram https://www.kwicfinder.com/kfNgram/kfNgramHelp.html/

Gardner, S., Nesi, H., & Biber, D. (2018). Discipline, level, genre: Integrating situational perspectives in a new MD analysis of university student writing. Applied Linguistics, 10, 1-30.

Gardner, S., & Xu, X. (2019). Engineering registers in the 21st century: SFL perspectives on online publications. Language, Context and Text, 1(1), 65-101.

Gilmore, A., & Millar, N. (2018). The language of civil engineering research articles: A corpus-based approach. English for Specific Purposes, 51, 1-17.

Goldberg, A.E. (1995). Constructions: A construction grammar approach to argument structure. University of Chicago Press.

Grabowski, L. (2013). Register variation across English pharmaceutical texts: A corpus-driven study of keywords, lexical bundles and phrase frames in patient information leaflets and summaries of product characteristics. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 95, 391-401.

Gray, B., & Biber, D. (2013). Lexical frames in academic prose and conversation. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 18(1), 109-136.

Hardy, J.A. & Romer, U. (2013). Revealing disciplinary variation in student writing: a multi-dimensional analysis of the Michigan Corpus of Upper-level Student Papers (MICUSP). Corpora, 8 (2), 183–207.

Hoey, M. (2005). Lexical priming: A new theory of words and language. Routledge.

Hsu, W. (2014). Measuring the vocabulary load of engineering textbooks for EFL undergraduates. English for Specific Purposes, 33, 54-65.

Hunston, S. and Francis, G. (2000). Pattern Grammar: A Corpus-Driven Approach to the Lexical Grammar of English. John Benjamins Publishing.

Hyland, K. (2008). As can be seen: Lexical bundles and disciplinary variation. English for Specific Purposes, 27 (1), 4–21.

Huddleston, R. and Pullum, G. (2002). The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge University Press.

Kanoksilapatham, B. (2015). Distinguishing textual features characterizing structural variation in research articles across three engineering sub-discipline corpora. English for Specific Purposes, 37, 74–86.

Leedham, M. E. (2011) A corpus-driven study of features of Chinese students’ undergraduate writing in UK universities [online] PhD thesis. The Open University. available from < http://oro.open.ac.uk/29228/1297/Leedham_Thesis.pdf> [19 November 2019]

Leedham, M. & Fernández-Parra, M. (2017). Recounting and reflecting: The use of first person pronouns in Chinese, Greek and British students' assignments in engineering. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 26, 66-77.

Liu, D. (2012). The most frequently-used multi-word constructions in academic written English: A multi-corpus study. English for Specific Purposes, 31(1), 25-35.

Marco, M.J.L. (2000). Collocational frameworks in medical research papers: A genre-based study. English for Specific Purposes, 19 (1), 63-86.

Mudraya, O. (2006). Engineering English: A lexical frequency instructional model. English for Specific Purposes, 25 (2), 235-256.

Nekrasova-Beker, T.M. (2019). Discipline-specific use of language patterns in engineering: A comparison of published pedagogical materials. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 41, 1-12.

Nekrasova-Beker, T. & Becker, A. (2020). The use of lexical patterns in engineering. Advances in Corpus-based Research on Academic Writing: Effects of discipline, register, and writer expertise, 95, 228-254.

Nesi, H. & Gardner, S. (2012). Genres across the disciplines: Student writing in higher education. Cambridge University Press.

Pan, F., Reppen, R., & Biber, D. (2016). Comparing patterns of L1 versus L2 English academic professionals: Lexical bundles in Telecommunications research journals. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 21, 60-71.

Pawley, A. & Syder, F. (1983). Two puzzles for linguistic theory. In J. Richards & R. Schmidt (Ed.), Language and Communication. (pp. 191-226). Longman.

Renouf, A. & Sinclair, J. (1991). Collocational frameworks in English. In K. Aijmer & B. Altenberg (Ed.), English Corpus Linguistics: Studies in Honour of Jan Svartvik. (pp. 128-143). Longman.

Rezoug, F. & Vincent, B. (2018). Exploring lexical bundles in the Algerian Corpus of Engineering. Arab Journal of Applied Linguistics, 3 (1), 47-77.

Römer, U. (2009). The inseparability of lexis and grammar: Corpus linguistic perspectives. Annual Review of Cognitive Linguistics, 7(1), 140-162.

Staples, S., Egbert, J., Biber, D., & Bethany, G. (2016). Academic writing development at the university level: Phrasal and clausal complexity across level of study, discipline, and genre. Written Communication, 33 (2), 149-183.

Wood, D.C. & Appel, R. (2014). Multiword constructions in first year business and engineering university textbooks and EAP textbooks. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 15, 1-13.

Ward, J. (2009). A basic engineering word list for less proficient foundation engineering undergraduates. English for Specific Purposes, 28, 170–182.

Wray, A. (2006) ‘Formulaic language’. In K. Brown (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. (pp. 590–597). Elsevier.




DOI: https://doi.org/10.17509/ijal.v11i2.34182

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


View My Stats

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.