Lexical vagueness in student writing
This study addresses the issue of <i>underspecificity </i>in undergraduate writing. Two corpora of South African undergraduate essays (writing in first and second language English) are compared to a corpus of academic papers (PW). The comparison is in terms of corpus-analytic methods and a discourse analytic approach to using definite expressions. So-called ~abstract~ nouns like <i>problem, purpose, fact, example </i>and <i>idea</i> identified as ~carrier/shell~ nouns, are often claimed to cause 'vagueness' in student writing, so students are advised not to use them. Yet corpus analysis (e.g. Biber <i>et al</i>, 1999) shows they are a core feature of English academic vocabulary. Distinguishing between sense and reference clarifies a crucial difference between nouns with vague denotation, and noun phrases (NPs) with vague reference. A quantitative analysis of the corpora reveals that the students and PWs are both ~shell~ nouns, and the syntactic patterns in which they frequently occur, with similarly high frequency. However, the PW sub-corpus contains significantly more nouns than the student corpora and exhibits significantly more variety in the nouns used. Using a discourse-based approach, a second analysis
Caldwell, Candice Anne
Lexical vagueness in student writing. This study addresses the issue of <i>underspecificity </i>in undergraduate writing. Two corpora of South African undergraduate essays (writing in first and second language English) are compared to a corpus of academic papers (PW). The comparison is in terms of corpus-analytic methods and a discourse analytic approach to using definite expressions. So-called ~abstract~ nouns like <i>problem, purpose, fact, example </i>and <i>idea</i> identified as ~carrier/shell~ nouns, are often claimed to cause 'vagueness' in student writing, so students are advised not to use them. Yet corpus analysis (e.g. Biber <i>et al</i>, 1999) shows they are a core feature of English academic vocabulary. Distinguishing between sense and reference clarifies a crucial difference between nouns with vague denotation, and noun phrases (NPs) with vague reference. A quantitative analysis of the corpora reveals that the students and PWs are both ~shell~ nouns, and the syntactic patterns in which they frequently occur, with similarly high frequency. However, the PW sub-corpus contains significantly more nouns than the student corpora and exhibits significantly more variety in the nouns used. Using a discourse-based approach, a second analysis
lexical vagueness student_writing study address_issue undergraduate writing corpus south_african undergraduate essay write first_second language english compare corpus academic paper comparison term corpus analytic method discourse_analytic use definite expression so_called abstract noun like problem purpose fact example idea identify carrier shell noun often claim cause vagueness student_writing student advise use them yet corpus_analysis show core feature english_academic vocabulary sense reference clarifies crucial difference noun vague denotation noun_phrase nps vague reference quantitative_analysis corpus reveal student shell noun syntactic pattern frequently_occur similarly high_frequency however sub corpus contains significantly nouns student corpus exhibit significantly variety noun use using discourse based second analysis