Analysis of an English Major’s Writing
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[Abstract] Corpus-based approach has become a well-proven method in linguistic study. The present paper attempts to make an analysis of an english major’s written journals in corpus approach. Through data analysis, this paper finds some typical mistakes in the subject’s writing and makes some suggestions for the learner’s future study.
[Key words] Corpus writing L1 transfer
1.Introduction
Since its birth in 1960s, Corpus Linguistics has brought a new and useful method to investigate linguistic data. According to John Sinclair(1991), a corpus is a collection of naturally occurring language text, chosen to characterize a state or variety of a language. As corpus collects “natural” linguistic data---language that people used in communication, it is a performance-based approach (Yang, 2002: 9). Compared with the traditional approaches to linguistics, i.e. introspection and elicitation, the corpus-based approach is convenient for it can be accessed using various types of software packages, thus corpus-based approach to linguistic investigation has shown its powerful advantages to better serve linguistic purposes. Sinclair has claimed that the systematic study of large corpora yields information about language use that is not available to unaided intuition:
…the contrast exposed between the impressions of language detail noted by people, and the evidence compiled objectively from texts is huge and systematic. It leads one to suppose that human intuition about language is highly specific, and not at all a good guide to what actually happens when the same people actually use the language(Sinclair, 1991:4).
This paper explores some features of a Chinese English major’s written journals and analyzes some of the typical mistakes. Hopefully it will provide new evidence to the present linguistic study with the corpus-based approach.
2. General analysis of the journal corpus
2.1 An overall picture of the written journals
This paper takes an English sophomore as the subject and collects her 24 weekly journals to make a journal corpus. In order to get a holistic view of the learner’s language proficiency, this paper makes a description of the investigated data via applying the Wordsmith tool. The result shows that most words in the journal corpus are 2, 3 and 4 letters long with an average word length of 4 letters. The average sentence and paragraph length (about 18 and 200 respectively) are much larger than the standard length (about 12 and 140 respectively). Moreover, the type/token ratio in the journal corpus is smaller than it should be. This implies that the most frequently used words are those of one or two syllables and the writer tends to use long sentences and many words to clearly express her ideas.
2.2 Contrastive analysis between Brown corpus and the journal corpus
A wordlist was made in terms of frequency and percentage of each word in the altogether 24 journals. Then this paper compares the data with a wordlist of a general corpus---Brown corpus, to make a vivid comparison of the characteristics between the Chinese English learner and the native speakers. It can be concluded that though most of the first 50 items coexist in the two corpora, there are some high frequency words in the journal corpus which are not so frequently occurred in Brown corpus. Two of the examples are “I” (No. 2 in journal corpus and No. 20 in Brown corpus) and “we” (No. 7 in journal corpus and No. 40 in Brown corpus). Another feature is that some words appears in the first 50 items of the journal corpus but not in the Brown corpus, such as “my”, “me”, “our”, “us” and “friends”. These might be the result of the specific writing genre. As the journal corpus is the collection of the student’s weekly journals which are mostly the record of the student’s life and the content of writing is mostly the writer’s own experience.
Other high frequency words in the journal corpus like “very”, “some”, “also” and “good” might be attributed from L1 (mother tongue) transfer. According to Rod Ellis, L1 transfer “refers to the influence that the learner’s L1 exerts over the acquisition of an L2” (2003:51). L1 transfer can be reflected in the overuse of some forms.
L1 transfer may result in not only the overuse of some expressions, but avoidance of some other forms as well. This can be proved by the absence of “would” in the journal corpus. The word “would” can be used as a marker for subjunctive mood, thus appear in the first 50 items of Brown corpus (No. 38). Because Chinese language does not contain equivalent structure, the investigated learner avoid to use the subjunctive mood in her writing.
3. Error analysis of the journal corpus
This paper annotates the written journals according to the CLEC annotation description. Then an accordancing process is conducted to explore concrete mistakes in the journals. The following sectors analyze the mistakes on different levels.
3.1 Analysis on lexical level
A major type of mistake on lexical level is the misuse of words. Some cases of the misuse are due to inaccurate word-choice, as shown in line (1). The subject also misuses the synonyms of some words as in line (2). A third type of misusing may be the result of incompetence of the learner’s L2, as line (3) indicates.
(1) riends would help me get rid of the bad points [Wd8] After a delicious meal
(2) I believed I mustn’t. One day after I went [Wd8] to the university.
(3) other[np9] person,[sn8] because my dog lost [Wd8] her hair which would be
Moreover, as there are no tense markers in Chinese language, the subject fails to distinguish several tenses in her writing, especially the present tense and past tense, as line (4) shows.
(4) Riends’. When my parents called me and ask [vp6] how I was, I said I was quite f
Another major mistake is the confusion of non-finitive and finitive verbs in English, as in line (5) and line (6). The mistake might also be due to the unawareness of the target language, for there isn’t such distinction in Chinese language
(5) be scientific when choosing food. Take [vp4] enough exercises can help us
(6) the miserable weather made us feeling [vp4] bad. So we didn’t go to th
3.2 Analysis on syntax-level
The following examples show structural deficiency, which is a typical mistake throughout the whole journal corpus. Structural deficiency to a great extent is due to the influence of Chinese structures.
(7) ifficult. I took a bag of 3-kilogramme apples [sn8], other food and a
(8) father, I liked listening to my father talking [sn8] about the principle,
(9) ouse, mum sent her to other[np9] person, [sn8] because my dog lost
Many Chinese English learners produce run-on sentences in their speaking and writing. The following examples are some of run-on sentences found in the journal corpus. Lack of proficiency and practice may account for the mistake. With the student’s more practice and awareness, this mistake could be avoided.
(10) the wild girl and became a lovely lady. [sn1] Beth got a new piano from
(11) nearly one hundred balloons prepared [sn1] for the lecture yesterday,
(12) h photo, each mouth was full of food. [sn1] When we got back, looked
4. Conclusion
This paper analyzes the characteristics and major mistakes of an English major’s weekly journals. Generally speaking, the student should enlarge her vocabulary in her future studies. In specific, she had better pay special attention to the differences of synonyms and be aware of the cultural influences on her word-choice and sentence-making. As to grammar, the subject has a good mastery except the tense, thus she should also be aware of the distinction of tenses.
References:
[1]Ellis, Rod. Second Language Acquisition[M]. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Languages Education Press, 2000.
[2]Kennedy, Graeme. An Introduction to Corpus Linguistics[M]. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2000.
[3]Sinclair, John . Corpus, Concordance, Collection[M]. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.
[4]杨惠中. 语料库语言学导论[M]. 上海: 上海外语教育.