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Corpora in assessing students’ writing

Corpora in assessing students’ writing. Elena Tarasheva, PhD New Bulgarian University. Conclusions at last year’s BETA conference. Method and effect of the previous study. 2 corpora: students’ writing – film analysis; 1 st & 2 nd draft

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Corpora in assessing students’ writing

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  1. Corpora in assessing students’ writing Elena Tarasheva, PhD New Bulgarian University

  2. Conclusions at last year’s BETA conference

  3. Method and effect of the previous study 2 corpora: students’ writing – film analysis; 1st & 2nd draft Analysis of the message of Michael Palin’s Travel series about Eastern Europe The first draft corpus revealed features of informal style, lack of cohesive devices through Key words; Concordancing revealed racial language. The second draft showed improvement

  4. Corpora and method for this study • Students’ summaries of a text; 300 words long • The text for the summary Key words for the summaries are compared to the key words for the text Concordancing reveals how each key word is used for the summaries and in the original Word lists suggest common mistakes in the writing

  5. The corpora • 13 student summaries • 1st year students at Sofia University • Language proficiency – C1 • Taught about cohesion, coherence, linking devices, text flow • 4 hours of teaching per week • The summary was set as a homework. The work was submitted via the electronic platform Moodle

  6. statistics • tokens (running words) in text 2,667 • types (distinct words) 729 • type/token ratio (TTR) 27.33 • standardised TTR basis 1,000 • mean word length (in characters) 4.99 • sentences 2,792 • mean (in words) 18.99 • paragraphs 377 • mean (in words) 100.93

  7. Key words • Calculated via a statistical procedure • An automatic function of The Word Smith • Compares the frequency list of a task corpus to the frequency list of a balanced corpus – in this case: the British National Corpus • The words with a frequency higher than in the balanced corpus tend to show the ‘about-ness’ of a text, specific language idiosyncrasies, particulars of the style etc. • The words with a frequency lower than in the balanced corpus show what the author avoided

  8. Key words in the original Key words in the summaries • Rhetoric • We • Writing • Radical • Writer • Toward • Our • Conservative • Student • Composition • Honest • Coherence • Learns • Rhetoric • Writing • Conservative • Writer • Radical • Liberal • Coherence • Text • Composition • Examples • Author • Doesn • s

  9. Concordancing • All the cases when a word is used in the corpus • The word is highlighted • The context to the left and right is shown • The concordances can be arranged to criteria pre-set by the researcher – L or R, -2, +3 etc.

  10. The degree of formality

  11. The possessive ‘s

  12. The Use of linking devices

  13. Linking devices

  14. Linking devices

  15. Clusters • Automatically calculated by the Word Smith • Words which occur together • The number of words can be pre-set – 3, for this study, but it can be 4, 5, 6

  16. Major key words in context Original collocates Summary collocates

  17. A missing key word

  18. concordancing • In this case – arranged according to -L1 • Because the word is a noun and we are interested in the attributes used with it • If it was a verb and we wanted to see what objects follow, then we would arrange for +R1

  19. students

  20. original

  21. Relative clauses

  22. Relative clauses

  23. Language Functions

  24. Language functions

  25. Negative keyness original summary

  26. Conclusions • Comparing the key word lists of a text and its summary reveal whether the gist of the text has been grasped • Concordances show differences in focus, suggests possible misunderstandings • Word lists allow assessing the acquisition of grammatical features, such as relative clauses, linking words etc. • High key-ness can reveal language functions • Word lists also reveal adherence to a style

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