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Article published In:
Journal of Second Language Studies
Vol. 3:1 (2020) ► pp.82–110

Lexical features in argumentative writing across English writers from different language backgrounds

| Middle East Technical University

This corpus-based research analysed three lexical features (lexical diversity, lexical sophistication, and cohesion) in English argumentative writing and examined the potential differences in lexical performance (1) between native and nonnative English writers and (2) across all writers from various language backgrounds. The findings revealed that nonnative English writers demonstrated significantly lower performance in lexical sophistication than did native English writers. Significant differences in all three lexical aspects exist between writers from different language backgrounds. Pedagogical implications for vocabulary instruction in academic writing for nonnative writers include emphasizing the mastery of academic, low-frequency, and discipline-specific vocabulary. Additionally, improving nonnative writers’ vocabulary size and lexical diversity is essential for building deeper level cohesion in writing. The results suggest unique writing characteristics of different nonnative writers and their varied learner needs should be acknowledged. Thus, targeted instruction is essential to provide effective enhancement to nonnative English writers’ lexical performance in academic writing.

Keywords: lexical features, academic writing, vocabulary, nonnative writers
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
    • 2.1Lexical diversity, lexical sophistication, and cohesion
    • 2.2Research gap and the present study
  • 3.Method
    • 3.1Measurements of three lexical features
    • 3.2Selected corpora and sample size
    • 3.3Research design
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Research question one
    • 4.2Research question two
    • 4.3Post hoc analyses
      • 4.3.1Lexical diversity
      • 4.3.2Coverage of the first 1,000 words
      • 4.3.3Coverage of the second 1,000 words
      • 4.3.4Coverage of the high-frequency words
      • 4.3.5Coverage of the AWL
      • 4.3.6Coverage of the AVL
      • 4.3.7Coverage of off-list words
      • 4.3.8Coverage of the low-frequency words
      • 4.3.9Referential cohesion
      • 4.3.10LSA
      • 4.3.11Connectives
  • 5.Discussion
    • 5.1Implications of the findings
    • 5.2Pedagogical implications for each language group
      • 5.2.1Chinese writers
      • 5.2.2German writers
      • 5.2.3Japanese writers
      • 5.2.4Russian writers
      • 5.2.5Spanish writers
      • 5.2.6Turkish writers
      • 5.2.7Summary
    • 5.3Limitation of the study
    • 5.4Recommendations for further research
  • 6.Conclusion
  • References
Published online: 10 April 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jsls.19024.yu
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