Expression Addition in English: Full-Text Version

Introduction

Our experience as EFL teachers has evidenced, unfortunately very often, how difficult it is to understand what the learners write. This is true even for those in advanced levels. There are several reasons that can help explain why this happens.

One possible explanation is that EFL learners have difficulty producing coherent and cohesive texts. Connor (1996) defines cohesion as “the use of explicit linguistic devices to signal relations between sentences and parts of texts” (p. 83). Halliday and Hassan (1976) categorize conjunctive devices into four groups to express additive, adversative, causal and temporal relations between sentences. For the purposes of this presentation, we’ll focus on additive conjunctions, and we suggest that you read Halliday and Hassan’s work.

Cohesion and coherence are closely related, though a text does not necessary has to look coherent in order to be cohesive. While cohesion is determined by lexical-grammatical relationships between the ideas, coherence is determined by semantic relationships. For this reason, the context of text production, that is, the author’s purpose or intent, the means employed to convey the information, and the audience, is of great importance.



The Research Topic

For the purposes of this study in progress, we will focus on the use of conjunctions, since this is an aspect of cohesion that many EFL educators consider important when teaching writing, and also because conjunctions allow writers to explicitly show the types of relationships among the different parts of a text. Conjunctions are used by writers to establish how one idea is connected to another; they are easily teachable and appear in lots of published instructional materials, in which sometimes they are referred to as connectives or connectors. EFL learners find conjunctions really accessible, even from the very early stages of language acquisition.

However important and easy to use conjunctions may appear, the prominence they have received from both teachers and learners has underestimated other resources that help create text cohesion, such as the lexical connections – word repetition, use of synonyms, antonyms and superordinates. No matter how efficiently conjunctions are taught and possibly learned, an excessive emphasis on them has made apprentices overuse and misuse them. It appears that, according to some studies reported by Connor (1996), the expression of cohesion is markedly different between native and non-native speakers of English. Basturkmen (2002) also reports other evidence for an excessive use of conjunctions by non-natives (even as twice as many, compared to natives). Based on the research analyzed by the author, she claims that “(t)eaching conjunctions sometimes treats the symptoms of the problem rather than addressing the problem itself” (2002, p. 52). Such problem consist of the learners’ having difficulty determining how ideas relate to one another and whether these follow an adequate sequence.

EFL educators need to consider the fact that a clear understanding of the formal connections among ideas may help explain why the learners write presumably well-formed sentences and yet their resulting text is very odd as a piece of discourse. Besides other means to ensure cohesion, EFL learners need to know how and when to use conjunctions, since these contextual devices allow the writer to show how ideas are connected in the mind and the world. Using connectors often has to do with style; thus, some conjunctions may sound discordant when used inappropriately.

Celce-Murcia and Larsen Freeman (1983), claim that one of the aspects that identifies a speaker as a non-native is the use of connectors that are inappropriate to the communicative situation, for example because those connectors are rarely used. The insights gained from these and other studies allow us to establish the topic of our research, namely the expression of addition in English via conjunctions. Our goal is to compare the use of additive conjunctions as evidenced in two groups of participants, university Venezuelan EFL students, and English native speaker students from an American college.

In order to accomplish our goal, the following methodological approach will be followed:

Data

Two types of corpora:
20 academic essays written by American college students whose native language is English. Arrangements are still being made so as to collect such data.
20 academic essays written by Venezuelan EFL students at UPEL-IPC who have completed their language acquisition courses. These essays have already been collected and are going under transcription and analysis.

The essays are from different rhetorical orders: argumentative, cause-effect, etc, and they are approximately 400 or 500 words long.

Tools for analysis

The essays are written with the help of a word processor. The Venezuelan participants have used the Multimedia Lab at UPEL-IPC, while the American students will send their essays via e-mail.

The texts are being coded for the analysis through the software program WORDSMITH TOOLS. We will identify the additive connectors used by both groups and establish their frequency of use. Though we do aim at identifying errors in the use of these connectives, it is likely that the Venezuelan learners’ texts will show some inappropriate uses. In such cases, we have decided to keep an additional record for further analysis and comments.


Why are conjunctions so interesting after all?

As conjunctions are highly teachable, they appear in many published English language teaching materials, where they are often referred to as connectives, connectors, or linking adverbials. You can read here what they are for:

To indicate the relation between the ideas in our minds and the world.
To express ideas with style.
To produce a text, rather than a mere collection of unconnected sentences.

Just for reference purposes, let’s briefly mention some classifications of cohesive devices (McCarthy 1991), conjunctive devices (Halliday and Hassan 1976) or additive connectors (Secord 1978, in Celce-Murcia and Larsen-Freeman 1983):

McCarthy 1991: (a) Reference, (b) Ellipsis; (c) Substitution; (d) Lexical; (e) Conjunctive.

Halliday and Hassan 1976: (a) Additive, (b) Adversative; (c) Causal; (d) Temporal.

Additive connectors ( to signal addition, introduction, to show similarity, etc.) according to Secord 1978, in Celce-Murcia and Larsen Freeman (1983): (a) Simple / Emphatic / Intensifying / Alternative; (b) Exemplification; (c) Reference; (d) Similarity; (e) Identification; and (f) Clarification.

Secord’s hierarchy of functional categories of logical connectors has influenced most of the EFL materials in the market. Here we will mention the additive connectors in greater detail:

Additive connectors are used to signal addition, introduction, to show similarity. The following relations are included:

Addition (our topic of interest)
Simple: additionally, moreover, in addition (to this), furthermore, further …
Emphatic: what is more …
Intensifying: in fact, actually, indeed …
Alternative: alternatively, on the other hand …
Exemplification
Reference
Similarity
Identification
Clarification

Celce-Murcia and Larsen-Freeman claim that understanding logical connectors would be of enormous help to EFL students in improving their reading, writing, speaking and listening skills. They suggest that EFL learners should be encouraged to develop “a sensitivity to both the register and the syntactic variations that occur in the use of these expressions” (1983, p. 334). We must add that EFL learners should be aware of this by using authentic data, as opposed to what it’s usually found in teaching materials.

In regards to the use of authentic materials, in recent years a lot of investigation has been addressed to how computers can facilitate language learning. One specific area on the computer frontier which is open to exploration is Corpus Linguistics. The aim of Corpus Linguistics is to discover patterns of authentic language use through analysis of actual usage. It does not attempt to generate theories of what is possible in the language; its only concern is the usage patterns of the empirical data and what that reveals to us about language behavior.

In order to arrive at a discovery of patterns of authentic language use, corpus linguists make use of a corpus (corpora in plural), which consists of a databank of NATURAL TEXTS compiled from writing and/or a transcription of recorded speech. A corpus-based analysis is believed to provide a more objective view of language than that of introspection, intuition and anecdotes, as in Chomsky’s case, for example.

Secord’s taxonomy, as exhaustive as it is, cannot offer insights regarding the frequency of use of each logical connector. That is why the information compiled by Biber and his team may be useful for our discussion of corpus-based analysis of language items. Biber and others compiled a 40 million-word corpus that they have labelled LONGMAN Spoken and Written English Corpus. The authors show the frequency of use for every grammatical construction in English in different contexts ranging from conversation to fiction and academic writing.

In their analysis of adverbials, they recognize three types: (a) circumstance; (b) stance, and (c) linking. Let’s focus our interest in the latter type.

The function of linking adverbials is to establish the speaker’s / writer’s perception about the relation between two discursive units; this helps create textual cohesion. They further distinguish six semantic categories of linking adverbials, among which those of addition stand out. They list some: in addition, further, similarly, also, by the same token, furthermore, likewise, moreover. However, when we examine the chart of the most widely used linking adverbials in conversation and academic prose, we can only find two of the above mentioned: furthermore and in addition, both in identical occurrence (100 times in every million words).

What does a corpus-based analysis have to do with EFL teaching?

Three aspects can be considered here, syllabus design, materials development, and classroom activities.

The syllabus organizes the teacher’s decisions regarding the focus of a class with respect to the students’ needs (frequency and register information can help make course planning choices.) In our case, it may help us to decide whether we introduce furthermore and in addition as the most common additive conjunctions, and once the students use these appropriately, and only then, provide them with other alternative choices to express addition. What do you think?

Materials could be developed on the basis of real examples which provide students with an opportunity to discover features of language use BY THEMSELVES. In our case, instead of teaching prescriptive grammar rules, we may instead use texts produced by natives and non-natives, compare the use of conjunctions to express addition and come up with conclusions that will be significant for the EFL learners.

Classroom activities may consist of hands-on student-conducted language analysis in which the students use a concordancing program and a deliberately chosen corpus to make their own discoveries about language use. The Venezuelan students participating in the study will be able to use their texts and those produced by their American counterparts in order to discover how their writing compares to the natives’.

Teacher/Student Roles and Benefits

The teacher who decides to apply Corpus Linguistics to Teaching would act as a research facilitator. Students are thus given access to the facts of authentic language use, which comes from REAL CONTEXTS rather than being constructed for pedagogical purposes. The Venezuelan students in our project may be able to determine:

The potential different meanings and uses of additive conjunctions.
Useful phrases and typical collocations they might use themselves.
The structure and nature of academic discourse.
The fact that certain language features are more typical of some kinds of text than others.


Let’s examine a few examples of the Venezuelan students’ written production. Please note which additive connectors are used and how frequently. Bear in mind Biber and others’ findings. How do these compare?

We have talked about both intuition and observation as two ways of studying language. It is clear that conjunctions contribute to cohesion and that teachers often focus on these devices in writing lessons, but students may misuse and/or overuse them (Field 1994). Let’s discuss some implications of a corpus-based analysis of language:

Overemphasis on conjunctions.
Corpus-based instructional materials.
Analysis of authentic texts (writing as a process)
Study of additive connectors in academic prose.

Obviously material writers will benefit greatly from frequency information when choosing which structures and words to present and in which sequence.

Some Sample Activities

To finish our presentation, we will now outline some possible instructional activities that may help students to gain more coherence in their writing.

Raising awareness of patterns

The teacher may bring examples of texts that show coherence and cohesion. In our case, maybe excerpts of articles from specialized journals, or sample essays downloaded from Internet. The following is a short sample which attempts to argue that A lot of people think that the examination system should be abolished:

... educationalists agree that this is not so. Also, girls tend to mature earlier than boys. The greatest gaps in development occur at primary age; exams are rare there nowadays. The inequality is much less at secondary level. Examinations encourage competition and favour academically gifted students; the less able (who actually need the most help) get neglected. The problem of "mixed ability" classes would exist whether we had examinations or not. The solution is to find better ways of organising classes and to employ more teachers. Research has proven that different examiners grade student papers differently; indeed, the same examiner will often give different marks to the same paper after a few months! Modern examination boards have sophisticated "moderation" systems for ensuring that marking is done fairly. In addition, most examinations include practicals or orals, so a student’s result does not depend completely on writtenwork. ...

The students are guided through the text so that they read each sentence and try to identify the types of relationships between the ideas, emphasizing in this case those of addition.

Reformulating

The teacher may take the sentences from a text produced by the students of from other sources, and separate them, often rearranging the order. The students will then try to combine ideas by joining two or more sentences together and to indicate the types of relationships between them. For the purposes of our study, it would be wise to focus on texts where relations of addition are noticeable.

Here is an example of a research paper on the Role of Literature in TEFL programs:

An understanding of the relation between code and context, as illustrated in any literary text, can foreground the way meanings are conveyed in other kinds of discourse.
A language teacher should have a great deal of information about how language works, not only at a grammatical level, but also at a functional, contextual one.
A language teacher should be familiar with the way conventional and literary communication operate and differ.
In Widdowson’s view, a literary text as a piece of discourse can be used to get insights about the way language is manipulated in order to express certain meanings.
The way I see it, the “material” that the teacher uses is language.
The final goal is to give learners the necessary tools to process “real-life” or “authentic” material successfully.

Following the reformulation and combination of ideas, the original text is shown so that students analyze how ideas were organized and any overt signaling used.

In Widdowson’s view, a literary text as a piece of discourse can be used to get insights about the way language is manipulated in order to express certain meanings. Moreover, such understanding of the relation between code and context, as illustrated in any literary text, can foreground the way meanings are conveyed in other kinds of discourse. The way I see it, the “material” that the teacher uses is language; therefore, a language teacher should have a great deal of information about how language works, not only at a grammatical level, but also at a functional, contextual one. A language teacher should be familiar with the way conventional and literary communication operate and differ. The final goal is, then, to give learners the necessary tools to process “real-life” or “authentic” material successfully.

Creating a text

Editing

By means of a process oriented approach to teaching EFL writing, students are guided towards the production of an essay, for example. Then they are asked to exchange papers and read over the texts in order to establish sequence of ideas and signal the additive relationships they can identify. The teacher can then ask the students to review the texts and locate where they have used conjunctions to express addition, reread the text and remove the conjunctions. After doing this, they should ask themselves How are these two ideas related? If they find it hard to establish what relationship there is between the ideas, they should try one of the following procedures:

· Include more information or remove the idea(s)
· Change the sequence of ideas
· Use a conjunction
· Remove the conjunction because it’s misleading
· Change the conjunction to a more accurate one.


References

Basturkmen, Helen 2002: Clause relations and macro patterns: cohesion, coherence and the writing of advanced ESOL students. In: English Teaching FORUM 40:1, 50-56.

Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S. and Finegan, E. 1999: Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. London: Longman.

Castañeda C. A. Y. (2005). La expresión de la adición en inglés por medio de conjunciones: una propuesta de investigación sobre la frecuencia de uso por parte de estudiantes nativos y no-nativos. Unpublished paper submitted as a requirement for the Doctoral course “Procedimientos de Investigación en Análisis Contrastivo” at Universidad de León, Spain.

Celce-Murcia, Marianne y Larsen-Freeman, Diane 1983: The Grammar Book: an ESL/EFL Teacher’s Course. New York: Newbury House Publishers Inc.

Connor, Ulla. 1996: Contrastive Rhetoric: Cross-cultural Aspects of Second Language Writing. New York: CUP.

Francis, Gill 1993: A Corpus-Driven Approach to Grammar. Principles, Methods and Examples. In: Baker et al. (Comps.) 1993: Text and Technology. In Honour of John Sinclair. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 137-156.

Halliday, M.A.K. y Hassan, R. 1976: Cohesion in English. London: Longman.

Krieger, D. (1999). Corpus Linguistics: what it is and how it can be applied to teaching. [On-line document] Available: http://iteslj.org/Articles/Krieger-Corpus.html [Consulted: 2005, July 8]

McCarthy, Michael 1991: Discourse Analysis for Language Teachers. Cambridge: CUP.

EXPRESSING ADDITION IN ENGLISH BY CONJUNCTIONS:

ABSTRACT

On the basis of evidence from TEFL, the learners’ written production appears to be difficult to read and understand; even those texts produced by advanced learners oftentimes lack coherence and cohesion. Many EFL teachers focus on conjunctions as a way of achieving text cohesion, since conjunctions can be explicitly taught and constitute a means to show how different parts of a text relate. Likewise, conjunctions help the writers to establish their position in relation to the ideas presented. An endless number of textbooks and other instructional materials for the teaching of English grammar and writing mention conjunctions under different labels (connectives, linking adverbials, linking words, connectors, transition words, among others). For the learners, these devices are easy to use from early stages of the foreign language acquisition. However, regardless of how efficiently conjunctions are taught, an excessive emphasis on them as cohesive devices has misguided the learners into overusing or misusing them. The purpose of this presentation is to reveal some insights from Corpus Linguistics in relation to the expression of addition in English. Based on information provided by Biber, et al. (1999), who compiled a corpus with 40 million words known as the LONGMAN Spoken and Written English Corpus, and what current textbooks include, a comparison is made and its implications for the teaching of English grammar and writing are discussed.

KEY WORDS: addition, conjunctions, English, writing, corpus linguistics.

ventesol 2006 Research in Progress

The VenTESOL Annual Convention 2006
“Daring to Lead the ELT Challenge”
May 19-21, 2006


Name of Presenter: Audy Y. Castañeda C.

Title of Presentation: Expressing Addition in English: Corpus-Based Research

Work Place: Universidad Pedagógica Experimental Libertador, Instituto Pedagógico de Caracas

Region: 6

Summary for Convention Program (150 words or less):

This Corpus-Based research in progress deals with how addition is expressed in English through conjunctions, an aspect of cohesion that EFL educators often focus on when teaching writing. The purpose of this study is to compare the use of additive connectors as evidenced in texts written by Venezuelan university students and American college students whose native language is English. Differences/contrasts in the type and number of conjunctions used are expected in both groups of participants. The data, still being collected, consists of two types of corpus: (a) 20 essays written by American students from the Northern Arizona University; and (b) 20 essays written by Venezuelan students from Universidad Pedagógica Experimental Libertador – Caracas. The results of this study will have repercussions in three areas: instructional design, the teaching of EFL writing skills, as well as the study of the connectors in English.