PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2022, Education, Criminal Justice, and Human Services: Literacy and Second Language Studies

Corpus linguists have long been interested in how words co-occur with each other for the past three decades. Formulaic sequences identified through a corpus-driven approach are considered the essential components of fluent linguistic production and effective communication. In addition, they also help language users create a professionally acceptable persona in the target discourse community. This three-paper dissertation study investigated three types of formulaic sequences (i.e., lexical bundles, phrase frames, and bigrams) in business and academic writing by English language learners. The goal was to improve the understanding of English learners' formulaic language use in different registers. The first paper examined the structural and functional differences of lexical bundles (i.e., a sequence of four words that co-occur frequently in a particular register) used in English business emails written by learners of business English and working professionals. The findings showed that the learners and working professionals tended to compose business emails differently as suggested by the various structural and functional use of lexical bundles. The second paper focused on the use of phrase frames (or p-frames, i.e., a multi-word sequence with one word variable within the sequence) in business emails by learners of business English, compared to that of working professionals. The p-frames were examined in terms of the structural characteristics, functional characteristics, and variability. Results indicated that p-frames could serve as a means to express politeness and formality in email communication and that p-frames can facilitate business English learning. The last paper presents the findings of bigrams (i.e., directly adjacent word pairs) of eleven collocational patterns (e.g., adjective-noun, verb-preposition) in the argumentative writing of English language learners from basic to intermediate proficiency levels. Previous studies mainly focused on the use of col (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Hye Pae (Committee Chair); Mark Sulzer (Committee Member); Tina Stanton-Chapman (Committee Member); Joy Xiao (Committee Member) Subjects: Education; English As A Second Language; Linguistics

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2019, EDU Teaching and Learning

An important component of academic writing in English is the word combinations or collocations writers use while expressing meaning and performing various rhetorical functions. It is essential for second language (L2) writers to gain command of these lexico-grammatical combinations (Cortes, 2004; Hyland, 2008a, 2008b) as they develop their L2 academic writing ability. The main purpose of the current study was to examine students' experiences with lexical bundles (i.e., frequently occurring combinations of words) under different instructional conditions in an L2 academic writing course. The lexical bundles were extracted from a corpus of learner English. In the study's first phase, the most frequently occurring lexical bundles contained in a corpus of L2 students' placement test essays were identified and then analyzed to develop an understanding of students' lexico-grammatical needs. In the second phase, students' (a) learning from and (b) responses to corpus-aided instruction featuring lexical bundles were investigated. The study employed a multimethod research design that gathered and analyzed both quantitative and qualitative sources of data (Creswell, 2015). The current study produced a number of findings during its two phases. The Phase One results showed that the placement test essays included relatively few discourse-organizing lexical bundles compared to stance and referential lexical bundles. These results provided insights into the lexico-grammatical needs of L2 writers, and these insights created a foundation from which to develop the subsequent instructional phase of the study. In Phase Two, the results of the quasi-experiments revealed a significant effect of both of the instructional modes (intentional and semi-intentional) employed as reflected in the students' post-test and delayed post-test lexico-grammatical writing gains. The semi-intentional instructional mode was effective in terms of the immediate post-test gains, while the intentional instru (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Alan Hirvela (Advisor); Dorinda Gallant (Committee Member); Youngjoo Yi (Committee Member) Subjects: Education; English As A Second Language; Foreign Language; Language; Linguistics; Social Research; Teaching