How to Use Collocation to Facilitating Academic Writing

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How to Use Collocation to Facilitating Academic
Writing

• Posen Liao
• National Taipei University

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Publish (in English) or perish?

• English has become the worlds predominant
  language of research.
• Many European and Japanese journals have begun a
  switch away from publishing articles in native
  languages to a new editorial policies that
  required English for the language of publication.
• Publications in the local language are often not
  counted of academic performance (faculty
  recognition, promotion, etc.).

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Perceptions about writing in English by HK
academics

• Over 90 of 585 respondents said that English was
  the most important language for publication, with
  only 7 putting Chinese.
• 87 expressed confidence to write a
  single-authored paper in English.
• 68 felt they were disadvantaged when attempting
  to publish in English when they compared
  themselves with native English speakers.
  (Flowerdew, 2000)

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Teaching academic writing

• In Taiwan, however, teaching English academic
  writing to college students has not been given
  the importance it deserves.
• Many teachers regard research paper writing as
  one the most difficult subjects to teach.
• Students are from different academic disciplines
  teachers face a challenge to meet their different
  needs in writing a research paper.

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Purpose of this speech

• This speech attempts to use collocation approach
  to help students write research papers in English
  on their own.
• This approach argues that language consists of
  meaningful chunks or phrases that, when combined
  properly, can produce a coherent text.
• Students need to learn skills for searching a
  text or corpus in ways which help them expand
  mental lexicons or collocations and possess a
  vast repertoire of ready-made expressions and
  sentences.

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The definitions of collocation

• Lewis(2000)certain words co-occur in natural
  text with greater than random frequency. (e.g.
  strong wind/ heavy rain)
• Oxford Collocations Dictionary for Students of
  English the way words combine in a language to
  produce natural-sounding speech and writing.
  (reach a goal/ an aim)

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Classification of collocation

• Benson, Benson Ilson (2007) Collocations fall
  into two major groups
• Grammatical collocations a phrase consisting of
  a dominant word (nouns, adjectives, verbs) and a
  preposition or grammatical structure.
• Lexical collocations consist of nouns,
  adjectives, verbs, and adverbs, and do not
  contain prepositions, infinitives, or clauses.

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Classification of collocation

• G1?N Prep?The price of apathy towards public
  affairs is to be ruled by evil men.
• G2?N to Inf? It was a pleasure to do business
  with you.
• G3?N that Cl?I took an oath that I would do my
  duty.
• G4?Prep N?Major earthquakes can be predicted
  months in advance.
• G5?Adj Prep?We were hungry for more success.
• G6?Adj to Inf?It is necessary to understand
  the nature of science.
• G7?Adj that Cl?He was afraid that he might
  lose his job.

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Classification of collocation

• L1?V N?The computer software program can help
  young children compose music.
• L2?Adj N?I can give you a rough estimate over
  the phone.
• L4?N V? Our burglar alarm goes off
  unexpectedly.
• L5?N of N?He sent her a bouquet of flowers.
• L6?Adv Adj?The good manager will be keenly
  aware of the needs of others.
• L7 ?V Adv?Students vary considerably in their
  abilities to understand the second language.

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Why do you make mis-collocations?

• 1. L1 Interference The use of Chinese patterns
  or rules which leads to collocation errors in
  English writing.
• ???/????? learn /study / grasp knowledge
  
• ???????? raise English ability
• Biochemists are making research into the causes
  of AIDS. (???)
• Biochemists are doing research into the
  causes of AIDS.

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Why do you make mis-collocations?

• 2. Overgeneralization generalizing a particular
  linguistic item or rule in English beyond
  legitimate bounds.
• commit a crime(??) ---commit a mistake(??)
• The research result was extremely disappointing.
• The research result was an extreme
  disappointment.
• extreme disappointment---great disappointment

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Other common errors

• V N
• learn knowledge acquire/ broaden/
  increase/ extend/ gain/ improve knowledge (????)
• kill problem attack/ combat/ deal with/
  ease/ grapple with/ overcome/ resolve/ solve/
  tackle problem (????)
• make problem create/ cause problem (????)
• raise (??)a question/ suggestion/ warning/
  an application/ ones resignation

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Other common errors

• A N
• sour rain acid rain (??)
• hearty greeting hearty welcomes(????)
• thick tea strong tea (??)
• toxic snake poisonous snake (??)
• N N
• job chance job opportunity (????)
• N of N
• cause of accident/ damage/ death/ trouble/
  failure/ anxiety/ success/ progress

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• Language consists of multi-word chunks. Language
  learning is raising students awareness of, and
  developing their ability to chunk language
  successfully.
• This approach rejects the traditional
  Present-Practice-Produce paradigm, and replaces
  it by the Observe-Hypothesize-Experiment cyclical
  paradigm.

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• Learning collocation is mostly a matter of
  noticing and recording, and students should be
  trained to be able to explore texts and select
  collocations which are crucial to their own
  writing needs.
• Eventually, students are guided to internalize
  these prefabricated language collocations/chunks
  to write a complete piece of research article
  (autonomous learning/ independent learners).

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Collecting collocations

• Train yourself to observe collocations/ lexical
  phrases in reading and to use these expressions
  in writing.
• Recording lexical items that allows you to see
  patterns of collocation.
• Using grids that indicate different parts of
  speech (??), such as verbs, nouns, adjectives,
  etc.

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Recording collocations
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Recording collocations
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Specific lexical patterns for each section of RA

• To classify lexical or sentence patterns based on
  different features required in each section of
  RA, such as introduction, method, results,
  discussion.
• e.g. Fill in the following blanks to complete
  sentences often used in describing General
  Background Information in Introduction
• In recent years there has been considerable
  interest in______________________.
• Recently, there has been growing interest
  in______________________________.
• The effect of ___________________ has been
  studied extensively in recent years.

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General lexical patterns across all sections of RA

• To classify lexical or sentence patterns based on
  their semantic meanings or logical relationships,
  such as cause and effect, comparison and
  contrast, differences and similarities,
  enumeration, definition, and others.
• e.g. Fill in the following blanks to complete
  sentences with cause-effect patterns
• All these _____ are attributable to __________.
• ______ will be due to a large extent to ______.
• The reasons for _______ could be _________.
• ________ is partially a result of ____________.

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Paragraphs of RA

• e.g. Fill in the following blanks to complete
  the paragraph often used to describe the purpose
  of the study
• In light of these concerns, this paper has three
  purposes (a) to provide _________ (b) to report
  on trends in_____________ and (c) to
  recommend______________.

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Paragraphs of RA

• Defining an academic term
• Before I proceed with my discussion on second
  language acquisition, I need to define an
  important concept, affective domain. Affective
  domain refers to the feelings that everyone
  experiences. It is often contrasted with the
  cognitive domain, which deals with our analytical
  abilities. An example of a personality factor
  that falls within the affective domain is the
  idea of self-esteem. Your self-esteem has to do
  with your view of yourself.

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Paragraphs of RA

• Defining an academic term
• Before I proceed with my discussion on ???? ,
  I need to define an important concept, ??????? .
  ???????refers to ????????? . It is often
  contrasted with ??????????????, which deals with
  ????????? . An example of________ that falls
  within ??????? is the idea of ????????? .
  ?????????has to do with ?????.

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Academic writing conventions

• Academic writing conventions are fairly
  consistent across a wide variety of disciplines
  (Weissberg Buker, 1990).
• A typical organizational pattern for research
  paper the IMRD format or some variant of it
  (Swales Feak, 1994)
• A common structure and ordering of information
  contained in each section of RA are already
  identified by researchers.

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1. INTRODUCTION

• Serves as an orientation for readers of the
  paper, giving them the nature and scope of the
  problem investigated.
• 1.1 General Background Information
• 1.2 Literature Review
• 1.3 Establishing a Niche
• 1.4 Research Purpose
• 1.5 Research Questions
• 1.6 Value of Research

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1.1 Background information

• 1. General statements about your area of research
  
• In the past 25 years the science and
  technology for the creation and use of ultrashort
  laser pulses have progressed tremendously.
• 2. Identify your topic within the general area
• With the increasing usage of mixed-signal
  integration, reliability requirements for analog
  MOS circuit application have become more critical.

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1.2 Literature review

• Citation Commentary
• (1) information prominent citation
• 1. Numerous studies stress that listening is
  fundamental for language acquisition (Dunkel,
  1991 Long, 1985).
• 2. Various approaches to face detection are
  discussed in 11, 24, 45.
• (2) author prominent citation
• Damasio (1994) has pointed out that
  emotions greatly influence how the brains
  cognitive functions operate.

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1.3 Research niche

• Pointing out a gap (inadequate area, unresolved
  conflict, extension of a previous topic) not
  investigated by other researchers.
• A fairly large body of literature exists on
  the teaching of writing. However, within that
  literature, there is a surprising lack of
  information on cooperative efforts between
  faculty members.

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1.4 Research purpose

• (1) Purposive
• The purpose of this study was to
  investigate the effects of integrative motivation
  on the learning of vocabulary.
• (2) Descriptive
• In this paper we present the use of fuzzy
  logic as a postprocessing method to improve the
  results in correlation applications.

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1.5 Research questions

• Open-ended What is the distribution and status
  of monkeys in Taiwan?
• Closed Is Prozac a good way to treat clinical
  depression in certain cases?
• Statement Two issues that need to be resolved in
  this regard are (a) whether we can assess the
  specific characteristics of a given group of test
  takers, and (b) whether we can incorporate such
  information into the way we design language
  tests.

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1.6 Research value

• May be written from the point of view of the
  practical benefits or theoretical importance of
  your study
• It is hoped that the system described here
  could serve as the basis for a study of automatic
  measurement systems.

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2. METHOD

• Describes the steps you followed in conducting
  your study and the materials you used at each
  step.
• 2.1 Research Design
• 2.2 Subjects/ Materials
• 2.3 Data Collection Procedure
• 2.4 Data Analysis 

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2.1 Research design

• Identify the specific method you used to conduct
  the research.
• The method to carry out this study was
  using a survey, which included questions and
  statements to which the participants were
  expected to respond anonymously.

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2.2 Subjects/ materials

• Identify any criteria you used to select
  subjects, materials, or instruments to conduct
  the research.
• 1. Subjects were recruited through posted
  sign-up sheets, letters, and by word of mouth.
• 2. In this experiment, we constructed a test bed
  that consists of a dual arm and a real-time
  stereo system.

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2.3 Data collection process

• The passive voice and past tense are
  conventionally used to describe research
  procedure in order to depersonalize the
  information.
• The data collection sessions each lasted
  about one hour and were conducted at roughly
  two-week intervals.

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2.4 Data analysis

• The passive voice and past tense are
  conventionally used to describe how data were
  analyzed.
• The analysis used the SPSS statistical
  software package. First, descriptive statistics
  were computed. Next, reliability as a measure of
  internal consistency was calculated.

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3. RESULTS

• Presents the findings of your study and briefly
  comment on them, reserving more extensive
  comments on the next chapter/ section Discussion.
  (Some may call this section Results and
  Discussion)
• 3.1 Research Findings
• 3.2 Graphics/ Locations of Results

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3.1 Research findings

• Statements that present the most important
  findings. Other supporting or detailed
  information could be put in Appendix.
• The results suggested that high achievers
  on the average (M2.36, SD.39) used a slightly
  less learning strategies than those in the low
  achiever group (M2.37, SD.41).

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3.2 Graphics of results

• Locational statements can be written in either
  the active or passive voice, and the present
  tense is used to locate your data in a figure.
• 1. Tables 12 and 13 present fusion experiments.
• 2. A picture of the experimental setup is
  depicted in Fig. 7.

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4. DISCUSSION

• Step back and take a broad look at your study as
  a whole. Move the reader from the specific
  information reported in the Results to a more
  general view of how the findings should be
  interpreted.
• 4.1 Review of Research Findings
• 4.2 Implications/Applications of the Study
• 4.3 Limitations of the Study
• 4.4 Recommendations for Future Research

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4.1 Review of findings

• 1. To give a possible explanation for the
  results
• Hedging toning down the statements to reduce the
  risk of your claim by using
• (1) modal auxiliary may, might, would
• (2) Adv./ Adj. probably, possibly, perhaps,
  possible, probable
• (3) V suggest, seem, appear, believe What
  factors have led to the overwhelming popularity
  of the PC? Probably the major reason for its
  success is the fact that it is easy to operate.

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4.1 Review of findings

• 2. Comparing your results with those of other
  studies
• Use the present tense
• These results are entirely consistent with
  those reported for hyperactive children on
  stimulant medication in previous studies.

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4.2 Implications of research

• Move the readers attention away from the
  specific results of your study and to focus more
  generally on the importance that the study may
  have for the field
• These findings lead us to believe that more
  difficult materials should be used in order to
  design the novel interleavers.

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4.3 Limitations of research

• Refers to restrictions in the study over which
  you have no control.
• Although the present study has yielded
  findings that have both theoretical and practical
  implications, its design is not without flaws/
  problems/ limitations/ shortcomings.

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4.4 Recommendations for future research

• To make recommendations for other researchers to
  do in the future
• An important area for future research in the
  years to come will be in the refinement of
  approaches to the analysis of the copper
  microstructure .

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Acknowledgements

• A display of necessary politeness. To show how
  you have benefited from members of an academic
  community.
• Financial Support Support for this work was
  provided by the National Science Council.
• Thanks The author wishes to thank A for his
  encouragement and guidance throughout this
  project.
• Disclaimers However, any mistakes that remain
  are my own.

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Computer-assisted learning

• TANGO ???http//candle.cs.nthu.edu.tw/collocation/
  webform2.aspx?funcID9
• TOTALrecall ?????http//candle.cs.nthu.edu.tw/tota
  lrecall/totalrecall/totalrecall.aspx?funcID1
• NTNU???(concordancer)????(collocation)??http//140
  .122.83.246/cwb/
• Web Concordancer ?????http//www.edict.com.hk/conc
  ordance/
• NCTU?????? http//140.113.115.21/aw/cex/Search.
  htm

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Advantages of collocation approach

• Students can keep language in the largest
  possible context of frame. They are more likely
  to store larger chunks and will make fewer
  mistakes when re-using the language themselves.
• It can serve as a useful guide for students to
  get involved in the writing process and develop
  their skills and autonomy in writing research
  reports.

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Conclusions

• Your are encouraged to find out what the writing
  conventions of your own fields are.
• You and your classmates can jointly build a
  corpus consisting of collocations, sentence
  patterns, and model paragraphs in the same
  discipline.
• You should keep language in the largest possible
  context or frame. The larger the frame, the more
  useful information, including grammatical
  collections, is likely to be retained.

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Conclusions

• You can develop your knowledge of collocations
  independently, where technology has made
  electronic texts available to you through CD-ROM
  and the Internet.
• Teachers should provide strategies to assist
  students to write for academic purpose, and the
  use of lexical approach may serve as an effective
  alternative to facilitate students academic
  writing.

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????
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Thank you for your attentionQ A