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Persuasive Features in Reviews Written by EFL Students

Learner Corpus Studies in Asia and the World

2

305-320

神戸大学国際コミュニケーションセンター

2014-05-31

2014-06-25

In an attempt to survey possibilities to employ a corpus tool for language teaching and research in an EFL context, the study was preliminarily designed on building a simple learner corpus of 70 pieces of reviews in English produced by EFL learners as part of the Persuasive English course work in a Thai university. The study investigated the review genre for persuasive writing styles such as rhetoric questions, and figurative language. Also, selected persuasive features, namely adjective, adverb, and connectives were examined. Further analysis was conducted by comparing the observed features to those in written works produced by international English learners in order to identify the learners' proficiency level against that of the learners from international contexts. A known learner corpora, the International Corpus Network of Asian Learners of English corpora was consulted for the task. The data revealed that most learners with low proficiency of English produced the review genre with smaller lexical variety. The persuasive devices were used, but with rather low accuracy. Influences from the native language Thai were also observed while learners with higher ability showed sign of adopting learned lessons in the writing of persuasive genre. The study has confirmed that by integrating a simple tool like a self-developed learner corpus into the language cla881'OOm, a teacher could conduct a research study, as well as make use of the data to improve the teaching materials for a more fruitful learning outcome.

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