The Nora Corpus An analysis of Arab EFL discourse

1. The Nora Corpus An analysis of Arab EFL discourse Eman Al Nafjan College of Nursing King Saud Bin Abdulazziz University for Health Sciences Riyadh Saudi Arabia

2. Content Background: motivation Objectives Data Findings Limitations Future Prospects

3. Background • Kaplan’s Doodle article • Ostler: “why is it that experienced ESL writing teachers can identify Arabic-speaking students’ English essays as having been written by Arabic speakers, even when these essays are free of grammatical errors”(1987;169)

4. Objective

6. Data Source: Handwritten journals for an EFL class. 20 students; ages ranging from 18 to 25. Location: Women only nursing college in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia Note: Students were directed not to spell or grammar check their writing.

7. A learner corpus is best specified by Granger in her definition that is based on Sinclair's definition of corpora in general: "Computer learner corpora are electronic collections of authentic FL/SL textual data assembled according to explicit design criteria for a particular SLA/FLT purpose. They are encoded in a standardised and homogeneous way and documented as to their origin and provenance" (2002; 7)

8. Building the corpus Authenticity Learning Context Design Criteria Academic Level Prior to alterations: 20 Microsoft Word files Documentation Transcriptional alterations After alterations: Nora Corpus Anonymity: Change all names to Nora Omission of obvious book extractions and quotations Correction of spelling mistakes for wordlist conformity

9. Examples of corpus texts in original context

10. Findings Determiner the My intuitive teaching experience assumption that EFL Arabic L1 students tend to overuse the. Halimah (2001) study of the Arabic and English exposition skills of Kuwaiti university students concluded that the use of the was “excessive” (2001;125)

11. Misuse and not excessiveness • Frequency wordlist finding:

12. 1- So I went to my house at half-past two in morning. This was my problem that it was happening every wednesday. In future, all girls will be married. They have a husband that they must looking after for him. They have a house or apa 2- which depend on Imagine. For example, Harry potter, Dark angel. Can you imagine the life without air condition, Maybe in winter we don't use it but in summer we can't live. I miss my brother and his family (wife, daughter and son) I love 3- breakfast. I study vocabulary after that eat dinner with family and I visit my grand mother. I cannot write anything in journal because very tired yesterday. I arrived an apartment on Riyadh at 12:00 a.m. After that sleep but wake up in

13. Another wordlist issue of

14. 1- amazing because my brother has a lot snakes in our home because he is like it very much. Today I wake up early to aid my mother in cooking 2-one at home because I have all attention. Toys: There a lot kinds of toys. The children can play and learn on it in the same time. Now, in some countries a lot of modern school 3- I hate my life when I think there a lot things I must do them but I don't want do them without reasons and I hate my life when do something wrong for anyone

15. BNC: kind + of strongly collocate • BNC: Sort of > lot* of • NC: sort does not occur

16. Arabic Collocations Arabic phrase In this day • BNC: in this day and age • Even occurrences without and age have nowadays meaning: But what, in this day, constitutes unnatural practices and indecent liberties? No doubt the phrases would be interpreted very differently now from an interpretation put upon them even 40 years ago. • Few exceptions such as: she used to do flower arrangements and the girls at work would order them you know? Mm And she came in this day with these flowers and spoke to me and I didn't know who she was

17. Arabic Collocations 1- My grand mother in this day enter the hospital because his heart is not okay. I hope she will come out soon from hospital. 2- Someone like you. In this day, after I finish my class I will go to rail way station to go to my real home in Al-Hasa. I miss my family so 3- The same routine every day. I do not go to college in this daybecause I am sick, I have asthma I stayed all the day in bed, I do not like that, because it is so boring. A 4- He write some love words to me. In this day I went to my college. It is so hard to study in Ramadan because we are fasting and also tired. After when we

18. Limitations Corpus size Disproportion of each participants contribution Corpus register Transcription of handwritten data One-man show

19. Future Prospects • Corpus Expansion • L1 specific material • Consciousness-raising • CIA: Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis

20. References • Halimah, A. M. (2001), ‘Rhetorical duality and Arabic speaking EST learners’, English for Specific Purposes, Vol 20, pp.111- 139 • Kaplan, R. B. (1972), 'Cultural Thought Patterns in Inter-Cultural Education' in Croft, K. Readings on English as a Second Language for Teachers and Teacher-Trainees, Massachusetts: Winthrop Publishers • Ostler, S.E. (1987), 'English in Parallels: A Comparison of English and Arabic Prose' in Connor, U. and Kaplan, R. B. Writing Across Languages: Analysis of L2 Text, Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company • Granger, S. (2002), ‘Bird’s-eye view of learner corpus research’ in Granger, S. and Hung, J. and Petch-Tyson, S. (2002), Computer Learner Corpora, Second Language Acquisition and Foreign Language Teaching, Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company