IJES 2017, v. 17, n. 2

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https://hdl.handle.net/10201/55987

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    Exploring nominalization in scientific textbooks: A cross-disciplinary study of hard and soft sciences
    (2018-02-20) Jalilifar, Alireza; White, Peter; Malekizadeh, N.
    Given the importance of disciplinary specificity in terms of the potential differences in the functionality of nominalizations in scientific textbooks and the dearth of studies of this type, the current study explores the extent to which nominalization is realized across two disciplines. To this aim, eight academic textbooks from Physics and Applied Linguistics are analyzed to identify the nominal patterns and expressions and their related types. Findings indicate that, despite the similarity of the first three most prevalent patterns in the sample textbooks, the distribution of these patterns marks disciplinary distinctions. That is, Physics academic writers tend to (a) use a more complex, lexically dense style of writing and package more information into compound nominal phrases by deploying a pattern where nominals are followed by strings of prepositional phrases in comparison to writers in Applied Linguistics; and (b) express particularity using nominals preceded by classifiers more frequently than Applied Linguistics writers. Writers in Applied Linguistics, on the other hand, are found to manifest a greater tendency toward conveying generality by using a pattern where nominals are realized with few pre/post modifiers.
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    Gender and the contemporary educational canon in the UK
    (2018-02-21) Elliott, Victoria
    This paper presents an analysis of the gender of the authors and the main characters of the set texts for English examinations taken at age 16 in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. It presents an argument for why representation within the canon is important and places this within the context of recent educational reform in England and Scotland. The analysis demonstrates that texts by female authors are in a minority, sometimes in the extreme, and when the gender of the main character is taken into account, there is an even greater imbalance. The reasons behind this, even after a time of major educational reform, are explored and the constraints of the market are suggested as reasons why greater risks were not taken.
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    Receptive vocabulary measures for EFL Costa Rican high school students
    (2018-02-21) Castro García, Damaris
    The study offers a glimpse of the current situation of foreign language education in the Costa Rican context from the perspective of vocabulary knowledge, particularly passive vocabulary size. Students from two institutions participated: one school implements Content Based Teaching while the other follows traditional, Foreign Language Teaching instruction. This research aims to describe the receptive vocabulary profile of students and to compare the vocabulary levels of students between two gender groups and under two types of English language teaching. These measures are established following the idea originally presented in Paul Nation’s (1983, 1990) Vocabulary Levels Test. In this case, Schmitt, Schmitt and Clapham’s (2001) Version 2 test was used to define passive vocabulary levels. Finally, the results of this analysis are compared to results for similar population samples in other studies.
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    Apparently, women don't know how to operate doors: A corpus-based analysis of women stereotypes in the TV series 3rd Rock from the Sun
    (2018-02-21) Gregori-Signes, Carmen
    This paper explores how women stereotypes are discursively evaluated in the TV sitcom 3 rd Rock from the Sun by paying attention to the societal, cultural and ideological values they convey. Following recent trends for the study of television series (Bednarek, 2010), the analysis is both qualitative and quantitative, adopting a Corpus- Assisted Discourse Analysis approach (Baker, 2006; Partington, 2004). The contextualised analysis of words that refer to women confirms that the sitcom writers of 3 rd Rock from the Sun purposefully resort to stereotyping as a verbal strategy to create humour while conveying negative attitudes towards women.
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    The effects of language typology on L2 lexical availability and spelling accuracy
    (2018-02-21) Martínez-Adrián, María; Gallardo-del-Puerto, Francisco
    This paper explores whether language typology plays any role in lexical availability and spelling accuracy in L2 English. Two groups of adult speakers were compared: a group of native speakers of a language typologically distant from English with a logographic writing system (Chinese; n=13) vs. a group of native speakers of a language typologically closer to English with an alphabetic system (Spanish; n=14). All participants performed a lexical availability task (Carcedo González, 1998a) which was later on analyzed in terms of the ‘total number of words’ and the ‘total number of words containing spelling mistakes’ per each of the 15 semantic categories included. Spanish speakers displayed larger available lexica and fewer spelling mistakes than Chinese speakers, an outcome which would confirm the positive influence of L1-L2 proximity on L2 lexical availability and the deleterious effect of having a non-alphabetic L1 writing system on L2 spelling accuracy.
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