ERIC Number: EJ1076897
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2013
Pages: 9
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1916-4742
EISSN: N/A
Distribution of Articles in Written Composition among Malaysian ESL Learners
Rahim, Mia Emily Abdul; Rahim, Emma Marini Abdul; Ning, Chia Han
English Language Teaching, v6 n10 p149-157 2013
The study aimed to investigate the distribution patterns of the English grammar articles (a, an, and the) as well as the distributions of their colligation patterns in written compositions of English among Malaysian ESL learners. This paper reports the results of a corpus-based study on articles used by these learners. The method used in this study was quantitative content analysis, in which it utilized the data from the Malaysian Corpus of Students' Argumentative Writing (MCSAW). The findings indicated that all the three articles were presented throughout the entire compositions and that the frequency of occurrences made up 18 percent of the entire tokens. The findings also showed that the distributions of the colligation patterns of the articles were at variance. Some of the colligation patterns were used heavily while others were not often applied in the compositions. The findings can help language teachers identify areas in the structure that need further emphasis in their teaching.
Descriptors: Foreign Countries, English (Second Language), Second Language Instruction, Second Language Learning, Form Classes (Languages), Computational Linguistics, Content Analysis, Statistical Analysis, Grammar, Sentence Structure, Writing (Composition), Measures (Individuals), Computer Software, College Students
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Malaysia
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A