The Use of English Amplifiers in Argumentative Writing Corpora

Lee, Ji Hae (이지혜); Na Yoon Hee (나윤희)

The Use of English Amplifiers in Argumentative Writing Corpora

Modern English Education
Abbr : MEESO
2017, 18(1), pp.75-96
Publisher : The Modern English Education Society
Research Area : Humanities > English Language and Literature > English Language Teaching
Published : February 28, 2017

Lee, Ji Hae ¹, Na Yoon Hee ¹

¹전남대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This study aims to investigate the features of English amplifiers which are categorized into maximizers and boosters in two writing corpora. Korean EFL students’ argumentative writing corpus was compiled from essay contests held at a national university between 2006 and 2012 and the NS professional writing corpus was collected from Opinions in the New York Times. A Chi-square test was performed to determine if there is a significant difference between the two corpora in the use of the amplifiers. An error analysis of the amplifiers used in the EFL corpus was also conducted. In the analysis of overall frequency of amplifiers in the two corpora, it was found that Korean EFL students significantly overused the amplifiers compared to NS professional writers. Although there was no significant difference in the use of maximizers, there existed a significant difference in the use of boosters between Korean EFL students and NS professional writers. The frequency analysis of individual amplifiers used in the two corpora revealed that Korean EFL students significantly overused certain maximizers and boosters (e.g., quite, more, very, and really). In the analysis of misused maximizers and boosters, there were many cases of semantic misuse of amplifiers, unnecessary use of amplifiers, and semantic misuse of adjectives in Korean EFL students’ writing. Drawing on the findings of the study, pedagogical implications for L2 writing instruction are presented.

KEYWORDS

amplifiers/maximizers/boosters/learner corpus/argumentative writing

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

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