The present study attempts to identify difficulties that Japanese students encounter with metadiscursive nouns in writing second language (L2) argumentation essays. Metadiscursive nouns are abstract and unspecific nouns which can serve as cohesive markers by retrieving their meanings in the text where they occur. Using a selected number of nouns…

Strong claims are made regarding the significant role that multiword sequences play in the comprehension and production of speech and writing. Although the literature is replete with research-informed, evidence-based guidelines on how to maximize the learning of such sequences, such guidelines need to be synthesized, analyzed and evaluated for…

The current study aims to examine the use of chunks and the extent of repetition in Korean middle school English textbooks. Also, the number of chunks shared by three publishers is examined. To create the corpora, 9 textbooks from three publishers were filed and processed by Simple Concordance Program. The results showed that chunk expressions…

Mastery of idiomatic expressions by foreign language learners is often equated with the fluency of native speakers of that language. However, learning these idiomatic expressions is one of the significant problems experienced by learners. The present quasi-experimental study conducted over four weeks in the ELT department of a Turkish university…

Formulaic sequences are found to be processed faster than their matched novel phrases in previous studies. Given the variety of formulaic types, few studies have compared processing on different types of formulaic sequences. The present study explored the processing among idioms, speech formulae and written formulae. It has been found that in…

This study investigated English teachers' use of learners' L1 (Arabic) in college classrooms in Kuwait. The purpose of the study was three-fold: (1) to describe the functions for which L1 was employed by the teachers, (2) to explore the affective, sociolinguistic, and psycholinguistic factors that may have led teachers to use L1 in L2 teaching,…

Abstract is of a pivotal genre in scientific communication, assisting not only highly selective readers with judgment of the pertinent articles but also researchers in disseminating new knowledge and intellectual discoveries. Difficult yet challenging, however, is the task of writing effective abstracts particularly among non-English speaking…

This article presents a corpus-based investigation on English prepositions of time presented in the argumentative essays of Form 4 and Form 5 Malaysian secondary students in the MCSAW corpus. The aims were to find out the distribution patterns and the common errors in the use of preposition of time, "on" and "at". This corpus…

A great deal of attention has been paid to the role of idiomatic language in learning a second language. It has been recently recognized by some second language researchers (e.g. Danesi, 2003) that second language speakers may sound unnatural if their speech is devoid of idiomatic language. This article is an attempt to see how the acquisition of…