Lexical Repetition in Academic Discourse

Table of Contents

• Introduction
  • Background to the study.
  • Aims of the present research.
  • An overview of the dissertation
• Theoretical Framework
  • Overview.
  • Coherence and cohesion..
    • Definitions of coherence and cohesion.
    • Types of cohesion.
  • Lexical cohesion and lexical repetition.
    • Categories of lexical cohesion
    • Lexical chains or a lexical net?
  • Hoey's (1991) Repetition Model..
    • The theoretical background of the model..
    • Hoey's (1991) taxonomy of lexical repetition
    • Links and bonds creating a lexical net.
    • The steps of the analysis.
    • Applications of Hoey's (1991) model..
    • Inconsistencies within Hoey's (1991) model.
    • The link triangle and the mediator missing.
    • The questions of anaphora resolution
    • Prescriptiveness or descriptiveness of the model.
  • Károly's (2002) Repetition Model..
    • Károly's (2002) taxonomy of lexical repetition ..
    • Károly's (2002) method of analysis......
    • Károly's empirical investigation.....
    • A corpus-based investigation using Károly's (2002) taxonomy.
  • Summary.
• Methodological background: the academic writing context.
  • Overview...
  • The nature of academic discourse.
  • General features of English academic discourse.
  • The types of writing tasks required at university.
  • Disciplinary differences in academic discourse.
  • Implications for language pedagogy.
  • Independent vs. integrative writing tasks.
  • Task variables influencing academic discourse quality.
  • The classification of variables in academic writing.
  • Contextual variables of integrated academic discourse quality
  • Cognitive variables of integrated academic discourse quality
  • Summary writing as a complex task
  • Writing a compare/contrast essay
  • Assessing academic discourse.
    • 'Traditional' and recent academic essay assessment practices
    • Validity in L2 academic writing assessment..
    • Generalizability of judgement on academic discourse quality.
    • Reliability of perceived discourse quality..
    • Text quality requirements by course teachers.
    • Explicit instruction on coherence, cohesion and lexical repetition in higher educationlxxv
    • Automated assessment of text quality.
    • Controversial views on the automated assessment of essay quality.
  • Summary...
• Aims and Research Questions..
• Research design and procedures of analysis.
  • A sequential mixed design.
  • Stage 1: Analysis of academic summaries.
    • The summary writing task...
    • Corpus size and representativity.
    • Context validity evaluation of the summary writing task
    • Features of the input text.......
    • Quality assessment of the corpus.
    • Methods of data analysis in Stage 1
  • Stage 2: Analysis of compare/contrast essays.
    • The compare/contrast essay writing task
    • Quality assessment of the corpus.
    • Methods of data analysis in Stage 2.
• Results of the lexical repetition analysis of academic summaries
• Results of the lexical repetition analysis of compare/contrast essays
• The design of a new LRA model for large-scale analysis...........
• Conclusions
  • Summary of main results.
  • Pedagogical implications.
  • Limitations..
  • Terminology issues.
  • Suggestions for further research.
• References...

Objectives and Key Themes

This dissertation aims to investigate the role of lexical repetition in organizing academic discourse, particularly focusing on the challenges it presents for L2 academic writing assessment. The research intends to bridge the gap between current computer-aided lexical cohesion analysis frameworks and the actual use of repetition in text organization. It seeks to develop a more comprehensive and applicable analytical tool for assessing discourse cohesion through the study of lexical repetition patterns.

• The text-organizing role of lexical repetition in academic discourse.
• The applicability of existing lexical repetition models for assessing academic writing quality.
• The development of a new computer-aided model for large-scale lexical repetition analysis.
• The pedagogical implications of the research findings for L2 academic writing instruction.
• The potential of the new analytical model for supporting teachers and learners in assessing and improving academic writing.

Chapter Summaries

The dissertation begins by establishing the theoretical framework for the study, outlining the concepts of coherence and cohesion in academic discourse, and reviewing existing models of lexical cohesion and lexical repetition analysis. This section introduces Hoey's (1991) Repetition Model and Károly's (2002) lexical repetition model, both of which provide important theoretical foundations for the research. Chapter 3 explores the methodological context of academic writing, including the nature of academic discourse, the types of writing tasks required at university, and the challenges associated with assessing L2 academic writing quality. The chapter also reviews existing assessment practices and discusses the potential of automated assessment tools. Chapters 4 and 5 outline the aims, research questions, and methodology of the study, which employs a sequential mixed methods design to analyze two corpora: one consisting of academic summaries and the other of compare/contrast essays. Chapters 6 and 7 present the results of the lexical repetition analysis of the two corpora, highlighting the patterns of repetition found in high- and low-rated texts. Finally, Chapter 8 outlines the design of a new, computer-aided model for large-scale lexical repetition analysis, incorporating theoretical insights from previous chapters and incorporating the findings of the corpus analyses.

Keywords

This dissertation focuses on lexical repetition, academic discourse, L2 writing assessment, computer-aided analysis, discourse cohesion, text organization, academic genres, and corpus linguistics.