Text types

Abstract: List of Figures, Concordances and Tables. Acknowledgements. Data Conventions and Terminology. Notes on Corpus Data and Software. Part I: Concepts and History:. 1. Texts and Text Types. 2. British Traditions in Text Analysis: Firth, Halliday and Sinclair. 3. Institutional Linguistics: Firth, Hill and Giddens. Part II: Text and Corpus Analysis:. 4. Baden--Powell: A Comparative Analysis of Two Short Texts. 5. Judging the Facts: An Analysis of One Text in its Institutional Context. 6. Human and Inhuman Geography: A Comparative Analysis of Two Long Texts and a Corpus. 7. Keywords, Collocations and Culture: The Analysis of Word Meanings across Corpora. 8. Towards a Modal Grammar of English: A Matter of Prolonged Fieldwork. 9. The Classic Questions. Notes. References. Name Index. Subject Index.

Abstract: Student academic writing is at the heart of teaching and learning in higher education. Students are assessed largely by what they write, and need to learn both general academic conventions as well as disciplinary writing requirements in order to be successful in higher education. Teaching Academic Writing is a 'toolkit' designed to help higher education lecturers and tutors teach writing to their students. Containing a range of diverse teaching strategies, the book offers both practical activities to help students develop their writing abilities and guidelines to help lecturers and tutors think in more depth about the assessment tasks they set and the feedback they give to students. The authors explore a wide variety of text types, from essays and reflective diaries to research projects and laboratory reports. The book draws on recent research in the fields of academic literacy, second language learning, and linguistics. It is grounded in recent developments such as the increasing diversity of the student body, the use of the Internet, electronic tuition, and issues related to distance learning in an era of increasing globalisation. Written by experienced teachers of writing, language, and linguistics, Teaching Academic Writing will be of interest to anyone involved in teaching academic writing in higher education.

Abstract: Current research has shown that comprehension can vary based on text and question types, and that readers' word recognition and background knowledge may account for these differences. Other reader characteristics such as semantic and syntactic awareness, inferencing, planning/organizing have also all been linked to reading comprehension, but have not been examined with regard to specific text and question types. The aim of this study was to explore the relationships between reader characteristics, text types, and question types, in children aged 10-14. We sought to compare children's performance when comprehending narrative, expository, and functional text, as well as to explore differences between children's performance on comprehension questions that assess their literal or inferential comprehension of a passage. To examine such differences, we analyzed the degree to which distinct cognitive skills (semantic and syntactic awareness, inferencing, planning/organizing) contribute to performance on varying types of texts and questions. This study found main effects of text and question types, as well as an interaction in which relations between question types varied between text types. Analyses indicated that higher order cognitive skills, including the ability to make inferences and to plan and organize information, contribute to comprehension of more complex text (e.g., expository vs. narrative) and question types (e.g., inferential vs. literal), and therefore are important components of reading for later elementary and middle school students. These findings suggest that developing these skills in early elementary school may better equip students for comprehending the texts they will encounter in higher grades.

Abstract: The purpose of this study was to examine the role of vocabulary in writing across three genres Fifth graders (N = 105) wrote three compositions: story, persuasive, and informative Each composition revolved around the topic of outer space to control for background knowledge Written compositions were scored for holistic writing quality and several different vocabulary constructs: diversity, maturity, elaboration, academic words, content words, and register The results indicated that students vary their vocabulary usage by genre Story text had higher diversity than informative text as well as higher maturity as compared to persuasive text Persuasive text contained higher diversity than informative text, and higher register than both of the other genres Informative text included more content words and elaboration than the other text types as well as more maturity than persuasive text Additionally, multiple regression and commonality analysis indicated that the vocabulary constructs related to writing quality differed by genre For story text, vocabulary diversity was a unique predictor, while for persuasive text, content words and register were unique predictors Finally, for informative text content words was the strongest unique predictor explaining almost all of the total variance in the five factor model, although maturity was also a unique predictor