Using a linguistic computer software to explore the N-grams in ESL college compositions

• Main Author: Rey John Castro Villanueva
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Department of English, Faculty of Arts and Letters, University of Santo Tomas 2017-12-01
• Series: Asian Journal of English Language Studies (AJELS)
• Subjects: college compositions; functional classifcations; linguistic computer software; n-grams
• Online Access: https://ajels.ust.edu.ph/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/3-Using-a-linguistic-computer-software-to-explore-the-N-grams-in-ESL-college-compositions.pdf

This research made an initial exploration on the English N-grams commonly used by college students in their ESL writing classes. Previous studies found out that there are several types of N-grams; however, this research zeroed in on three- and four-word N-grams only as these are the most researched types and have been used in many related studies. Moreover, the functional classification of each of the identified three- and four-word N-grams was identified through the use of the taxonomy forwarded by Biber et al. (2004). The Antconc 3.2.4w retrieved a total of 31 English N-grams from the academic computer corpus that contains 100,000 running words. The findings reveal that referential N-grams are widespread, whereas both stance and referential N-grams record a minimal rate of occurrence. Several reasons in respect of the underuse of both stance and discourse N-grams were discussed; however, all of them require further analysis before any conclusion can be made.