Official Blog Entry #1

Crossley, S. A., & McNamara, D. S. (2011).  Shared features of L2 writing: Intergroup homogeneity and text classification. Journal of Second Language Writing, 20(4), 271-285.  doi:10.1016/j.jslw.2011.05.007

This is a study reported in the style of a scientific report.  Not unlike the format used by the physical sciences for lab and research reports at both the academic and professional levels.  It rather reminded me of research reports that I referenced in college when I was Biology major.  The objective of the study “is to investigate the potential for linguistic features related to text cohesion, lexical sophistication and syntactic complexity to discriminate between texts written by L1 and L2 writers” (Crossley & McNamara, 2011).  In other words, they were hoping to identify and prove certain linguistic markers and patterns can be used to predict and identify L2 writers and L1 writers in a diverse collection of argumentative papers. 

                They compared a selection of 904 L2 argumentative papers (a mixture of German, Czech, Spanish and Finnish L1 writers) from the International Corpus of Learner English (ICLE) and 211 L1 essays from “native English speaking college students in first year persuasive writing classes” (Crossley & McNamara, 2011).  Several tests and measures were used for data collection and analysis.  After presenting their reasons for the methods selected and presenting the results that they found, they discussed the findings.   They felt that the results supported their claim that “intergroup homogeneity exists in the linguistic patterns of L2 writers” (Crossley & McNamara, 2011).  They argue that their results show that L2 writers use “less sophisticated lexical features and less sophisticated morphological features” (Crossley & McNamara, 2011).  These are indicated in the four linguistic features of hypernymy, polysemy, stem overlap and lexical diversity.  L2 writers words are more general resulting in lower hypernymy scores and less ambiguous and so give lower polysemy scores (Crossley & McNamara, 2011).  For stem overlap, L2 writers are not as likely to use words that “share stems between sentences” (Crossley & McNamara, 2011).  That is they are not as likely to repeat the same root concept in different morphologies in the same paper or paragraph (i.e. artisic and artistically).   While L2 writers were found to employ a greater lexical diversity than the L1 writers that did not mean that they were more proficient than the L1 writers.  That is more an indicator of “rhetorical strategies” (Crossley & McNamara, 2011). 

While their study and findings appear to prove their point, I am not sure that this article has aided my focus for the semester or done anything for my personal development other than to add to my lexical knowledge of field specific terminology.  I will say that it has me wanting to explore the test and measures they used for future personal academic use.  Would I recommend this article to peers and scholars?  I would say ‘yes’ with qualifications.  If the individual is looking to determine factors that influence L2 writing styles or methods for identifying L2 writers from L1 writers in a mixed pool of essays, then yes this article could be a useful tool.  However, for myself, it did not offer as much insight into the Czech EFL psyche as I would like and only gave me limited clues as to how to specially tailor L2 writing exercises for Czech and other Slavic EFL students.