Danh từ hóa trong viết học thuật nghiên cứu trên các bài luận của sinh viên chuyên ngành tiếng anh anh ở trường đại học ngoại ngữ đại học huế

HUE UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF ENGLISH DINH CONG TIEN DAT NOMINALIZATION IN ACADEMIC WRITING: A STUDY INTO HUFLIS ENGLISH-MAJOR STUDENTS’ ESSAYS GRADUATION THESIS SUPERVISOR: PHAM HONG ANH, Ph.D Hue, Academic year: 2019 - 2023 ĐẠI HỌC HUẾ ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ KHOA TIẾNG ANH ĐINH CƠNG TIẾN ĐẠT DANH TỪ HĨA TRONG VIẾT HỌC THUẬT- NGHIÊN CỨU TRÊN CÁC BÀI LUẬN CỦA SINH VIÊN CHUYÊN NGÀNH TIẾNG ANH ANH Ở TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ, ĐẠI HỌC HUẾ KHÓA LUẬN TỐT NGHIỆP GIẢNG VIÊN HƯỚNG DẪN: TS PHẠM HỒNG ANH Huế, Năm học: 2019 - 2023 STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP I certify that the thesis that I am submitting today, entitled: NOMINALIZATION IN ACADEMIC WRITING: A STUDY INTO HUFLIS ENGLISH-MAJOR STUDENTS’ ESSAYS has been completed solely by myself It has not been submitted, in whole or in apart, in any previous applications for a degree, except where due reference is made in the text of the thesis Hue, 17th April, 2023 Investigator, Dinh Cong Tien Dat i ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First and foremost, I would love to express my deepest gratitude towards my supervisor, Mrs Pham Hong Anh She fuels my initial idea of the topic, arouses the scholarly passion in me, and shares with me all my concerns and interests during the course of this study She wholeheartedly supports me, guides me with advice and feedback, and uncovers new vistas in me towards the end of this study and even further I owe her a debt of gratitude Second, I would like to send my sincere thanks to the students of the two classes of Writing 5, semester one, academic years 2022-2023 They provided me a huge help with their participation in completing the questionnaire Without their help I could not have done data collection Finally, I would like to send my best regards to the Faculty of English at University of Foreign Languages and International Studies, Hue University, for providing me a precious opportunity to carry out this thesis This is truly a worthy milestone of my academic path ii ABSTRACT This study investigates nominalization in English-major students’ essays in terms of: i) students’ perception, and ii) students’ performance Particularly, it aims to seek answers to these two research questions Research question 1: How English-major students perceive academic writing in relation to language use in general and nominalization in particular? Research question 2: How is nominalization presented in English-major students’ essays? For research question 1, a questionnaire was used to collect data from 100 English-major students of Writing classes at the Faculty of English, University of Foreign Languages and International Studies (HUFLIS), Hue University Findings for research question show two salient issues First, most of the students could well perceive academic writing in terms of academic vocabulary and complex syntactic structures Second, most of the students could identify nominalization through given sentences in the questionnaire, on the basic of lexical density and syntactic complexity, but relying on understandability in meaning For research question 2, thirty midterm essays randomly selected from those 100 students were analyzed in terms of types of nominalized words, formation of nominalized words, and syntactic structures of sentences containing nominalized words Findings for research question show a considerable number of nominalized words in three types: Verb to Noun, Adjective to Noun, and Noun to Various The use of nominalized elements in the essays was mostly at lexical level and derived from habitual use There was a little evidence of syntactic transformation involving nominalization Discussion of the findings concerns: i) various levels of nominalization, not simply lexical levels and syntactic levels, and ii) the influence of test factors of the midterm test essays such as time control and topic control The findings of the study have implications for teachers of Academic Writing subject, students of Writing classes, and curriculum designers at HUFLIS iii TĨM TẮT Nghiên cứu tìm hiểu danh từ hoá viết học thuật luận sinh viên chuyên ngành tiếng Anh mặt i, quan niệm sinh viên, ii, thể sinh viên Cụ thể là, nghiên cứu nhằm trả lời hai câu hỏi nghiên cứu sau Câu hỏi thứ nhất: Sinh viên chuyên ngành tiếng Anh có quan niệm viết học thuật khía cạnh sử dụng ngơn ngữ nói chung danh từ hóa nói riêng? Câu hỏi thứ hai: Danh từ hoá thể luận sinh viên chuyên ngành tiếng Anh? Đối với câu hỏi thứ nhất, phiếu điều tra sử dụng để thu thập liệu từ 100 sinh viên chuyên ngành tiếng Anh lớp Viết khoa Tiếng Anh, trường Đại học Ngoại ngữ, Đại học Huế Kết câu hỏi nghiên cứu thứ cho thấy hai vấn đề bật Thứ nhất, hầu hết sinh viên hiểu viết học thuật khía cạnh từ vựng học thuật cấu trúc cú pháp phức tạp Thứ hai, hầu hết sinh viên nhận diện danh từ hoá từ câu cho sẵn phiếu điều tra dựa vào mật độ từ vựng cấu trúc cú pháp phức tạp hết rõ nghĩa câu Đối với câu hỏi nghiên cứu thứ hai, ba mươi luận kiểm tra kì chọn ngẫu nhiên từ 100 sinh viên nói phân tích khía cạnh loại danh từ hoá, việc thành lập danh từ hoá, cấu trúc cú pháp câu chứa yếu tố danh từ hoá Kết câu hỏi nghiên cứu thứ hai cho thấy số lượng đáng kể danh từ hoá ba loại: Động từ sang Danh từ, Tính từ sang Danh từ, Danh từ sang Danh từ Việc sử dụng danh từ hoá luận hầu hết cấp độ từ vựng xuất phát theo thói quen sử dụng Có trường hợp cho thấy có chuyển đổi cấu trúc cú pháp câu chứa danh từ hoá Thảo luận kết nghiên cứu nêu hai vấn đề chính: i, có mức độ danh từ hố khác không hai mức độ từ vựng cú pháp, ii, có yếu tố ảnh hưởng từ kiểm tra áp lực thời gian chủ đề viết Kết từ nghiên cứu có khuyến nghị cho giáo viên dạy môn Viết, sinh viên lớp Viết, chuyên gia thiết kế chương trình trường Đại học Ngoại ngữ, Đại học Huế iv TABLE OF CONTENTS STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP i ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ii ABSTRACT iii TÓM TẮT iv TABLE OF CONTENTS v LIST OF TABLES viii LIST OF FIGURES ix LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS x CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION .1 1.1 The rationale 1.2 The background of the study 1.2.1 The personal background 1.2.2 Theoretical background 1.3 Research objectives and research questions 1.4 The scope of the study 1.5 The significance of the study 1.6 The overall structure of the study CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Nominalization 2.1.1 Definitions 2.1.2 Classifications of nominalization .7 2.2 Academic writing 10 2.2.1 What is academic writing 10 2.2.2 Language features of academic writing 10 2.3 Nominalization in academic writing 12 2.4 EFL/ESL students’ academic writing 13 2.5 Previous studies 14 2.6 The research gap 16 CHAPTER THREE: METHODOLOGY .17 v 3.1 Research approach 17 3.2 Research participants and setting 17 3.3 Data collection instruments 18 3.3.1 Questionnaire 18 3.3.2 Students’ essays .19 3.4 Data collection procedure 20 3.5 Data analysis .20 CHAPTER FOUR: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 22 4.1 Findings .22 4.1.1 English-major students’ perception of academic writing in relation to language use and nominalization 22 4.1.1.1 English-major students’ perception of academic writing in relation to language use 22 4.1.1.1.a Writing activities ascribed for academic writing .22 4.1.1.1.b Quality of language of academic writing 23 4.1.1.1.c Features of language of academic writing 24 4.1.1.1.d Importance of each language feature of academic writing 25 4.1.1.2 English-major students’ perception of nominalization in academic writing 26 4.1.1.2.a The students’ selection of nominalized sentences 26 4.1.1.2.b Reasons of the selections 28 4.1.2 The presentation of nominalization in English-major students’ essays 29 4.2 Discussion 39 4.2.1 English-major students’ perception of academic writing and nominalization 39 4.2.2 Presentation of nominalization in the students’ essays 40 4.3 Summary of the chapter 41 CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSION .43 5.1 Summary of key findings 43 5.1.1 Research question 1: How English-major students perceive academic writing in relation to language use in general and nominalization in particular? .43 vi 5.1.2 Research question 2: How is nominalization presented in English-major students’ essays? .44 5.2 Limitations of the study 45 5.3 Suggestions for future relevant research .46 5.4 Implications 47 5.5 A final thought 48 REFERENCES 49 APPENDICES 52 APPENDIX 1: .52 APPENDIX 2: .53 APPENDIX 3: .54 vii LIST OF TABLES Table 2.1: Classification of nominalization by Simpson and Lester (Lei & Yi, 2019, p 17) Table 2.2: Classification of nominalization by Halliday (Lei & Yi, 2009, p.18) .8 Table 3.1: Halliday’s classification of nominalization (Lei & Yi 2019) 21 Table 4.1 Numbers of nominalized elements in five types .31 Table 4.2 Numbers of Verb to Noun tokens 34 Table 4.3 Numbers of Adjective to Noun tokens 35 Table 4.4 Numbers of Noun to Various tokens .36 viii CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSION This chapter begins with a summary of key findings of the study The chapter then describes limitations of the study, suggestions for future relevant research, and implications The chapter ends with a final word from the thesis writer 5.1 Summary of key findings 5.1.1 Research question 1: How English-major students perceive academic writing in relation to language use in general and nominalization in particular? Research findings for this question are divided into two parts: i, English-major students’ perception of academic writing in relation to language use, and ii, Englishmajor students’ perception of nominalization in academic writing In terms of the students’ perception of academic writing in relation to language use, four aspects were recorded, namely writing activities, qualities of language of academic writing, features of language and importance of each feature For writing activities, all of the participant students could refer to writing activities ascribed to academic language such as writing assignments of university subjects, Academic Writing class’s papers, examination questions, research papers, and graduation theses All of those writing activities are typical activities at university and thus highly perceivable to the students For language qualities of academic writing, the most chosen qualities included complex language, logical, specific, and lexically condensed These qualities are evident indicators of academic writing that are taught to the students in Writing classes and often required of in the students’ writing papers Those less evident qualities, which could be harder for the students to perceive, relate to writing tone, for example subjective, objective, interpersonal For language features in academic writing, the two most perceivable ones that were mostly chosen by the students were academic vocabulary and complex sentence structure After these two features came passive voice, noun phrases, verb phrases and other types of phrases Hedging language, nominalization, and impersonal It structure were also recognized as language features of academic writing by a 43 considerable number of students For the importance of each feature, there was a high consistency between the most chosen features and the most perceivably important ones, to the students’ perception In particular, the students thought that academic vocabulary and complex sentence structures were the two most prominent and important language features of academic writing After academic vocabulary and complex sentence structures, all types of phrases, nominalization and hedging were also perceived by the students to be important in academic writing In terms of the students’ perception of nominalization in academic writing, the findings showed that the students were able to identify nominalized sentences in provided sets of sentences An overall look at all the selected sentences showed a tendency that the students drew on understandability to select the sentences Remarkably, in one of the sets consisting of two levels of nominalization, the much more selected nominalized sentence was the less complex and less abstract nominalization As for reasons for their selection, most of the students chose a professional style to draw on, and other reasons which were fairly equally important were strong logic, complex language, compact structure, easy-to-understand expression, and condensed information 5.1.2 Research question 2: How is nominalization presented in Englishmajor students’ essays? The presentation of nominalization in the students’ essays could be generally seen in the number of nominalized words and tokens of each word Among the five types of nominalization, Verb to Noun, Adjective to Noun, Preposition to Noun, Conjunction to Noun, and Noun to Various, as classified in the literature, the Verb to Noun, Adjective to Noun, and Noun to Various were evident in the essays, and the other two were absent Specifically, the Verb to Noun type made up the biggest group in terms of the number of different nominalized words and the number of tokens of each word Remarkably, words that were used most frequently, learning and competition, were recorded from the essays about technology’s impact on children’s learning and 44 beauty pageants respectively In terms of word formation, most words were formed with suffixes -tion, -ing, and -ment The second biggest type was Adjective to Noun although this group was not big in the number of different words and the number of tokens of each word Most nominalized words of this type were formed with suffixes -ity, -ce, and -ness The Noun to Various type has the smallest number of different nominalized words and tokens of each word The zero transference (e.g cost) was seen as more common than the noun to noun (e.g child to childhood) The corpus also showed that some nominalized elements come from collocation (e.g in conclusion, taking these points into consideration) and expressions that are rather fixed or common (e.g in terms of appearance, cognitive development, online shopping) In terms of syntactic transformation, the corpus of sentences containing nominalized elements showed that nominalization took place more at lexical level and less at syntactic level A considerable number of sentences had basic patterns of semantic-syntactic correspondence There was a little evidence of syntactic transformation that went beyond the basic semantic-syntactic correspondence to a more complex pattern Despite limited cases, this was evidence of nominalization at a certain level that shifted away from common ways of conceptualizing meaning into syntactic patterns 5.2 Limitations of the study A study at this scope cannot avoid limitations The biggest area of limitation lies in the methodology It is not scientific and persuasive to rely on the naked eye and personal feeling in identifying nominalized elements in the students’ essays Because no software or instrument for nominalization identification was available at the time of the study, there was no other way Although the identification was drawn on a sound theoretical framework of nominalization identification and classification, for example the use of suffixes for transference from a verb or an adjective to noun, the current methodology could not avoid inaccuracy Also, when 45 nominalized elements were identified, color coding to classify the elements was done manually, which can be a possible area of inaccuracy as well The second area of limitation lies at the questionnaire design In order to investigate the students’ perception of nominalization in the situation that the students, at the time of their participation in the study, had not been taught nominalization in the official curriculum, it was challenging for the researcher to ask them about this notion What the researcher did was to provide sets of sentences containing nominalized ones, which derived from relevant literature, for the students to recognize and identify This way may limit the students’ recognition within the provided sentences only There are surely better ways than that Besides, the number of thirty essays can limit the research findings For midterm 50-minute timed essays, data of the nominalized tokens may not yield insightful conclusions for research of this topic In relation to the research gap mentioned in chapter two, which this study aims to address, investigation of nominalization in exam writing papers under time and topic control may shed light into areas, like what this study could possibly However, within thirty essays, findings may not be very insightful Finally, despite my huge effort in carrying out this whole study, doing it under time and other constraints can pose this study some possible limitations other than what have been described above 5.3 Suggestions for future relevant research For relevant research in the future, suggestions are drawn on the limitations described above First, methodology should be improved More scientific instruments for nominalization identification from a corpus of writing can help reduce risk of inaccuracy While color coding for nominalization classification is a good common way in research, programmed color coding is surely better for consideration than manual coding Second, questionnaire design so as to better investigate students’ perception of nominalization when the students have no prior knowledge of nominalization is a worthy area of more investment Third, a bigger 46 corpus of writing, or essays, can yield more data and help increase generalizability of studies Besides, future relevant studies may need to interview students to further explore their responses to either questionnaire or essays Conversation like an interview can help elicit valuable information which other instruments cannot Future studies can also look at nominalization errors in students’ essays to analyze the students’ development of nominalization 5.4 Implications The findings of this study can provide some kind of implications For teachers of Writing subjects, there are a few issues they may need to take into consideration First, nominalization and its role in academic writing needs to be emphasized for the students Students need to be aware of nominalization Second, the teacher himself or herself needs to have a mindset of nominalization, especially in the light of Functional Grammar when teaching Writing Next, it is important to integrate explicit teaching of academic vocabulary and complex grammar specifically for Academic Writing classes Depending on students’ level, the teacher may also need to give students exercise asking them to nominalize given sentences at various levels For students, this study has some implications specifically for their writing First, they should get ready for the mindset of academic writing, which is not spoken language and which shifts away from basic conceptualization of meaning It is important to distinguish free writing from academic writing They should learn nominalization and practice using that in their writing For curriculum designers, first, it is worth considering to have Functional Grammar to be taught in the same semester of Writing Currently, the Functional Grammar subject, which contains a unit of nominalization, is taught to year-four students, while Writing is to year-three students Second, it is important to add theories of academic writing and nominalization in the Writing syllabus That way would make it officially a requirement of the course 47 5.5 A final thought This is the first time I have completed a whole research study Many precious things have happened and opened my eyes Doing research into something I have been practicing and endeavoring for, that is academic writing, is hugely beneficial for me It is obvious that theories of academic writing and nominalization in particular that I have to read, review, and synthesize for the thesis are huge for me Also, the job of writing this thesis that simultaneously presents theories of academic writing and nominalization, and applies the theories right away has been so tricky for me I now have invaluable lessons and experience for my academic path ahead Besides, in terms of doing research, I have grown good qualities as a researcher such as carefulness, patience, caution, and self-discipline I know this is the first time I have been working as a researcher, but I believe these qualities will become deeply rooted in my future academic land 48 REFERENCES Akhtar, R., & Riaz, M (2019) Formality in academic writing: Investigating stylistic competence of undergraduate EFL learners University of Wah Journal of Social Sciences, 2(1), 1-20 Aunurrahman, A., Hamied, F A H., & Emilia, E (2017) Exploring the tertiary EFL students’ academic writing competencies Indonesian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 7(1), 72-79 Badley, G (2009) Academic writing as shaping and re-shaping Teaching in Higher Education, 14(2), 209-219 Baratta, A M (2010) Nominalization development across an undergraduate academic degree program Journal of pragmatics, 42(4), 1017-1036 Bello, I (2016) Cognitive implications of nominalizations in the advancement of scientific discourse International Journal of English Studies, 16(2), 1-23 Biber D S Conrad & R, Reppon (1998) Corpus Linguistic Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Budjalemba, A S., & Listyani, L (2020) Factors contributing to students difficulties in academic writing class: Students perceptions UC Journal: ELT, Linguistics and 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Beauty pageants are proliferating and attracting large audiences Discuss both pros and cons 52 APPENDIX 2: UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES MID-TERM TEST ONE AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES SUBJECT: WRITING - ESSAY FACULTY OF ENGLISH WRITING TIME: 50 MINUTES Name: Student ID Group: -Choose one of the two questions to write an essay Technologies have a huge impact on young children’s learning Discuss both pros and cons Should advertisements on Facebook be banned? What’s your opinion? 53 APPENDIX 3: QUESTIONNAIRE This questionnaire aims to collect data for a research study into English academic writing and nominalization Your participation and responses help provide data for the study The collected data is used only for this research and is kept confidential Please share your opinions by answering the questions Thank you for your cooperation I YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION Your name (optional): How many years have you been studying English: years Your former English Writing GPA: II YOUR PERCEPTION OF ENGLISH ACADEMIC WRITING IN TERMS OF LANGUAGE FEATURES NOTE: Please put a tick ✓ to the item(s) you choose You can choose as many items as you would like to Which of the following writing activities you think academic writing is for? Writing tasks of Writing classes Written assignments of university subjects, e.g Research Methods, Literature, Culture, etc Examination questions Graduation theses Research papers Others: (your opinion) Which of the following you think academic writing is? Specific Lexically condensed 54 Abstract Direct Complex language Simple language Impersonal Objective Subjective Logical Others: O (your opinion) O t th Which of the following items you think features academic writing? eh Complex sentence structures (e.g., sentences containing main clauses and er clauses) subordinate rs voice Passive s Noun: phrases : Verb phrases ( Adjective phrases (y Adverb phrases yo Nominalization (i.e nouns ending in -ion, -ity, -ness, -ment; gerunds) ou Impersonal It structures (e.g It is clear that, It seems/appears that…) ur Hedging language (e.g modal verbs like can, could, may, might, etc., r expressions o like I believe, to our knowledge, it is our view that, could be suggested, would seem op likely, etc.) Academic vocabulary ip in Appropriate content-based vocabulary ni Punctuation conventions io No abbreviations on Others: (your opinion) )n ) 55 How much importance you think each of the following items has in academic writing? Very important Important Neutral A little important Not important I don’t know Complex sentence structures Passive voice Noun phrases Verb phrases Adjective phrases Adverb phrases Nominalization Impersonal It structures Hedging language Academic vocabulary Appropriate content-based vocabulary Punctuation conventions No abbreviations III YOUR PERCEPTION OF NOMINALIZATION IN ENGLISH ACADEMIC WRITING Nominalization indicates nouns transferred from other parts of speech like verbs and adjectives Please read the following sets of sentences and put a tick ✓ to the sentence that you think more appropriate for academic writing In each set you can choose as many items as you would like to 56 Set 1: We walked in the evening along the river to Henley Our evening walk along the river took us to Henley Set 2: People in all countries are now travelling abroad much more than they used to Foreign travel is everywhere on the increase Set 3: Alcohol addiction lost him his job Because he was addicted to alcohol, he lost his job Set 4: Because more people are immigrating to Sydney, properties cost more money Due to increased immigration to Sydney, properties cost more money Sydney’s immigration growth has led to increased property costs Set 5: She lost the opportunity to apply for the job The loss of opportunity cost her dearly 6.The sentences you ticked in all sets in sentence are believed to be more appropriate for academic writing because they have: Condensed information Professional style Scientific style Concise expression Easy-to-understand expression Compact structure Complex language Strong logic Other: (your opinion) 57