Corpus Analysis of Conjunctions: Arabic Learners Difficulties with - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Corpus Analysis of Conjunctions: Arabic Learners’ Difficulties with Collocations

Haslina Hassan Nuraihan Mat Daud Nuraihan Mat Daud International Islamic University Malaysia haslina.h@iiu.edu.my; nuraihan@iiu.edu.my;

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Third International Conference on Arabic Linguistics and Literature Arabic Linguistics and Literature

19-21 September 2011

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Presentation Outline

• Introduction
• Statement of the Problem
• Objectives of the study

Arabic Conjunctions

• Arabic Conjunctions
• Data collection and research procedure
• Analysis of Results
• Conclusion and suggestions

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keywords

• Arabic conjunctions
• L2 Arabic learners
• Collocations of Arabic conjunctions

Collocations of Arabic conjunctions

• Learner corpus

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Introduction

• Sinclair defined collocations as the
• ccurrence of two or more words within

a short space of each other in a text (Sinclair, 1991:170) (Sinclair, 1991:170)

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Statement of the problem

• Although collocations could be one of

the challenges in learning a language, very few studies have been done on Arabic learners’ competency in using Arabic learners’ competency in using Arabic collocations (particularly on Malay Arabic major learners).

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• One area that learners may have

problems with is the use of conjunctions.

• The Arabic conjunctions consist of

The Arabic conjunctions consist of collocations, and based on experience, these were found to be problematic to the second language learners.

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Objectives of the study

• To give accurate description of Arabic

conjunctions used among learners of Arabic; To investigate the misuse of Arabic

• To investigate the misuse of Arabic

conjunctions among the learners;

• To see how certain combinations of

words were preferred by the learners.

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Arabic conjunctions

• Combined words that signal a connection

between sentences

• not single words, or a repetition of word

serve as connectors and carry a variety of

• serve as connectors and carry a variety of

meanings: additive, adversative, causal, temporal, clarification, conditional and limitation if attached to a complete sentence (Hassan, 1999).

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Normally found as a result of different combinations of words:

No. Words combination Examples of conjunctions

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conjunctions 1. preposition +noun +preposition

• /
• 2.

preposition +preposition +noun

3. preposition +noun +preposition +noun

• 4.

preposition +noun

• 13

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5. preposition +preposition

• 14

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6. preposition + preposition +preposition

• 15

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• 7. preposition + preposition +preposition

+noun

• 8. Preposition + noun +noun

$

• %

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• *+

*

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,-./0 1 2.( '(3405 567 !"#

9 Preposition +preposition +noun +noun +reference 89: 10 Preposition +preposition +noun +noun ;<6 1=5 11 Noun +noun 1 2 >.

• ?@

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• ?@

12 Noun +preposition A '() B9C D)

13 noun + preposition + preposition ": 14 noun + preposition +noun '9'EB+

• 15

F@

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15 Verb + preposition + noun F@ 16 Verb + noun + preposition +preposition D)GGBH

Meanings

• ADDITIVE ! "#$%#&'!
• I

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• ()*+%#&'!

ADVERSATIVE

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CAUSAL K;+)JJ+GBJ?@ I

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• $/$0&'!

TEMPORAL B4J5PFJD'6"#J=#J#J7)J'() PB4 12'&'! CLARIFICATION

• JD)GGBHJ'(3405JB9CJD9E)

JD)GGBHJ'(3405JB9CJD9E) 1=5;<6J0<QJD)J'9'EB+ $

• %

=J1=5;<60 I RJ7/J= !JD) S B0DT S U)V I B71;9 J'+"KJ

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• +345&'!
• CONDITIONAL

) S D9)V S J7J7JDT

• 6'&'!

LIMITATION

• W2/W2

S *X-*X-; S

• ;
• W2/W2

S *X-*X-; S

• ;
• 728&'!

SPECIFICATION

• 567.(

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Research procedure

• 1. Data Collection
• The data was collected from students’ essays

which were submitted online to the researcher; The university’s Learning Management

• The university’s Learning Management

System (LMS) was a platform used for this study;

• These essays formed the corpus for this

study;

• The corpus size is about 240,000 words.

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• 2. Participants of the study
• 60 university students enrolled in the

“Computer Application in Language and Literature” course offered by the Department

• f Arabic Language and Literature, IIUM.
• The students are predominately in their first
• The students are predominately in their first

and second year of Arabic major degree programme with 97% of them are Malaysians.

• Studied Arabic language for at least 10 years

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• They were given the choice to write

either descriptive or comparative essays

• n Microsoft Word on the first day of

class without any help from native class without any help from native speakers;

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• 3. Instrument used
• SketchEngine (www.sketchengine.co.uk) was

used to track the frequency of conjunctions employed by the students

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• Microsoft Excel (SketchEngine is unable to

detect the collocations for a number of conjunctions)

• Manual analysis was also incorporated in this
• Manual analysis was also incorporated in this

study, as fully automatic analysis was not possible to investigate learner corpus that is known to have a high number of deviations (Najda, N., 2004:41).

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Findings

• Findings no 1: to give accurate description of

conjunctions used by the students

• No. of conjunctions employed in the entire

corpus 215

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Maximum no. of conjunctions used in one essay 15 Minimum no. of conjunctions used in one essay 1 Essays with no conjunctions at all Average use of conjunctions in the entire corpus 3.583

• there are about 83 Arabic conjunctions

used in the Modern Standard Arabic,

• only 48 were applied
• 35 were hardly used by the students.

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Frequency of conjunctions used

Frequency Conjunction ID Conjunctions 26 1 #$%

• #$#

25 34

• 25

34

• 23

18 !"& 19 19 '()*

• '()*+
• )*,+
• )*

18 6 .( 15 60 / + '1234 12 62 *1+

• *1

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Frequency Conjunction ID Conjunctions 11 45 + 8 3 56 7 41 7+ 7 46 8+ 6 5 9*

• 98+

6 5 9*

• 98+

5 2 :5;6 5 25

• 5

36 &<"+ 4 15 7+ 4 17 !"# / 7

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Frequency Conjunction ID Conjunctions 11 =">+ 24 8# 26 =? 27 2@ 28

• 29

AB 29 AB 30 #C 32

• 37

)D+ 57 7; 75 #8# 76 *8#+ 77 (<A+

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Findings no 2: To investigate the misuse of Arabic conjunctions among the learners

• out of 276 conjunctive occurrences, 22.10%

(61 occurrences) were wrongly applied by the students students

• the students failed to choose the correct

combination of two or more words, and the results was also reported by (Fan P., 2010) - the students’ unawareness of collocational properties in vocabulary.

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Findings no.3: To see how certain combinations of words were preferred by the learners

• when learners encountered a

collocational problem, they tend to resort to one of the strategies of lexical resort to one of the strategies of lexical simplification: synonym, avoidance, transfer and paraphrasing (Granger, 2003)

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Correct collocations Problematic Collocations Strategies Applied #$%

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Avoidance Paraphrasing Paraphrasing Paraphrasing

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Avoidance Avoidance 56 56 Avoidance :5;6 :5;FB :5;F Avoidance Avoidance .( ?+

• +

Avoidance Transfer

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• Avoidance

Avoidance *G G *G Paraphrasing Paraphrasing '()*

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'(

• )*,+

)*,

• )*,+
• '()*B

)*,B Avoidance Avoidance Avoidance Transfer )*,B Transfer '(:(H) '(:(H)B+ Paraphrasing

• +
• +

Paraphrasing Paraphrasing !"# !"#

• Avoidance

Transfer

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• Avoidance

Paraphrasing Transfer Transfer &<"+ !3I Transfer &<"+ !3I

• J<&<"+
• J<3+

Transfer Transfer Transfer *1+ J1+

• '12B

Transfer Transfer )+ ),+ Avoidance

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Conclusion

• Certain collocations of conjunctions are

used more frequently compared to

• thers;

Less problems with conjunctions that are

• Less problems with conjunctions that are

normally used in spoken and in their reading texts;

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• Problematic conjunctions include

combinations of words that have affixes and those with similar combinations in mother tongue; yet they don’t have one to one they don’t have one to one correspondence syntactically or/and semantically

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• When the meaning of a group of

words may be different from the meaning of each member of the groups, this may cause a confusion to the language learners who normally the language learners who normally focus on the meaning of each word in understanding a text.

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• Another possible problem that the

learners faced with collocations is in identifying which word occurs with the stem word in a certain context. stem word in a certain context.

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Suggestions

• the need to focus on the most

commonly used conjunctions with a special attention to collocations; special attention to collocations;

• emphasis should be stressed on

errors in conjunctive use when teaching Arabic to second or foreign language learners;

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• thorough analysis should be carried
• ut in the future focusing on L1 and

L2 interference, particularly on L2 interference, particularly on conjunctive use

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Thank you Terima kasih EY+' EY+'

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