Defining in Englisha tool to measure writings abilities

  1. Aguado Jiménez, Pilar 1
  2. Sánchez Hernández, Purificación 1
  1. 1 Universidad de Murcia
    info

    Universidad de Murcia

    Murcia, España

    ROR https://ror.org/03p3aeb86

Revista:
Journal of English Studies

ISSN: 1576-6357

Any de publicació: 2001

Número: 3

Pàgines: 7-20

Tipus: Article

DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR lock_openDialnet editor

Altres publicacions en: Journal of English Studies

Resum

Drawing conclusions, comparing and contrasting, defining, explaining reasons and purposes, speculating and verifying, inferring and implying and other patterns of writing organisation, are the very matter of communication, whether in the form of everyday conversation or more highly specialised uses of language. These functions of language could be used to measure foreign language students' capability in different skills, writing for instance. This paper deals with the ability to write definitions, as an alternative to essay writing, of the students of English Language in the 1st year of English Philology at the University of Murcia . They were asked to define 10 words accurately chosen from the vocabulary lists published by Nation (1999). The results obtained have been used as a parameter to measure their writing ability. Significant correlations have been found between the marks obtained in the Oxford Placement Test performed at the beginning of the semester and those in our test based on definitions. We propose that definitions be considered as a parameter to check the writing abilities of the students and as a complement to the Oxford Placement Test

Referències bibliogràfiques

  • Alcaraz Varó, E. 2000. El inglés profesional y académico. Madrid: Alianza Editorial.
  • Cambridge International Dictionary of English. 1996. Cambridge: CUP. Collins English Dictionary. 1995. Harper Collins Publisher CD-ROM.
  • Downie, N. M. & Heath, R. W. 1971. Métodos estadísticos aplicados. Madrid: Ediciones del Castillo. Translation from Basic Statistical Methods (1970). New York: Harper & Row. 100-116, 247-256, 336.
  • Collins English Dictionary 1995. Harper Collins Publisher CD-ROM.
  • Hamp-Lyons, L. and Heasley, B. 1987. Study Writing. Cambridge: CUP.
  • Ilson. R. 1991. “Lexicography”. The Linguistics Dictionary. Ed. K. Malmkjaer. London: Routledge.
  • Jordan, R. R. 1996. Academic Writing Course. Harlow: Longman.
  • Jordan, R. R. 1997. English for Academic Purposes. Cambridge: CUP.
  • Morenberg, M. 2002. Doing Grammar. 3rd edition. Oxford: OUP.
  • Nation, P. http://www.vuw.ac.nz/lals/staff/paul_nation/index.html.
  • Partington, A. 1996. Using Corpora for English Language Research and Teaching. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
  • Rudska, B., J. Channell, P. Ostyn and T. Purseys, 1985. More Words You Need. London: Macmillan
  • Rudska, B., J. Channell, P. Ostyn and T. Putseys. 1982. The Words You Need. London: Macmillan.
  • Skehan, P. 1989 Individual differences in Second Language Learning. London: Edward Arnold.
  • Wilkins, D. A. 1986. Notional Syllabuses. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Woods, A., Fletcher, P. & Hughes, A. (1986). Statistics in Language Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Fuente de los datos: Dialnet