A corpus-based analysis of grammatical cohesion in L2 German: Insights into the effect of learners' native language on academic writing proficiency in a foreign language.

This project investigates how advanced learners of German as a foreign language (L2) establish cohesion in their academic writing. The ability to write cohesive texts, that is, use grammatical and lexical devices appropriately to signal the logical structure of a text to readers, is important for academic writing. Research into L2 English has shown that L2 learners use cohesive devices differently from L1 users. Therefore, it is surprising that the use of cohesive devices by learners of languages other than English has received little attention in language acquisition research to date. This project sets out to fill this gap by proposing an analysis of grammatical cohesion in academic L2 German summary writing. The aim is threefold: (1) investigate empirically the effects of L2 German writers´ L1 on how they use cohesive devices, (2) analyse similarities and differences in the use of cohesive devices in L1 and L2 German, focusing on specific characteristics of cohesion in writing produced by learners with L1 Dutch and (3) create the corpora necessary for this analysis. I will adopt a novel approach to contrastive corpus-based analysis, comparing three corpora in consecutive cycles. In so doing, I will contribute to the growing body of learner corpora and advance the theoretical knowledge of learner language by identifying L1-specific and L1-independent characteristics of cohesion in academic learner language.

Keywords:GERMAN LINGUISTICS, CORPUS LINGUISTICS, LEARNER CORPUS RESEARCH

Disciplines:German language, Computational linguistics, Corpus linguistics, Text linguistics, Language proficiency