Résumés
Abstract
This study aims to examine the relationship between the productive knowledge of some lexical and phraseological indices and the quality of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners’ writing. A sample of 120 expository essays, written by semesters 1 and 5 university students in a less proficient EFL context, are rated by human evaluators and automatically examined for the target indices. The results show that, unlike the index of lexical diversity, both indices of content word frequency and range could significantly discriminate between different proficiency levels. For the phraseological indices, both the proportions of rare and frequent bigrams yielded between-group differences, with higher proficiency students performing significantly better in both categories. Using a regression analysis, the results show that the use of rare and contextually restricted content words and the production of larger proportions of rare and frequent bigrams could be considered indicators of better writing proficiency. The study suggests implications for the teaching of EFL.
Keywords:
- EFL,
- bigrams,
- frequency,
- range,
- diversity
Résumé
Cette étude vise à examiner la relation entre les compétences lexicales/phraséologiques et la qualité de la production écrite des étudiants de l’anglais/langue étrangère. Un échantillon de 120 essais explicatifs écrits par des étudiants des semestres 1 et 5 dans un contexte EFL moins compétent, sont notés par des évaluateurs humains et examinés pour les indices cibles en utilisant un traitement automatique. Les résultats montrent que, contrairement à l’indice de diversité lexicale, la fréquence et la distribution contextuelle de mots de contenu peuvent distinguer entre les deux différents niveaux. Pour les indices phraséologiques, les proportions de bigrammes rares et fréquents ont produit des différences entre les deux groupes : les étudiants de S5 sont les plus performants avec de meilleurs résultats dans les deux catégories. À l’aide d’une régression linéaire, les résultats montrent que l’utilisation de mots de contenu rares et contextuellement restreints et aussi une plus grande proportion de bigrammes rares et fréquents pourraient être considérés comme des indicateurs d’une meilleure compétence en production écrite. L’étude suggère des implications pour l’enseignement et l’apprentissage de l’anglais en tant que langue étrangère.
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