The Texture of Inefficiently Self-Regulating ESL Systems
Terence Patrick Murphy · IGI Global eBooks · 2011
This chapter addresses the question of how to measure the student’s English as a second language (ESL) textual sophistication. It suggests that the second language text is an inefficiently self-regulating system, at the levels of grammar, lexis and logico-rhetorical structure. Learner texts use a narrow or even fixed set of key lexical phrases; they deploy cohesive ties that bind the text incorrectly, they omit cohesive ties altogether, or redundantly retain items that are easily recovered from the situational context. Following a review of some typical second language cohesion problems, the chapter offers an analysis of the emergent texture of four versions of the same paper, each written by a different ESL student. The results suggest that a learner text-maker is unable to perceive the ineffective choices in texts written at levels of sophistication higher than those he or she is capable of creating.Request access from your librarian to read this chapter's full text.