A corpus-based analysis of scientific writing in L2 college students

Abstract

In Korea, a growing number of colleges have mandated ‘English-only lectures.’ With the expanding interests of using English in college lectures, it is necessary not only to evaluate usefulness of maintaining such a policy, but also to assess students’ works to provide better English-mediated instruction in higher educational institutions. Therefore, the current research investigates how Korean undergraduate students at a science and technology focused university use English in their laboratory reports. To this end, 171 chemistry lab reports and 110 biology lab reports were collected, and the collected reports were compiled into a study corpora. The corpora were compared against the academic reports of an upper-level students’ corpus, MICUSP, to investigate the typical linguistic characteristics of the lab reports. It was found that the lab reports contain some traits of general academic reports, such as the use of auxiliary verbs for representing the degree of certainty. However, there are also traits signaling non-canonical features of the lab report genre in debriefing results. With the results of the current study, it is expected that the coverage of EAP and ESP for specific academic fields can be expanded so that customized English programs and materials can be developed.