Patterns of elaboration and inter-language development: an exploratory corpus analysis of college student essays

Corpus linguistic analysis has been increasingly applied to the studies of variation in surface linguistic features of second language writing. Previous research found that nonnative English speaking (NNS) writers at higher levels of proficiency produced larger quantity (measured by the number of words) and greater quality (measured by the number of varieties of lexical items used in the texts) than those at lower levels of proficiency (e.g. Ferris, 1994). Karasawa (2001), however, found large quantity did not always mean judged higher quality of NNS essays. The present study compared the patterns of elaboration found in NNS student essays in high, intermediate, and low holistic score ranges. The specific target linguistic features examined were lexical items used for modification of nouns and other clause elements, namely, adjectives, adverbs, past/present participles, to-infinitives, prepositional phrases, and that- and wh- clauses. These three NNS sub-groups were further compared with two sub-groups of essays written by native English speaking (NS) students. The results showed some differences in the combinations of linguistic items used for elaboration among the NNS essays in different score ranges while the NS essays did not show any clear trends. This paper concludes that the different patterns of elaboration found in the NNS essays may reflect different stages of inter-language development