A corpus-driven approach to identifying discipline-specific metaphorical vocabulary for Japanese university English-medium instruction programs
Project/Area Number |
20K00863
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Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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Allocation Type | Multi-year Fund |
Section | 一般 |
Review Section |
Basic Section 02100:Foreign language education-related
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Research Institution | University of Niigata Prefecture |
Principal Investigator |
Bennett Phillip 新潟県立大学, 国際地域学部, 准教授 (70601714)
|
Project Period (FY) |
2020-04-01 – 2023-03-31
|
Project Status |
Completed (Fiscal Year 2022)
|
Budget Amount *help |
¥1,170,000 (Direct Cost: ¥900,000、Indirect Cost: ¥270,000)
Fiscal Year 2022: ¥390,000 (Direct Cost: ¥300,000、Indirect Cost: ¥90,000)
Fiscal Year 2021: ¥390,000 (Direct Cost: ¥300,000、Indirect Cost: ¥90,000)
Fiscal Year 2020: ¥390,000 (Direct Cost: ¥300,000、Indirect Cost: ¥90,000)
|
Keywords | Corpora / EMI / Metaphor / corpora / metaphor / Academic vocabulary / EnglishMediumInstruction / Materials development |
Outline of Research at the Start |
This project is a corpus-driven cross-disciplinary investigation of metaphorical vocabulary appearing in English-medium instruction courses in Japan. Common metaphor themes will be identified in a range of disciplines, and materials will be developed to aid understanding of metaphorical vocabulary.
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Outline of Final Research Achievements |
During the time I have been receiving kaken funding, I have built a 2-million-word corpus of materials from English as a Medium of Instruction courses in 5 Japanese universities. The corpus contains both spoken (16%) and written (84%) data, and is 4 times larger than the corpus used in my prior study in this area. I have taken samples of data from this corpus for four academic disciplines (Applied Linguistics, Literature, Philosophy, and Political Science - 50,000-word samples each) and manually coded them for the presence of metaphorical vocabulary. I enlisted a second rater who is also familiar with the metaphor coding procedure to establish the reliability of the codings. I then used these codings to calculate estimates of the rate at which learners in EMI programs are likely to encounter metaphorical vocabulary. I also identified prominent metaphorical themes in each of the four disciplines and estimated the proportion of all metaphors that these comprise.
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Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements |
Most vocabulary instruction is focused on the teaching of basic or literal word definitions, and little attention is paid to how highly-frequent words often take on extended meanings. My hope is that my research findings will help to encourage a broader understanding of lexical development.
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Report
(4 results)
Research Products
(3 results)