Contrastive Discourse Analysis - Functional and Corpus Perspectives - Maite Taboada
The use of it-clefts in the written production of Spanish advanced learners of English
Contrastive Discourse Analysis - Functional and Corpus Perspectives - Maite Taboada
Susana Doval Suárez [+]
University of Santiago de Compostela
Susana Doval Suárez is a tenured Lecturer in the Department of English Philology at the University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain). She holds a BA and a PhD in English Philology from the University of Santiago de Compostela. Susana teaches courses in phonetics, phonology, morphology and syntax. Her area of interest is second language learning, in particular acquisition of orthography and discourse competence.
Elsa González Álvarez [+]
University of Santiago de Compostela
Elsa González Álvarez is a tenured Lecturer in the Department of English Philology at the University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain). She holds a BA and a PhD in English Philology from the University of Santiago de Compostela. Elsa teaches courses in morphology and syntax , in addition to postgraduate courses in second language acquisition and methodology in linguistic research. Elsa’s PhD thesis was on lexical innovation in the interlanguage of second language learners, an area in which she has also published a book and several articles.
Description
The present chapter explores the use of it-cleft constructions, a type of focusing device that has been claimed to be over-represented in the written production of advanced learners with different L1 backgrounds. Its objective is threefold: first, it investigates how Spanish advanced EFL learners compare with NSs from the point of view of their use of it-clefts, second, it addresses the issue of how NNSs and NSs compare regarding their use of the different discourse functions of it-clefts, and finally, the chapter investigates whether the differences between the two groups may be attributed to influence of the L1.