Learning vocabulary is often a challenge for foreign lang uage learners, particularly in recognition and understanding of lexical collocations in academic discourse. The aim of this study is to analyze the comprehension of verb + noun collocations in academic texts in English by students at foreign language courses at Comahue University. A multiple choice test to recognize thirty six collocations was administered to sixty students, with three groups of twelve collocations, each showing neutral, positive or negative prosody. A semi-structured interview was also carried out and information obtained from a group of fifteen respondents chosen at random. A significant number of students had difficulties when recognizing collocations in context. However, in the interview the level of comprehension proved higher. There is no significant evidence of influence of type of prosody on collocation recognition.
]]>In this paper we discuss the use of certain language forms which reveal the presence of the addresser (writer/speaker) and their addressees in pedagogic genres. We particularly focus on passive voice and, correspondingly, the use of personal pronouns in a corpus of educational videos, a fast-growing but not so deeply studied genre so far, La presencia de destinadores y destinatarios en géneros académicos en inglés. El caso de la voz pasiva y los pronombres personales de 1.ª y 2.ª persona as compared to a corpus comprised of textbooks, the traditional pedagogic genre used in university contexts. Both corpora include English texts in the field of engineering which may potentially be used in English for Academic Purposes courses. Our preliminary findings suggest that modality determines, to a great extent, the language forms selected and this fact, in turn, has significant discourse consequences, not only from the point of view of genre analysis but also from the perspective of the teaching of English to Spanish native speakers.
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