Tokens, types and means

Before discussing group differences, an overview of the results of the analysis in terms of descriptive statistics is needed “to provide a summary of the data” (Dornyei, 2007, p. 209). This includes the raw frequencies of stance categories, mean frequencies of each category and the different use of stance markers in the two groups.

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The total number of words in the L2 scripts is 89,438 with an average of 2,236 words per chapter while the L1 texts contain 108,154 words with an average of 2,704 words per chapter (see Table 14).

Table 14: Comparison of the whole number of the words in each corpus

Writers group Number of chapters Number of the whole words Average of words per each chapter

L2 writers 40 89,438 2,236 L1 writers 40 108,154 2,704 Total number of words in the corpus 197,592

It is worth reiterating that the study is not by any means claiming that the discussion chapters in each corpus are representative of all discussion chapters submitted in the Applied Linguistics and TEFL disciplines and therefore it is not one of the study aims to generalise from the findings. Instead, the current research is largely qualitative and is seeking to find out about the student writers’ own perspectives and motivations about using certain stance features, and how expert writers see students’ use of these linguistic features.

4.2.2.1 Tokens

As Table 15 shows, the total number of stance markers is 1,128 in the English L2 texts while it is 2,548 in the L1. A general overview shows that Egyptian English L2 used slightly more than half the markers used by L1 writers in the total number. This striking difference appears clearly in using hedges, self-mentions with 707 and 26, respectively, by L2 writers, and 1380 and 278, respectively, by L1 writers.

Table 15: Raw frequencies of stance markers

Writers' group Boosters Hedges Self-mentions Attitude

Markers All stance markers L2 writers’ words: (89,438) 239 707 26 156 1128 L1 writers’ words: (108,154) 348 1380 37 278 2043 Total 587 2087 63 434 3171 4.2.2.2 Types

Moving to the types of stance markers, it is clearly noticed that the L1 writers used overall more types of stance markers with 100 types compared to 69 types used by L2 writers. The striking

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difference is found in the types of attitude markers and hedges where L1 writers used considerably more types than the L2 (see Table 16).

Table 16: Raw number of Types of each category of stance markers

Writers' group Types of

boosters Types of hedges Types of self-mentions Types of attitude markers All types

L2 writers 25 28 3 13 69

L1 writers 31 43 5 21 100

However, it is not possible to make a direct comparison between the figures for the two groups, as the total number of words in each corpus is different as mentioned earlier (89,438 in the L2 texts and 108,154 in the L1 texts). Therefore, the occurrences of each category of stance markers were calculated for each text. Then, the data were normalised by expressing them in terms of frequency per 1000 words which allowed a valid comparison of L1 and L2 corpora. The following formula was used to calculate the stance markers’ frequency per 1000 words for each chapter in each group corpus:

stance markers per text X 1000 words per text

Then the mean frequencies of each category of stance markers were calculated per 1000 words. After that, Mann–Whitney tests were employed to find out the statistical differences of the

frequency of using boosters, hedges, self-mentions and attitude markers between the two writer groups.

4.2.2.3 Means of overall tokens and types (per 1000 words)

Table 17 shows the average value of both tokens and types used by the two groups of writers. It can be seen that the L1 writers’ means of whole tokens and types of stance markers are

numerically higher than the L2 writers. While the British (L1) means of tokens are remarkably higher than those of the Egyptian (L2), the average value of the L2 types (0.77 type per 1000 words) is slightly fewer than the L1 types (0.92 type per 1000 words).

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Table 17: Means of all Tokens and Types per 1000 words

Writer group Tokens Types

L2 writers Mean 12.61 0.77 L1 writers Mean 18.89 0.92

4.2.2.4 Means of each category (tokens and types) per 1000 words

Table 18 and Figure 17 show that both writer groups used hedges more frequently than the other categories of stance markers with total of 20.6 compared to 5.9 for boosters, which came second. It can be seen that the L1 mean figures are noticeably higher than those of the L2 writers’ in all stance categories, i.e. boosters, hedges, self-mentions and attitude markers. The means of the L1 hedges (12.75) and attitude markers (2.57) are considerably higher than the L2’s, 7.9 and 1.74, respectively. Also, the L1 boosters and self-mentions are slightly higher than the L2’s.

Table 18: Means of tokens

Writers Boosters Hedges Self-mentions Attitudes L2 Mean 2.6727 7.9053 .2910 1.7455 N 40 40 40 40 Std. Deviation 2.81378 5.92276 .38572 1.17232 L1 Mean 3.2190 12.7590 .3422 2.5715 N 40 40 40 40 Std. Deviation 2.02692 6.76729 .33919 1.73535

Variations between the writer group within the EFL writers in boosters and self-mentions (SD= 2.81 and 0.38) are higher than that within the English L1 group (SD= 2.02 and 0.33),

respectively, indicating that the L1 writers are more consistent with each other than the L2s in the number of boosters and self-mentions they used. However, the L2 writers showed more consistency in terms of hedges and attitude markers (5.92 and 1.17) than the L1 writers (SD= 6.76 and 1.73), respectively.

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Figure 17: Means of tokens per 1000 words

Similar to the means of tokens, both the L1 and the L2 writers used substantially more types of hedges than other categories, which seems to be reasonable as hedges have the highest number of types according to Hyland’s scheme (101 types), see Table 19 and Figure 18. The data in the table indicates that the L2 writers used fewer types of stance markers than the L1 writers in all categories.

Table 19: Means of types per 1000 words

Writer group Boosters Hedges Self-mentions Attitude markers

L2 0.28 0.31 0.03 0.15

L1 0.29 0.40 0.05 0.19

Figure 18: Means of types 2.66 7.90 0.29 1.74 3.22 12.76 0.34 2.57 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14

Boosters Hedges Self-mentions Attitudes

L2 writers L1 writers 0.28 0.31 0.03 0.15 0.29 0.40 0.05 0.19 0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 0.25 0.30 0.35 0.40 0.45

Boosters Hedgs Self-mentions Attitudes

Means of Types per 1000 words

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The following section presents the inferential statistics that help to make generalisations about the two writer groups, i.e. to make judgements of the probability that the observed difference mentioned in the descriptive statistics between the two groups is a dependable one.