EXPRES Corpus for A Field-specific Automated Exploratory Study of L2 English Expert Scientific Writing

Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2022), pages 4739–4746 Marseille, 20-25 June 2022 © European Language Resources Association (ELRA), licensed under CC-BY-NC-4.0 4739 EXPRES Corpus for A Field-specific Automated Exploratory Study of L2 English Expert Scientific Writing Ana-Maria Bucur1,2, Madalina Chitez2, Valentina Muresan2, Andreea Dinca2, Roxana Rogobete2 1 University of Bucharest 2 West University of Timis,oara, Romania ana-maria.bucur@drd.unibuc.ro {madalina.chitez, valentina.muresan, andreea.dinca, roxana.rogobete}@e-uvt.ro Abstract Field Specific Expert Scientific Writing in English as a Lingua Franca is essential for the effective research networking and dissemination worldwide. Extracting the linguistic profile of the research articles written in L2 English can help young researchers and expert scholars in various disciplines adapt to the scientific writing norms of their communities of practice. In this exploratory study, we present and test an automated linguistic assessment model that includes features relevant for the cross-disciplinary second language framework: Text Complexity Analysis features, such as Syntactic and Lexical Complexity, and Field Specific Academic Word Lists. We analyse how these features vary across four disciplinary fields (Economics, IT, Linguistics and Political Science) in a corpus of L2-English Expert Scientific Writing, part of the EXPRES corpus (Corpus of Expert Writing in Romanian and English). The variation in field specific writing is also analysed in groups of linguistic features extracted from the higher visibility (Hv) versus lower visibility (Lv) journals. After applying lexical sophistication, lexical variation and syntactic complexity formulae, significant differences between disciplines were identified, mainly that research articles from Lv journals have higher lexical complexity, but lower syntactic complexity than articles from Hv journals; while academic vocabulary proved to have discipline specific variation. Keywords: Text Complexity Analysis, Academic Vocabulary, Expert Scientific Writing in English, EXPRES Corpus, Indexed Journal Writing 1. Introduction Developing proficient writing skills in English has been a debated subject over the last decades, since English has become the ”the main lingua franca for research networking and scientific communication” (P´erez-Llantada, 2012). Researchers and professionals in the disciplines are often hampered in their endeav- ours to disseminate scientific research results because of insufficient academic writing skills, and developing them is a challenge regardless of the field of interest. However, writing in the disciplines, while using a for- eign language, strongly relies on an understanding of the writing practices of each particular field (Bazerman, 1991). Research articles (RAs), as an academic genre, hold a central place in academia, as they are the main form of scientific communication (Swales, 1990). Although it has a similar function across disciplines, namely that of communicating research findings, the research article differs substantially from one discipline to another. The current investigation seeks to understand if there are significant linguistic differences between several field- specific discourse communities (Swales, 1990; Hyland, 2008), such as Linguistics, Economics, Information Technology, and Political Sciences, by analysing spe- cific research articles written by a particular group of English-L2 scholars (i.e. Romanian scholars). Being an exploratory study, it aims to compare the linguis- tic profiles and patterns within expert academic writ- ing published in two different categories …

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