Proceedings of the - British Association for Applied Linguistics

14
Relevance and Influence of Phraseological Phenomena in Native and Non-native Text Production
Cordula Glass
Relevance and Influence of Phraseological
Phenomena in Native and Non-native Text
Production
Cordula Glass
University of Erlangen-Nurmberg
cordula.glass@angl.phil.uni-erlangen.de
A native-like linguistic competence is often quoted as one of the main
objectives of advanced language teaching. Yet despite a good command of
lexis and syntax, few learners become truly proficient users of their
selected target language. “It’s not wrong but it’s not proper English either”
is what students often hear (Wray, 2000). Therefore this study took a closer
look at learners’ lexical choice with respect to language perception in
general and judgment of nativeness in particular.
A special focus concentrated on phraseological phenomena, which are - as
Hausmann (1984) already pointed out thirty years ago - particularly
challenging for learners of a foreign language. In more recent studies
Waible (2008) and de Cock (1999) were able to show that native speakers
and learners of English use indeed different phraseological expressions and
are therefore easy to identify. Yet, Mittmann (2004) argues that this would
also be true for speakers from different varieties of English, so the question
remains, if these differences play any role as far as the judgment of a
speaker’s linguistic ability is concerned.
In a corpus-based analysis a database of over 120 non-native and native
texts has been analysed according to characteristic phraseological features.
These results were then used as a basis for a more qualitative approach:
Following the methodology of Herbst (1992), native and non-native
teachers of English as well as native and non-native speakers without any
background in EFL teaching were asked to evaluate a sample of eight texts.
These texts were all based on the same picture story and written by more
and less competent L1 and L2 speakers of English. With the help of an
online questionnaire these short stories were then subdivided into short
paragraphs, which the participants assessed and ranked in terms of
“nativeness”.
In most cases, correct English phrasing did indeed have an impact on the
perception of its reader. Unsurprisingly, native speakers of English have
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