Multi-word Units for
Persian-speaking Learners of English
This site provides the online supplementary materials for the multi-word units for
Persian-speaking learners of English project.
Maryam
Barghamadi
Maryam Barghamadi is a PhD candidate in English Corpus Linguistics at Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia. She has a wide variety of research interests that mainly focus on linguistics, such as formulaic language, corpus linguistics, discourse analysis, vocabulary and C.A.L.L.
She is currently working on MWUs and creating a digital flashcard for Persian learners of English. She has authored/co-authored several peer-reviewed articles in corpus linguistics and MWUs. Maryam received the Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) scholarship in 2022.
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Contact: barg0008@flinders.edu.au
Amanda
Muller PhD
Associate Professor Amanda Müller works at Flinders University in Australia. For a decade her main teaching role was to support up to 1,000 international nursing students with their communication in clinical settings. She has created a number of teaching and learning innovations around vocabulary and language learning computer games, which have also been the subject of her research.
In 2018, she won the International Education Association of Australia (IEAA) national Excellence Award for Best Practice in International Education. In 2017, she received the Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching. She was also invited to become a member of the International Academic Advisory Board Member for IAFOR – the International Academic Forum based in Japan. In 2015, she received the Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Early Career Researchers and a nomination to participate in the Building Research Leaders program.
In 2014, Associate Professor Müller's teaching materials and work were written about as a case study for e-learning in a survey of practices across NZ, Japan, UK, Singapore, and Australia. Also, she earned two Quality Labels for Valid Serious Games from the Serious Gaming Committee of the Dutch Society for Simulation in Healthcare.
Associate Professor Müller is a registered expert with the national regulatory body for universities in the following areas: (a) International – Onshore, (b) English for Specific Purposes, and (c) Learning Technologies from 2013-2018. She is also an Australian Research Council assessor.
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Contact: amanda.muller@flinders.edu.au
James
Rogers PhD
Dr. James Rogers is a tenured associate professor at Meijo Univeristy in Japan. He has been published over 40 times in journals or books, and has spoken at over 30 conferences throughout the world. His work has been published in top-tier linguistics journals such as Studies in Second Language Acquisition, English for Specific Purposes, and Language Teaching Research.
His research interests include corpus linguistics, vocabulary acquisition, and C.A.L.L. Dr. Rogers has also created a series of English learning smartphone apps which have been downloaded over 300,000 times.
Contact: jrogers@meijo-u.ac.jp
Weifeng
Han PhD
Dr Han is a senior lecturer and the coordinator of the Master of Speech Pathology program at Federation University Australia. He also has full academic status at Flinders University. He has been involved in syntactic and corpus linguistics studies for over 15 years. His first PhD was in theoretical syntax, and the second PhD in Speech-Language Pathology studied L1 multidialectal learners’ L2 acquisition at the syntax-semantics interface and its implication in separating language disorders from language differences.
Dr Han was a post-doctoral research fellow in syntax in Hong Kong and a visiting professor in corpus linguistics in Canada. He is familiar with mixed-method research. He has published four research books in syntactic typology and second language lexical and syntactic acquisition. A fifth book on typical and atypical language development in cultural and linguistic diversity is contracted to publish by Routledge in 2023.
He has authored/co-authored over 30 peer-reviewed articles in syntax, corpus linguistics and second language acquisition. Dr Han also co-authored a vignette in the CRAN Project (R) and a spoken corpus in Wu. He has also presented in Australia, Canada, the US, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, the West Indies and Mainland China on topics of syntax and corpus linguistics in their interface with second language acquisition.
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Contact: weifeng.han@flinders.edu.au
Joanne
Arciuli PhD
Professor Arciuli’s interdisciplinary research program focuses on communication skills (including speech, language and literacy) and wellbeing. She employs many different research techniques including corpus analyses, acoustic analyses, brain imaging, behavioural experiments, intervention and instruction studies, and secondary analysis of large datasets.
She has been continuously funded by the Australian Research Council since 2007 including a prestigious Future Fellowship. She has authored 100 peer-reviewed journal articles. They are published in a diverse range of specialist journals (disability, psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, education, speech-language pathology, and nursing) as well as in broad readership interdisciplinary journals.
Arciuli is the International Coordinator on the Board of the Society for Scientific Studies of Reading (US) and a Board member for the Luke Priddis Foundation (Australia). She has been an invited visiting scholar at The University of Padova (Italy), Pennsylvania State University (US), and was an IAS Fellow at Durham University (UK).
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Contact: joanne.arciuli@flinders.edu.au
Abstract
In second language learning research, L1-L2 congruency refers to the similarity in form and meaning of the way a word or phrase is said between two languages. If there is low L1-L2 congruency, the learning burden of a word or phrase can be higher and thus such items should be focused on more to help learners avoid errors. For example, an unacceptable structure could be produced when second language learners directly use translation strategy to formulate multiword units (MWUs) in the target language. This project used L1-L2 congruency as a criterion to identify English MWUs with low congruency with their Persian equivalents to create a resource for Persian-speaking English learners. L1-L2 contrastive analysis was conducted on a list of approximately 11,000 high-frequency MWUs. This list was translated, and the items were given ratings regarding their congruency in Persian. The results revealed that more than 60% of the items examined were incongruent with their translations, demonstrating that L1-L2 congruency is a significant factor in selecting MWUs for Persian-speaking English learners. Thus, this study indicates that to avoid errors in MWU production, focusing on incongruent items may be beneficial for learners. The results of this study provide valuable insights into MWU selection criteria as well as a valuable resource which can be downloaded below.
© 2022 Dr. James Martin Rogers