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Resumen:
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Academic writing in English has often been described as a primarily reader-oriented discourse, in which the structure, objectives, and claims are made explicit and carefully framed. Second or foreign language (L2) learners often transfer part of their first language (L1) writing cultureH into their L2 texts. This is problematic becauseacademic texts call for a high degree of disciplinarity: learners not only have to be aware of the conventions of the L2 regarding language use in a particular genre, but also of the academic conventions of their own discipline. The present doctoral dissertation demonstrates how corpus approaches to L2 texts can help to identify learner writing features when compared to native or expert counterparts. The four studies presented in this thesis highlight some of the linguistic challenges students face when writing in English for different academic purposes and disciplines at university, and provide pedagogical suggestions for the teaching and learning of certain linguistic features that can be useful for L2 academic writers and instructors. Study one examined the effects of content-based language instruction (CBI) on the production of academic vocabulary in a classroom writing task. The texts were written by first-year university students enrolled in two different instruction settings, English as medium of instruction (EMI) and the same programme in their L1, over one semester. Both the materials used in class and the learner corpus were examined in order to identify the degree to which they incorporate items from three lists of interdisciplinary academic terminology, namely the Academic Vocabulary (AVL), Collocations (ACL) and Formulas List (AFL). The results indicated that the learner corpus, both L1 and EMI learners, produced more general academic and technical words after the course; EMI learners also increased their use of collocations and formulas. The benefits of CBI for acquiring academic terminology and for developing disciplinary literacy are discussed in the light of the instruction settings under study…
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