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Naoko Taguchi is an Associate Professor of Japanese and Second Language Acquisition at Carnegie Mellon University. Her primary research interests include pragmatics in SLA.

Learning genres are essential in learning how to write in an academic setting. Higher-education contexts require students to write many different kinds of texts –essays, book reviews, research papers, laboratory reports, and reflective diaries. These different text types, or genres, can be constructed from a range of linguistic forms and text components. For example, a typical book review contains the components of introduction, summary of content, and evaluation. Phrases such as “many people suggest that . . .” and “one alternative is . . . ” are usually found in an argumentative essay. At the task of genre writing, L2 writers have to become able to not only control these linguistic forms and organizations, but also learn how to frame their language to fit a certain genre.

DocuScope (Ishizaki & Kaufer, 2011) is a string matcher software that contains 45 million English words classified into 120 categories or text types. It can serve as a useful diagnostic and assessment tool for L2 learners seeking to acquire a new genre in English. For example, the category “narrative” contains linguistic elements such as past tense verbs, expressions of time shift (e.g., “last year”) and time duration (e.g., “for two years”). When texts are analyzed by DocuScope, its pattern matcher automatically codes linguistic patterns and categorizes the texts based on the patterns found in the texts. In addition to the text tagging function, DocuScope provides a visualization environment that helps people visualize and understand intended genre effects in texts. For example, people can see how similar their text is compared with the prototypical text in the given genre, and what linguistic forms and categories are present or absent compared with the prototype.

An example application of DocuScope to L2 writing class is found in Zhao and Kaufer (2013). Students receive a prompt that intends to elicit a text in specific genre (e.g., narration). Students can upload their texts to DocuScope, and the instructor can turn on DocuScope functions. The tool generates assessment results of the assigned genre, and the instructor can bring the analytical diagram to the class. The instructor can provide feedback to students whether they met the requirements of their assigned genre. They can also show both prototypical and peripheral cases and demonstrate the linguistic choices that differentiate them from each other. In summary, DocuScope can serve as a useful instructional technology that facilitates writing development. DocuScope can enhance teachers and learners’ understanding of the correspondence between linguistic choices and genre effects in the practice of writing, which is usually taught only implicitly in classroom.

References

Ishizaki, S., & Kaufer, D. (2011). Computer-aided rhetorical analysis. In P. McCarthy & C.

Boonthum-Denecke (eds.), Applied natural language processing and content analysis (pp. 276–296). Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference.

Zhao, H., & Kaufer, D. (2013). DocuScope for genre analysis: Potential for assessing pragmaticfunctions in second language writing. In N. Taguchi & J. Sykes (eds.). Technology in interlanguage pragmatics research and teaching (pp. 235-260).Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.