Microsoft Word - ELTLS-V2N2-p43 English Language Teaching and Linguistics Studies ISSN 2640-9836 (Print) ISSN 2640-9844 (Online) Vol. 2, No. 2, 2020 www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eltls 43 Original Paper Clear Like an Expert Davina Allison1* 1 Queensland University of Technology, Australia * Davina Allison, Queensland University of Technology, Australia Received: March 20, 2020 Accepted: April 16, 2020 Online Published: April 20, 2020 doi:10.22158/eltls.v2n2p43 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.22158/eltls.v2n2p43 This short comment owes much to current research in academic writing, text sophistication, and text readability. The linguistic devices that predict text readability and comprehension are not all equal. The connecting words in The cat sat on the mat. In addition, the cat purred while sitting on the mat. Secondly, the cat got off the mat. Finally, the cat ran away, While extremely predictive of text comprehension are also liable to result in negative judgments of writing quality. This is also the case for less complex sentence patterns, less diverse vocabularies, and the use of commonly occurring words. Academic writing that is always highly rated is a corollary of both text sophistication and text intelligibility. Complex syntax, a broad and deep vocabulary, and less frequent words are, according to research, always salient. Research has also found that expert writers exploit quite specific language resources for readability. These resources include lexical (word) overlap and repetition, semantic (meaning) overlap, and text givenness. Lexical overlap involves the repetition of lemmas and their inflections or diverse forms. Lemmas are base-words that correlate to the dictionary form of a word. Cat, for example, is the lemma for cats, catted, catlike, and catting; sat the lemma for sit and sitting; and mat the lemma for mats, matted, and matting. Expert writers utilise noun, verb, and adjective lemmas across all parts of a text. The straightforward repetition of words across paragraphs is also typical of successful academic writing. Applied Linguists measure the repetition of words via type-token ratios, which divide the number of types (discrete words) by the number of tokens (overall word count of a text). In the following sentences, for example, there are18types and 29 tokens: The (1) cat (2) sat (3) on (4) the mat (5) but (6) them at was (7) wet (8), so (9) the causation the dry (10) ground (11) instead (12). Then (13), it (14) rained (15) again (16) and the cat went (17) inside (18). The type-token ratio of lexical diversity is, therefore, 63% while the ratio of the repetition of types is www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eltls English Language Teaching and Linguistics Studies Vol. 2, No. 2, 2020 44 Published by SCHOLINK INC. 37%. Type-token ratios provide a base measure for comparison across all kinds of contexts. Type-token ratio analyses have shown, for example, that expert writers repeat key content words and function bundles such as in order to, as well as, and it can be argued much more than novice writers. Synonyms, by definition, effect semantic repetition when deployed across adjacent paragraphs. Synonyms for sat include perched, lounged, slouched, sprawled, squatted, and straddled while synonyms for mat include rug, carpet, and floor covering. In academic writing, the most cohesive types of synonymic sets are noun, verb, and adjective sets such as cat = feline, mouser, kitty, tabby, and moggy as well as the sat and mat sets above. Text givenness is also arobust predictor of text intelligibility. Texts high in givenness integrate a range of mostly anaphoric (point backwards) devices to evoke what has already been written in the text or, if you like, what has already been given to the reader. The use of pronouns is one way to realise givenness. Instances of personal pronouns such as he, him, she, her, and they index what has gone before as in The cat sat on the mat. In addition, they purred while sitting on the mat. The demonstratives this, those, that, and these also possess markedly cohesive properties as they can point both backwards and forwards in a text. Note the connections forged in the following sentences: The cats got off the mat. This means that those cats were no longer on that mat. Unattended demonstratives, in contrast to attended demonstratives, require more processing time but are even more predictive of text readability. The following sentences include unattended demonstratives: There was a dog on the mat. This (dog) scared the cat. The owner removed the mat. This (lack of a mat) stopped the cat from sitting on the doorstep. High quality texts also tend to contain more of the definite article as the can likewise point to something preceding in the discourse. It is clear, then, that in order to be clear in the right kinds of ways, writers need to repeat different word forms, key words, and function bundles; utilisesynonyms; and make use of this, that, and the. Deploying these language resources across contiguous paragraphs allows the reader to make meaning. They are a fail-safe way to facilitate comprehension. No matter how sophisticated the writing.