Analysis of the verbal lexical frequencies of university essays by students advised in the Writing Clinic of the School of Psychology of the UASLP, Mexico

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15381/lengsoc.v22i2.24993

Keywords:

academic writing, verb frequency, word list, word, verbal unit

Abstract

This paper aims to describe the frequency of occurrence of verbal words, in 68 productions written by university students at the School of Psychology of the Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí, México. The students attended counseling sessions on academic writing before the COVID-19 pandemic period. The methodology used was quantitative-contrastive. The data analysis was carried out by applying the AntConc, a free access program. The word position (Rank), the frequency of repetition (Freq) and the words themselves (types and tokens) were obtained. A total of 350 verbs were identified and the 10 most frequent (38 % in total) were taken and contrasted with the CREA corpus of the RAE and the corpus of adult, children, and journalistic texts of Moreno and Guirao (2008). The results show that there is no significant variation between the contrasted corpora. Students frequently use attributive and auxiliary verbs in their text productions. The results discussed in this paper highlight the need to include the use of more complex verbs in writing curricula at the university level.

Author Biographies

  • Marco Pérez, Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí, Mexico

    D. in Linguistics from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) and Professor of Language at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities and the Faculty of Psychology at the Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí, Mexico. He is a member of the National System of Researchers and the Teacher Strengthening Program (PRODEP). Her research has focused mainly on lexicology, focusing on phraseology, taboo or high-flown lexicon, lexical availability and lexical analysis for the school context.

  • Guadalupe Rojas, Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí, Mexico

    B.A. in Applied Linguistics from the Universidad Autónoma de Tlaxcala. She holds a Master's degree in Language Sciences from the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla and a PhD in Psychology (emphasis in education) from the Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí. She holds a scholarship from the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (National Council of Science and Technology). Her research areas focus on the following topics: linguistic and cognitive skills involved in academic and disciplinary writing processes, academic achievement, development of writing interventions and discourse analysis. She has recently delved, in collaboration with other colleagues, into studying ways to intervene in reading comprehension and language skills involved in academic writing. In addition, she is co-founder and head of the "Writing Clinic", a center focused on providing personal counseling in the writing process.

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Published

2023-09-26

Issue

Vol. 22 No. 2 (2023)

Section

Academic articles

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Copyright (c) 2023 Marco Antonio Pérez, Guadalupe Rojas Corona

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How to Cite

Pérez, M., & Rojas, G. (2023). Analysis of the verbal lexical frequencies of university essays by students advised in the Writing Clinic of the School of Psychology of the UASLP, Mexico. Lengua Y Sociedad, 22(2), 357-375. https://doi.org/10.15381/lengsoc.v22i2.24993