Making things happen: A study of grammatical metaphors in L2 writing scripts

IF 4.2 1区文学 Q1 EDUCATION & EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH

Assessing Writing Pub Date : 2025-05-12 DOI:10.1016/j.asw.2025.100939

Nicholas Glasson, Andrew Kitney

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

The notion of grammatical metaphor (GM) (Halliday, 1985) is essentially where a writer can shift an action or quality into being a ‘thing’. As in most senses of metaphor, the goal is to “represent something as something else” (McGrath & Liardét, 2023, p.33).

This study investigated the use of grammatical metaphor (GM) in Linguaskill writing exam responses across CEFR proficiency levels (below-B1 to C1 or above). It analysed the presence of a pre-existing GM list (see McGrath & Liardét, 2023) to explore GM frequency in L2 responses, the correlative relationship with proficiency scores and qualitatively explored candidate responses in terms of how GMs were used. Results show a moderate positive correlation between proficiency and GM use, with a dominance of process-to-thing shifts (e.g., transform→transformation) and emergence of GM use from lower to higher proficiency levels. This underscores GM's significance in crafting academically valued meanings in L2 contexts, suggesting its potential for informing instructional and assessment practices.

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让事情发生：二语写作脚本的语法隐喻研究

语法隐喻（GM）的概念（Halliday, 1985）本质上是指作家可以将一个动作或质量转变为一个“事物”。就像大多数意义上的隐喻一样，目标是“将某物表现为另一物”(麦格拉思&；liardsamt, 2023，第33页)。本研究调查了不同CEFR水平（b1以下至C1或以上）的学生在语言写作考试中的语法隐喻使用情况。它分析了一份预先存在的转基因清单(见McGrath &；liardsamet, 2023)探索第二语言回答中的GM频率，与熟练程度分数的相关关系，并就GM的使用方式定性地探索候选回答。结果表明，熟练程度与转基因使用之间存在适度的正相关关系，过程到事物的转变（例如，转换→转换）占主导地位，转基因使用从低水平到高水平的出现。这强调了通用汽车在第二语言语境中塑造学术价值意义的重要性，表明它有可能为教学和评估实践提供信息。

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来源期刊

Assessing Writing Multiple-

CiteScore

6.00

自引率

17.90%

发文量

期刊介绍： Assessing Writing is a refereed international journal providing a forum for ideas, research and practice on the assessment of written language. Assessing Writing publishes articles, book reviews, conference reports, and academic exchanges concerning writing assessments of all kinds, including traditional (direct and standardised forms of) testing of writing, alternative performance assessments (such as portfolios), workplace sampling and classroom assessment. The journal focuses on all stages of the writing assessment process, including needs evaluation, assessment creation, implementation, and validation, and test development.