A Corpus-Based analysis of the Use of figures of speech in students’ essays

Abstract

Description is a type of writing that requires the use of sensory details, comparisons and applying some aesthetic aspects of language like 'figures of speech' to convey different meanings in a vivid and colourful way. However, EFL learners struggle with using some difficult and complex figures of speech and end up using the common ones like images and personifications or even relying on a repeated set of adverbs and adjectives. Therefore, this study is called for with an attempt to analyze the way MA postgraduates employ figures of speech in description. To fulfill the research purpose, a corpus based comparative analysis was conducted. The corpus cons ists of twenty (20) descriptive essays written by MA2 students of both Language Sciences and Literature and Civilization streams, at the department of English, Oum El Bouaghi University. Figures of speech were tallied using AntConc and SPSS soft ware. After that, the results were arranged into frequency distribution and presented in graphic forms. Then, a comparison and a discussion of the data taken from both streams took place. Therefore, the obtained data revealed that MA2 students of Literature and Civil ization stream used figures of speech more than the Language Science stream. The findings confirmed the stated hypothesis which claims that there is a significant difference in the use of figures of speech between the two streams and rejected the null hypo thesis. Also, the hypothesis of Chi square test is confirmed so that there is a relationship between the stream and the use of figures of speech. On the whole, this study highlights the need of EFL learners to know the different figures of speech and use them properly in their descriptive essays.