scholarly journals Functional Analyses of Metadiscourse Markers in L2 Students’ Academic Writing

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nayef Jomaa Jomaa ◽  
Mohammad M. Alia

Stance in general and metadiscourse markers, in particular, have attracted the interest of several studies. Therefore, this study explores the use of metadiscourse in the second language (L2) academic writing by English as a foreign language (EFL) postgraduates in one of the Malaysian public universities. We analyzed the frequency and wordings of modality within the citations of the literature review chapters of 20 Ph.D. theses employing the Systemic Functional Linguistics. Data were analyzed manually utilizing the technique of quantifying the findings to highlight the similarities and differences in using metadiscourse markers. The findings revealed the dominance of full declarative clauses in both Applied Linguistics and Information Technology. Besides the Finite Modal Operators, Mood Adjuncts and Comment Adjuncts were also used to demonstrate modality with a variety in their stance, degrees, and frequencies. Pedagogically, these findings could help supervisors in identifying the implications of their students’ writings. In addition, students can be directed towards reading EAP textbooks and materials that are dedicated to areas of academic writing, metadiscourse markers, and citations.

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nayef Jomaa Jomaa ◽  
Siti Jamilah Bidin

Due to their significance in establishing a research background, citations have been under focus by several researchers. However, limited studies have applied the Functional Theory in analysing reporting verbs in citations. Hence, this study identifies citations in the literature review chapters of 20 PhD theses in Information Technology and Applied Linguistics by EFL postgraduates within the ESL context. These PhD theses were selected purposefully. This study explores qualitatively the processes based on the ideational metafunction of the Systemic Functional Linguistics. The findings show that the material processes were used dominantly, followed by relational, verbal, and mental processes, whereas the behavioural  processes were less used. The use of processes ‘verbs’ is influenced by field and tenor as register variables. Thus, the findings imply that EFL postgraduates are unaware of using processes; therefore, they should receive discipline-specific instructions. Pedagogical textbooks for academic writing could be also developed based on the outputs of the present study.


2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Natela DOGHONADZE ◽  
Ekaterine PIPIA ◽  
Nikoloz PARJANADZE

The article deals with various aspects of plagiarism: definition (discriminating it from cheating and copyright violation), types (intended / unintended), involved people, causes, prevention, detection and punishment of plagiarism. A survey (questionnaire containing 42 items to be assessed in a 5-point Likert scale and one open- ended item) was conducted in Georgia. The questionnaire developed based on the literature review was uploaded on social media in three variants (to analyze the results separately and compare them): for students, for researchers and for assessors. The obtained results revealed that the opinions of the three groups of respondents differed to a certain degree, but were quite similar, eventually. The survey disclosed the existing problems, such as: lack of academic writing (in the native and especially foreign language) and research skills, lack of training in avoiding plagiarism, insufficiently clear university policies in the area, the emphasis on punishment instead of prevention, etc. Based on the obtained results recommendations for universities are given concerning plagiarism policies. 


2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 259-293
Author(s):  
Isaac Nuokyaa-Ire Mwinlaaru

Abstract This study explores the benefits of a synergy between ESP research on genre and theoretical dimensions of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). It models genre on SFL dimensions and employs this model to analyse 200 biodata written by Applied Linguistics scholars, 100 each from research articles and seminar posters. Data were analysed from contextual, logico-semantic and lexicogrammatical perspectives. The findings reveal five generic stages in biodata. The frequency distribution of these stages and the phases that realise them shows variation between research article bios and seminar bios. The most frequent logico-semantic (or rhetorical) relations identified among stages and phases are of the expansion type, namely addition and elaboration, Further, collocational frameworks are used in organising some generic phases into waves of meaning and in construing different identities. Finally, evaluative resources, in the form of lexical bundles, modification and circumstantial elements in the clause, are employed by writers to boost their professional achievements and promote themselves. These findings contribute to theoretical discussions on genre and the scholarship on the interface between identity construction and academic writing, and also motivate further research.


Author(s):  
Muna Liyana Binti Mohamad Tarmizi ◽  
Anealka Aziz Hussin

Literature review in academic writing plays an integral role in demonstrating writers’ knowledge about a field of study as well as in informing the writers of influential researchers and research groups in the field. More importantly, writers are expected to critically analyze previous studies related to their topic. Despite its importance to the academic text, student writers find it challenging to establish a critical stance and to provide evaluative judgment when reviewing the literature. This paper presents a contrastive analysis of student and expert writers’ expressions of criticality in literature review sections of 8 applied linguistics master theses from UiTM (a Malaysian public university) and 62 literature reviews of research journal articles from a similar field (i.e., Language and Communication, English for Academic Purposes and Applied Linguistics). Corpus techniques are used to identify the most common expressions of criticality used by these two groups of writers. The corpus was analyzed using detailed consistency analysis and concordance software from WordSmith Tools (Scott, 2012). Findings revealed that student writers prefer to use hedges and boosters to express criticality and the evaluations they make tend to sound more reporting rather than analyzing and synthesizing the resources critically. Results from this study are beneficial for constructing pedagogical instructions and guidelines for student writers in their critical analysis of the literature review.


2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-91
Author(s):  
Norma Patricia Barletta ◽  
Diana Chamorro ◽  
Jorge Mizuno

Opposite to what is traditionally stated, the theoretical framework often constitutes an independent section in research articles. Therein writers establish the theoretical tradition that supports their research and make an account of the theoretical and research developments in their discipline, specifically, in their topic of research, thus establishing a dialogue with other voices. This article examines how writers organize their theoretical framework by means of verbal clauses using the resources of the graduation subsystem proposed by the systemic functional linguistics to express force —which will help them to construct their authorial voice. This study analyzed the verbal clauses and the graduation resources of the theoretical frameworks in 20 research articles in Spanish language published in Colombian journals from the area of applied linguistics. Findings show the variety of resources deployed by writers in their verbal clauses to strengthen their commitment to their tenets, especially in prominent places of their theoretical framework, such as the macroTheme, hyperThemes, macroNew and hyperNew. Awareness of these theoretical framework features may be relevant for teaching academic writing.


Author(s):  
Cheng-hua Hsiao

Evaluation is a central linguistic feature that expresses a writer’s critical stance and plays a prominent role in academic discourse. By using Martin and White’s (2005) appraisal framework, particularly regarding attitude, this study conducted a textual analysis of literature review chapters in master’s theses written by Taiwanese graduates. Attitude can be regarded as a manner of behavior caused by feelings and opinions. The review genre was selected for study because that is where the writer’s position toward the status of knowledge is displayed. Furthermore, studies have explored various types of linguistic features, and the data sources were mainly journal articles. Few studies have yet studied the review genre in master’s theses in applied linguistics written by master’s students. The results of the study will render additional understanding of advanced EFL Taiwanese learners’ evaluation in the literature review genre and offer advice for instructors in academic writing.


Author(s):  
Yan Zhang

Abstract Despite the commonly reported underuse of linking adverbials of contrast and concession (such as yet, nevertheless) by English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners in writing, relatively little is known about the use of structural conjunctions in this regard. The present work uses a corpus approach to investigate the use of while, a polysemous conjunction of contrast and concession, in the writing of Chinese EFL learners as compared with their British native-speaker counterparts. The analysis of while-clauses is informed by clause-complexing and textual descriptions of clause in Systemic Functional Linguistics (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2013). Preference for initial concessive while-clauses by native-speaker students was found, in sharp contrast to the dominant use of final adversative while-clauses by Chinese EFL learners. Analysis of the native-speaker data revealed that initial concessive while-clause is characterized by equivalence or relatedness of topical themes of while-clause and its main clause, confirming the discourse-organizing function of thematic hypotactic clauses. In addition, the pattern of non-human subjects and low-value modal operators (e.g. While this … may …) associated dominantly and exclusively with initial concessive while-clauses in the native corpus serves further evidence of distinctive features of concessive while-clauses. This study adds to a growing body of literature on the SFL approach to second language writing and is among the first to combine corpus-based methodologies and SFL theoretical framework to analyze logico-semantic relations. The study concludes with some pedagogical implications for teaching adversative and concessive while-clauses to EFL learners.


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-76
Author(s):  
Monalisa Pasaribu ◽  
Tiurma Lumban Lumban ◽  
Hernawati Samosir

Academic writing is one of important skill to have students in tertiary education, including students of Information Technology Diploma. Using Systemic Functional Linguistics Genre Pedagogy (SFL GP), the students report writings are investigated, his research aims at investigating how students comprehend SFL GP in their report writing and find out the relationship between students’ knowledge of SFL GP with their language proficiency. The texts are analyzed using the genre division by Rose and Martin. The results of the analysis will be used to investigate if the knowledge of genre writing for technology-based students is related to their language proficiency. This research contributes to better use of genre pedagogy for science students, more specifically, students of Information Technology.


2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 75
Author(s):  
Eska Perdana Prasetya ◽  
Anita Dewi Ekawati ◽  
Deni Sapta Nugraha ◽  
Ahmad Marzuq ◽  
Tiara Saputri Darlis

<span lang="EN-GB">This research is about Corpus Linguistics, Language Corpora, And Language Teaching. As we know about this science is relatively new and is associated with technology. There are several areas discussed in this study such as several important parts of the corpus, the information generated in the corpus, four main characteristics of the corpus, Types of Corpora, Corpora in Language Teaching, several types that could be related to corpus research, Applications of corpus linguistics to language teaching may be direct or indirect. The field of applied linguistics analyses large collections of written and spoken texts, which have been carefully designed to represent specific domains of language use, such as informal speech or academic writing.</span>


2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-126
Author(s):  
Tine Sopaheluwakan ◽  
Mohammad A. Amin Soetomo

Information Technology as a new Technology has been used in businesses from small company until multinational company in almost all industries. IT role as an enabler and differentiation factor separating success company from average company. IT need people to build, operate, maintain and support the systems, hence expect the new hire to immediately contribute from the first day they join the company. The industry define the needs for Information Technology competence and expect Education Institution as one of IT resource work hard to design their program study to fulfill the needs for Information Technology graduates, yet the industry still struggle to succeed in hiring fresh graduate to fill the IT position. Information Technology Training Institution can be an alternative to improve the education result. Also certification on Information Technology competence from third party or independent body might be used as a standard for both Industry and Education. This paper will report literature review several previous paper about all of the above.


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