scholarly journals Genre Pedagogy and Bilingual Graduate Students’ Academic Writing

Publications ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Teresa Morell ◽  
Susana Pastor Cesteros

Genre pedagogy plays an important role in helping graduate students to enter the discourse community of their fields. Although familiarity with research genres benefits graduate students, few studies have explored the influences of instruction on learners’ subsequent generic practices. In this study, we describe the genre-based approach used in a bilingual (English and Spanish) Applied Linguistics graduate course, which aimed to enhance students’ research genre awareness to allow them to be better able to confront their own work as investigators. The description of the course is followed by a study to determine if and how a research article discourse analysis task influenced the students’ academic writing in their own papers. Our research question was the following: To what extent can course instruction influence students’ academic writing? The study entails a survey to elicit students’ perspectives on the influence of the course and its tasks on their academic writing, as well as teachers’ comments on the students’ written work. Although learning to do research at the graduate level requires a broad range of competencies that go beyond genre awareness, the findings from the survey confirmed the positive effects of genre knowledge gains in accomplishing further research goals.

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-63
Author(s):  
Abdul Wahid Ibrahim Tocalo

Rhetorical move analyses of research article (RA) abstracts have established variations across disciplines and cultures. However, there is still a need for more explorations on Applied Linguistics discipline. Comparing native and other group of non-native speakers of English, such as Filipino users of the language, has also been a neglect in research as far as the researcher’s knowledge is concerned. Hence, this study investigated the rhetorical moves in the RA abstracts of American and Filipino writers who are published in two journals related to Applied Linguistics field. The study also explored the lexical verbs underlying each move in all the abstracts. Each abstract was then segmented into moves. Findings revealed that the moves Situating the Research (STR), Presenting the Research (PTR), and Discussing the Research (DTR) were obligatorily used by both groups of writers, while the moves Describing the Methodology (DTM) and Summarizing the Findings (STF) were obligatory only among Filipinos and optional among Americans. Filipino writers appear to develop their own conventions deviating from Americans who are considered native speakers and norm providers. The results also amplify the existence of cultural differences even in abstract writing. Further, the study details lists of lexical verbs that may be used to realize a rhetorical intent of each move. Hence, academic writing instructions may be informed by the rhetorical and linguistic realizations unveiled in this study. Directions for future research are likewise provided.


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.


2020 ◽  
Vol 83 ◽  
pp. 191-204
Author(s):  
Muhammed Parviz ◽  
Alireza Jalilifar ◽  
Alexanne Don

The present study aimed at exploring how research article writers from two academic disciplines exploit phrasal complexity features (PCFs) to verbalize the results sections of research articles with the eventual aim of assisting advanced EFL writers with their composition strategies. To this end, following a manual search, 200 empirical research articles in the fields of Applied Linguistics and Physics were comparatively examined. Due to the low rate of success of tagging programs in identifying the occurrences of PCFs, the datasets were also manually analyzed. The results revealed that the research article writers drew upon three high-frequency phrasal complexity features, namely, pre-modifying adjectives, post-modifying prepositional phrases, and nominalizations. The study also revealed that the results sections of research articles included different amounts of exceedingly complex patterns of pre-modification, a hybrid of novel appositive structures, and great reliance on hyphenated adjectives. Overall, we believe that these findings can be used to heighten the awareness of academic writers and instructors regarding the linguistic characteristics of academic writing and of the variations of how such phrasal features of compression are constructed in different academic subjects.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-159
Author(s):  
Arturo Mendoza ◽  
Viviana Oropez ◽  
Daniel Rodríguez ◽  
Zazil Sobrevilla ◽  
Joaquín Martínez

Abstract This paper addresses writing in ERPP for graduate students matriculated in a Mexican Public University where the medium of instruction is Spanish. The students who were involved in our study registered for an academic writing course in ERPP, and submitted a draft research article in English as part of the admission requirements. Following a mixed-method approach, through a survey and a semi-structured interview, we aimed to explore the various ways in which students use English for research and publication purposes, the discursive and non-discursive challenges they perceived while drafting the article, and their feelings and attitudes towards writing in ERPP. The findings suggest that the discursive and non-discursive challenges perceived were aggravated by the lack of critical-pragmatic approaches, the poor English writing skills developed for academic purposes, and the lack of support for editing their papers in English, particularly from thesis supervisors. This led them to experience feelings of anxiety, frustration and discomfort about writing in English. We would argue that this additional burden and pressure for graduate students to publish in English in semi-periphery countries translates into a lack of confidence and feeling of disadvantage in comparison with their counterparts located in anglophone research communities in centre countries.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-212
Author(s):  
Hadi Kashiha

Abstract Research articles have begun to occupy the status of a prominent academic genre, as publishing one is a significant way to gain credibility and to establish oneself as a researcher among members of a discourse community. One way to distinguish discourse communities is to look at the linguistic features used in the generic structure of their research articles. One of these linguistic features is metadiscourse which deals with the connection between authors, texts and readers. The present study adopted Hyland’s (2005a) model of metadiscourse to compare the use of interactional markers in the moves of 40 research article introductions from Applied Linguistics and Chemistry. Findings indicated some variations in the way that disciplinary authors employed interactional devices in introduction moves. These findings can be discussed in terms of familiarizing novice writers with discipline-specific features of their research article introduction and interpersonality in establishing a link between a text and readers.


2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 235-264
Author(s):  
Tomoyuki Kawase

Abstract Constructing a coherent text and achieving genre-specific communicative purposes are crucial aspects of academic writing. However, to date, it remains unclear how coherence and genre are related to each other conceptually. This paper seeks to extend previous research on the influence of genre on coherence relations by examining how writers of applied linguistics research articles (RAs) organise sentences in the discussion section to achieve communicative purposes of the RA discussion genre. The analyses suggest that the writers of the selected discussions might have related sentences to each other differently depending on the purposes they sought to achieve. Possible reasons for relational features are considered in light of the nature of the RA discussion genre and/or the applied linguistics discipline.


2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 151-167
Author(s):  
S. A. Sheypak

The paper addresses concerns of preparing the research article for publication in a high-ranking international journal. The paper argues how to develop the competence which is required for successful manuscript submission in the international peer-review journal. The analysis of the reasons for rejecting the manuscript submitted in international journals suggests considering a successful submission through the dialogue between the author and the discourse community of the journal selected for publication. The publication competence of the author is considered as the author’s ability to construct his/her position in the text or authorial voice. Bakhtin’s concept of voice allows interpreting authorial positioning in the dialogue with the discourse community selected for submission. While only the author’s position in the article is intentionally aligned with the epistemological, discursive, and rhetorical boundaries of the discursive community of the journal, the author’s voice may be approved by the community through publication. The approach adopted in the paper is based on Swales’ concept of discourse community and the concept of author’s positioning in academic text suggested by Ivanič. The structure of authorial positioning in the article is developed by using Schmid’s model of the narrative text. The publication competence of the author confirms his/her ability to construct authorial voice, which requires firstly determining the boundaries of the discursive community selected for publication through reading. When the author aligns his/her position in the manuscript with the community boundaries, the author’s voice is addressed to the selected community and it is able to convince the community in the validity of the researcher’s results. In conclusion, the structure of authorial positioning in the research paper is suggested for designing the curriculum of academic writing for publication purposes (ERPP) which aims at successful interactions between the author and the journal community at all stages of manuscript elaboration.


2012 ◽  
Vol 57 (7) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alireza Jalilifar ◽  
Razieh Dabbi

Writing a master's thesis, oftentimes the first shot by a novice researcher at writing for academic purposes, requires providing a framework and support by learning how to cite the works of others. Compared to the host of studies on research article introductions as the product of expert writing, little work has been done on citations in master's thesis introductions (MAIs), and so the paucity of research in this area calls for further investigation into citations in MAIs. To this aim, we compared the use of citation forms in 65 Iranian MAIs in the field of Applied Linguistics. Citation forms were divided into integral which play an overt grammatical role within a sentence and non-integral which play a covert grammatical role in text. Each category was further divided into sub-categories. Analyses of the citation practices indicated that integral citations constituted a greater proportion of citations in the MAIs. The study also examined stance manifested in verb controlling citations and underlined the importance of evidential marking in academic writing and discussed pedagogical implications of the research.


2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wenhsien Yang

Abstract Due to the competitiveness in academic publication and the emerging heavy reliance on Internet search engines to expand visibility and readership and to promote publications, writing an attractive and appropriate research article title is essential. In addition, titles may be the first aspect of papers evaluated by journal editors in their screening of submissions in order to meet the requirements of the target audience. These demands call for the use of various academic writing skills, and thus make writing titles challenging. Research on structuring journal article titles has been extensively conducted across disciplines, but what keywords (i.e. lexical items highly distinctive of the titles) are employed to reflect current knowledge and receive high citations is still under-researched. To bridge this gap, the present corpus-driven research collected and investigated titles written in leading applied linguistics journals over 25 years to identify their keywords. These were compared to different time spans to study the significance and relevance of the domain knowledge. The most frequently cited articles were also selected to study how their titles relate to keyword use and to investigate their impact on the domain knowledge. The results reveal that keywords vary in accordance with the research trends over time. In addition, while titles are becoming longer, more keywords are employed by authors in order to expand the paper’s visibility and enhance the citations. The pedagogical implications for teaching academic writing, and suggestions for researching this appendant genre are provided.


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