scholarly journals Sustainable Development of EFL Learners’ Research Writing Competence and Their Identity Construction: Chinese Novice Writer-Researchers’ Metadiscourse Use in English Research Articles

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (17) ◽  
pp. 9523
Author(s):  
Xiaole Gu ◽  
Ziwei Xu

English for foreign language (EFL) novice writer-researchers are faced with an increasing pressure for international publication as a prerequisite for sustainable career development in academia. The use of metadiscourse, as a key indicator for their discourse competence, has been a subject of research for English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and/or English for Specific Purposes (ESP) scholars. This study investigates metadiscourse features of research articles’ (RA) results and discussion (R&D) sections written by Chinese PhD students and their writer identities reflected through metadiscourse choice. A corpus was built, consisting of a subcorpus of R&D of unpublished research articles (RAs) written by Chinese PhD students (CNWs) and one of the same part-genre by English-speaking expert writers (EEWs). Metadiscourse used by the two groups were identified based on Hyland’s interpersonal model of metadiscourse. Quantitative analyses on the frequency and variety of metadiscourse markers found a significant difference not only in interactional metadiscourse but also in some subcategories of interactive and interactional metadiscourse, indicating that CNWs attach more importance to organisation of ideas than to the persuasiveness of arguments. A questionnaire survey was conducted to explore the influence of the CNWs’ perception of RA writing on their metadiscourse choice. It revealed that knowledge of generic conventions and metadiscourse functions, awareness of the writer–reader relationship, and confidence in language competence may influence metadiscourse choice. The paper concludes with the view that the CNWs generally view themselves as a recounter and reporter of their research, remaining conservative when presenting an authoritative voice and a confident identity as a knowledge creator.

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ping Liu ◽  
Xu Huang

This study adopts the revised interpersonal model of metadiscourse to discover whether and to what extent Chinese authors employ a varying amount of Interactional Metadiscourse (IM) in the past decade in English abstracts of economics Research Articles (RAs). The data was drawn from a prestigious economics journal in China to compose a corpus of 289 abstracts. The analysis indicates that Chinese authors harmonize with English counterparts by capitalizing on more hedges, while the amount of boosters unexpectedly maintains at a high level over time, both of which can be attributed to the interaction of Chinese deep-seated cultural leanings and Anglo-American cultural preferences. Consistent with our prediction, attitude markers exhibit no significant difference along the years given the initial parallel with English counterparts. However, there are significant differences of self-mentions in the past decade regardless of English rhetorical conventions, which may be attributed to economical influences in China. With regards to engagement features, they remain relatively underused with no marked difference within the period resulting from the genre-specific factor which confines their use.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Mavadat Saidi

Academic study writers utilize a specific set of discursive resources backed up by both cultural and professional norms to be endorsed by the intended audience. The current study aimed to investigate if there were any significant differences between English and Persian academic research articles published in peer-reviewed journals in the field of nutrition in light of appraisal theory. To this end, a corpus of 40 English and 40 Persian academic research articles was analyzed in terms of three categories and subcategories of appraisal theory. The results revealed that the authors of both English and Persian research articles included more attitude resources followed by graduation and engagement resources. Furthermore, no significant difference was observed between these two sets of articles in terms of three major appraisal categories. The findings carry pedagogical implications for English for academic purposes courses to provide the academic discourse communities with the required discursive competencies.


2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 46
Author(s):  
Eva Sudarwati ◽  
Shynta Amalia

Abstract This study attempts to see the effect of Think, Talk, and Write strategy on the students’ narrative writing competence. Considering the importance of the use of teaching media, this study tries to integrate Stick Figure as a teaching media in Think, Talk, and Write Strategy. A quasi experimental study was conducted to see the improvement of the students’ narrative writing competence. It involved 42 students who were selected on the basis of convenience sampling and assigned into two groups; experimental and control groups. The statistical analyses of paired sample t-test in experimental group showed that there was significant improvement on the students’ writing competence before (M=5.77, SD= 2.342) and after (M= 11.79, SD= 2.342), t(21)=12.059, p<0.05.Moreover, the result of independent t-test between experimental and control groups showed a significant difference. It can be seen that the mean differences was 3.79545 and the significance value is lower than 0.05, 0.000<0.05.


2021 ◽  
Vol 108 (Supplement_2) ◽  
Author(s):  
M Rafii ◽  
A Freethy ◽  
J Chan

Abstract Introduction The COVID-19 pandemic has witnessed an increased reliance on telemedicine. Patient satisfaction is a key indicator of whether telephone consultations deliver high-quality care. This study evaluates patient perceptions of telephone consultations conducted in a single plastic surgery outpatient department. Method Structured telephone interviews using an adapted Telehealth Usability Questionnaire and the NHS Friends and Family Test were conducted in 98 patients who had undergone outpatient telephone consultations with a plastic surgeon. 13 questions explored domains of usefulness, interaction quality, reliability, patient satisfaction, and future use of telehealth. Results 72 of 98 (73%) completed the survey. Male(49):Female(23). Mean age 59 (range 17-91). 50.4% Strongly agreed (SA) and 24.3% agreed (A) to questions addressing usefulness of the platform. For interaction quality; 63% SA and 21% A. 47% disagreed with questions pertaining to reliability. Overall, 75% were either SA/A for satisfaction and 81% would use telehealth again. No significant difference was found in domain scores when comparing sex or age groups. Conclusions Overall, patient perceptions were positive towards the usefulness and interaction quality of telephone consultations. However, reliability scored poorly. Most patients were satisfied with the care provided. Comparison to other telehealth mediums e.g. video consultation and patient safety studies are needed.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arab World English Journal ◽  
Susilo Susilo ◽  
Bibit Suhatmady ◽  
Dyah Sunggingwati ◽  
Hany Farisa ◽  
...  

The study aims at investigating the effect of second language (L2) exposure environment on NNESTs’ teaching skills and beliefs about EFL learning beyond the classroom. This is a survey for non-native English speaking teachers (NNESTs) of Indonesian Senior High Schools ( or in Indonesian terms ‘SMA’) from different L2 environments, namely: 1) urban-region exposure environment schools (n=40), and 2) rural-region exposure environment schools (n=40). There were two instruments used in the present study, i.e. 1) observation scaling checklist, and 2) questionnaire. The observation scaling checklist was used for assessing the respondents’ performance when they were teaching in class. Meanwhile, the questionnaire using a four-point Likert scale was used to elicit data. The researchers used a series of independent t-test to analyze the data. The result reveals that: 1) there is a significant difference between teaching skills of NNESTs from the urban region schools and those of NNESTs from rural region schools, t (78)= 19.499, p=0.000; and 2) there is a significant difference between beliefs about English as a foreign language (EFL learning beyond the classroom of the NNESTs from urban region schools and those of NNESTs from rural region schools, t (78)= - 4.925, p=0.000


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-55
Author(s):  
Nur Asma

The common problems faced by students in English speaking are anxiety and the lack of confidence and ideas. This research was conducted to determine the relevant factors and to provide a solution by using the smartphone video camera. To obtain the data in this research, experimental research was performed inside and outside the classroom with a series of treatments and a questionnaire sheet as the instrument. The data were analyzed using a model proposed by Smeda, Dakich, and Sharda (2014) and a Likert scale questionnaire, which was adapted from Spratt, Humphreys, and Chan (2002). The result from the test showed a significant difference between the experimental and control classes as the carried t-test presented the score of -8.36, which was out of the limit (between -1.96 and 1.96). Another result was the students developed positively which was shown by: the anxiety tends to decrease as they were given time before performing thus prepared better, their self-confidence was increased and challenged by using the smartphone video camera method due to the application of innovation in the speaking class. The conclusion of this research is lecturer needs to apply new methods, one of which is using a smartphone application.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anggi Cecilia Safaningrum

The study identified research competency needs of postgraduate students of Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education in research writing in Nigerian Universities. The study adopted a survey research design and was carried out in South-Eastern Nigeria. Two research questions and a hypothesis guided the study. The population for the study was 372 comprising 222 master and 150 PhD students of STEM Education in nine Universities in south-eastern Nigeria. Proportionate simple random sampling techniques were used to select 50% of the population, which gave a sample size of 186 (111 master and 75 PhD students). Structured questionnaire developed from the literature which was reviewed by the researchers was used to collect data. Each item in the instrument had two columns of needed and difficult with each of the columns assigned a four response options with values 4, 3, 2 and 1. The instrument was validated by specialists. Cronbach alpha method was used to determine the internal consistency of the items and a coefficient of 0.85 was obtained. Data collected were analyzed using mean while the null hypothesis was tested using t-test. The findings revealed that postgraduate students needed 32 competencies in research writing; 25 of the competencies were difficult to employ by the students. The hypothesis tested revealed that there was no significant difference in the responses of the two groups of students on the difficult competencies. It was recommended that lecturers should utilize the 32 competencies while emphasizing the 25 difficult ones to make students competent in producing a quality research work.


2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Anis Firdatul Rochma ◽  
Sulis Triyono

<em>As an effort to give contribution to the existing knowledge, it is expected for the undergraduate students to compose an engaging research article in order to convince the readers about the importance of the research article. However, there is only a little attention given to the articles written by the undergraduate students although it is considered very critical to examine whether the exposure of English academic writing has significantly enhances the writing competence of the students. Furthermore, as it is also very crucial to build a meaningful semantic meaning among the sentences in order to disclose the worthiness of the research article, it is essential to analyze the cohesion of the research article written by the undergraduate students. Henceforth, the present research is projected to investigate the cohesion of the research articles written by the undergraduate students of English Language Teaching. As the introduction section of research article is likely to be an area to portray the logical explanation of the research, the present research solely focuses on examining the cohesion of the introduction section of research article. By adopting a qualitative design and involving several steps to analyze the introduction section, it is revealed that the grammatical cohesion is considered to be the most utilized type of cohesion in writing the introduction section. Still, the lexical cohesion is also necessary to build an eloquent semantic meaning about the topic as well the importance of the research article.</em>


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mila Vulchanova ◽  
Pedro Guijarro-Fuentes ◽  
Jacqueline Collier ◽  
Valentin Vulchanov

Languages around the world differ in terms of the number of adnominal and pronominal demonstratives they require, as well as the factors that impact on their felicitous use. Given this cross-linguistic variation in deictic demonstrative terms, and the features that determine their felicitous use, an open question is how this is accommodated within bilingual cognition and language. In particular, we were interested in the extent to which bilingual language exposure and practice might alter the way in which a bilingual is using deictic demonstratives in their first language. Recent research on language attrition suggests that L2 learning selectively affects aspects of the native language, with some domains of language competence being more vulnerable than others. If demonstratives are basic, and acquired relatively early, they should be less susceptible to change and attrition. This was the hypothesis we went on to test in the current study. We tested two groups of native Spanish speakers, a control group living in Spain and an experimental group living in Norway using the (Spatial) Memory game paradigm. Contra to our expectations, the results indicate a significant difference between the two groups in use of deictic terms, indicative of a change in the preferred number of terms used. This suggests that deictic referential systems may change over time under pressure from bilingual language exposure.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document