scholarly journals Examining the Application of Grammatical Metaphors in Academic Writing

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 108
Author(s):  
Ying Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Graduate Students ◽  
Writing Instruction ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Lexical Density ◽  
Academic Register ◽  
Text Cohesion ◽  
English Academic Writing ◽  
Writing Competence

English academic writing is a challenging task for Chinese EFL learners. For graduate students, they need systematic and explicit guidance to improve their academic writing competence. Grammatical metaphors are important resources for constructing academic discourse, and nominalization in ideational metaphors is regarded as the most powerful tool for achieving formality, objectivity, lexical density and text cohesion typical of academic papers. This article focuses on the role of grammatical metaphors in the production of quality academic written texts. It analyzes the function of grammatical metaphors in academic register and the application of these grammatical metaphors in creating academic meanings. The paper also provides some pedagogical implications for academic writing instruction for advanced EFL learners.

scholarly journals Exploring EFL Learners’ Self-Efficacy in Academic Writing Based on Process-Genre Approach

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ying Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Graduate Students ◽  
Writing Instruction ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Self Efficacy ◽  
Teaching Experiment ◽  
General Level ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Level Of Confidence

This study explores the change of EFL learners’ level of self-efficacy in process-genre academic writing instruction. The teaching experiment was conducted for 14 weeks. A total of 59 graduate students participated in the experiment. Before the experiment, the results showed that the general level of EFL graduates’ self-efficacy in academic writing was relatively low. After 14 weeks of academic writing instruction conducted by the process-genre approach, participants’ self-efficacy improved significantly. In the interview, participants also reported an increasing level of confidence in academic writing. Based on the findings, implications of academic writing instruction to improve students’ self-efficacy are discussed in the paper.

scholarly journals A Discourse Analysis: Cohesion of the Introduction Section of Research Article

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Anis Firdatul Rochma ◽  
Sulis Triyono
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
English Language ◽  
English Language Teaching ◽  
Research Articles ◽  
Semantic Meaning ◽  
Lexical Cohesion ◽  
Research Article ◽  
English Academic Writing ◽  
Writing Competence

<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>

scholarly journals Linguistic Markers and Stylistic Attributes of Hedging in English Academic Papers Written by Native and Non-Native Speakers of English

MANUSYA ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Amara Prasithrathsint
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Linguistic Markers ◽  
Native Speakers Of English ◽  
English Academic Writing ◽  
The Impact

Hedging means mitigating words so as to lessen the impact of an utterance. It may cause uncertainty in language but is regarded as an important feature in English academic writing. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the style of academic writing in English with particular reference to the significant role of hedging and the linguistic features that mark it. The data was taken from academic articles in the humanities written by native speakers of English, Filipino speakers of English, and Thai speakers of English. It is hypothesized that speakers of English as a foreign language use fewer and different hedging devices than native speakers of English. The result of the analysis shows that the prominent linguistic markers of hedging are the auxiliaries may, might, could, the verbs suggest, appear, seem, and the adverbs perhaps and often. They are divided into three groups according to their stylistic attributes of hedging; namely, probability, indetermination, and approximation. The use of hedging found in the data confirms what Hyman (1994) says; i.e., that hedging allows writers to express their uncertainty about the truth of their statements. It is also found that English native speakers use hedges most frequently. The Filipino speakers of English are the second, and the Thai speakers of English use hedges the least frequency. This implies that hedging is likely to be related to the level of competence in English including knowledge of stylistic variation, and that it needs to be formally taught to those who speak English as a second or foreign language.

scholarly journals Energizing Students’ Academic Writing Competence through Research Group Activity (A Supervisor Intervention)

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 589
Author(s):  
Lastika Ary Prihandoko
Keyword(s):  
Graduate Students ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Research Group ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Descriptive Analysis ◽  
Qualitative Approach ◽  
Group Activity ◽  
Interview Method ◽  
Writing Competence ◽  
Selection Of

The outcome of having a manuscript published in reputable international journals leads students to various challenges. The supervisor has an essential role in succeeding students to achieve this goal. This study aims to determine the position of the supervisor in guiding students to have a publication in reputable international journals by a research group activity. This study focuses on retrieving data from three non-native speakers (NNS) supervisors who guide graduate students majoring in chemistry who have manuscripts published in reputable international journals. Data obtained by interview method. This research uses the qualitative approach with descriptive analysis. Based on the data collected, the mentor has a crucial role in succeeding the students to have reputable international manuscript publications. Interventions conducted by supervisor varied from the selection of a title to the choice of journal publisher.

scholarly journals Lexical Complexity on Descriptive Writing of Indonesian Male and Female EFL Learners

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 297
Author(s):  
Siti Aisah Ginting
Keyword(s):  
Academic Writing ◽  
Text Analysis ◽  
English Department ◽  
Lexical Diversity ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Lexical Complexity ◽  
Lexical Density ◽  
Descriptive Writing ◽  
Computerized Text Analysis

This study was aimed to find out the effect of gender on linguistics properties of academic writing abstracts of Indonesian Male and Female EFL Learners. Therefore, the linguistics properties of 40 essays from EFL learners (20 males & 20 females) were analyzed on the lexical complexity (diversity and density). The participants were selected from a homogenous group of EFL learners who were sitting for Writing 1 (one) subject in the English Department Universitas Negeri Medan—Indonesia. A computerized text analysis program (Word Smith Tools) was employed to measure the lexical complexity of the EFL learners’ essays (descriptive writing). As a result, females indicated to write more lexical density way than males in their descriptive writing but no significant different on lexical diversity. 

scholarly journals Investigating Grammatical Colloquial Features in EFL Learners’ Theses by Chinese English Learners

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (6) ◽  
pp. 138
Author(s):  
Nan Wang
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Analysis ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
English Learners ◽  
Academic Discourse ◽  
Analysis Method ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Doctoral Dissertations ◽  
English Academic Writing ◽  
Chinese English Learners ◽  
Pragmatic Paradigm

<p>Researches into colloquialisation in academic writing have become increasingly popular in recent years. However, little has been conducted to the dimension of grammar. Thus, through the corpus-based quantitative and qualitative analysis method, the present study compiled three corpora extracted from Chinese MA theses, PhD dissertations and international journals, aiming to explore the grammatical colloquial features and non-colloquial features in Chinese EFL learners’ theses. Compared with international journals, both MA theses and PhD dissertations displayed strong colloquial tendency. The similarities between MA theses and PhD dissertations outweigh their differences. Besides, doctoral dissertations are not less colloquial than MA theses. The statistical evidence suggests that the EFL learners in China lack the register consciousness of academic writing and fail to comply with the conventional pragmatic paradigm of academic discourse. With the intention to deepen EFL learners’ stylistic awareness and decrease their colloquial tendency, the study offers some suggestions, seeking for the pedagogical implications for English academic writing.</p>

Stories Are Like Water: An Academic Writing Workshop for Nurses

2013 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 81-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Madeline Walker ◽  
Coby Tschanz
Keyword(s):  
Nursing Students ◽  
Graduate Students ◽  
Writing Instruction ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Nursing Faculty ◽  
Graduate Programs ◽  
Writing Workshop ◽  
Nurse Educator ◽  
Formal Instruction

Traditionally, there is very little formal instruction in academic writing for nurses in graduate programs. We, the writing scholar and a nurse educator and PhD student at a major Canadian university, describe how we collaborated on developing and delivering a 1-day academic writing workshop for incoming master of nursing students. By sharing this description, we hope to motivate nursing faculty to offer similar workshops to address the dearth of writing instruction for graduate students in nursing and to improve scholarship outcomes.

The role of genre in information structuring in English

2012 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 143-159
Author(s):  
Elma Kerz
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Traditional View ◽  
Specific Information ◽  
Subordinate Clauses ◽  
Research Article ◽  
Information Packaging ◽  
English Academic Writing

In a recent paper, Biber and Gray (2010) provide empirical evidence for the dramatic increase of compressed structures in English academic writing over the last 100 years. According to their corpus findings, the grammatical complexity of academic writing displays a phrasal rather than clausal character, the corollary of which is a compressed rather than elaborated discourse style (the latter one being typical of spoken registers). Given this finding, the question arises as to how far the traditional view that information structure should be viewed as a single partition of information within a given utterance adequately accounts for genre-specific information packaging strategies. To provide an answer to this question, the current study sets out to explore and compare information structuring within what will be referred to here as ‘compression strategies’, namely the use of adverbial subordinate clauses, -ING constructions, and complex NP constructions across two different genres: the highly compressed genre of research article abstracts, and fiction. The findings reported here suggest that in more compressed discourse styles such as academic writing, there is a higher probability of encountering information structure partition not only at the clausal but also at the phrasal level. The present paper highlights the importance of genre variation as one predictor of variation in information structuring within constructions.

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