scholarly journals Reporting Verbs and Related Syntactic Choices in Students' Theses: A Study of Two Disciplines

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 130-142
Author(s):  
Martina Jarkovská ◽  
Lenka Kučírková
Keyword(s):  
Academic Writing ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Tertiary Education ◽  
Past Research ◽  
English For Academic Purposes ◽  
Communicative Functions ◽  
Literature Reviews ◽  
Lower Ability ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Verb Tense

Adopting Hyland's (2002) framework of reporting words (RVs), the paper investigates the use of RVs in Master's theses written in English by students of two disciplines, Economics and Management and Natural Resources. The data were drawn from two sub-corpora, each consisting of 82 Literature Reviews, where other authors' research is summarised and commented on. Besides determining the most frequent communicative functions, in this paper, the RVs are further analysed in terms of the verb tense, voice, and subject-agent. The findings revealed significant differences between the two disciplines. In the former, most RVs were in the present active with named-author as the subject, conveying a neutral attitude towards the reported message and neutrally summarising previous research outcomes. Most RVs were in the past tense in the latter, reporting on past research procedures or outcomes. The findings reveal infrequent use of evaluative or critical verbs. Each discipline's predominant choice may suggest writers' lower ability to highlight the cited sources' direct relevance to their research. The study hopes to contribute to the efficacy of teaching English for Academic Purposes to non-native speakers. It has pedagogical implications for academic writing in both undergraduate and postgraduate courses at non-philological tertiary education institutions.

scholarly journals Expressions of Criticality in Expert and Student Writing: A Corpus Contrastive Analysis of Literature Reviews

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 19
Author(s):  
Muna Liyana Binti Mohamad Tarmizi ◽  
Anealka Aziz Hussin
Keyword(s):  
Literature Review ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Applied Linguistics ◽  
English For Academic Purposes ◽  
Student Writing ◽  
Contrastive Analysis ◽  
Student Writers ◽  
Research Journal ◽  
Literature Reviews ◽  
Integral Role

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.

scholarly journals Bibliometric analysis of scientific production on academic writing: a study of the last 10 years

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (3C) ◽  
pp. 200-209
Author(s):  
Julio E. Postigo-Zumarán ◽  
Lorena Jessica Nova Revilla ◽  
Fanny Esperanza Zavala Alfaro ◽  
Dennis Arias-Chávez
Keyword(s):  
Academic Writing ◽  
Web Of Science ◽  
The United States ◽  
English For Academic Purposes ◽  
Scientific Production ◽  
Publish Or Perish ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Number Of Publications ◽  
Number Of Citations

The objective of the study is to characterize the world scientific production on academic writing between the years 2011 to July 2021. A bibliometric study was carried out in five databases (Scopus, Web of Science, Google Scholar, Microsoft Academic and Crossref). Bibliometric indicators were analyzed in 4117 articles through Publish or Perish v. 7.19 and the same analytical software of the chosen databases. The results indicate that the article entitled “Codemeshing in academic writing: Identifying teachable strategies of translanguaging” is the document with the highest number of citations; Montserrat Castelló Badía, the most cited author; Journal Of English For Academic Purposes stands out as the medium with the largest number of publications on the subject; and among the countries that concentrate the largest production on creative writing, the United States, the United Kingdom, China, Australia and Spain stand out. It is concluded that the rate of publications will increase in the following months, which means continuing to periodically carry out measurements on scientific production to determine the evolution and contributions of the scientific material produced.

scholarly journals Cultural Collisions in L2 Academic Writing

2003 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Steinman
Keyword(s):  
Academic Writing ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Writing Pedagogy ◽  
English For Academic Purposes ◽  
Contrastive Rhetoric ◽  
Esl Writing ◽  
Discourse Practices ◽  
Technical Issues ◽  
Open Discussion ◽  
Writing Instructors

Learning to write in English for academic purposes presents a significant challenge for non-native speakers. Not only must they deal with the obvious linguistic and technical issues such as syntax, vocabulary, and format, but they must also become familiar with Western notions of academic rhetoric. (West or Western in this article refer primarily to North America.) Collisions of cultures are experienced when the discourse practices L2 writers are expected to reproduce clash with what they know, believe, and value in their L1 writing. For this article I reviewed a range of literature that addresses writing and culture. Described by researchers and by L2 writers are collisions regarding voice, organization, reader/ writer responsibility, topic, and identity. Implications for writing pedagogy include awareness of contrastive rhetoric on the part of ESL writing instructors; instructors' acknowledgment of and appreciation for the prior knowledge that students bring from their L1; realization on the part of ESL writing instructors that Western notions of,for example, voice are indeed just notions and are simply one way among many of expressing oneself; and a need for open discussion with students about how they might incorporate standard Western notions of writing without compromising their own identity.

scholarly journals WRITING INTRODUCTION SECTIONS OF RESEARCH ARTICLES IN APPLIED LINGUISTICS: CROSS-LINGUISTIC STUDY OF NATIVE AND NON-NATIVE WRITERS

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 248 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maryam Farnia ◽  
Safoora Barati
Keyword(s):  
Academic Writing ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Current Knowledge ◽  
Applied Linguistics ◽  
Writing Pedagogy ◽  
Native English Speakers ◽  
Genre Studies ◽  
Communicative Functions ◽  
Native Speakers Of English ◽  
Novice Writers

Genre studies allow researchers to observe the repeated communicative functions and their linguistic components in different genres (Brett, 1994). Writing the introduction section is a tough and burdensome task for both native and non-native speakers (Swales & Feak, 1994). Hence, the present study aimed to investigate the generic organization of English research article introductions written by native English and Iranian non-native speakers of English. A total of 160 published articles were selected from established journals in Applied Linguistics. Following Swales’ (2004) Create A Research Space (CARS) model, the researchers analyzed the articles for their specific generic patterns. Findings displayed that native English writers used significantly more strategies than Iranian non-native speakers of English, yielding richer texts. The findings of the present study contribute to the current knowledge of cross-cultural studies in academic writing to non-native English speakers in general and to non-native English novice writers in particular. Built on Swales’ (2004) CARS model, the study describes how introduction sections are developed in English by native and non-native speakers, offering insights into ESP/EAP writing pedagogy.

scholarly journals The Success of an EAP Programme in Tertiary Education: Using a Student-Centric Approach to Scaffold Materials in an EAP

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. p213
Author(s):  
Misty So-Sum Wai Cook
Keyword(s):  
Academic Writing ◽  
Curriculum Design ◽  
Tertiary Education ◽  
Writing Skills ◽  
English For Academic Purposes ◽  
Content Development ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Language Writing ◽  
Scaffold Materials ◽  
The Impact

Researchers and practitioners who focus on academic writing in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) courses have reported on the need to equip students with the necessary knowledge and skills to deal with academic writing across different disciplines in tertiary education (Rinnert & Kobayashi, 2005; Shi, 2011; Thompson, 2013). Previous research (e.g., Crosthwaite, 2016) has predominantly measured students’ progress in an EAP by comparing students’ pre- and post-course scores of individual language/writing skills. Much less has been reported on the effectiveness of a detailed EAP curriculum design that scaffolds skills in stages. This study contributes to the current EAP research by examining holistically the impact of a 12-week EAP course that adopts a reading-to-write, student-centric approach to scaffold progressively difficult writing skills/knowledge to help students acquire academic writing skills by focusing on three core skills: language, text organisation, and content development. The data of this study show students’ perceptions of their writing abilities and the significant improvement in academic writing skills before and after completing the course.

scholarly journals The linguistic disadvantage of scholars who write in English as an additional language: Myth or reality

2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (02) ◽  
pp. 249-260 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Flowerdew
Keyword(s):  
Academic Writing ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
First Language ◽  
English For Academic Purposes ◽  
Academic Publishing ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
Writing For Publication ◽  
Playing Field ◽  
Academic Writer ◽  
Deliberate Learning

Academics are coming under increasing pressure to publish internationally. Given the global dominance of English, this very likely means publishing in English-medium journals and with publishers which publish in English. This raises the important question of the possible disadvantage of those scholars whose first language is not English and who therefore have the additional burden of having to develop adequate proficiency in an additional language, English. As a student of modern languages to university level and of other languages to rather lower levels of proficiency and as a teacher of English for academic purposes (EAP) and of English for research and publication purposes (ERPP), since I became aware of this issue, I have always believed this extra burden on the English as an additional language (EAL) academic writer to be a self-evident truth. Ken Hyland, however, in a recent book (Hyland, 2015) and an article titled ‘Academic publishing and the myth of linguistic injustice’ (Hyland, 2016a), has taken it upon himself to argue that such an assumption is ill-founded. Hyland argues that native-speakers (NSs) of English encounter the same difficulties as non-native speakers (NNSs) when it comes to academic writing, that ‘academic English is no one's first language’, and that it requires ‘deliberate learning’ by both NSs and NSs (p. 57). Native and non-native writers, Hyland implies, are on a level playing field when it comes to writing for publication, both groups having to jump the same hurdles.

scholarly journals A Corpus-Based Study on the Use of the Logical Connector ‘Thus’ in the Academic Writing of Turkish EFL Learners

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 64
Author(s):  
Serpil Ucar ◽  
Ceyhun Yukselir
Keyword(s):  
Likelihood Ratio ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
American English ◽  
Advanced Learners ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Log Likelihood ◽  
Log Likelihood Ratio ◽  
Effect Relation ◽  
Academic Genre

This research was conducted to investigate how frequently Turkish advanced learners of English use the logical connector ‘thus’ in their academic prose and to investigate whether it was overused, underused or misused semantically in comparison to English native speakers. The data were collected from three corpora; Corpus of Contemporary American English and 20 scientific articles of native speakers as control corpora, and 20 scientific articles of Turkish advanced EFL learners. The raw frequencies, frequencies per million words, frequencies per text and log-likelihood ratio were measured so as to compare varieties across the three corpora. The findings revealed that Turkish learners of English showed underuse in the use of the connector ‘thus’ in their academic prose compared to native speakers. Additionally, they did not demonstrate misuse in the use of the connector ‘thus’. Nevertheless, non-native learners of English tended to use this connector in a resultative role (cause-effect relation) more frequently whereas native speakers used it in appositional and summative roles more as well as its resultative role. Furthermore, the most frequent occurrences of ‘thus’ have been in academic genre.

nr="309"Innere Sicherheit, Sprache und Biographie. : Eine biographietheoretische Perspektive auf einen komplexen Zusammenhang

2021 ◽  
Vol 2019 (1) ◽  
pp. 309-325
Author(s):  
Nadja Thoma
Keyword(s):  
Identity Politics ◽  
Language Ideologies ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
Language Education ◽  
Security Threat ◽  
Internal Security ◽  
Analytical Perspective ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Innere Sicherheit

Zusammenfassung Im Kontext der zunehmenden Versicherheitlichung von Migration, deren Bedeutung auch für sprachliche Bildung im Kontext nationaler und globaler Sicherheitsagenden diskutiert wird, werden bestimmte Gruppen von Migrant*innen als Sicherheitsbedrohung konstruiert. Die Instrumentalisierung von Sprache für Identitätspolitik, die im Konzept von Sprache als ,Schlüssel zur Integration‘ besonders deutlich wird und unter Rückgriff auf Sprachideologien erklärt werden kann, bleibt nicht ohne Folgen für Angehörige minorisierter Gruppen. Der vorliegende Beitrag geht der Frage nach, was ,innere Sicherheit‘ für Student*innen bedeutet, denen zugeschrieben wird, keine ,native speaker‘ zu sein. Den Bezugspunkt der ,inneren Sicherheit‘ bildet dabei nicht der Nationalstaat, sondern das Subjekt. Aus einer biographieanalytischen Perspektive wird rekonstruiert, mit welchen (Un-)Sicherheitsdimensionen die Subjekte an der Universität und in Hinblick auf ihre beruflichen Pläne konfrontiert sind, wie Sicherheit und Sprache biographisch eingebettet sind und welche Strategien und Wege die Student*innen (nicht) nutzen (können), um ihre Sicherheitsspielräume zu erweitern.Abstract: In light of the increasing securitization of migration, language education is discussed as part of national and global security agendas, and certain groups of migrants have been constructed as a security threat. The instrumentalization of language for identity politics is particularly evident in the concept of language as a ‘key to integration’ and can be explained with language ideologies. These ideologies are not without consequences for members of minoritized groups. The article at hand explores the meaning of ‘internal security’ for university students who are not considered ‘native speakers’. The reference point of ‘internal security’ is not the nation state, but the subject. From a biographical-analytical perspective, the article reconstructs dimensions of security and insecurity which the subjects confront at university with regard to their professional aims. It will explore how the connection between security and language is embedded in their biographies, as well as the strategies and pathways students can and cannot use to expand their security scope.

Visualisation of different harmonisations varying in mode, consonance & dissonance

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Konstantinos Giannos ◽  
George Athanasopoulos ◽  
Emilios Cambouropoulos
Keyword(s):  
Past Research ◽  
Auditory Stimuli ◽  
Modal Interaction ◽  
Variable Roughness ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Highly Correlated ◽  
Listening Task ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Tonal Stimuli ◽  
Musical Elements

Visual associations with auditory stimuli have been the subject of numerous studies. Colour, shape, size, and several other parameters have been linked to musical elements like timbre and pitch. In this paper we aim to examine the relationship between harmonisations with varying degrees of dissonance and visual roughness. Based on past research in which high sensory dissonance was associated with angular shapes, we argued that non-tonal and highly dissonant harmonisations will be associated with angular and rough images, while more consonant stimuli will be associated with images of low visual roughness. A fixed melody was harmonised in 7 different styles, including highly tonal, non-tonal, and random variations. Through a listening task, musically trained participants rated the stimuli in terms of enjoyment, familiarity, and matched them to images of variable roughness. The overall consonance of the stimuli was calculated using two distinct models (Wang et al., 2013; Harrison & Pearce, 2020) and a variant of the aggregate dyadic consonance index (Huron, 1994). Our results demonstrate that dissonance, as calculated by all models, was highly correlated with visual roughness, and enjoyment and familiarity followed expected patterns compared to tonal and non-tonal stimuli. In addition to sensory dissonance, however, it appears that other factors, such as the typicality of chord progressions and the sense of tonality may also influence this cross-modal interaction.

Sentence Disparity, Judge Shopping and Trial Court Delay

1996 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Don Weatherburn ◽  
Bronwyn Linc
Keyword(s):  
Past Research ◽  
High Rate ◽  
District Court ◽  
Trial Court ◽  
Significant Drop ◽  
Court Delay ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Criminal Matters ◽  
Determining Factor

Until recently, criminal matters finalised by way of a trial in the NSW District Court have been the subject of substantial delays. In 1990–93, there was a significant drop in the backlog of trial cases pending in the court but the corresponding reduction in trial court delay has been less substantial than might have been expected. The article draws on past research showing that adjournments contribute significantly to trial court delay and considers the question of whether the practice of 'judge shopping' might in part be responsible for the high rate of adjournments. Evidence is presented showing that there are substantial disparities in the use of imprisonment by District Court judges and that this appears to be a determining factor in the willingness of defendants to proceed to trial.

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