A Comparative Study of Reporting Verbs Used in the Introduction Chapters of Bachelor’s Theses and Master’s Theses by Chinese English-Majored Students

Abstract

Reporting verbs (RVs), as rhetorical lexical devices, play a key role in academic writing because they enable writers to attribute content to other sources and allow them to convey both the kind of activities reported and their evaluation of the reported information. However, no study has been conducted on how RVs are used differently between bachelor’s theses (BTs) and master’s theses (MTs) in the Chinese context. Through corpus-based and comparative analysis, this study, therefore, aims to analyze and compare the use of RVs between 30 BT Introduction Chapters and 30 MT Introduction Chapters by Chinese English-majored students in terms of denotative potentials and evaluative functions based on Hyland’s (2002) classification framework. The results reveal that RVs used by undergraduate students are smaller in amount and narrower in range compared with those used by master’s students. Concerning the denotative potentials of RVs, a similar distribution of RVs was found in the two corpora. Both undergraduate and master’s students prefer Discourse Act RVs and Research Act RVs to Cognition Act RVs. Regarding their evaluative functions, undergraduate students show a tendency toward non-factive RVs, while master’s students tend to use factive RVs. These findings provide a valuable view of how Chinese English-majored students use RVs in their thesis writing, but their knowledge of the rhetorical functions of this device is still insufficient. The findings might increase thesis writers’ knowledge on the significance of RVs and raise their awareness of using RVs appropriately and effectively in their thesis writing, or even in all kinds of academic discourse. This paper then provides some suggestions for thesis writing courses.

"I Am Aware, but Who Am I to Comment.": Critical Stance in Indonesian EFL Students' Academic Essay

“…Undergraduate students in the social humanities also have a predilection, as Liardét and Black (2019) concluded, to employ argue verbs in their academic writing, which Soler Monreal and Gil Salom (2011) refer to this as speculation over the reliability of the cited materials. A large amount of discourse assurance factive verbs suggests that students are more likely to present cited materials in a more positive or conclusive manner that such practice was also found in several studies (see Hyland, 2002;Jarkovská & Kučírková, 2020;Loan & Pramoolsook, 2015;Wen & Pramoolsook, 2021). The employment of assurance verbs, particularly factives, implies that the EFL novice writers are not passively accepting the assertions of the authors but are instead able to articulate their thoughts on the cited materials in an objective and impartial manner.…”

“…EFL novice writers typically attribute to the cited materials rather than expressing their stance by paying attention to the relationship between syntactic features and rhetorical functions when reporting authors' claims. Wen and Pramoolsook (2021) conclude that undergraduate students' preference for non-factive verbs allows them to comment neutrally on the cited materials and avoid biases in making interpretations, thus highlighting the author's agency instead of theirs.…”

“…However, studies have consistently reported that novice EFL writers have struggled with reporting verbs in their academic writing. It is the case for EFL writers in Indonesia (Amrullah et al, 2017;Arsyad et al, 2021), Iran (Yeganeh & Boghayeri, 2015), Malaysia (Manan & Noor, 2014), Thailand (Jaroongkhongdach, 2015;Jogthong, 2001), Vietnam (Loan & Pramoolsook, 2015), Czech (Jarkovská & Kučírková, 2020), Spain (Luzón, 2018;Soler Monreal & Gil Salom, 2011), Ghana (Agbaglo, 2017), and China (Kwon et al, 2018;Wen & Pramoolsook, 2021). The studies have found a predilection for EFL writers to use RV in a limited manner, especially in research acts (such as find, show, analyze) and discourse factive Volume 13, Number 2, September 2022, 210-230 (such as explain, argue, affirm).…”

“…Some of these factors, albeit intuitively stated by some scholars, include a lack of understanding or exposure to the content of the cited previous studies (Arsyad et al, 2021;Jaroongkhongdach, 2015), as well as their reluctance to evaluate and comment on the claims of the authors (Agbaglo, 2017;Jaroongkhongdach, 2015;Soler Monreal & Gil Salom, 2011). Although EFL writers may have been exposed to training on using RV in academic writing, they nonetheless fail to make decisions about and experiment with new lexical varieties of RV owing to a lack of confidence (linguistic inferiority) (Bloch, 2010;Wen & Pramoolsook, 2021). This insecurity stems from their low English proficiency and, as a result, directs their judgment that they are not as eligible as English native speakers to effectively communicate their stance on materials presented in the language (Soler Monreal & Gil Salom, 2011;Uba, 2019).…”