Comparing research articles in pulmonology and other disciplines

Abstract

There have been many arguments for research-informed pedagogy in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) classes, including medical English classes. While there has been a wealth of research on writing in English for medical purposes, there has been little research on academic research articles (RAs) specifically in the pulmonology domain with very little empirical information about linguistic patterning useful in materials design for writing instruction. The extent to which writing in that branch of medicine is similar to writing in hard sciences in general is unknown. The present study analyzes the linguistic features in a specialized corpus of pulmonology research articles and a comparison corpus of research articles from other scientific disciplines using three of the functional dimensions established by Biber (1988) that are relevant to academic writing-the first, third, and fifth dimension. Results indicate that in comparison to research articles in other hard sciences, pulmonology research articles have more densely packed information and less abstract information. Pedagogical implications for academic writing teachers of respiratory therapy students in EFL and ESL contexts and future research directions are discussed.