Concept‐based language instruction and the teaching of citation in English academic writing

In this introduction to the special issue, we first present a brief historical overview of sociocultural theory (SCT) as it has been extended to the process of second language (L2) development and instruction, beginning with two significant publications that appeared in 1994. In the early years, the theory was used as a lens to understand various aspects of learning and instruction. Eventually, it came to be used as a means of promoting the processes that it investigates. As we explain in this article, the shift in research orientation reflects Vygotsky's commitment to the unity of theory and research with practice. We then address a problem associated with the term “sociocultural,” which has been used since the inception of L2 research informed by the theory. This is followed by a presentation of the four central principles of the theory, which is contextualized within a discussion of dialectics, the foundational methodological approach adopted by Vygotsky in formulating the theory of higher psychological functioning. The principles each relate to the process through which naturally endowed instincts that govern mental and emotional behavior from birth are restructured as they interact with culturally developed forms of mediation, including—most importantly—language. Next, we present an overview of the special issue that includes a discussion of the important concepts that are brought to bear in instructed L2 development. These include the important distinction between everyday and scientific concepts and concept‐based instruction; the zone of proximal development and dynamic assessment; languaging, or the psychological use of speaking and writing in the developmental process; perezhivanie, the dialectical unity of emotion and cognition as related to development; and obuchenie, the instruction–development dialectic. These concepts, along with the theoretical principles, are employed in various ways in the seven articles included in the special issue. The articles are representative of the innovative SCT‐L2 research that is currently under way in East Asia, a region of the world that only recently has been attracted to the theory. While the research reported on in the special issue emerges from this particular area, the implications for other instructional contexts and for the theory itself are significant.

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Sub-disciplinary variation of metadiscursive verb patterns in English research articles: a functional analysis of medical discourse

Chen,

Xu,

Feng

2023

International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching

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As a cover term for the negotiation of propositional information and reader engagement, metadiscourse has gained considerable attention from scholars of academic discourse. Recent studies have extended to previously unexplored structures that realize metadiscourse, such as ‘metadiscursive nouns’ (Jiang and Hyland 2018. Nouns and academic interactions: A neglected feature of metadiscourse. Applied Linguistics 39. 508–531). Among various linguistic resources, verbs are often regarded as a linguistic element undertaking multiple discourse acts and functions in different contexts, with some acts and functions being metadiscursive. Based on previous studies on reporting verbs and functional sentence stems, this study proposes the concept of metadiscursive verb patterns (MVPs) and examines this linguistic resource in a self-built MedDEAP corpus of five million words, a clinical medicine English research article corpus consisting of 18 sub-disciplines. We conducted an intradisciplinary investigation into MVPs to analyze their structural and functional variations across the sub-disciplines of medical academic English. The findings revealed that most MVPs exhibit a preference for some sub-disciplines, and a few sub-disciplines reflect certain characteristic genre features in the use of certain MVPs. It is shown that medical academic discourse is characterized by methodological and conceptual cross-fertilization. Hence, variation in MVPs is a natural linguistic representation of interdisciplinary synergy. Based on our findings, we conclude by addressing the pedagogical implications for proper use of MVPs in academic writing.

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Concept‐based language instruction and the teaching of citation in English academic writing

Cited by 4 publications

References 35 publications

Sociocultural Theory and Language Education

Sociocultural Theory and Language Education

Sociocultural theory and classroom second language learning in the East Asian context: Introduction to the special issue

Sub-disciplinary variation of metadiscursive verb patterns in English research articles: a functional analysis of medical discourse

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