Linking adverbials in academic writing on applied linguistics by Chinese doctoral students

Lei, Lei

doi:10.1016/j.jeap.2012.05.003

Cited by 79 publications

(77 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…The kind of unnecessary use of logical markers observed in this study has been reported in other research (Lei, 2012;Shaw, 2009). Our observations would appear to indicate that use of code gloss and logical markers for some student writers in our setting is a residual area of difficulty even at postgraduate level.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 84%

Guiding the reader (or not) to re-create coherence: Observations on postgraduate student writing in an academic argumentative writing task

Baştürkmen

Randow

2014

Journal of English for Academic Purposes

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 84%

Guiding the reader (or not) to re-create coherence: Observations on postgraduate student writing in an academic argumentative writing task

Baştürkmen

Randow

2014

Journal of English for Academic Purposes

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“…Studies of assessed pieces of writing produced in Chinese contexts have had similar findings on linking adverbials to those of learner corpus studies (e.g., Bolton et al, 2002;Hyland, 2008a;Lee & Chen, 2009;Lei, 2012;Milton, 1999). Using his own corpus of Hong Kong Chinese university student writing in English, Milton (1999, p. 226) reports that students tend to "overuse" certain informal linking adverbials compared besides has an "afterthought connotation" (p. 288) and precedes less crucial information, arguing that it is not suitable for use at the start of a sentence or even paragraph in the way the Chinese students employ it (e.g., "…students' confidence might be increased.…”

mentioning

confidence: 75%

“…Shaw's reasoning seems more applicable to contrasts between extended writing and the short essays of learner corpora since the latter try to compress the pros and cons of an argumentative essay into 500 words (and for ELT tests often just 100-180 words); in such cases it may be more reasonable to compare the use of linking adverbials through per sentence counts (see discussion in Lei, 2012).…”

Section: Chinese Students' Use Of Linking Adverbialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Besides … on the other hand: Using a corpus approach to explore the influence of teaching materials on Chinese students’ use of linking adverbials

Leedham

Cai

2013

Journal of Second Language Writing

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Studies conducted on first and second language student writing in English have pointed to the latter group's high use of features such as informal language, pronouns, and linking adverbials, yet few studies have been conducted on assessed undergraduate writing produced within an English-speaking environment. This paper reports findings from a corpus study of Chinese and British students' writing in UK universities, confirming that a key area of difference is the Chinese students' higher use of particular linking adverbials (e.g., besides, on the other hand). We hypothesise that one reason for this higher usage is the influence of secondary school teaching materials in mainland China prior to UK university study and examine a set of model texts from the English paper in the Chinese university entrance test, selected as these texts comprise much of the teaching material in the final year of secondary education. We argue that Chinese students are "primed" (Hoey, 2005) to favour particular linking adverbials, to disregard issues of informality, and to prefer sentence-initial positioning. It is hoped that the reported findings will challenge English language teachers and textbook writers to consider the requirements of writing within the academy.Keywords: Chinese students; teaching materials; corpus linguistics; linking adverbials; intensive reading lesson; National Matriculation Test. 2 IntroductionStudents from China are increasingly choosing to study at undergraduate level in English-speaking countries; in the UK, Chinese people now comprise the "largest single overseas student group" with more than 90,000 Chinese students engaged in learning in the UK (the British Council, 2011). However, relatively few large-scale studies have been carried out on the assessed undergraduate writing of this group within English-speaking contexts; instead, the majority of large-scale studies of both Chinese 1 students' writing and non-native speaker (NNS 2 ) student writing in general have been corpus studies concentrating on data sets of unassessed, extremely short, argumentative essays collected mainly from non-UK universities. While these "learner corpus" studies have yielded useful insights into L2English students' writing, it is unclear how far the findings can be extended to longer pieces of assessed writing.A common assertion of learner corpus studies is that NNSs "overuse," "under- English-speaking context, and this paper aims to address this gap. The dataset for 1 While it is recognised that the term 'Chinese students' refers to a range of geographical locations, dialects and ethnic groups, the majority of students in the study are from the PRC. Moreover, the contextual data in the corpus used in this study (BAWE) details only the student's self-proclaimed L1 (for many Chinese students this is simply 'Chinese'), and does not request information on perceived ethnicity. The group termed 'L1 English' or 'British' students gave English as their L1 and undertook all or most of their secondary education in the UK. 2 In this pap...

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“…Thus, the analysis of various cohesive devices and their use has attracted many researchers and language teachers involved in the study and instruction of academic writing (e.g. Aktas & Cortes, 2008;Connor, 1984;Hinkel, 2001;Lei, 2012;Nesi & Basturkmen, 2006, to name a few).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Comparison of Thematic Choices and Thematic Progression Patterns in the Research Articles of Well-established and Emerging Disciplines

Babaii

Atai

Shoja

2016

IJAL

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Several studies have employed the theme-rheme construct to examine the generic profile of research articles (RAs). However, they have mostly focused on the subject matter and nature of disciplines, and other disciplinary characteristics as contextual factors which can impact the genre realization have not been considered in the discourse analysis research. This work, therefore, investigates thematic choices and thematic progression patterns in the RA in relation to the status of disciplines as well-established or emerging fields. To this end, a corpus of 240 RAs of mechanical engineering, biomedical engineering, horticulture, and environmental science were analyzed using Halliday's (1994) framework of thematicity and McCabe's (1999) model of thematic progression (TP). The results showed significant differences in the distributions of unmarked and marked themes as well as the patterns of thematic progression between the well-established and emerging disciplines. Based on the findings of this study, we suggest further consideration of the status of disciplines in discourse studies which can serve disciplinary research and contribute to the body of research on science.

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Linking adverbials in academic writing on applied linguistics by Chinese doctoral students

Cited by 79 publications

References 7 publications

Guiding the reader (or not) to re-create coherence: Observations on postgraduate student writing in an academic argumentative writing task

Guiding the reader (or not) to re-create coherence: Observations on postgraduate student writing in an academic argumentative writing task

Besides … on the other hand: Using a corpus approach to explore the influence of teaching materials on Chinese students’ use of linking adverbials

A Comparison of Thematic Choices and Thematic Progression Patterns in the Research Articles of Well-established and Emerging Disciplines

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