The relationship between syntactic complexity and rhetorical move-steps in research article introductions: Variation among four social science and engineering disciplines

Lu, Xiaofei; Casal, J. Elliott; Liu, Yingying; Kisselev, Olesya; Yoon, Jungwan

doi:10.1016/j.jeap.2021.101006

Cited by 35 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…Since most of the previous studies on syntactic complexity were directed with limited measuring indices (Biber et al, 2011;Bulté and Housen, 2012), such as mean words per T-unit (W/T), words per clause (W/C), or dependent clause ratio (DC/C), it is necessary to measure syntactic complexity with a relatively comprehensive range of indices. Therefore, this study has adopted for analysis the 14 measures Lu (2011) proposed in the Syntactic Complexity Analyzer (SCA), including the six measures Ortega (2003) Measures of syntactic complexity have been proven to be sensitive to the genres of narrative and expository writing (Scott and Windsor, 2000;Beers and Nagy, 2009;Jeong, 2017) and those of narrative and argumentative writing (Crowhurst and Piche, 1979;Beers and Nagy, 2009;Lu, 2011;Qin and Uccelli, 2016;Yoon andPolio, 2016, 2017;Abdel-Malek, 2019;Jagaiah et al, 2020;Xu, 2020;Casal et al, 2021;Lu et al, 2021;Yu, 2021). Scott and Windsor (2000) found that students' (9 and 11 years old) narratives had more clauses per T-unit than the expository summaries, while Crowhurst and Piche (1979) found that student (12 years old) narratives had fewer clauses per T-unit than persuasive essays (argumentative) and were not significantly different from the descriptive texts.…”

Section: Syntactic Complexity In Writingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Measures of syntactic complexity have been proven to be sensitive to the genres of narrative and expository writing ( Scott and Windsor, 2000 ; Beers and Nagy, 2009 ; Jeong, 2017 ) and those of narrative and argumentative writing ( Crowhurst and Piche, 1979 ; Beers and Nagy, 2009 ; Lu, 2011 ; Qin and Uccelli, 2016 ; Yoon and Polio, 2016 , 2017 ; Abdel-Malek, 2019 ; Jagaiah et al, 2020 ; Xu, 2020 ; Casal et al, 2021 ; Lu et al, 2021 ; Yu, 2021 ). Scott and Windsor (2000) found that students’ (9 and 11 years old) narratives had more clauses per T-unit than the expository summaries, while Crowhurst and Piche (1979) found that student (12 years old) narratives had fewer clauses per T-unit than persuasive essays (argumentative) and were not significantly different from the descriptive texts.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The effects of genre on the syntactic complexity of argumentative and expository writing by Chinese EFL learners

Heng²,

Cao³

2022

Front. Psychol.

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Genre researchers have found that writing in different genres involves different cognitive task loads and requires different linguistic demands. Generally speaking, narratives involve the description of events with a focus on people and their actions within a specific time frame, whereas non-narrative genres focus on making an argument or discussing ideas or beliefs in a logical fashion, thus resulting in distinct language features. However, the vast majority of genre-based studies have either focused on one single genre or made comparisons between narrative and non-narrative writing (mostly argumentative) in academic contexts without examining how EFL writers perform across non-narrative genres. Moreover, the measures used in quantifying the syntactic complexity of writing are varied, leading to inconsistent findings. This study investigated the effects of genre on the syntactic complexity of writing through comparing argumentative and expository compositions written by Chinese English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) learners over one academic year. Fifty-two participants were asked to write eight compositions (with two genres alternated), four argumentative and four expository, which were parsed via the Syntactic Complexity Analyzer. The results with time as the within-subjects variable showed a significant development of syntactic complexity in both argumentative and expository compositions over one academic year. Meanwhile, the paired-sample t-test with genre as the within-subjects variable exhibited a higher syntactic complexity in argumentative compositions than in expository ones on most of the 14 measures examined at four time points over the year. Additionally, a two-way repeated measures analysis of variance with genre and time as independent variables ascertained an interactional effect of time and genre on some of the 14 measures. The present study tested and verified the impact genre exerts on the syntactic complexity of writing, providing implications for teachers to be more informed in teaching and assessing EFL writing and for students to be more conscious of genre difference in EFL writing.

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Section: Syntactic Complexity In Writingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effects of genre on the syntactic complexity of argumentative and expository writing by Chinese EFL learners

Heng²,

Cao³

2022

Front. Psychol.

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“…The extent to which disciplinary variations may inform the use and distribution of language features has triggered a number of empirical studies investigating syntactic complexity across disciplines. For example, Lu et al (2021) explored the relationship between syntactic complexity and rhetorical organizations of RA introductions among four social and engineering disciplines. The results obtained from their study indicated that there existed statistically significant disciplinary variations with regard to the realization of moves and steps in RA introductions as assessed by syntactic complexity metrics.…”

Section: Writing Complexity Across Academic Disciplinesmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Corpus-based Analysis of Noun Phrase Complexity in Research Article Part-genres in Applied Linguistics and Clinical Medicine

Esfandiari

Ahmadi²

2022

LRR

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Complexity measures in academic writing have experienced a shift from clausal to phrasal indices in recent years. Drawing on a subset of Biber et al."s ( 2011) hypothesized stages of writing development, we explored phrasal complexity across sections (part-genres) of research articles (RAs) in applied linguistics and clinical medicine. A 389,332-word corpus consisting of 80 randomly selected RAs from leading journals in applied linguistics and clinical medicine was compiled for the purposes of the present study. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and independent-samples t-test, as implemented in SPSS (version 25), were employed to find differences across the RA sections and between two groups of academic writers. The findings indicated that RAs in clinical medicine relied more heavily on noun phrase modifiers in all sections than those in applied linguistics, suggesting that the distributional pattern of these linguistic expressions is discipline-independent. The implications of the distributional pattern of phrasal complexity are discussed in relation to L2 writing pedagogy and the development of genrebased, discipline-specific academic writing.

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“…Genre analysis has sparked a growing interest in the rhetorical moves, to spread academic information within a particular discourse community (Tessuto, 2015;Lu et al, 2021), as well as use of formulaic sequences in academic discourse (Kashiha, 2014;Nam, 2017). In the space of academic communities, the fellows use research articles as a channel to express their ideas and feelings to others (Henceforth, RAs) and it is arguably the vital genre in academic discourse (Mohammad & Sadat, 2014;Li, 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Within genre analyses (ESP), 'earlier studies may be summarised into two groups following their concentration of target objective'. The first group focuses on the structure of dissertations, research papers or other specialized writings, for instance, Hong (2019); Tessuto (2015); Amnuai (2019); Lu et al (2021) and the second group is on specific features of RAs, such as the use of 'hedging, modality, reporting verbs and function-form connections'. For example, Hyland (2000); Omidian et al (2018); Casal (2020) mentioned but a few (Ruiying & Allison, 2004).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Analysis of Structural Bundles Clustered within Rhetorical Moves of Qualitative and Quantitative Discussion Section of Research Articles

Mohammed¹,

Jabar²,

Halim³

et al. 2023

IJARPED

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One of the most significant activities that writers can engage in to share their knowledge and establish a voice within the disciplinary community is writing academic research articles. To have a greater understanding of this commonly practiced genre, exploring the linguistic realisations which are used to classify the rhetorical structures of academic research articles is beneficial. This study's main objective was to analyse structural bundles clustered in rhetorical moves in the Discussion parts of the specialised corpora of qualitative and quantitative datasets of Applied Linguistics Research articles (RAs), wherein each corpus contains Discussion sections of 50 RAs, as well as structural elements of those lexical bundles. For rhetorical move identification, the data were analysed based on Ruiying and Allison's (2003) model. For lexical bundle analysis, the corpus-driven approach was used to extract

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The relationship between syntactic complexity and rhetorical move-steps in research article introductions: Variation among four social science and engineering disciplines

Cited by 35 publications

References 39 publications

The effects of genre on the syntactic complexity of argumentative and expository writing by Chinese EFL learners

The effects of genre on the syntactic complexity of argumentative and expository writing by Chinese EFL learners

A Corpus-based Analysis of Noun Phrase Complexity in Research Article Part-genres in Applied Linguistics and Clinical Medicine

An Analysis of Structural Bundles Clustered within Rhetorical Moves of Qualitative and Quantitative Discussion Section of Research Articles

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