This article explores self-mention in L2 (Czech) English-medium master's theses written in the humanities along three dimensions of analysis: realisation, authorial roles and distribution across ...rhetorical sections. While extending the scope of self-mention to cover nominal forms, the aim of the study is to find out how Czech graduates combine pronominal and nominal self-mention to modulate the degree of visibility and authority they convey in their texts. The contrastive corpus-based investigation compares a corpus of Czech English-medium master's theses with two reference L1 corpora representing learner and published academic discourse to examine differences pertaining to variation along culture, expertise and discipline dimensions. The findings indicate that realisation patterns of self-mention and preferences for specific authorial roles vary significantly across the corpora. Czech graduates tend to be reluctant to display a high degree of visibility and authority, prefer to adopt a stance of humility, and fail to approximate disciplinary patterns of self-mention. The paper argues that this is motivated by the efforts of students to blend L1 and L2 academic conventions, their lower level of rhetorical maturity, and the audience addressed by the students in the examination context of the master's thesis.
This study investigates cross-linguistic variation of metadiscourse in the results and discussion chapters of engineering master's theses written in English and Spanish. The analysis is based on a ...corpus of 200 master's thesis results and discussion chapters: 100 written by L1 English students and 100 written by L1 Spanish students. Using Hyland's (2005a) interpersonal model of metadiscourse, the results and discussion chapters were compared to examine the influence of lingua-cultural contexts of writing on student writer's employment of metadiscoursal resources. Findings of the comparative analysis reveal significant cross-linguistic differences for overall frequency of metadiscourse as well as for most (sub-)categories. The analysis suggests that interpersonal features of writing are inexorably linked to the specific lingua-cultural contexts in which texts are produced and consumed, even within the same discipline and (part-)genre. The paper concludes with some pedagogical implications for L2 writing instruction.
This paper employs an intercultural perspective to examine students' views on master's thesis supervision and the roles and responsibilities of supervisors and students. The 302 respondents who ...answered the online questionnaire were enrolled in international master's degree programmes in four Finnish universities. The study revealed asymmetric views by students regarding the division of responsibilities between themselves and their supervisors. It was found that very few students and supervisors discuss the differences in study cultures between Finland and students' countries of origin, their cultural backgrounds or the aspects of Finnish society that students do not understand. The research suggests that supervisors and students need to conduct early discussions on supervision and culture.
The use of source texts in academic writing has been explored in at least two groups of EAP studies, those on the reading-writing connection in student writing and those on citation practices in ...disciplinary discourse. In recent years, there have been a growing number of studies on the rhetorical functions of intertextual links in different academic genres such as research articles and theses, and studies have also compared citation use by novice and more established writers. Following a brief analysis of citation forms, this article explores the functions of source text use in the discussion sections of master's theses and research articles from biology using two typologies, one created by Thompson (2001, 2005) and, the second, an expanded model described in this paper, which reflects the rhetorical progression of this part-genre. Previous genre studies have only referred to the use of literature in one move in discussions, “commenting on results.” However, the results of this study show that intertextual links are used for a variety of rhetorical functions throughout discussions in master's theses and journal articles. This article concludes with a discussion of implications from this study for the EAP classroom to facilitate the development of advanced second language writers.
•Examines form and function of citations in thesis and research article discussions.•Student and RA authors background previous research with non-integral citations.•Presents an expanded framework for analyzing the function of citations.•Results reveal a variety of functions for citations in student and published texts.
På baggrund af det danske censorkorps i psykologis samlede specialedatabase i perioden 2014-2019 analyseres i denne artikel mere end 4000 problembeskrivelser til psykologiske kandidatspecialer. I ...artiklen argumenteres for, at psykologien som forskningsfelt i tiltagende grad er blevet mere ateoretisk, mere kvantitativt orienteret og mere diagnostisk orienteret. Disse tendenser analyseres og diskuteres i relation til de 4000 specialebeskrivelser med udgangspunkt i et mixed methods-design. På baggrund af analysen konkluderes bl.a., at psykologistuderende i vid udstrækning refererer til (meta)teoretiske positioner i deres problembeskrivelser, at psykologistuderende meget klart foretrækker kvalitative metoder, og at der er relativt store forskelle imellem universiteterne, i forhold til hvor meget de psykologistuderende refererer til diagnostiske kategorier.
In this paper, we outline three tendencies concerning the current state of psychology: (1) That psychology is increasingly becoming a-theoretical, (2) That psychology is increasingly becoming a quantitative science, and (3) That psychology is becoming more diagnostic in nature. We discuss these tendencies by taking a closer look at descriptions of all master theses from the six different institutions in Denmark that offered psychological study programmes between 2014 and 2019. In total, 4830 descriptions have been organised and categorised. We have done this by using a mixed-methods approach that combines a quantitative sentiment analysis with a qualitative approach that looks at smaller extracts of the sample. The results give surprising perspectives on all three tendencies since our analysis shows a rather large use of theory in the theses, that there is a very clear orientation towards qualitative methods in the theses and that the use of diagnoses varies considerably across universities.
It is vital that subjects such as the circular economy, sustainable design, green computing or environmental engineering be included in the engineering curriculum. Education for sustainable ...development will enable engineers to develop sustainable products and provide sustainable services, thereby leading to a beneficial result for society and making an indispensable contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals achievement. As the last stage for students in academia, Degree Theses (Bachelor’s and Master’s) provide a good tool for reviewing the sustainability competencies developed during the degree, as well as being an opportunity for applying these competencies in a holistic way. In their Degree Theses, students should be able to demonstrate that they are aware of the need to introduce and assess sustainability in their future engineering projects. This paper presents a guide aimed at helping engineering students to design and develop sustainable projects, and analyzes the first results of its use in two schools of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya—BarcelonaTech. The proposal is based on a tool referred to as “the Sustainability Matrix”, in which cells contain questions that engineering students should take into account when undertaking their Degree Theses. The questions are related to the project development, the project exploitation and the possible risks involved, three aspects in accordance with the sustainability dimensions (economic, environmental and social). The Sustainability Matrix helps students to develop sustainable projects when they graduate, and teachers to assess how sustainability is incorporated across the curriculum in the subjects they teach and in the students’ Degree Theses.
This study correlates with a research study published in the journal Pragmalingüística, in which the contrastive use of the rhetorical functions of citations in master’s theses in Spanish and English ...was studied. The main objective pursued by this new research is to determine which rhetorical functions are used most frequently in the different parts of a master’s thesis and what these can accomplish in each part of the text. Following Petrić (2007), a computerized textual analysis of the rhetorical function of citation was used to study this phenomenon in a corpus of sixteen (16) theses of which eight (8) were written by American and eight (8) by Spanish postgraduates in their native language. With regards to cultural conventions, the results showed that when compared to native Spanish writers, the Americans students use the highest number of citations and write a relatively longer Introduction and Conclusion parts. The sets of functions are consonant with the rhetorical purpose of each part, which thus shows a close link between the citation and the structural organization of the academic text, despite the frequent use of Attribution (AT) in most parts of the thesis.
The purpose of this study is to identify the trends in master’s theses on visual arts conducted in Turkish primary education. We used different combination of keywords regarding visual arts and ...primary education and identified 84 master’s theses. Utilizing content analysis, we identified the title of the advisor, date, university, department, level, methods, sampling method, grade level, sample size, data collection, implications, keywords, gender of the researcher, the number of Turkish and English sources were identified. Findings were given in frequency and coding tables. The results indicated that most master’s thesis on visual arts conducted in Turkey writers were female, the advisor of the theses were mostly assistant professor, thesis were mostly published in 2011, most theses were published in Gazi University, most thesis were published in arts education departments, most theses were in master’s degree. Most studies utilized qualitative analysis and conducted with primary school students. Data analysis techniques included content analysis and documents analysis. Examining the implications of the thesis results showed that professional development courses could be given, art education environments should be equipped with proper materials, duration of visual arts courses should be increased, and collaboration with museums should be established.
El objetivo de este artículo es analizar los derechos de propiedad intelectual sobre los trabajos elaborados por quienes cursan estudios universitarios, con particular referencia a los TFG, TFM y ...tesis doctorales que se realizan en el ámbito de la ciencia jurídica. Para ello, en primer lugar, se examina la posibilidad de que el trabajo de investigación sea merecedor de la condición de obra; en segundo lugar, se clarifica la cuestión relativa a la titularidad de los derechos de autor sobre estos trabajos; y, en tercer lugar, se reflexiona en torno a la obligación de dejar las obras en repositorios institucionales de acceso abierto.
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