Thesis writing (used here as an umbrella term to cover both master's and doctoral postgraduate-level writing) is a high-stakes genre for postgraduate students. This important student genre has been ...well-researched from a corpus-based perspective. Corpora of theses and also research articles have been used for data-driven learning (DDL) of this key genre. The purpose of this article is to critically examine key DDL initiatives, some of which take a ‘research into practice’ orientation. Importantly, the discussion is framed around the notion of ‘specificity’ in the context of needs analysis, and whether the initiatives take a wide-angle, narrow-angle or move from a wide-angle to a narrow angle approach. Accounts which focus on DIY (do-it-yourself) mini-corpus compilation and use by students are also reviewed. The final section of the article presents a critique of current pedagogic applications, taking a closer look at the issue of ‘specificity’ within the wider context of needs analysis and mapping out areas for future consideration. It is suggested that an ethnographic perspective may be particularly useful for conceptualising specificity relating to students' present situation needs. The article also considers the impact of AI/ChatGPT on future corpus-based pedagogy of thesis writing.
•Disciplinary corpora can usefully be used for teaching thesis writing.•Thesis writing courses using corpora can be viewed along a continuum of a wide-angle and a narrow-angle approach.•Do-it-yourself corpora are an ideal means of achieving ‘specificity’ in thesis writing courses.•Ethnographic methods can also shed light on the issue of ‘specificity’ in thesis writing pedagogy.
Plagiarism is a broad and multidisciplinary field of study, and within second-language (L2) writing, research on the topic goes back to the mid-1980s. In this review article we first discuss the ...received view of plagiarism as a transgressive act and alternative understandings which have been presented in the L1 and L2 writing literature. We then survey and identify salient themes in the growing body of work relating to plagiarism, primarily from an L2 writing/applied linguistic perspective. These themes include terminological distinctions; views of the role of textual plagiarism in language learning and a writer's development; a concern with students’ and teachers’ sometimes differing understanding of plagiarism; and disciplinary differences in perceptions of plagiarism. We review research into the role of the electronic media in changing orientations toward plagiarism, the potential role of culture as a cause of plagiarism in the work of L2 writers, and pedagogical approaches to guiding students away from plagiarism. Methodological issues in researching plagiarism are surveyed, and the article concludes by suggesting directions for future research.
► Examines the use of direct quotations in master's theses written by L2 writers. ► Compares the use of direct quotations in high- and low-rated master's theses. ► Provides an account of student ...writers’ motivations to use direct quotation.
Using textual analysis and interviews with student writers, this study aims to provide an insight into second language students’ use of direct quotations in their MA theses by comparing direct quotations in high-rated and low-rated Master's theses, and by exploring student writers’ own motivations to quote directly from sources. The corpus consists of eight high-rated and eight low-rated Master's theses written in English in the field of gender studies by students from Central and Eastern Europe studying at an English-medium university in Central Europe. The findings show that high-rated theses display almost three times as many direct quotations per 1000 words as low-rated theses, which was found to be statistically significant. Differences are also evident in the type of quotations preferred: while high-rated theses primarily use quotation fragments (i.e., quotations shorter than a T-unit), low-rated theses rely on clause-based quotations, which do not require modification when quoted in a text. Interviews with student writers reveal the following motivations to quote directly from sources: (a) source-related motivations (e.g., vivid expression of an idea), (b) writers’ own goals (e.g., stylistic variety), (c) external factors (e.g., lack of time), and (d) students’ beliefs and fears (e.g., fear of plagiarism). The findings are discussed with reference to the development of student academic writing in the area of source use and citation. Pedagogical recommendations aimed at making students’ use of direct quotations more effective are also offered.
Teaching materials developed in-house are commonly used in EAP courses; however, research on their linguistic content, which can have important pedagogical implications, is scarce. This study ...examines the occurrence and repetition of general academic vocabulary, operationalised as the Academic Vocabulary List (AVL) (Gardner & Davies, 2014), in the printed teaching materials developed in-house and used in a presessional EAP course at a UK university. The course was divided into three modules and taught over five weeks. At the end of each week, teachers provided us with photocopies of the printed teaching materials they had used. A corpus was compiled from the printed materials of each module. The results show that 846 AVL lemmas (i.e., 28.07% of the lemmas in the AVL) appeared in the materials. They were not equally distributed among the three modules and only 90 AVL lemmas overlapped across modules. The results also show that the average repetition rate of AVL lemmas in the materials was unlikely to lead to the incidental development of recall knowledge from exposure to these materials alone. Recommendations are made for the development of in-house EAP materials and teaching activities that increase students' exposure to academic vocabulary and facilitate its learning.
•We examined academic vocabulary in EAP printed teaching materials developed in-house.•We searched the printed teaching materials for Academic Vocabulary List (AVL) lemmas.•846 lemmas (28.07% of the AVL) appeared in the printed materials.•The average repetition rate of academic vocabulary was below 10 occurrences.•A list of the AVL lemmas in the printed materials is provided.
Intersectionality, the interconnectedness of social categories to account for individual experience or behaviour, has received increased attention in various areas in applied linguistics. Although in ...English for Research Publication Purposes (ERPP) different identity vectors have been investigated separately, there has been less focus on how these vectors intersect with each other to shape writers' experiences of publishing and contribute to their (dis)advantageous position as academics. In this paper, we draw on the intersectionality framework to provide a more nuanced understanding of the experiences of 12 Syrian academics in exile as they try to publish in international journals as well as their perceptions and practices regarding their marginalisation. Three areas of exiled academics' experiences are examined in this study: access to academic-related employment, conducting research, and research writing for international publication in English. Using interviews with Syrian academics and their co-authors, we investigated how multiple vectors of identity intersect and impact on the Syrian academics' writing for publication in exile. It has been shown that exiled academics experience marginalisation in all three areas on account of multiple aspects of their identity. We conclude with implications for support agencies and funding bodies on how to better assist exiled academics.
This study explores the foreign language learning emotions of four EFL adolescent students in Romania and the ways in which their emotions emerge in their sociocultural context. Multiple qualitative ...methods were employed over a school semester, including a written task, semi-structured interviews with the learners and their teachers, lesson observations and English-related events outside the classroom. It was found that, while all four participants reported experiencing positive emotions in language learning, a distinction was identified in the intensity and stability of their emotions. Two participants expressed a strong and stable emotion of love towards English, while the other two participants experienced enjoyment in their English language learning without an intense emotional attachment to English. Unlike enjoyment, love was found to be the driving force in the learning process, creating effective coping mechanisms when there was a lack of enjoyment in certain classroom situations and motivating learners to invest greater effort into language learning in and out of the classroom. The findings thus revealed that, unlike enjoyment, love broadened cognition and maintained engagement in learning. The study emphasizes the role of strong, enduring positive emotions in teenage students’ language learning process.
The Academic Vocabulary List (AVL) (Gardner & Davies, 2014) is a valuable resource for EAP teachers and students as it identifies potential lexical learning/teaching targets. This study enhances the ...AVL's pedagogical usefulness by identifying polysemous lemmas in it. Polysemous AVL lemmas are operationalised as those with more than one definition in two lexicographic resources, the Collins COBUILD Advanced Learners' Dictionary and WordNet. This study also examines a theoretical issue, the relationship between the number of meaning senses of AVL lemmas and their frequency in an academic-English corpus. To this end, correlations were calculated between the numbers of AVL lemmas' meaning definitions listed in both lexicographic resources and their frequency in the COCA-Academic corpus. 34.38% of the 2673 AVL lemmas included in both lexicographic resources, excluding homonyms, are polysemous. Most (66.05%) come from the most frequent 1000 AVL lemmas. The number of meaning definitions of AVL lemmas and their frequency are positively correlated. This correlation is non-linear, i.e., low-frequency words tend to be monosemous but beyond a frequency threshold, word definitions increase as word frequency increases. Implications for future research and teaching are discussed.
·We examined polysemy in the Academic Vocabulary List using the Collins COBUILD Advanced Learners' Dictionary and WordNet·AVL lemma frequency in COCA-Academic and dictionary definitions are positively correlated·919 (34.38%) of the 2673 AVL lemmas shared between the two lexicographic resources are polysemous·607 (65.05%) of polysemous AVL lemmas are in the most frequent 1000 AVL lemmas·The list of polysemous AVL lemmas is provided
Drawing on supervisor and supervisee interviews, analysis of supervisor feedback on the supervisee's draft chapters, and departmental supervisory guidelines, this study focuses on the roles a ...master's dissertation supervisor plays during the course of supervision. These roles are discussed referring to models of supervisory pedagogy, the teaching, partnership, apprenticeship, contractual, pastoral, and non-interfering models. Supervisee and supervisor agreed that the supervisor aligned with different roles at different times for different purposes, showing this was a case of adaptive supervision. Nonetheless, the supervisor's feedback indicated supervision was more directive than his interview data suggested, illustrating the need to collect data from multiple sources to capture the complexities of the supervisory dynamic. We conclude that the dangers of departments attempting to formulate homogenized supervisory practices are highlighted by our case.
Abstract
Direct quotation (DQ) use varies considerably across disciplines, from complete absence in hard sciences to
relative frequency in social sciences. This study investigates DQs in literature, ...focusing on PhD thesis introductions in English.
A corpus of 15 introductions tagged for move-and-step genre analysis was used to investigate DQ frequency, their distribution in
the rhetorical structure of introductions, and source text types used for DQs. The findings show that (i) DQs are the most common
source use practice in the corpus; (ii) DQs are concentrated in three rhetorical steps: reviewing previous research, presenting
the analysed literary work, and making topic generalisations; and (iii) source text type used for DQs is associated with specific
rhetorical steps. These findings suggest that DQs are essential for the realisation of the rhetorical purpose of the steps which
carry them and for knowledge construction in literature PhD theses.
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