This study investigated citation features of Chinese English-major master’s theses and doctoral dissertations and compared the citations in the literature reviews and discussions. Xu’s (2016) ...framework based on systemic functional linguistics was expanded to incorporate content, function, writer’s stance and types of citations into the ideational, interpersonal and textual dimensions. The literature review and discussion chapters in 30 master’s theses and 30 doctoral dissertations were randomly collected for analysis. Results show that doctoral students fulfilled two functions of citations – application and agreement – significantly more than master’s students. Doctoral students are better able to evaluate and apply previous models in their research and start to establish their academic identity by presenting direct support. Further analysis indicates that the functions of literature reviews and discussions influence the distribution of citation features. Both groups used one citation function – topic-relevance – more in discussions than in literature reviews to interpret their findings and compare them against previous scholars’ claims. This study provides implications for theorizing L2 research writing and offers advice for students to improve their citation competence.
Following a large body of research on metadiscourse in academic writing, this paper explores one feature of textual metadiscourse, code glosses, in English L2 academic texts written by Czech ...university students. The study draws on Hyland’s metadiscourse model (2005), which characterizes code glosses as devices that elaborate propositional meanings by rephrasing or explaining what has been said. Thus, they can help readers understand the writer’s intended meaning or contribute to the formation of persuasive arguments. The corpus consists of 48 English L2 Master’s theses representing three disciplines – linguistics, literature and English language teaching (ELT) methodology, totalling almost 950,000 words. The results are compared with professional writing represented by English L1 research articles from the same disciplines. The findings reveal differences in the frequency and functions of several code glosses, as novice writers are shown to overuse certain devices. The findings also indicate cross-disciplinary variation, as reformulation and exemplification proved to be much more prominent in linguistics and methodology than in literary studies.
PurposeDeveloping graduate students' academic writing has been a major concern for many scholars over the past few years. Existing literature on the challenges of thesis writing has not focused on ...master's students in English language teaching (ELT). Data on the challenges have been mainly gathered from the theses and focused on the structure and genre requirements. Few available studies have investigated such challenges through the lens of supervisors in an international context. Knowledge about the factors hindering the thesis writing process of non-native MA students in English from the supervisors' perspectives is scarce. This study attempts to fill these gaps by answering this question: From supervisors' perspectives, what factors hinder the thesis writing process of non-native MA students?Design/methodology/approachThirty supervisors from state and private universities across Iran voluntarily participated in this qualitative study. Drawing upon teachers' diaries and semi-structured interviews, the authors identified major factors negatively influencing the thesis work of master's students. Data were transferred into NVivo 10 and analyzed thematically following Colaizzi's method.FindingsThe study found that factors constraining students' writing were (1) students' lack of effort, (2) students' lack of a strategy for writing, (3) students' lack of autonomy and (4) students' absence of voice.Originality/valueThe authors discuss the practical implications of these factors for different stakeholders. There is a growing interest in postgraduate students' thesis writing processes. Surprisingly, no research exists on supervisors' perceptions of factors that constrain the thesis writing process of non-native English master's students.
► Activity theory used to examine influence of context on Master’s level writing. ► Introductory sections of Master’s theses compared with published texts in same field. ► Specific school based ...requirements influence rhetorical moves. ► Students emphasize their role as agents in their writing. ► Students assert their knowledge and stress their actions on prior knowledge.
This paper is a preliminary investigation into how the context of student life influences student writing. Specifically, activity theory is drawn upon to explore how the role of assessment affects students’ attempts to participate in knowledge-producing communities, a relatively under-researched aspect of student writing. To identify rhetorical characteristics characteristic to student writing, the introductory sections of master’s theses in the field of educational philosophy are compared with the introductory sections of journal articles published within the same discipline. The analysis is framed using
Samraj’s (2008) modification of Swales’ (1990) “Create-A-Research-Space” model for philosophy texts, and specific attention is paid to how students present themselves as agents through their use of inter-textuality and the use of the first-person pronoun. It is suggested that student writers represent themselves as
accomplishing more tasks, thereby asserting themselves as experts in ways published authors need not. Activity theory is used to link the distinctive rhetorical practices of student theses to the functions they serve in acadamic settings. As primarily a theoretical piece, this paper makes an argument in favour of a rhetorical, context-sensitive approach to the study of student writing. The texts analysed serve to exemplify the power and utility of this approach.
Writing in a second (L2)/foreign language is generally a challenging activity, and writing an MA thesis, as an example of academic enterprise, can be daunting when done in a language in which the ...writer is not fully competent. The challenge such a genre of writing poses for L2 writers has not been properly addressed. To fill in the gap in this area, the present study aimed at comparing Master's theses written by Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) students in three Iranian universities in terms of the challenges such academic writing poses for student-writers. The corpus comprised 60 randomly selected theses from those universities submitted to English as a Foreign Language departments between the years 2010 and 2012. A series of one-way ANOVAs were employed to compare the means of obtained frequencies across the theses. Results revealed that, except for organisational problems, theses varied in terms of language, style, content and methodological problems. It was also found that theses mainly suffer from style and language problems. The study sheds light on the extent to which L2 writers are aware of the structure of MA theses, reveals the challenges common to most students in this particular type of academic writing and offers advice on improving the quality of thesis-writing.
There have been a growing number of discourse studies in recent years on written academic genres produced by students. However, the master's thesis has not received as much attention as the PhD ...dissertation. This investigation of master's theses from three disciplines, biology, philosophy and linguistics, employs both discourse analysis and interviews with subject specialists. An analysis of the overall organization of the thesis with a focus on the structure of introductions reveals discourse features that distinguish this genre from research articles and also points to disciplinary variation within this genre. An analysis of the use of citations and the first person pronoun in the introductions shows that philosophy students create a much stronger authorial presence but establish weaker intertextual links to previous research than the biology students do in these texts. The linguistics students occupy a more central position in terms of these dimensions.
•Analysis of the Theme zone in a learner corpus of English-medium Master's theses.•Czech students tend to use primarily simple unmarked two-component Theme patterns.•Overuse of textual and underuse ...of interpersonal Themes show rhetorical immaturity.•Textual Themes are realised mostly by conjunctive adjuncts and fewer conjunctions.•Interpersonal Themes are realised mainly by persuasion and obviousness markers.
Drawing on Halliday's approach to information structure in discourse, this paper explores the discursive function of the initial part of the sentence, i.e. the Theme zone, in a learner corpus of Master's theses by Czech university students of English. The aims of the study are to identify the major patterns of Themes, to analyse the realisations of textual and interpersonal Themes and to compare the Theme choices in Czech students’ theses with the academic discourse of Anglophone student writers as illustrated by BAWE, and to consider how the findings of the study can contribute to the teaching of academic writing at university level. The results of the investigation show that Czech students tend to use primarily simple and two-component Theme patterns; textual Themes tend to be overused, whereas interpersonal Themes are strongly underused. Since the underuse or overuse of some thematic patterns and their realisations may be addressed by explicit instruction aiming at expanding the range of rhetorical resources that the students have at their disposal to build a coherent discourse, the findings of this study are intended to inform the design of courses and study materials for the teaching of academic writing at university level.
PDF
