A Comparative Study of the Rhetorical Moves and Communicative Functions of Journal and Thesis Abstracts
2
조회
0
다운로드
2
인용
0
참고문헌
키워드
초록
The abstract found at the beginning of most journal articles and theses has increasingly become an essential part of academic writing and acquiring the skills of writing an abstract is therefore important to L2 novice writers to enter the discourse community of their discipline. Based on 50 professional writers’ abstracts from five international journals in applied linguistics and 50 Korean students’ abstracts from their Master’s theses in the same discipline, the present study attempts to explore similarities and differences in the rhetorical moves of abstracts as well as major communicative functions and dominant linguistic features realized in each rhetorical move between two corpora. The results showed that although there was no statistically significant difference between expert writers and student writers in the frequency and distribution of moves, the use of certain communicative functions and linguistic features realized in each move distinguished professional writers from student writers. The Korean students’ thesis abstracts contained certain functional and linguistic inadequacies which may hamper the general readability and acceptability for the scientific community. Implications of the findings for the teaching of academic writing for NNS students are presented.
Abstract
The abstract found at the beginning of most journal articles and theses has increasingly become an essential part of academic writing and acquiring the skills of writing an abstract is therefore important to L2 novice writers to enter the discourse community of their discipline. Based on 50 professional writers’ abstracts from five international journals in applied linguistics and 50 Korean students’ abstracts from their Master’s theses in the same discipline, the present study attempts to explore similarities and differences in the rhetorical moves of abstracts as well as major communicative functions and dominant linguistic features realized in each rhetorical move between two corpora. The results showed that although there was no statistically significant difference between expert writers and student writers in the frequency and distribution of moves, the use of certain communicative functions and linguistic features realized in each move distinguished professional writers from student writers. The Korean students’ thesis abstracts contained certain functional and linguistic inadequacies which may hamper the general readability and acceptability for the scientific community. Implications of the findings for the teaching of academic writing for NNS students are presented.
참고문헌 (26)
- Anderson, K., "A genre analysis study of 80 medical abstracts", Edinburgh Working Papers in Applied Linguistics, 8, pp.1~23 (1997)
- Bhatia, V. K., "Analyzing genre : Language use in professional settings" (1993), Longman
- Busch-Lauer, I. A., "Abstracts in German medical journals : A linguistic analysis", Information Processing & Management, 31, pp.769~776 (1995)
- Connor, U., "Contrastive rhetoric : Cross-cultural aspects of second language writing" (1996), CUP
- Crookes, G., "Towards a validated analysis of scientific text structure", Applied Linguistics, 7, pp.57~70 (1986)
- Geloebiowski, Z., "Prominent messages in education and applied linguistics abstracts: How do authors appeal to their prospective readers?", Journal of Pragmatics, 41, pp.753~769 (2009)
- Graetz, N., "Teaching EFL students to extract structural information from abstracts, In Reading for professional purposes: Methods and materials in teaching languages", pp.123~135 (1985), Acco
- Holmes, R., "Genre analysis and the social sciences : An investigation of the structure of research article discussion sections in three disciplines", English for Specific Purposes, 16, pp.321~337 (1997)
- Huckin, T., "Abstracting from abstracts, In Academic writing in context", pp.93~103 (2006), Continuum
- Hyland, K., "Disciplinary discourses: Social interactions in academic writing" (2000), Pearson
- Lorés, R., "On RA abstracts : From rhetorical structure to thematic organization", English for Specific Purposes, 23, pp.280~302 (2004)
- Martin, P. M., "A genre analysis of English and Spanish research paper abstracts in experimental social sciences", English for Specific Purposes, 22, pp.25~43 (2003)
- Nwogu, K. N, "Structure of science popularisations : A genre-analysis approach to the schema of popularised medical texts", English for Specific Purposes, 10, pp.111~123 (1991)
- Paltridge, B., "Genre analysis and the identification of textual boundaries", Applied Linguistics, 15, pp.288~299 (1994)
- Pecorari, D., "Visible and occluded citation features in postgraduate second-language writing", English for Specific Purposes, 25, pp.4~29 (2006)
- Pho, P. D., "Research article abstracts in applied linguistics and educational technology : A study of linguistic realizations of rhetorical structure and authorial stance", Discourse Studies, 10, pp.231~250 (2008)
- Ren, H., "A comparison study on the rhetorical moves of abstracts in published research articles and Master’s foreign-language theses", English Language Teaching, 4, pp.162~166 (2011)
- Salager-Meyer, F., "Discourse flaws in medical English abstracts: A genre analysis per research- and text-type", Text, 10, pp.365~384 (1990)
- Salager-Meyer, F., "A text-type and move analysis study of verb tense and modality distribution in medical English abstracts", English for Specific Purposes, 11, pp.93~113 (1992)
- Samraj, B., "An exploration of a genre set : Research article abstracts and introductions in two disciplines", English for Specific Purposes, 24, pp.141~156 (2005)
- Samraj, B., "A discourse analysis of master’s theses across disciplines with a focus on introduction", Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 7, pp.55~67 (2008)
- Santos, M. B. D., "The textual organization of research paper abstracts in applied linguistics", Text, 16, pp.481~499 (1996)
- Swales, J., "Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings" (1990), Cambridge University Press
- Ventola, E., "Abstracts as an object of linguistic study, In Writing vs. speaking: Language, text, discourse, communication", pp.333~352 (1994), Gunter Narr
- Weissberg, R., "Writing up research: Experimental research report writing for students of English" (1990), Prentice Hall
- Williams, I. A., "Results section of medical research articles: analysis of rhetorical categories for pedagogical purposes", English for Specific Purposes, 18, pp.347~366 (1999)