Journal of English for Academic Purposes最新文献

This study examined the rhetorical organization and the distribution of meta-discourse markers in a corpus of 20 qualitative research articles in the Applied Linguistics field. The findings of the study indicated that the seven-move structure proposed by prior research in quantitative datasets is also true in our qualitative dataset. Concerning steps, however, this study indicated that there are two new steps in the Comment on the Results move and also two new steps in the Deduction from the Research move, compared with the quantitative data of prior research. It was also found that both the distribution and frequency of meta-discourse markers indicate significant differences in comparison with quantitative research articles. Given these findings, we can say that although the schematic structure proposed for the Discussion sections of quantitative research articles is applicable to the qualitative corpus, it is also important not to ignore subtle nuances in the two research paradigms. Drawing academic writers' attention to these rhetorical and linguistic nuances arising from research paradigm differences can carry practical pedagogical implications. The findings of this study can raise novice writers’ awareness with respect to academic writing rhetoric and the functions of meta-discourse markers in qualitative research in Applied Linguistics.

Argumentation is a crucial skill in higher education, and argumentative essays are common genres that students have to write. However, studies have shown that many L2 learners have difficulty in developing an argument in their essays (Wingate, 2012) and that teachers face challenges in gaining an understanding of argumentation and how to scaffold L2 learners (Kibler, 2017). As a first step toward establishing a comprehensive argumentative writing framework for learners and teachers, this article presents a synthesis of relevant empirical studies that illuminate the argumentative features of academic discourse. Focusing on two research perspectives—argumentative writing for general academic purposes and argumentative writing for specific academic purposes—, this review aims to establish a nexus between generic knowledge about argumentation and discipline-specific contexts for argumentation. This review forms the theoretical foundations for the improvement of English for academic purposes practice, providing choices that teachers may have been previously unaware of, thus empowering them to move beyond the constraints of a structure-oriented understanding of argumentative writing and helping learners navigate the demands of higher education.

Tweetorials, long Twitter threads to communicate complex concepts, are becoming increasingly popular among medical experts. While a few studies have analyzed tweetorials which serve to communicate scientific information to a general audience, no attention has been paid to how tweetorials are used to report on and publicize research and results published in an article or preprint. In this study move analysis was conducted to analyze a corpus of 50 such biomedical publication-promoting tweetorials, in order to understand how the paper/preprint is recontextualized in this online genre. The analysis reveals that the moves in these tweetorials work together to draw attention to the publication and highlight the key findings and contributions. In addition to moves adapted from the research article, tweetorials incorporate some moves and steps intended to attract and engage the readers. The way these moves are realized is determined by the (semi-)expert audience, the promotional purpose of the genre, and the affordances of the medium. Features typical of the research article are combined with resources intended to create intimacy and solidarity and make authors more visible. The results suggest that these tweetorials are a suitable tool for researchers to promote their work and meet the challenges of the attention economy.

There is a dearth of research on cohesion in academic writing, specifically in research articles (RAs). In addition, there is little quantitative information on how cohesion is realized in different rhetorical sections of RAs. Thus, the present study investigated cohesion at sentence, paragraph, and the whole textual levels across the rhetorical sections of RAs of applied linguistics. To this end, 25 indices of local, global, and text cohesion were obtained from a corpus of 100 RAs in the field of applied linguistics divided into seven sections (abstract, introduction, literature review, method, results, discussion, and conclusion). The results of mixed-effects modeling showed that the measures of local and text cohesion were significantly affected by the rhetorical section. Moreover, random forest modeling revealed that the indices of global cohesion could predict the introduction, method, and results sections, while text cohesion was a classifier for abstract and conclusion sections. The findings are thoroughly discussed, offering insights into their theoretical and pedagogical implications.

This study reports on a diachronic investigation into the under-explored practice of using a rhetorical part – an unconventional, informationally non-compulsory part involving the use of rhetorical device(s) – in compound titles of published pragmatics research articles (RAs). By analyzing 2263 compound RA titles drawn from two high-profile international journals in pragmatics published during three periods of time (i.e., 1993–2002, 2003–2012, 2013–2022), we show that (a) the overall distribution of compound RA titles involving a rhetorical part has shown a statistically significant increase across the periods concerned, and that (b) rhetorical devices used in the rhetorical part mainly include quotations, rhetorical questions, metaphors, parodies, alliterations, and repetition, with quotations being the only type whose occurrence frequency has been steadily increasing across the three periods studied. The increasing use of a rhetorical part is attributed to the competitive context of international academic publication and the inherent characteristic of the pragmatics discipline. Hopefully, this study could provide new evidence for the transition to post-academic writing style as well as the documented rhetorical marketization of the academic genres, and inform academic title writing in practice.

While the grammatical marking of stance in academic writing is dynamic and susceptible to change over time, relatively few studies have tracked the changing patterns of stance expressions in contemporary medical academic writing. Based on 480 medical research articles published in top medical journals between 1970 and 2020, this study investigated the use of three major types of stance devices (modals, stance adverbials, and that-complement clauses) from a diachronic perspective. Results showed that the three types of stance devices and their functional/syntactic categories displayed a clear downward trend. In terms of stance markers within functional/syntactic categories, results demonstrated that stance markers indicating certainty declined in use, whereas stance markers conveying uncertainty increased. The results indicate that medical academic writing tends to become less interpersonal and more informational over time. In addition, medical writers are inclined to make more cautious and tentative knowledge claims across the years. These changes may be related to the development of medical science and have important pedagogical implications.

Gesture has been recognized as an important aspect of second language (L2) acquisition, playing a vital role in L2 communication. Previous research has shown that L2 learners' communicative efficacy can be facilitated through gesture mediation. In particular, L2 learners may find gesture a useful tool to deliver their subject-related academic presentations. However, whether classroom gesture instruction could boost L2 learners' gesture use in academic speaking context and their overall presentation performance has rarely been explored. Drawing on activity theory, this study aims to investigate the potential role of gesture instruction in intermediate L2 English learners' gesture use and their academic presentation performance. Our study found that L2 learners who received classroom gesture instructions showed significant improvement in their use of gestures, and outperformed the control group in a post-test presentation session, showing improvement in all gesture types among which beats were significantly increased. These findings confirm the teachability of gesture to enhance Chinese L2 English learners' academic presentation skills, proving gesture as an indispensable instructional component in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) classroom.

As multimodal texts become ubiquitous in the digital age, analyzing how writers interact with readers via the multimodal genre is getting increasingly important. Enlightened by Kress and van Leeuwen's (2006) work on visual design, D'Angelo (2016) extended the metadiscourse model (Hyland, 2004) and proposed a new framework of visual metadiscourse to analyze academic posters. In this study, we adopted the well-recognized metadiscourse model (Hyland, 2004; Hyland & Tse, 2004) and developed D'Angelo's (2016) visual metadiscourse framework to evaluate the comprehensibility and engagement of medical students' infographics completed in an EAP class. A total of 127 Visme infographics on how to prevent hypertension were collected and analyzed. We focused on how the students used diverse metadiscourse resources to inform and engage the audience in their infographics. We coded interactive and interactional features regarding both textual metadiscourse and visual metadiscourse for each poster and identified the overall patterns of the EAP students' metadiscourse use. We also zoomed in on illustrative posters to depict the students' use of various metadiscourse resources. This study adds to the metadiscourse model by extending it to the multimodal genre and sheds new light on multimodal pedagogy.

This study explores how English as a Second Language (ESL) students make reference to outside sources and incorporate textual repetition using multimodal resources in a video project. ESL students’ source use and citation practices have been studied extensively in the context of traditional text-based writing. However, little attention is paid to the issue of making citations in multimodal writing, despite the fact that multimodal writing has been a popular topic in recent decades. The current study bridges this gap by analyzing the cases of multimodal citation in 14 videos created by ESL students in a first-year composition course, accompanied by insights from two students. The analysis yields three patterns of incorporating sources—concurrently afforded, verbally afforded, and visually afforded citations—that employ different combinations of visual and audio resources. Direct quotations are incorporated as part of the narration as well as the visual representation. These multimodal citations and quotations fulfill three broad rhetorical functions: attribution, exemplification, and establishing links between sources. There is also evidence of knowledge transfer across genre and cultural boundaries. This study provides insights into how modal affordances could be leveraged to acknowledge propositional content in creative and rhetorically effective ways. It provides pedagogical ideas for designing multimodal assignments to engage students in the critical discussion of audience, intertextuality, and discourse community.