Journal of English for Academic Purposes最新文献

This study explores the difference in syntactic complexity between lay summaries (LSs) and scientific abstracts holistically and across their common rhetorical moves. Twenty-three syntactic complexity indices were employed to analyze a corpus of LSs and their counterpart abstracts from The New England Journal of Medicine. The analyses revealed that the LSs employed significantly shorter production units, more subordinate structures, more verb phrases, but fewer coordinate phrases and fewer complex nominals. Notably, the number of specific noun modifiers within complex nominals did not differ significantly between the two groups, indicating a comparable level of nominal sophistication. Moreover, we observed significant differences in the syntactic complexity of sentences realizing the common rhetorical moves across the two genres. Specifically, sentences introducing background and presenting results were syntactically simpler in the LSs, whereas the syntactic complexity of sentences summarizing methods and drawing conclusions remains largely consistent across both groups. The study contributes to a deeper understanding of the linguistic features of LSs and offers useful implications for LS writing practice.

For graduate students to succeed, acquiring skill at evaluating arguments is crucial, but reaching mastery at argument evaluation necessitates perspicacity and a willingness to challenge recognized authorities, published articles, and heretofore accepted “truths.” Teaching university students to become more effective at critique, however, has seldom been the focus of academic study within the context of English as a foreign language (EFL). In this action research, a critical-question approach was employed in an English for Academic Purposes (EAP) class designed to instruct graduate-level science majors to critique popular science articles. Instructional focus shifted, as the action research progressed, from general critical questions to scheme-relevant critical questions drawing upon Walton's argumentation scheme theory. Students' skill development level was assessed through group oral critiques and individual critique essay writing. Subsequent discourse-based interviews with five students revealed nuances in skill development. Results indicated that students' oral critique skills improved over time, whereas substantial enhancements in the targeted goal of their critique essay writing did not materialize. This study showcases how EFL university students' exposure to societal, rhetorical and power dynamics within a specific sociocultural context can impact their performance in critiquing written English text.

English-medium instruction (EMI) is on the rise in higher education (HE) across the globe. Despite this trend, a gap remains in the evaluation of EMI programs, leaving the question of what constitutes good practices in EMI largely unresolved. Moreover, the intersection between EMI and program evaluation is still elusive, resulting in a dearth of universally accepted guidelines and tools for evaluating EMI. This study introduces the English-Medium Instruction Q Evaluation (EMI-QE), an instrument designed to assess EMI in HE. The EMI-QE was demonstrated in a computer science program and was found to reflect several key strengths (e.g., lecturers’ confidence in using English and language support) and areas for improvement (e.g., lectures’ communication gaps and cultural sensitivity) of the program. In addition to addressing English proficiency and implementing an English certification policy, it was recommended that the program offer professional development on cultural sensitivity and inclusive teaching practices in order to address diversity issues, ensuring that all students, regardless of their backgrounds, are well supported.

Drawing on Appraisal theory within Systemic Functional Linguistics, this study employs a corpus-based approach to examine how EFL writers of high- and low-scoring argumentative essays use Engagement resources both individually and in combination to construct arguments within the argument chain at the paragraph level. The quantitative analysis reveals that while both groups use Contract Heterogloss more frequently to assert claims and conclusions, low-scoring writers heavily depend on Pronounce, whereas high-scoring writers utilize a diverse range of Contract Heterogloss. The qualitative analysis indicates that high-scoring writers develop and strengthen their assertive claims by presenting solid reasons and credible evidence to engage with potentially dissenting readers. These elements are incorporated into their writing through combinations of Engagement resources, such as Counter + Entertain/Deny/Justify and Endorse/Entertain + Entertain. However, low-scoring writers failed to adequately support their claims by skillfully deploying Engagement resources across different stages of argument, ultimately weakening the persuasiveness of their arguments. Our findings highlight the importance of providing students with instruction on Engagement strategies and their persuasive impact from a dialogic perspective. The identified strategies can therefore serve as pedagogical tools to assist students in constructing effective arguments by adeptly utilizing Engagement resources, facilitating interaction with external viewpoints and readers.

There has been growing interest in the performance and efficiency of ChatGPT in generating academic texts. However, little empirical research has been conducted on its performance in producing review article abstracts. This study adopts the genre analysis approach to investigate the rhetorical moves of review article abstracts in hard and soft science disciplines based on two self-compiled corpora, respectively including 160 scholar-written abstracts from four high-impact international journals, and 160 abstracts generated by ChatGPT, with an aim to reveal the similarities and differences between human-written and AI-generated English review article abstracts. The results show significant differences between human-written and ChatGPT-generated abstracts, first in the frequency of three out of the five moves, and then in the sequential order of moves, with each type of abstracts demonstrating a preference for move sequence patterns as well as obligatory and optional elements. The two types of abstracts differ significantly in the frequency of move embedding, but share the same embedding combination patterns. These findings may deepen our understanding of ChatGPT's capabilities and limitations in generating academic texts across different disciplines, help improve the generative AI system, then highlight the complex relationship among the structure of academic abstracts, discipline cultures and genre knowledge.

Although the grant proposal is a high-stakes genre for researchers, there are few analyses available for consultation by learners and most studies investigate only a limited number of successful proposals written by experienced academics. This study reports on a genre analysis of a learner corpus of grant proposal summaries (abstracts), written by researchers who operate at the periphery of academia. The proposals were written by exiled Syrian academics and submitted to the Council for At-Risk Academics (Cara) grant awarding body for research funding. A corpus of 102 proposal summaries was compiled consisting of 27 successful and 75 unsuccessful summaries, and a genre framework of three moves and ten steps was developed. Successful summaries were contrasted with unsuccessful summaries; this comparison reveals that unsuccessful summaries underuse the move Indicating the value of the research. Specifically, they tend to omit two steps: Importance (of the research) and Research Outcomes. All Cara summaries were also compared with Matzler's (2021) prototype; results show that both successful and unsuccessful summaries underuse the Methods step. These findings provide pointers to the genre functions likely to be most problematic for learners, and have immediate practical applications in pedagogic materials for proposal writing.

This meta-ethnography synthesises 26 qualitative studies published since 2000 to explore factors shaping NNES students' English academic writing experiences in higher education. The findings reveal that students' writing experiences are significantly influenced by their prior educational backgrounds, current learning contexts, self-perceived writing capabilities, and the strategies they employ to navigate various writing challenges, including a lack of preparedness, insufficient institutional support, and inadequate academic and linguistic competence. The findings also indicate that students' adaptive strategies, such as the use of cognitive, meta-cognitive, and social strategies, play a crucial role in mitigating academic writing deficiencies. The findings underscore the need for higher education institutions to implement more responsive and inclusive support systems that address the cognitive, linguistic, and affective dimensions of students' academic writing endeavours. Drawing upon the findings, a conceptual framework is developed, providing a holistic view of factors mediating students' writing experiences and offering theoretical and practical implications for enhancing educational practices and policies to better support these students’ academic endeavours.