Journal of English for Academic Purposes最新文献

One of the challenges in higher education is providing educational access to an increasingly multilingual and multicultural student population. Universities are therefore considering using English as language of instruction (EMI), but students' limited proficiency in English can be a drawback. Live subtitling might help to overcome this language barrier. The aim of this article is to report on (1) whether these subtitles influence their performance and (2) how university students in Flanders perceive EMI lectures with intralingual live subtitles. This has been investigated during five 2-h Marketing lectures taught in English to students of Economics who have Dutch as mother tongue (27% bilingual). The live subtitling was produced in each lecture in real time through respeaking during two lecture fragments of approximately 25 min. Quantitative and qualitative data have been collected using (1) online language tests, consisting of a certified listening test and vocabulary test to determine the students’ English proficiency; (2) an online demographics questionnaire (e.g. mother tongue and self-reported proficiency in English); (3) tests after each lecture about the content and perception of the lecture. The findings show that, on average, students performed noticeably better in a comprehension test when given intralingual live subtitles.

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.