Transcript Investigating writing in the disciplines through corpora

TESOL '08 - New York
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INVESTIGATING WRITING IN
THE DISCIPLINES THROUGH
CORPORA
VIVIANA CORTES
IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY
Outline of the presentation
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Course description
Example of class presentation
Student work sample
Student corpus work
Report
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Course description
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Taught in a computer lab
Maximum 20 students
Corpus of research papers collected by students
Concordancing software
Materials based on empirical studies on schema
theory (Swales, 1981, 2004) presented by
instructor on screen (Power Point or other)
Student worksheet - Readings from studies
Explore the corpus exercises
Final reports for each section
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SUMMARIZING
PREVIOUS RESEARCH
REFERENCING AND CITING
Move 2 – Part 2
Part I: Openings
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Swales (1981) found that in many cases Move 2 is the
most extensive section of introductions. The move often
opens with some summary of one or two pieces of
research which are relevant to the title or core of the
study that is being reported, probably taking them in
chronological order. Even though there seems to be no
particular signal of onset, the writers generally
indicate to the reader that the beginning of a
summary of previous research is about to take place.
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Openings
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The word ‘first’ can
be an indicator of
the start of the
research history:
 Look at these
examples from the
Published Research
Articles Corpus:
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The first researcher to draw
attention to the personal
narratives of African American
children within an educational
context was Labov (1972), who
documented the structure of
African American male
adolescents using a… (Applied
Linguistics)
The first reference to possibly
confirmed meteor effects on radio
propagation seems to be that of
Skellett who suggested that effects
observed… (Physics and
Astronomy)
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Openings
In other cases, Move 2 may start with a topicsentence generalization which characterizes the
research history:
 Much of the empirical literature has been in the
context of Western society; less research has been
conducted in Asian society, where culture and values
differ significantly from the West. (Computer
Science)
 Recent examples in the process modeling literature
include Bauer et al. (2000) and Asprey and
Macchietto (2000). (Statistics)
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Part II: Referencing
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In many cases, at a given
‘reference-point’ there may
be references to one or more
publications. In his study,
Swales (1981) found a
‘reference-point’ with as
may as eleven references. In
some references, the authors
were referred to within the
main structure of the
sentence; sometimes as
subject and sometimes as
agent following by.
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Peric et al. (1992, 1993)
studied the properties of
discontinuous bifurcation
solutions for elasticplastic
solids… (Engineering)
Previous reports presented
parameter estimates for cow
traits as summarized by
Arango et al. (2002)…
(Animal Science)
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Referencing
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As we will see in the language
conventions section, the orientation
when referencing can be of two types:
subject orientation or author
orientation.
The sentences used when referencing
employ reporting main verbs: verbs
that refer to the communicative rather
than experimental function of the
researchers. These verbs are in the past
tense or in the present perfect. Swales
suggests a short list of verbs that can
exemplify those verbs used when
referencing:
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suggest, propose,
report, show,
investigate, find, study,
discuss, examine,
develop, identify,
refine, reveal, stress,
summarize, support.
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Referencing
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In addition, referencepoints can show the
reference as sentence
element or as
parenthetical
reference, as in
examples these
examples:
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Underwood, Schmitt and Galpin (2004)
demonstrate that words, when they are
part of formulaic sequences, are read
more quickly than the same words when
embedded in non-formulaic text.
(Applied Linguistics).
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For example, explicit reference now
can be found to the significance of
design in achieving environmental,
economic, and social policy goals at
national, regional, and international
levels.3 (Architecture)
Student Work
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Reading Comprehension Exercises
Exploring the Corpus
Concordancing
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Reading Comprehension Exercise
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Student’s answers
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1.
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The move often opens with some summary of one or two pieces
of research which are relevant to the title or core of the study
that is being reported. There may be reference to one or more
publications.
When it opens with some summary of one or two pieces of
research, the word first can indicate the start of the research
history. In the other case, you can find a reference point which
the authors refer to within the main structure of a sentence. It
can be the subject or the agent following the word by.
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Exploring the corpus
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Student’s findings
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After reading some introductions, I could notice that most writer
prefer to start the summary of previous research with a topic
sentence. Examples:
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The language of the RA has been characterised as having an
apparent absence of rhetoric. Bazerman (1998, p. 14) describes
this characteristic in the following way:
The most systematic research available on this transition is that
described in Ferreiro (1991), Ferreiro and GoÂmez Palacio
(1982), and Ferreiro and Teberosky (1979/1982).
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Concordancing
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Concordancing
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Student’s report (Agronomy)
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The way the authors signal that they are about to start the summary of previous
research of the introduction is pretty constant in my discipline, Agronomy. In four
out of five introductions (because the fifth didn’t have Move 2) the authors used
the word ‘research’ or ‘studies’ followed by a verb in present perfect tense ( 4
examples are bellow this paragraph). None of them used the word ‘first’ (I used
the program Word Search) or the following verb in the past, but present
perfect.
We can see that all authors in my discipline (Agronomy) referred to previous
research following a subject orientation. All the verbs were in the present
perfect. Some verbs were commonly used to report previous studies in my
discipline such as: identify, study, address, and conduct. Therefore, two more
verbs (address and conduct) can be added to the list of verbs mentioned by
Swales (1990): suggest, propose, report, show, investigate, find, study, discuss,
examine, develop, identify, refine, reveal, stress, summarize, support.
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Thank you
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[email protected]
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