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Investigating writing in the disciplines through corpora Viviana Cortes Iowa State University

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Title: Investigating writing in the disciplines through corpora Viviana Cortes Iowa State University


1
Investigating writing in the disciplines through
corporaViviana CortesIowa State University
2
Outline of the presentation
  • Course description
  • Example of class presentation
  • Student work sample
  • Student corpus work
  • Report

3
Course description
  • 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

4
Summarizing previous research Referencing and
citing
  • Move 2 Part 2

5
Part I Openings
  • 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.

6
Openings
  • The word first can be an indicator of the start
    of the research history
  • Look at these examples from the Published
    Research Articles Corpus
  • 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)

7
  • Openings
  • In other cases, Move 2 may start with a
    topic-sentence 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)

8
Part II Referencing
  • 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.
  • 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)

9
Referencing
  • 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
  • suggest, propose, report, show, investigate,
    find, study, discuss, examine, develop, identify,
    refine, reveal, stress, summarize, support.

10
Referencing
  • In addition, reference-points can show the
    reference as sentence element or as parenthetical
    reference, as in examples these examples
  • 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).
  • 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)

11
Student Work
  • Reading Comprehension Exercises
  • Exploring the Corpus
  • Concordancing

12
Reading Comprehension Exercise
13
(No Transcript)
14
Students answers
  • 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.

15
Exploring the corpus
16
(No Transcript)
17
Students findings
  • After reading some introductions, I could notice
    that most writer prefer to start the summary of
    previous research with a topic sentence.
    Examples
  • 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).

18
Concordancing
19
Concordancing
20
Students report (Agronomy)
  • 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 didnt 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.

21
Thank you
  • viviana_at_iastate.edu
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