the citation skills of Chinese students entering - PowerPoint Presentation

the citation skills of Chinese students entering pre-sessional EAP COURSES in the u.K.From corpus-based research to pedagogic activities ian.johnson@port.ac.uk / @ianjohnson168 “…find a voice” “Helping students… Ian Johnson

Research questionsUsing a corpus-based approach, with writing sampled from students with Chinese L1, attending pre-sessional English for Academic Purposes (EAP) courses in the U.K: To what extent do citation practices diverge from ‘proficient’ exemplar writing?What implications arise from any observed variation? How can pedagogy respond to the findings?

RationaleA significant student groupChina contributed 25% of the U.K’s international undergraduates (58,800) in 2014-15 (HESA, 2015) A rite of passageCitation is key to the ‘dialogic’ (Bakhtin, 1981) nature of writing, and to “claiming membership of the discourse community.” (Groom, 2000:66) A research gapUndergraduates seldom studied, despite extensive research on higher level writing (Hyland, 1999; Bloch, 2010; Nesi, 2014)

Citation and dialogic writingNon-integral citationThe Earth is flat (Smith, 2010)Integral citationSmith (2010) believes that the Earth is flat The use and choice of a reporting verb allows writers to ‘endorse’, ‘acknowledge’ or ‘distance’ from cited claims(Martin & White, 2005:134; Lee, 2010).

SampleAnalogue corpus (Chinese Learner English (CLE))178 draft essays, on sociological topicsProduced six weeks after arrival in U.K; L1 Chinese207,000 word tokensExemplar / Reference corpus (British Academic Written English (BAWE)) Social Sciences sub corpus of BAWE1,999,130 word tokensNesi’s (2014) analysis of BAWE citations acted as a model

Corpus Query Language Original (Nesi, 2014)[tag = "NP.?"] [word = "et"]? [word = "\."]? [word = "al"]? [word = "\."]? [word = "\("] [tag = "CD"] [word = "\)"] [tag = "VV|VO|VVD|VVZ|MD"] Modified to:[tag = "NP.?"] [word = "et"]? [word = "\."]? [word = "al"]? [word = "\."]? [word = "\("] [tag = "CD.?"] [] {0,3} [word = "\)"] ? [tag = "VV.* |MD|VH.* "] Additional capture Present Perfect tense: X has said… Follow-on citations: X also said… Irregular citations X, he said… Sufficiency question: No CQL discovered all citation attempts

Reporting Verb Log Likelihood (Keyness) Say ****106.65 Show ****36.61 Find ***12.33 Mention **10.12 Claim **7.1 Argue 3.35 Suggest *4.14 Explain *4.82 Believe**6.86   CLEBAWE Research2121Mental19Textual7869   CLEBAWE Present4365Past5734 CLE: 31% of integral citationsBAWE: No comparable results‘Expert’: 22% (Pickard, 1995)  CLEBAWEIntegral2326Non7774 Citation Integral or non- integral Inclusion of quote Reporting verb Act type reported Tense ENDORSE

Results “It is a common experience for EAP teachers to have great difficulty in identifying the point of view that a non-native speaker is trying to convey, or even to assume [one] … only to find this unexpectedly contradicted in a subsequent explicit evaluation” (Thompson & Ye, 1991: 366).

Logogenesis“As the text unfolds, patterns emerge, some of which acquire added value through resonating with other patterns in the text or context of situation… behind it lies the potential that informs every choice made by the speaker or the writer, and in terms of which these choices are interpreted by listeners or readers” (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014:63, my emphasis)For example, X claims… would typically be challenged either by patterning with an adversative (ibid.: 612) conjunction such as However, or by the introduction of a counter claim at a later point.

‘Argue’ + conjunction (BAWE random sample)

‘Show’ + noun phrase (BAWE random sample)

Pedagogically speaking…Across CLE, a 5% average mark increase was found for essays with five report verb clauses versus one.Analogue and exemplar corpora: potential for developing student writing (Thompson & Tribble, 2001).Gardner and Nesi (2013): BAWE corpus-based citation resources on British Council website.Should the focus be on teaching usage of a small range of key reporting verbs? Can a corpus activity help?

A modelShowDemonstrate Believe Find Claim Suggest Argue State Low High Degree of commitment The proposed teaching activity aims to sensitise learners to the difference between Show (endorse), State (acknowledge) and Argue (distance).

Activity 1 – Testing knowledge/intuitionTalk to a partner. What, if any, meaning difference is there between these three sentences?Johnson (2016) argued that drinking green tea is good for weight lossJohnson (2016) stated that drinking green tea is good for weight lossJohnson (2016) showed that drinking green tea is good for weight loss

Activity 2 - Deduction Similarly, Perrow (1973)    ?  _______   that organisational change through managerial grids, training and job enrichment is ineffective However, Carter et al (2001) men and women generally think equally Hamner (1976) and Luthans (1974) people learn the required behaviours, exhibit them to gain rewards, and performance improves However, as Higgins (1987) , by late 1930 the balance of class power had shifted in favour of the labour movement Most importantly, as Renton (2005) , the BNP’s electoral breakthrough of 2003 needed re-legitimisation from the 2004 elections Choose one reporting verb from show, argue and state to complete the group of sentences: NB: there are three such blocks presented together in the real activity, one for each verb

Activity 3 – Textual features in combinationLook at the sections to the left of each reporting verbUsing two different colours, highlight all:AdverbsNoun phrasesWhich reporting verb is most often preceded by:Adverbs Noun phrasesNeitherActivities to be followed by further tasks and discussion around what can be deduced about the meaning of the three reporting verbs.

Activity 4 – Grammatical formationLook at the sections to the right of each reporting verbWhat three main grammar patterns can you find? List them below. Are the possible grammar patterns the same or different for the three verbs?Which of the three verbs is most used in the examples to introduce “direct quotations”?

Activity 5 – Application of knowledgeFill in the blanks:The verb ___________ is used to report something in positive terms, often the result of a piece of academic research or studyThe verb ___________ is used to report an idea or opinion which is part of a wider academic debate, or ‘not a definite fact’The verb ___________ is used to report neutrally something that has been said or written.Can you think of one alternative verb each for the meanings in a, b and c?

Activity 6 – Application to new examplesChoose the most appropriate reporting verb from argue, show or state in these sentences:Analysis by Sekine et al (1989) __________ that neither the AER or ZPA formed in the miceHowever, O’Connor (1999) ___________ travel agencies are good at searching and packaging loads of information Fosu (1991) __________ , however, that by entering manufacturing share separately, Balassa (1984) assumes exports ….Wright et al (2001) ________ “food taste preferences are now inextricably linked to artistic design and media manipulation”.Parsons (1982) _________ through a probit model that factors like mortality, age …. Beck (1992) _________ that it was after the 1950s that consumers became more conscious about their identity

Activity 7 – Corpus investigationStudy the two concordances. Both are 20 randomly selected lines containing a reporting verb. The first comes from high scoring student writing, the second from novice level student writing. What differences do you notice?

ReferencesBakhtin, M. (1981). The dialogic imagination. Austin: University of Texas Press. Bloch, J. (2010). A concordance-based study of the use of reporting verbs as rhetorical devices in academic papers. Journal of Writing Research, 2(2), 219-244 Dunning, T. (1993). Accurate methods for the statistics of surprise and coincidence. Computational Linguistics 19(1), 61-74Gardner, S. & Nesi, H. (2013). A classification of genre families in university student writing. Applied Linguistics, 34(1), 25-52Groom, N. (2000). “A workable balance”: Self and sources in argumentative writing. In S. Mitchell & R. Andrews (Eds.) Learning to argue in higher education, (pp. 65-73) . Portsmouth, NH: Boynton CookHalliday, M.A.K. & Matthiessen, C.M.I.M. (2014.) Halliday’s introduction to functional grammar. (4th ed.). Abingdon: Routledge HESA. (Higher Education Standards Authority) (2015). Students in Higher Education 2013-14Hyland, K. (1999). Academic attribution: Citation and the construction of disciplinary knowledge. Applied Linguistics, 20( 3 ) , 341-367

ReferencesLee, S-H. (2010). Attribution in high- and low- graded persuasive essays by tertiary students. Functions of Language, 17(2), 181-207. Martin, J.R & White, P.R.R. (2005). The language of evaluation. Basingstoke: Palgrave Nesi, H. (2014). Corpus Query Techniques for investigating citation in student assignments. In M. Gotti & D. Giannoni (eds.) Corpus analysis for descriptive and pedagogic purposes (pp. 85-106). Bern: Peter Lang. Pecorari, D. (2013). Teaching to avoid plagiarism: How to promote good source use. Maidenhead, UK: Open University Press.Pickard, V. (1995). Citing previous writers: What can we say instead of ‘say’? Hong Kong Papers in Linguistics and Language Teaching, 18(1995), 89-102 Rayson, P. (2015). Log-Likelihood and effect size calculator. University of Lancaster. Retrieved from Lancaster University website: http://ucrel.lancs.ac.uk/llwizard.htmlThompson, P. & Tribble, C. (2001). Looking at citations: Using corpora in English for academic purposes. Language Learning & Technology, 5 (3), 91-105.Thompson, G. & Ye, Y.Y. (1991). Evaluation in reporting verbs used in academic papers. Applied Linguistics, 12(4), 365-382.