Delineating sampling procedures: Pedagogical significance of analysing sampling descriptions and their justifications in TESL experimental research reports

Teaching second language learners how to write research reports constitutes a crucial component in programmes on English for Specific Purposes (ESP) in institutions of higher learning. One of the rhetorical segments in research reports that merit attention has to do with the descriptions and justifications of sampling procedures. This genre-based study looks into sampling delineations in the Method-related sections of research articles on the teaching of English as a second language (TESL) written by expert writers and published in eight reputed international refereed journals. Using Swales’s (1990 & 2004) framework, I conducted a quantitative analysis of the rhetorical steps and a qualitative investigation into the language resources employed in delineating sampling procedures. This investigation has considerable relevance to ESP students and instructors as it has yielded pertinent findings on how samples can be appropriately described to meet the expectations of dissertation examiners, reviewers, and supervisors. The findings of this study have furnished insights into how supervisors and instructors can possibly teach novice writers ways of using specific linguistic mechanisms to lucidly describe and convincingly justify the sampling procedures in the Method sections of experimental research reports

Rhetorical categories and linguistic mechanisms in describing research conditions: a comparative genre-based investigation into researchers' choices in Education and Applied Linguistics

Novice writers of research reports often assume that research methods are generally not mentioned in the Results section of a research paper. The extent to which such an assumption is well-founded can be determined by conducting a mixed-method genre-based study of data obtained from authentic research papers. Using both quantitative and qualitative techniques in a genre analysis of two corpora of Results sections in linguistic and educational research articles, the researcher has investigated the various ways in which research methods are mentioned or reiterated in the Results sections of research reports. The findings have shown that despite the significantly different frequencies of steps related to data collection procedures in the two disciplines, research methods are frequently incorporated in the Results section. What merits attention, however, is an important range of communicative functions and an interesting repertoire of linguistic choices that should be thoroughly studied in the preparation of teaching material aimed at enlightening learners on how research methods need to be described in presenting results. The findings of this study will demonstrate that teaching novice writers how to describe research methods while presenting certain results should in fact constitute an important component in an ESP programme intended to promote academic literacy

Looking beyond comparative descriptions of subject behaviours: a pedagogically motivated qualitative study of research results in applied linguistics and education

Guiding novice research paper writers to present findings may form an essential component in an ESP course at the tertiary level. To enlighten second language learners on the possible types of findings generally presented in the Results section of research papers, the researcher analysed seven categories of results in journal articles on applied linguistics and education. By means of a genre-based approach recommended by Swales (1990; 2004) and employed by Brett (1994), various categories of findings were analysed with reference to both rhetorical functions and prominent linguistic resources. The results have shown that text segments related to findings may exhibit distinctly different linguistic characteristics that need to be highlighted in exercises aimed at helping learners distinguish categories of findings. This investigation is of considerable pedagogical significance, in that the close link between experienced writers’ communicative intentions and their linguistic choices can be effectively demonstrated to help learners present findings in the two academic fields

Elucidating data analysis procedures in research reports on language education: an inquiry into writers? communicative resources

Helping learners acquire the skills in writing research methods constitutes an important component in various programmes in tertiary education. One of the challenges encountered by novice writers in language education has to do with the elucidation of data analysis procedures in experimental research reports. Adopting a genre-based approach, this study analyses the rhetorical strategies and linguistic resources used for recounting and justifying the steps taken in analyzing data. Employing the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS), the researcher conducted a quantitative analysis of the rhetorical steps used by experienced writers in 32 experimental research reports published in eight reputed international refereed journals. Attention was directed to the determination of the degree to which the frequencies of the steps under investigation-focused headings differ from those under procedure-focused headings. A detailed qualitative analysis of the writers’ textual data was also conducted to identify the broad spectrum of language mechanisms employed in recounting and justifying the data analysis procedures. The findings have shed some light on what and how dissertation supervisors and instructors can possibly highlight while guiding second language writers to recount and justify data analysis procedures in experimental studies on language education

Commenting on research results in applied linguistics and education: a comparative genre-based investigation

As university students are frequently given the tasks of writing research reports to fulfil their respective programme requirements, teaching novice writers to present the results of their reports understandably constitutes an essential component of English lessons at tertiary level. While past research has shown that results are consistently commented on in the Discussion section in various disciplines, the degrees to which they are allowed in the Results section may vary across different disciplines and across research reports based on different research methods. Without a detailed investigation into such disciplinary and methodological differences, instructors and supervisors would find it difficult to inform novice writers about the permissibility and necessity to incorporate comments of different categories in the Results section. This mixed-method genre-based study used quantitative and qualitative techniques to (i) identify the extent to which disciplinary and methodological differences have a bearing on the frequencies of comments in the Results sections of research papers in applied linguistics and education, and (ii) investigate the various categories of comments in relation to their prominent linguistic mechanisms. The findings of this study can also help instructors design relevant teaching materials that illustrate how experienced writers link their comments with major categories of research results

Indicating Significance of Current Research: Pedagogical Implications of a Genre Analysis for Dissertation Writing

Effectiveness of supervising undergraduate and postgraduate students in dissertation writing hinges largely on a range of factors comprising not merely a supervisor’s competence in an area of specialisation but also the supervisor’s language awareness required for guiding a candidate through a difficult process of writing the dissertation itself. Using a corpus of management research articles and the methods for analysing the research genre, this paper examines how experienced writers use various rhetorical and linguistic strategies to highlight the significance of their research in the terminal portions of their papers. The findings of this study have important implications for the teaching of English for research purposes (ERP) particularly as they indicate how second language learners may be taught to highlight the strengths of their studies based on the findings reported. I will also discuss the extent to which supervisors and instructors can help students augment the acceptability of a dissertation by developing teaching materials that introduce various schematic and linguistic strategies intended to highlight the strengths of a candidate’s research findings

Associating Interference with Strategy Instruction: An Investigation into the Learning of the Present Continuous

Analysing errors committed by second language learners in the acquisition of English tenses, particularly the present continuous, can offer great insights into learners’ difficulties in acquiring target language rules. Focusing on a set of eight rules governing the use of the present continuous, one of the verb forms frequently employed in daily conversations, the researcher employed elicitation procedures aimed at discovering difficulties encountered by learners in second language acquisition. With reference to the errors analysed, the researcher claims that the learners’ first language is not the only linguistic factor affecting the acquisition of English tenses. The learners’ failure to grasp the significance of auxiliary verbs used in combination with the inflectional suffixes of the main verbs, in particular, has been identified as a factor causing learning difficulties. While the subjects’ inability to relate some verb forms to temporal and frequency adverbials may be ascribed to intralingual interference, which is associated with developmental sequence and general learning strategies, it is interesting to note that interference causing a large portion of the errors may be both intralingual and interlingual in nature. On the basis of the data elicited, it is recommended that both finite and non-finite verbs should be explained in relation one another in the syntactic, semantic and morphological aspects. Cognitive and memory-related learning strategies are also recommended to enhance the learning of the present continuous in relation to other verb forms and their associated semantic functions

Presenting findings on subjects' behaviours: a genre-based study of linguistic and educational research reports

While different categories of findings are frequently presented in linguistic and educational research papers, four categories of results are closely associated with descriptions of groups’ and individuals’ behaviours respectively. These categories deserve much attention in an ESP course for students in the related disciplines as numerous studies involve detailed descriptions of subjects’ behaviours. Understandably, undergraduate and postgraduate students are expected to describe subjects’ behaviours in appropriate and comprehensible ways that are generally accepted by members of the academic discourse community, particularly examiners of research reports and dissertations. Using a qualitative genre analysis of two corpora of Results sections in linguistic and educational research articles published from 2002 to 2004, the researcher has studied the various patterns in which behaviours of subjects are presented as findings. Given that numerous linguistic problems are often encountered by novice writers while attempting to present findings in English research reports, this paper discusses the relevant linguistic resources that ESP instructors need to highlight in the process of teaching second language learners how to present findings pertaining to the descriptions of behaviours. The findings of this study have important pedagogical implications for developing language literacy as they distinctly show how concepts of rhetorical categories and their associated linguistic choices can be effectively applied in teaching tertiary students to describe subjects’ behaviours in an interesting range of research contexts

Method sections of management research articles: a pedagogically motivated qualitative study.

Notwithstanding the voluminous literature devoted to research genres, more investigation needs to be conducted to demonstrate the pedagogical significance of studying linguistic features in relation to communicative functions. Motivated by a concern for the pedagogical applicability of genre analysis, this paper investigates the extent to which results of an analysis may be effectively employed for the second language acquisition of syntactic structures and lexical items commonly found in the Method sections of management research articles. On the basis of the data analyzed, I suggest that writing courses in tertiary institutions should be tailored to meet the needs of students encountering di?culties in associating linguistic features with communicative functions of academic texts. Using an innovative and comprehensible approach to describing the steps under each rhetorical move, I have provided relevant materials that may be usefully exploited in the teaching of the genre specifications of the Method sections of management research articles. Despite the acknowledgment that no single model can be considered entirely appropriate for learners in different academic disciplines, reasons are given to explain why constituent steps should be investigated in sufficient detail if ESP teachers are to provide a pedagogically meaningful model for second language learners in a particular discipline

Interference in the Acquisition of the Present Perfect Continuous: Implications of a Grammaticality Judgment Test

Linguistic interference in the acquisition of tenses has remained a fertile area for extensive studies on the teaching of English to speakers of other languages. Congruent with previous studies, this study aims to find out whether errors in the learning of a grammatical category is more ascribable to negative transfer resulting from learners’ first language or the rules governing its use in the target language. Employing a grammaticality judgment test in the form of an elicitation procedure, the researcher focuses on second language learners’ acquisition of the present perfect continuous in an attempt to investigate the extent to which interference may occur as a result of learners’ confusion with temporal and aspectual values that collectively form part of the learners’ mother tongue and second language. Using the data elicited, the researcher has found that linguistic interference should not be construed as merely negative transfer from the learner’s first language because temporal and aspectual values associated with verb forms in the target language itself may also be an essential component of interference. Based on the findings, the researcher has recommended a three-pronged interactive approach to the teaching of the present perfect continuous, related verbal categories, and temporal/frequency adverbials