REVISITING THE EFFECTS OF SOCIOCULTURAL CONTEXT AND DISCIPLINES ON THE USE OF HEDGES IN RESEARCH ARTICLES

This study examines whether sociocultural context and discipline substantially affect usage of hedges in research articles. The corpus for the study consists of 104 research articles from two languages (English and Indonesian) with the disciplines of applied linguistics and chemistry. The analysis reveals that there is a statistically significant effect of sociocultural context in research articles from applied linguistics only. Interaction effect between sociocultural context and discipline is also observed. However, there is no statistically significant effect of the disciplines. It seems that both factors are not the major factors influencing usage of hedges in research articles. One intrapersonal factor, namely the cultural models embraced by the individual authors in regard to hedging usage, is proposed as a significant factor which determines the degree of uncertainty of research articles.   

THE EFFECT OF GRAMMATICAL ACCURACY AND GENDER ON INTERLANGUAGE REQUEST STRATEGY

The present study was aimed at examining whether grammatical accuracy and gender were significant predictors of the use of request strategy (direct or indirect). Participants were 39 seventh semester students (29 males and 10 females) majoring in an International Business Management program at a public higher education institution in Bali. Their English proficiency levels ranged from pre-intermediate to intermediate. The participants were asked to write an e-mail based on a situation carefully designed so as to necessitate the use of indirect strategy. Grammatical accuracy was operationalized as an average score per T-unit. The head act of each request was coded as either direct or indirect, and the binary logistic regression was conducted on the data with significance level being set at p < .05. The results revealed that neither grammatical accuracy (Wald = 0.72, df = 1, p = 0.40) nor gender (Wald = 0.67, df = 1, p = 0.41) was a significant predictor of a request strategy use. The use of request strategy could not also be predicted from the interaction of grammatical accuracy and gender, Wald = 0.66, df = 1, p = 0.42. These results indicate that the odds for using indirect strategy are similar regardless of the level of grammatical accuracy and gender.Â

COMPARING HEDGES USED BY ENGLISH AND INDONESIAN SCHOLARS IN PUBLISHED RESEARCH ARTICLES: A CORPUS-BASED STUDY

The study examines whether English and Indonesian research articles written by their respective native speaker scholars are significantly different from each other in terms of the number of hedges used. Hedges are rhetorical features (e.g. may, perhaps, suggest) used to withhold complete commitment to the truth-value of propositions. The ultimate goal of the study is to examine whether Indonesian scholars need special instruction in hedging propositions. The assumption underlying the present study is that when they write in English, Indonesian scholars will deploy rhetorical features inherent in the Indonesian academic writing. Statistical analysis on 52 Applied Linguistics research articles (26 from each language) reveals that English research articles contain significantly more hedges than their Indonesian counterparts (Mann-Whitney U = 68.00, n1 = n2 = 26, p < 0.05, r = - 0.69), suggesting that Indonesian scholars are indeed in need of instruction that specifically focuses on hedging propositions in English

THE EFFECTS OF L2 PRAGMATIC AUTONOMOUS AND CONTROLLED MOTIVATIONS ON ENGAGEMENT WITH PRAGMATIC ASPECT

No study has investigated the relationship between student engagement per se and student motivation within second language (L2) pragmatics, notwithstanding the significance of engagement for L2 learning. The present study aimed to explore the effects of two global motivational orientations (autonomous and controlled motivations) on behavioral engagement within the perspective of L2 pragmatics by drawing on self-determination theory. A total of 76 college students agreed to participate and were requested to fill out a tailor-made, 34-item, 6-point Likert-scale questionnaire. The results of data analysis using standard multiple linear regression revealed that both Autonomous and Controlled Motivations significantly predicted and explained a large amount of variance in Engagement, F(2, 71) = 161.28, p < .01, R2 = .82, adjusted R2 = .81, and that the effect of Controlled Motivation, B = .33, t(71) = 8.05, p < .01, was twice as large as that of Autonomous Motivation, B = .16, t(71) = 4.91, p < .01. These findings indicate that students’ controlled motivation is more powerful in enhancing their engagement in learning L2 pragmatics. Pedagogically, it implies that teachers should bolster students’ motivation to learn L2 pragmatics, which can eventually lead to their increased engagement

Boosting in English and Indonesian Research Articles: A Cross-Cultural and Cross-Disciplinary Study

Boosters, defined as linguistic devices (e.g. certainly) used by writers to indicate full commitment to the truth value of a proposition, has received little attention from applied linguists, despite their persuasive power in research writing. The present study investigated the effects of the two variables of sociocultural context and discipline on the frequency of use of boosters in research articles. A specialized corpus of 104 research articles published between 2007 and 2010 taken from applied linguistics and chemistry written in English and Indonesian by the respective native speaker scholars were quantitatively analyzed using 2 x 2 Factorial ANOVA. The results showed that there was a significant main effect of sociocultural context, F (1, 100) = 44,34, p <0,05, ŋ2 = 0,307, a significant main effect of discipline, F (1,100) = 19,16, p < 0,05, ŋ2 = 0,161, and a significant interaction between sociocultural context and discipline, F (1,100) = 6,90, p < 0,05, ŋ2 = 0,065. However, the within-sociocultural context simple effects analysis revealed that English applied linguistics and chemistry research articles were not significantly different from each other, F (1,101) = 1,07, n.s. suggesting that, discipline might not be a decisive factor that influences boosting usage in research articles. These results indicate that the two variables (sociocultural context and discipline) exerted unequal influence upon boosting practices in research articles. The differential characteristics of the two sociocultural contexts are offered as explanations to account for the differential boosting practices of English and Indonesian research articles

COMPARING HEDGES USED BY ENGLISH AND INDONESIAN SCHOLARS IN PUBLISHED RESEARCH ARTICLES: A CORPUS-BASED STUDY

The study examines whether English and Indonesian research articles written by their respective native speaker scholars are significantly different from each other in terms of the number of hedges used. Hedges are rhetorical features (e.g. may, perhaps, suggest) used to withhold complete commitment to the truth-value of propositions. The ultimate goal of the study is to examine whether Indonesian scholars need special instruction in hedging propositions. The assumption underlying the present study is that when they write in English, Indonesian scholars will deploy rhetorical features inherent in the Indonesian academic writing. Statistical analysis on 52 Applied Linguistics research articles (26 from each language) reveals that English research articles contain significantly more hedges than their Indonesian counterparts (Mann-Whitney U = 68.00, n1 = n2 = 26, p < 0.05, r = - 0.69), suggesting that Indonesian scholars are indeed in need of instruction that specifically focuses on hedging propositions in English

Indonesian EFL Learners’ Motivation to Learn Second Language Pragmatics

Despite the significance of motivation and pragmatic competence for L2 learners, surprisingly, research into L2 pragmatics learning motivation is almost non-existent. Drawing on the self-determination theory of human motivation, the present study was carried out to investigate the level and nature of Indonesian EFL learners’ motivation for L2 pragmatics learning. A total of 76 Indonesian-speaking sophomores studying international business management were asked to fill out a tailor-made, 29-item online questionnaire designed to measure the level and nature of their motivation for L2 pragmatics learning. It was found that (i) Indonesian EFL students’ motivation for L2 pragmatics learning was insufficiently high, (ii) their intrinsic motivation was the highest compared to other types of motivation, and (iii) their external motivation was surprisingly low. These findings can be explained in the light of the students’ previously instructed foreign language learning experiences which placed undue emphasis on the formal aspects of the target language while marginalizing the social ones. Pedagogically, the findings imply that, owing to the malleability of human motivation, EFL teachers should employ principled instructional methods to promote their students’ L2 pragmatics learning motivation. Be that as it may, further studies need to be conducted to (in) validate the above-mentioned findings, taking into consideration the limitations of the present study

High neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio as a predictor of mortality in major burn patients

Major burns are a type of trauma with high mortality risk. Therefore, an accurate predictor of mortality indicators is needed in burn patients. This study used an analytical observational study design with a retrospective case-control approach. One such indicator is the neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio which was studied further in this study. Subjects included 60 burn patients with 30 survivors and 30 mortalities. The sex characteristics of the subjects were predominantly male (70%), with a median age of 38.5 (IQR 30.5 – 52.5) ​​years. Fire (68.3%) was the most common cause of burns. The median neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio decreased from day 1 (median 15.6, IQR 10.1–21.7) to day 3 (median 6.7, IQR 4.4 – 11.8). However, there was a different pattern in which the value of the neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio was found to increase on day 3 in the mortality group. The binomial logistic regression test found that the neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio value greater than or equal to 10 on the 3rd day was significantly associated with mortality risk with an aOR of 13.91 (95% CI 1.77 – 109.47). The conclusion is that A high neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio at day three can be used as a predictor of mortality in major burn patients