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

1. TESOL '08 - New York 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 TESOL '08 - New York

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 TESOL '08 - New York

4. TESOL '08 - New York Summarizing previous researchReferencing 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. TESOL '08 - New York

6. Openings TESOL '08 - New York 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) TESOL '08 - New York

8. Part II: Referencing TESOL '08 - New York 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 TESOL '08 - New York 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) TESOL '08 - New York

11. Student Work • Reading Comprehension Exercises • Exploring the Corpus • Concordancing TESOL '08 - New York

12. Reading Comprehension Exercise TESOL '08 - New York

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14. Student’s 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. TESOL '08 - New York

15. Exploring the corpus TESOL '08 - New York

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17. Student’s 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). TESOL '08 - New York

18. Concordancing TESOL '08 - New York

19. Concordancing TESOL '08 - New York

20. Student’s 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 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. TESOL '08 - New York

21. Thank you • viviana@iastate.edu TESOL '08 - New York