Raising collective awareness of rhetorical strategies
-
Sue Birch-Bécaas
Abstract
Scientists who are non-native speakers (NNSs) may receive inadequate training in the skills required to write scientific English, and may even be unaware of the various language and procedural issues involved in gaining acceptance from their own research community. Pedagogic materials exist for teaching these skills but, to date, there has been little interactive online assistance available. In addition, their own institutions may not even formally recognize this need by providing writing courses for doctoral students and practising researchers. This article describes how a new online writing tool can be used to raise awareness with regard to the writing of research article (RA) introductions in a multidisciplinary perspective. The tool is based on a corpus of NNS drafts and revised versions that have been processed pedagogically to highlight rhetorical and linguistic features. In this chapter, a series of communicative activities is described which progressively draws the learners’ attention to some of the rhetorical, organisational and linguistic features common to RA introductions that they may use when writing their own texts. Keywords: research writing; online tool; genre analysis; expert writing; typical errors
Abstract
Scientists who are non-native speakers (NNSs) may receive inadequate training in the skills required to write scientific English, and may even be unaware of the various language and procedural issues involved in gaining acceptance from their own research community. Pedagogic materials exist for teaching these skills but, to date, there has been little interactive online assistance available. In addition, their own institutions may not even formally recognize this need by providing writing courses for doctoral students and practising researchers. This article describes how a new online writing tool can be used to raise awareness with regard to the writing of research article (RA) introductions in a multidisciplinary perspective. The tool is based on a corpus of NNS drafts and revised versions that have been processed pedagogically to highlight rhetorical and linguistic features. In this chapter, a series of communicative activities is described which progressively draws the learners’ attention to some of the rhetorical, organisational and linguistic features common to RA introductions that they may use when writing their own texts. Keywords: research writing; online tool; genre analysis; expert writing; typical errors
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Preface vii
- Issues in corpus-informed research and learning in ESP 1
-
Part I. ESP corpora for language research
- From text to corpus 17
- Phraseological patterns in a large corpus of biomedical articles 45
- A corpus-based study of adjectival vs nominal modification in medical English 83
- Semantic prosody and specialised translation, or how a lexico-grammatical theory of language can help with specialised translation 103
-
Part II. ESP corpora for genre-based approaches
- Oralising text slides in scientific conference presentations 137
- Corpora and academic writing 167
- Measuring the construction of discoursal expertise through corpus-based genre analysis 193
-
Part III. ESP corpora for language teaching and learning
- Bringing data and dictionary together 217
- Raising collective awareness of rhetorical strategies 239
- Corpus consultation for ESP 261
- Notes on contributors 293
- Author index 297
- Subject index 301
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Preface vii
- Issues in corpus-informed research and learning in ESP 1
-
Part I. ESP corpora for language research
- From text to corpus 17
- Phraseological patterns in a large corpus of biomedical articles 45
- A corpus-based study of adjectival vs nominal modification in medical English 83
- Semantic prosody and specialised translation, or how a lexico-grammatical theory of language can help with specialised translation 103
-
Part II. ESP corpora for genre-based approaches
- Oralising text slides in scientific conference presentations 137
- Corpora and academic writing 167
- Measuring the construction of discoursal expertise through corpus-based genre analysis 193
-
Part III. ESP corpora for language teaching and learning
- Bringing data and dictionary together 217
- Raising collective awareness of rhetorical strategies 239
- Corpus consultation for ESP 261
- Notes on contributors 293
- Author index 297
- Subject index 301
