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Framing the Research and Engaging the Reader in Graduate Engineering Students’ Abstracts

  • Vesna Bogdanović

    Vesna Bogdanović holds a PhD degree in English Language and Linguistics from the University of Novi Sad, Serbia. She is employed as an associate p[rofessor at the Faculty of Technical Sciences, University of Novi Sad, Serbia, where she has been teaching ESP and EAP courses for more than 20 years. She is the author/co-author of a number of scientific papers, a book on metadiscourse, and four ESP textbooks for students of civil engineering and students of graphic engineering and design. Her interests include the analyses of well-written and pragmatic ESP textbooks, research on categories of metadiscourse, and pragmatic aspects of academic English.

         and Dragana Gak

    Dragana Gak is employed at the Faculty of Technical Sciences, University of Novi Sad, Serbia as an assistant professor. She has been teaching courses in general English (GE), business English (BE), and English for specific purposes (ESP) for more than twenty years. She defended her doctoral dissertation at the Faculty of Philosophy, University in Novi Sad in the field of English language and linguistics. Her main interests include metadiscourse in business English, academic writing, and business communication in industrial engineering and management.
Published/Copyright: July 3, 2024
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Chinese Journal of Applied Linguistics
From the journal Chinese Journal of Applied Linguistics Volume 47 Issue 2

Abstract

Writing an abstract is a challenging assignment for graduate students as it requires condensing all the extensive research into a few sentences, providing sufficient background knowledge, and presenting findings compellingly to the academic community. This study observes how graduate engineering students cope with writing their abstracts for their first published papers, with a specific focus on metadiscourse. The study is based on the learner corpus of 1,746 abstracts (117,535 words) written by non-native English speakers in English and Serbian during their Master’s studies. The research follows Hyland’s taxonomy, focusing on interactive frame markers and interactional engagement markers, together with metadiscursive nouns in order to uncover cross-linguistic patterns and pedagogical implications. The comparison of the absolute and relative frequency with statistical significance and log likelihood between Serbian and English sub-corpora demonstrates that students tend to use frame markers with greater frequency in Serbian abstracts than in English ones. Additionally, engagement markers, and especially directives, are used twice as often as frame markers in both sub-corpora, with a higher prevalence in English abstracts. Following the qualitative and quantitative analyses, the findings offer pedagogical implications related to the range of frame markers and metadiscursive nouns used by students to introduce their research aims and the range of engagement markers used to engage readers in their research and thus claim their credibility in academic writing.

Keywords: abstracts; frame markers; engagement markers; metadiscursive nouns; graduate students’ writing

About the authors

Vesna Bogdanović

Vesna Bogdanović holds a PhD degree in English Language and Linguistics from the University of Novi Sad, Serbia. She is employed as an associate p[rofessor at the Faculty of Technical Sciences, University of Novi Sad, Serbia, where she has been teaching ESP and EAP courses for more than 20 years. She is the author/co-author of a number of scientific papers, a book on metadiscourse, and four ESP textbooks for students of civil engineering and students of graphic engineering and design. Her interests include the analyses of well-written and pragmatic ESP textbooks, research on categories of metadiscourse, and pragmatic aspects of academic English.

Dragana Gak

Dragana Gak is employed at the Faculty of Technical Sciences, University of Novi Sad, Serbia as an assistant professor. She has been teaching courses in general English (GE), business English (BE), and English for specific purposes (ESP) for more than twenty years. She defended her doctoral dissertation at the Faculty of Philosophy, University in Novi Sad in the field of English language and linguistics. Her main interests include metadiscourse in business English, academic writing, and business communication in industrial engineering and management.

Acknowledgments

This research has been supported by the Serbia’s Ministry of Science, Technological Development and Innovation (Contract No. 451-03-65/2024-03/200156) and the Faculty of Technical Sciences, University of Novi Sad, Serbia through the project “Scientific and Artistic Research Work of Researchers in Teaching and Associate Positions at the Faculty of Technical Sciences, University of Novi Sad” (No. 01-3394/1).

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Published Online: 2024-07-03
Published in Print: 2024-06-25

© 2024 BFSU, FLTRP, Walter de Gruyter, Cultural and Education Section British Embassy

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Metadiscourse in a Disciplinary Context Guest Editors: Erdem Akbaş & Feng (Kevin) Jiang
  3. Metadiscourse in a Disciplinary Context: An Overview
  4. Digesting Psychology: Metadiscourse as a Recontextualising Tool in the Digital Communication of Disciplinary Research
  5. “Here, We Investigate If There Is …”: A Functional Investigation of Self-Mentions in Research Article Abstracts
  6. One Journal, Different Practices: A Corpus-Based Study of Interactive Metadiscourse in Applied Linguistics
  7. Framing the Research and Engaging the Reader in Graduate Engineering Students’ Abstracts
  8. Building Successful Communication in EMI Contexts: A Multimodal Approach to Organizational Metadiscourse in Intercultural Lectures
  9. The Use of Metadiscourse Markers in the Spoken Discourse of Different EMI Disciplines
  10. Metadiscourse in MOOC Video Lectures: Comparison with University Lectures and Disciplinary Variation
  11. Metadiscursive Features in Interdisciplinary Lectures: Implications for EAP Notetaking
  12. Abstracts
  13. Chinese Abstracts
https://doi.org/10.1515/CJAL-2024-0205
Keywords for this article
abstracts; frame markers; engagement markers; metadiscursive nouns; graduate students’ writing

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Metadiscourse in a Disciplinary Context Guest Editors: Erdem Akbaş & Feng (Kevin) Jiang
  3. Metadiscourse in a Disciplinary Context: An Overview
  4. Digesting Psychology: Metadiscourse as a Recontextualising Tool in the Digital Communication of Disciplinary Research
  5. “Here, We Investigate If There Is …”: A Functional Investigation of Self-Mentions in Research Article Abstracts
  6. One Journal, Different Practices: A Corpus-Based Study of Interactive Metadiscourse in Applied Linguistics
  7. Framing the Research and Engaging the Reader in Graduate Engineering Students’ Abstracts
  8. Building Successful Communication in EMI Contexts: A Multimodal Approach to Organizational Metadiscourse in Intercultural Lectures
  9. The Use of Metadiscourse Markers in the Spoken Discourse of Different EMI Disciplines
  10. Metadiscourse in MOOC Video Lectures: Comparison with University Lectures and Disciplinary Variation
  11. Metadiscursive Features in Interdisciplinary Lectures: Implications for EAP Notetaking
  12. Abstracts
  13. Chinese Abstracts
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