外国语学院推荐学报文章sya corpus-based study on the reporting verb argue

1、Acorpus-basedstudyonthereportingverbBIXiao-(SchoolofForeignLanguages,BeihangUniversity,Beijing100191,Abstract:Reporting verbsrefer to those verbs used by the authors to make comments on arguments or demonstrate their own opinions. The significance of reporting verbsnotits role in showing ones attitu

2、de towards others claims, but also in the r. Taking academic identity, which is Acorpus-basedstudyonthereportingverbBIXiao-(SchoolofForeignLanguages,BeihangUniversity,Beijing100191,Abstract:Reporting verbsrefer to those verbs used by the authors to make comments on arguments or demonstrate their own

3、 opinions. The significance of reporting verbsnotits role in showing ones attitude towards others claims, but also in the r. Taking academic identity, which is extremely l to a sful academic reporting verb of “argue” as an le, this study is based on two self-established namely, and this study ive an

4、d ysis on the EAPs produced by NSs and es the t EFL learners in China encounter with several usages and show , compared with native speakers. Pedagogically, this r like to improve studentsEnglishacademic writing skills by emphasizing the using of corpora in writing classrooms.Keywords:Reportingverbs

5、;argue;EAP;Categories: PrID:As a significant way of citing, English academic verbs attract a number of oversea scholars rs memorize conduct their researches, lly present previous studies, shouldering the burden of publicity and broadcasting of profes al knowledge. The using of reporting verbs is mea

6、ns of achieving academic communication and functionally (Hu &Jiang, and Ye (1991) categorized reporting opsychological verbs and research verbs, based on which Hyland (1999) further put up with his classifications: research verbs, cognitive verbs anddiscourse verbs.Reportingverbsareusednot only to p

7、resent writers own ideas hypotheses, but more importantly, to show citing and commenting on eoplesThey indicate the writers attitudes, criticism or doubts towards the author (Sakata, 2002). are numbers of reporting verbs in use 1), with verbs those similarmany differing in meaning and even eaning wo

8、uld differ slightly They may imply the attitudes itions others t thefunctions Latour(1987) held the attitudes,supportingorobjecting,totheauthor.utilized appropriay,reportingverbswouldhelp EFL students to correctly stand on a stronger academic us, showing the importance of research, strengthen the si

9、gnificance of his weaker or ition, commenting or ethedefectsofauthors researches and ing Though enormous in number, we can still English has already been their second Underways for students to thesefavorabled different words in writing has big problem, still less in ea 收稿日期：2011-06-,北航外国语学，教学毕业，主要研究

10、方向为“第二语言习得”“语言教学”，关注认知语言学和语言习得交叉学科的研作者简，出生于199012籍贯山东省昌乐When using reporting EFL learners on the one hand, 研究方向：二语习得，语料库语言学。problems in differing the discrepancies of numerous verbs, which leads to the lack of exactness and diversity if vocabulary choosing. On the other hand, SL learners frequently

11、turn to realize the diversity of their vocabulary, but due to deficiency of understanding, reporting verbs are often chosen casually. Students think too when choosing a reporting verb to express writing skills is never exaggerated. Using reporting verbs, students can extend their understanding in th

12、e development and research s us of a specific scientific area, but also their attitudes toward previous studies proclaimthe nthem.The of how to cite previous studies others ideas have ability of Chiine the tgraduatestudentsacademic ideas onsidering the of contexts, which lead to serious problems prs

13、 credibility and authenticity. problems in differing the discrepancies of numerous verbs, which leads to the lack of exactness and diversity if vocabulary choosing. On the other hand, SL learners frequently turn to realize the diversity of their vocabulary, but due to deficiency of understanding, re

14、porting verbs are often chosen casually. Students think too when choosing a reporting verb to express writing skills is never exaggerated. Using reporting verbs, students can extend their understanding in the development and research s us of a specific scientific area, but also their attitudes towar

15、d previous studies proclaimthe nthem.The of how to cite previous studies others ideas have ability of Chiine the tgraduatestudentsacademic ideas onsidering the of contexts, which lead to serious problems prs credibility and authenticity. As regard the frequently used and Ye further t second verb arg

16、ue, it is widely in the learners more often inclined to use verbs with ite and neutral English-spoken t it has itionandneutralattitude. Doavoiding ite and negative ones. recognize this ? What problems occur and saying no to others s are they are using this his r, impoliteheirlike these will be explo

17、red by means of using self-made corpora.CorpusEnglishoriginatedin1980s.Withits richness in contexts and collocations, it can be used as a resource for students to learn reporting verbs. Using corpora in English classrooms is never a newly born baby, but the trial of it in English academic writing cl

18、assroom is seen.Thisp r willput o EAPwriting However, some researchers tEFL learners still have serious in correctly citing others ideas and providing for their own ideas, deprived the credibility and theoretical basis the r. On English writing classes, overstress the importance of expressing studen

19、ts significance of reporting verbs with neutral the le selected after itions. Students could not study, as a strong aid to give impetus to studentswritingt reporting verbs with slight This r conduct a corpus-based study “negotiation” connecting the author and writer(Bloch, 2010).students often hold

20、the reporting verb argue, with the aims showing similarities and of and self-red” attitudes(Hyland, 2008). n tgraduate English not only ed the vocabulary deficiency and native speakers. Moreover, it will focus on some typical inappropriate usage of Chi students, explaining the features and reasons.

21、As last, it makes a list of 20 typical senten containing reporting verbs argue, to serve as theresourceforcontextteachingandEFL learners, but also indicated drawback of understanding these reporting Reasons for these problems in aspects, on the on hang, the thinking patterns n and people; on the oth

22、er hand, students are on the way of acquiring a second language, lack vocabulary. But more importantly, students In the part roduction, this r already made a relatively description of no to practice these reporting verbs verbs. In this part, a reporting verb compare the corpus-based study on will be

23、 conducted and show context and only asked to make judgments based on dictionary sand literary meanings, which toerrorsinvocabularyn tgraduate English To tgraduate students and native writers. Details are discussed in English, the significance of English 2.1 6. Twenty Data his r are fromtwoself-made

24、 corpora.Native speaker arguearechosentohelptherealizationofcontext teaching and learning.2.2Researchcorpus contains 42 English academic about 95000 words, which were selected from three linguistic kernel magazines among the top ten factor of influence. Texts are all written by English native speake

25、rs from 2011 to 2013, whose nationalities are among the UK, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, This r mainly studies two questions reportingverbof NSs when using reporting 2.1 6. Twenty Data his r are fromtwoself-made corpora.Native speaker arguearechosentohelptherealizationofcontext teaching and le

26、arning.2.2Researchcorpus contains 42 English academic about 95000 words, which were selected from three linguistic kernel magazines among the top ten factor of influence. Texts are all written by English native speakers from 2011 to 2013, whose nationalities are among the UK, Canada, New Zealand and

27、 Australia, This r mainly studies two questions reportingverbof NSs when using reporting argue,comparedwithnative2. What are the frequently occurred ared the timing and quality of data. With ion in world linguistic area, these usageofargue by2.3Researchcan represent native speakers English writing l

28、evel. Non-native speakers (NNS) The reporting verb argue is one of the most frequently occurred one among many academic corpora. According to Hyland(2003)，in a native academic writing corpus of 3500000 argue occurred 526 times asareporting verb,is by ed of 28 excellent ions tgraduate English majors,

29、 with The size is of the means times in students English s, pragmatic and literature. about 150.000. Contents and corpora are nearly the same, prs,therelativenormalizedfrequenciesby10000 words are 164.56times Butotherreportingverbs like e, support are comparable. The table below shows constitutionof

30、thetwoappeared comparatively less, which not feasible for study. In addition, students are more familiar with this Table1:Theconstitutionoftwon other ones. Thus this r argueasthesubjectreportingResultsandThisrconductsacorpus-basedstudyreporting verb argue from 6 1. When browsing the reporting verb R

31、esultsareshownCategory1:this r calculates in argue, argues, argued frequencies of tenses.2. Wordsmith 5.0 is chosen as the ysis is one of the commonly used s istical methods in corpus linguisticstudy.Thoughtherelimi ionsofusing this method, but it is very useful when “valuating the profile of a word

32、 in relation to the norm” (Tognini-Bonelli, 2001). After browsing and counting, argue appeared 115 times in NS corpus and 60 times in NNS corpus. Table 2 the raw frequencies and normalized 3. Data is checking one by one to re the reportingcontaining argue are used 4. Calculating the normalized scien

33、tificraw frequencies in order to ofthereportingverbwo5. containing argue yzed from 6 Table2:Frequenciesofegral, Corpusof NS NNS terms of tenses, students and writersaremuchsimilarwhenusingtheverb argue. But in NNS corpus, students present perfect more n speakers, this may t students to prove their i

34、deas by emphasizingt are widely accepted or already-acknowledged.CategoryThis r calculated the most X2=50.35.pThe Chi-square test result collocations of argue and compared n t corpus and NNS corpus. Results are shown table frequencies of argue in the two corpora notably. Also, from tableterms of ten

35、ses, students and writersaremuchsimilarwhenusingtheverb argue. But in NNS corpus, students present perfect more n speakers, this may t students to prove their ideas by emphasizingt are widely accepted or already-acknowledged.CategoryThis r calculated the most X2=50.35.pThe Chi-square test result col

36、locations of argue and compared n t corpus and NNS corpus. Results are shown table frequencies of argue in the two corpora notably. Also, from table 2 we can get to Collocation twotermsoffrequencies,theof students is much t of speakers. This may t students in lack in using the reporting verb argue.

37、In this may also corresponds with Suns tstudents have little awareness of using reporting verbs and their importance. Thus they seldom use Category2:Whenusingthereportingverbargue,are ed to express their ideas and idiomatically. But this is not the truth in study.Resultsareabletable 4 we can t write

38、rs differ a lot. lly use inappropriate one, like the leslistedArgue+le 1：Ullmann(1967) argues polysemy a functional feature of human speech, which arise in a multiplicity of way and examines of polysemization, is to say, shifts X2=0.0257,p4.46.Tenseare reted hetwofigurative language homonyms foreign

39、influence.(NNSBased on the data of 3 and chi-square test result, this r t Argue+CollocationPercent09Percent032Percent20Percent0As 03Percent01Percent40Percent0Totaler ge (%)le 2：These researches argued about instead of making comments or criticizing on the original arguments (Sun, 2009). Compared wit

40、h other types of ci ion, students inclined to “author-inserted” ones. As Bloch (2003) result.(NNSAccording to Learning Guide 2010 The University of Adelaide, argue should t-clause to function as a reporting thisreflectedthetstudentsholda Students have problems in using argue, for they should have us

41、e collocations like argue+n. and argue+about. Reasons may be their awareness are not enough when using it and deficiency understandingthispattern of “standing on the shoulders of which partly t students are lower academic identity and lack in creative ideas. lesareselectedtole 2：These researches arg

42、ued about instead of making comments or criticizing on the original arguments (Sun, 2009). Compared with other types of ci ion, students inclined to “author-inserted” ones. As Bloch (2003) result.(NNSAccording to Learning Guide 2010 The University of Adelaide, argue should t-clause to function as a

43、reporting thisreflectedthetstudentsholda Students have problems in using argue, for they should have use collocations like argue+n. and argue+about. Reasons may be their awareness are not enough when using it and deficiency understandingthispattern of “standing on the shoulders of which partly t stu

44、dents are lower academic identity and lack in creative ideas. lesareselectedtodole 3: In light of these considerations, o account the above-mentioned Categoryegral/ions Swales t o tcategories, one includes contains vocabulary acquisition through reading is name of the author, which is (e.g. Pichette

45、 2005; Pigada and itt others put the name put of the ciion sentenwhich he called non-egral. When citing in egral style, writers seems to give priority to the authors as this is considered as a specific cito a specific author (1990). The table below shows the us of these two ion wo Esquiliche Mesa et

46、 al. 2007; Pulido 2007; Brown et al.2008).(NS corpus)This sentence containing the reporting verb argue are in non- egral ci ion type, which showed the writer weakened the opinion holders s us by putting their names at out of le 4: On the on hand, Bialystok Table5:ionmethodfrequencyofwo1994a, 1994b)

47、argues starts out as implicit and as the language learner（NNSt linguistic knowledge es more es more This ion commonly used by egral is tgraduate majors, by which they can emphasize on their researchs importance and academic insteadofexpressingtheirownCategorydverb/without-The table below illustrated

48、 whether or not students add an adverb in ion sentence usingthereportingverbFromtable6the rgetstot both non-native writers and tend to use the ciion method of showing their respect to the authors andTable6:Adverbfrequencyofwho created the argument.Whats more, EFL learners nearly all egral method tal

49、k abouttistosay, out of they seldom put the authors containingargue. students should build their own academic and students toal authenticity and emphasize itions. The es for students to using From the table above we can tverbs are adding to their dverb/without-34Frequencyofci ione2students in china

50、frequently use adverbs After argue from ysis of the reporting easily and convincingly to strengthen category, we may tof their ci ions, while native speakers seldom do this. This on the one hand reflect students weak academic s us, overs e ition and on the other, theyare influenced problems in using

51、 reporting verbs, such collocations and attitudes. EFL finddifficultiesincorrectlyexpressingtheir language which tries tostudents in china frequently use adverbs After argue from ysis of the reporting easily and convincingly to strengthen category, we may tof their ci ions, while native speakers sel

52、dom do this. This on the one hand reflect students weak academic s us, overs e ition and on the other, theyare influenced problems in using reporting verbs, such collocations and attitudes. EFL finddifficultiesincorrectlyexpressingtheir language which tries to exaggerate by effective reporting verbs

53、. Reasons may vocabulary deficiency and the influence Chi thinking patterns of avoidingand adding respects to others ideas. praise on others opinions in writing, instead criticizingtheseideasle 5: Lakoff and Johnson (2003) convincingly t our knowledge English academic writing classes, teacher overs

54、ed the importance of expressing ideas directly which leads to problems in choosing reporting verb. Thus the reformation of s which is gained via experience is projected onto less concrete s which are less sible 25due to of bodily experience, n the other classroomisaround, for the understand somethin

55、g in else.（NNS corpus）of metaphor is terms of In the case of reporting verbs acquisition, students may still have difficulties in choosing suitable verbs to satisfy their various needs. Academic teaching class thus plays an important roleininformingstudentswiththeirauthenticand correct collocation a

56、nd usage in contexts. Thus language teachings should be clear enough when making teaching syllabus. Corpus-based study has mushroomed since the very birth of corpus linguistics. Johns argued t the use of data-driven learning strategies which connected with concordance technologies has students to ac

57、tively participate in a fluid students used convincingly to er to their ions to add to academicCategoryAuthorAcademic writers may reportarguments ition of himself or the original This difference impsthehigh or author. Table 7frequenciesofthisositionofillustrated Table7:author/writerfrequencywot can

58、vary across different contexts or genres (Johns, 1994). According to Aston (2000), utilizing corpora in teaching is of importance to provide vivid contexts to study and witness the communicative nature of texts. Language use is a pro s of negotiation in such contexts in academic writing classes. ind

59、icated t one importance of using corpora language teaching classes t students o the initiator of study and teachers merely the assistants and coordinators (2008). All these researches have focused on the indispensible tacorpusplaysinEnglishThrough Chi scholars started later From the table above the

60、r tacademic dom utilize reporting argue to express their own idea, but to stand on others shoulders to add their own academic identity, which corresponded to the research of Hewings and Hewing in 2003. They argued students tend to talk about the idea from corpus t the western countries, application