Studying disciplinary corpora to teach the craft of Discussion

Abstract

Producing publishable quality research articles is a difficult task for novice scholarly writers. Particularly challenging is writing the Discussion/Conclusion section, which requires taking evaluative and interpretive stances on obtained results and substantiating claims regarding the worth of the scholarly contribution of the article to scientific knowledge. Conforming to the expectations of the target disciplinary community adds another dimension to the challenge. Corpus-based genre analysis can foster postgraduate writing instruction by providing insightful descriptions of rhetorical patterns and variation in disciplinary discourse. This paper introduces a pedagogically-oriented cross-disciplinary model of moves and steps devised through top-down corpus analysis. The model was applied to pedagogical materials and tasks designed to enhance genre and corpus-based teaching of Discussion/ Conclusions with an explicit focus on rhetorical conventions. Studying disciplinary corpora to teach the craft of Discussion Elena Cotos, Stephanie Link, Sarah HuffmanAbstract Producing publishable quality research articles is a difficult task for novice scholarly writers. Particularly challenging is writing the Discussion/Conclusion section, which requires taking evaluative and interpretive stances on obtained results and substantiating claims regarding the worth of the scholarly contribution of the article to scientific knowledge. Conforming to the expectations of the target disciplinary community adds another dimension to the challenge. Corpusbased genre analysis can foster postgraduate writing instruction by providing insightful descriptions of rhetorical patterns and variation in disciplinary discourse. This paper introduces a pedagogically-oriented cross-disciplinary model of moves and steps devised through top-down corpus analysis. The model was applied to pedagogical materials and tasks designed to enhance genre and corpus-based teaching of Discussion/Conclusions with an explicit focus on rhetorical conventions.

Strengthening move analysis methodology towards bridging the function-form gap

“…The first reason for our focus on this section is that the Discussion section of ERAs has proved particularly problematic for EAP scholars, as reviews by Amirian et al (2008), Basturkmen (2012), Cotos et al (2016), Peacock (2002), and Swales (2004) demonstrate.…”

“…In our view, one problem lies in the great variability of move conceptualisations proposed by existing empirically-based models about this part-genre in English (e.g. Basturkmen, 2009Basturkmen, , 2012Berkenkotter & Huckin, 1995;Cotos et al, 2016;Holmes, 1997;Hopkins & Dudley-Evans, 1988;Kanoksilapatham, 2005Kanoksilapatham, , 2007Nwogu, 1997;Peacock, 2002;Yang & Allison, 2003). First, it is striking that the number of moves varies from three in Berkenkotter and Huckin (1995) through seven in Yang and Allison (2003) to eleven in Hopkins and Dudley-Evans (1988).…”

“…Furthermore, it still remains unclear which is the minimal formal unit for annotating moves-and-steps (cf. a proposition, in Connor and Mauranen, 1999; the sentence for moves and the phrase (or clause) for steps, in Cotos et al, 2015Cotos et al, , 2016 or a sentence or paragraph, in Crookes, 1986), and whether functional interpretation best proceeds top-down or bottom-up. In this context, a group of experienced EAP researchers drawn from a number of Spanish universities was set up in 2010 as the ENEIDA 1 Team.…”

Applying the Bundle–Move Connection Approach to the Development of an Online Writing Support Tool for Research Articles

“…That is because these sections are highly argumentative, and ubiquitous bundles, which are used extensively across different moves in different sections, such as on the other hand, in the case of, as well as the, in terms of the, on the basis of, and in the context of, occupy the top of the lexical bundles list. Because a few participants in the pilot study made comments similar to "I did not know how to begin a sentence," it would be desirable to provide explicit teaching sessions (e.g., Cotos et al, 2016;Flowerdew, 2015b) in addition to training for successful use of the tool. In fact, the top-down and deductive teaching of genre and the provision of a training session explaining how to use the tool are crucial, in that the data-driven learning literature has repeatedly pointed out that training is a prerequisite for students to benefit from corpus consultation (Boulton, 2010).…”

“…Thus, the analytical framework for the particular communicative functions (i.e., discourse units) is prepared first, and the analysis is then conducted based on the predetermined discourse unit types. For example, Cotos, Link, and Huffman (2016) used top-down corpus analysis for the moves in discussion and conclusion sections across disciplines and introduced a pedagogical model that could be applied to materials and tasks in a postgraduate writing course.…”