A multi-dimensional comparison of L1 and L2 medical research articles

Abstract

By conducting a multi-dimensional analysis and investigating a set of individual linguistic features comprising the dimensions, we explored linguistic similarities and differences between the medical research articles written by English-L1 and English-L2 (Chinese-L1) writers across four sections of research articles. We had multiple findings. First, the L1-English sections were consistently more narrative and overtly argumentative than the Chinese-L1 sections. Second, sections had a stronger effect than those of language backgrounds (L1 versus L2) on the dimension scores and the frequencies of individual linguistic features of the L1 and L2 research articles. Third, we observed a two-way distinction between Introduction/Discussion and Methods/Results on four of the five dimensions as well as on most of the individual linguistic features. We also discussed pedagogical implications for academic writing instructions and methodological implications for corpus design.