Academic Features Among the Non-academic: A Case of Chinese Argumentative Texts as Compared to BaREnLoB

Xin Zhang ,Shaoyun Long

doi:10.7176/jlll/71-02

Abstract

Compared with different degrees of academic corpora(RC): BaREnLoB, this study conducted a CIA analysis to find out whether the usage features owned by Chinese English majors in their argumentative texts in WECCL2.0 (the observation corpus,OC henceforth) can demonstrate different academic features except for non academic ones. Results show some academic features among the non-academic(i.e.almost the same strong narrative features, and insufficient epistemic comments, rare depiction and classification of particular things, i.e. similar to previous findings). It shows: (i) NN2 (mostly followed by should ) and we (the usual form to refer to the author himself /herself or the research group themselves) are usually incorporated as subjects; (ii) The standard frequency (PMW) of the top 20 verbs(including be, have, find, know, become, see, etc.) and all the 55 pointed common stative ones(Zhang Z.B, 2003) between OC and RC differ much although the standard frequency(PMW) of stative verbs among the 20 top between differs slightly. (iii) the occurrences of “ they/he/she + modal verbs” in OC are many times more than those in RC, even “we/you/I + modal verbs” between show the nonnatives employ much less than the natives. (iv) there are 4 out of 19 carefully-picked abstract nouns before modal verbs are in OC while none in RC. In short, this research finds that the English argumentative writings by Chinese English majors display some academic features as mirrored by the reference corpus except for some non-academic features as we found before. Finally, some implications for the teaching and research of modal verbs are discussed. Keywords: deontic and epistemic modality, academic feature among non academic, Chinese argumentative texts DOI: 10.7176/JLLL/71-02 Publication date: August 31 st 2020

Highlights

Studies on English modal verbs has attracted much attention
The standard frequency of stative verbs(at least the above 55) shares a contrastive comparison,another evidence to say Chinese English learners have an academic trend when talking about something they concern
With WordSmith Tools like Concord, Wordlist, and Cluster Analysis, we have found that the usage features of modal verbs in these argumentative writings

Summary

Introduction

Studies on English modal verbs has attracted much attention There are some studies done from the perspective of cognition linguistics (e.g. Liang Xiaobo, 2001), there are studies on the modality of the Chinese language(e.g. Grammar Research and Exploration. All the studies are presented in various ways because the corpora they used and the settings they established are quite different, so the conclusions obtained are not so comprehensive, consistent and reliable(e.g.no effect size is involved even in one single research). Whether the epistemic sequences hidden in observation corpus could betray some academic features against the reference corpora is a www.iiste.org very new research area that aims to help language researchers and instructors to learn something from the interlanguage texts more confidently

Results

Discussion

Conclusion