Scientific Genre Research Articles

The Effects of Using Scientific Genre to Promote Undergraduate Students’ English Academic Writing in an ESP Course

Argumentative writing is problematic for Thai EFL learners. This study aims to determine the effects of an argumentative correspondence writing course in an ESP for Science classroom. The course was designed from the genre-based approach, including stance and engagement by Hyland (2005) and ESP material design by Hutchinson and Waters (1987). The experiment involved 40 participants studying in a science field in a public university in Thailand. The study used a one-group pretest and posttest design. The research instruments were a knowledge test and a writing test for scientific argumentative correspondence. The results revealed statistically meaningful differences between the pretest and posttest scores, indicating that the students increased their abilities and gained higher test scores through completing the course. The findings suggest that instruction of writing scientific argumentative correspondences is effective and should be included in ESP science courses, especially as a foundation for writing longer texts in scientific genres.

MULTIMODAL REPRESENTATIONS ACROSS SCIENTIFIC GENRES: PERSPECTIVES FROM SCIENCE TEACHERS' PRACTICES

Multimodal representations have caught science education researchers’ attention due to its immense role in meaning making. While much have been written about this area of research, the interplay between multimodal representations and scientific genres in classrooms is yet to be fully explored.The purpose of this study is to examine multimodal representations across scientific genres from the viewpoints of science teachers. With Filipino science teachers as respondents, we employed a sequential explanatory mixed methods research design to determine the frequency of occurrence of scientific genres in classrooms as well as the frequency of use of multimodal representations across each scientific genre. First, we administered the questionnaire, analyzed the result then conducted a follow-up interview to determine how and why scientific genres and multimodal representations are utilized. Results revealed that information report and explanation are the genres most utilized by science teachers primarily because they conform to curriculum standards and that these support students’ learning and skills. On the other hand, experimental account and argument genres are used less often largely due to lack of available materials and teacher competence. Across these genres, linguistic-verbal, visual-graphical and gestural-kinesthetic representations are “always” used while material-operational and mathematical-symbolic are used to a lesser extent. More importantly, this study confirms again that science teaching is multimodal mainly to address each student learning needs and make meaning making thus, science learning, easier. Important implications to practice and research are discussed.

Деконструкция англоязычных военных терминов в массмедийном тексте

The article examines the process of deconstruction of the English-language military terminological units when used in the mass media text, which appeared due to the rapid development of mass media. The material for the study comprises 550 fragments of the English-language mass media texts published in electronic mass media – newspapers, in particular, The Independent, as well as on information news websites, having direct or indirect relation to military subjects, characterized by the presence of terminological units subjected to deconstructive processes. The authors emphasize the fact that the periodicals that have been analyzed are more of popular scientific genre, rather than highly specialized, since they are aimed at the mass reader who does not fully understand military topics. It is argued that highly specialized military terminological units, unlike general scientific, suprasectoral ones, are deconstructed within the framework of a mass media text according to the frame model or the scenario model. In some cases, a complex version of semantic deconstruction has been used which combines some elements of both models. The authors come to the conclusion that the English-language military terminology in the mass media text and discourse can be presented by both suprasectoral military terms of general scientific nature and having a certain degree of determinologization owing to the mass media and highly specialized terms which require a certain explanation by the author of the text. Highly specialized English-language military terminology is a characteristic feature of printed and online journalistic publications aimed at a trained reader. Due to the orientation of a mass media text to a mass audience, a significant part of highly specialized English-language terminological units of the military sphere is deconstructed in semantic terms, i.e. their meaning is revealed directly in the text to facilitate its perception and understanding by explication or definition.

Exploratory Study on the Blended Learning of Research and Language Skills in EFL and Interinstitutional Assessment

Blended learning is receiving more and more attention due to social changes, technological advances, and the increasing internationality of studies, and research needs to be carried out to explore the possibilities this instruction modality offers to university students. This project aimed to test the feasibility and success of a blended course on research and EFL skills and to determine whether there is an internationally shared criterion when assessing students’ scientific work. To do so, a short module on research skills was designed and implemented with 30 students from the BSc in Optics and Optometry from the Complutense University of Madrid, whose final project, the production of a scientific poster, was assessed by three instructors from different universities. The results show that the content and modality of the teaching were successful in the increase in students’ research and language skills. The assessment of the posters showed heterogeneous evaluations regarding the quality of their visual features and their contents. Therefore, more research is needed on international perspectives about the presentation of results in the academic and scientific genre to pursue the creation and dissemination of homogeneous criteria, and therefore improve students’ performance with an international value.

Сочетаемость аргументов разных функциональных групп в научных текстах

The study aims to determine the compatibility of arguments from different functional groups in a collection of scientific texts. The study is novel in that it develops a functional classification of argumentation schemes and identifies the features of using arguments from different functional groups in the collection of Russian-language scientific texts (it is the first time that such an analysis of functional compatibility of arguments has been carried out both for texts of the scientific genre and for texts in Russian). Based on a comparative analysis of the semantics of arguments and the functional features of their use, a classifi-cation of argumentation schemes has been developed differentiating four methods of proof (from authority, from practical value, through elaboration or causal analysis). The use of arguments from four groups has been investigated using a set of 1030 reasoning sequences extracted from expertly annotated scientific papers on linguistics and computer technology. It has been shown that the analysed papers are characterised by an active combination of arguments from different functional groups with their uneven positional arrangement in some sequences, depending on the emphasis in the proof. The work includes the following parts: argumentation modelling, a functional comparison of argumentation schemes, presentation of reasoning through functional blocks, a compatibility analysis of such arguments.

Psychophysiological responses to mobile reading: evidence from frontal EEG signals under a distracting reading environment and different text genres

PurposeReading represents a basic way by which humans understand the world and acquire knowledge; it is also central to learning and communicating. However, with the rapid development of mobile reading, an individual's cognition of objective facts may be affected by the reading environment and text genre, resulting in limited memorization and understanding of the reading material. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the influence of the reading environment and text genre on individuals' cognitive activities from the perspective of motivational activation level using evidence from electroencephalography (EEG) signals.Design/methodology/approachThe study employed a mixed design experiment with two reading environments (quiet and distracting) between subjects, two text genres (entertaining and scientific) within subjects and two reading tasks (memory recall and comprehension) within subjects. There were 50 participants in the experiment, and the data obtained from 44 participants while they read the materials and completed the reading tasks were analyzed.FindingsThe results showed that readers are more positively motivated to read in a quiet reading environment than in a distracting reading environment when facing the memory recall tasks of entertaining genre passages and comprehension tasks of scientific genre passages. Entertaining genres are more likely to arouse readers' reading interest but hinder the memory recall of the content details. While scientific genres are not easy to understand, they are helpful for working memory.Originality/valueThis study not only applies a new technology to mobile reading research in the field of library science and addresses the limitations of self-report data, but also provides suggestions for the further improvement of mobile reading service providers. Additionally, the results may provide useful information for learners with different learning demands.

Out-of-Domain Discourse Dependency Parsing via Bootstrapping: An Empirical Analysis on Its Effectiveness and Limitation

Abstract Discourse parsing has been studied for decades. However, it still remains challenging to utilize discourse parsing for real-world applications because the parsing accuracy degrades significantly on out-of-domain text. In this paper, we report and discuss the effectiveness and limitations of bootstrapping methods for adapting modern BERT-based discourse dependency parsers to out-of-domain text without relying on additional human supervision. Specifically, we investigate self-training, co-training, tri-training, and asymmetric tri-training of graph-based and transition-based discourse dependency parsing models, as well as confidence measures and sample selection criteria in two adaptation scenarios: monologue adaptation between scientific disciplines and dialogue genre adaptation. We also release COVID-19 Discourse Dependency Treebank (COVID19-DTB), a new manually annotated resource for discourse dependency parsing of biomedical paper abstracts. The experimental results show that bootstrapping is significantly and consistently effective for unsupervised domain adaptation of discourse dependency parsing, but the low coverage of accurately predicted pseudo labels is a bottleneck for further improvement. We show that active learning can mitigate this limitation.

ПРАГМАТИКА ДИСКУРСИВНЫХ ЖАНРОВ ПРЕДИСЛОВИЕ И ВВЕДЕНИЕ К ФРАНЦУЗСКОМУ И РУССКОМУ ФИЛОСОФСКИМ СЛОВАРЯМ: СРАВНИТЕЛЬНЫЙ АНАЛИЗ

В статье речь идет о прагматике дискурсивных жанров предисловие и введение к русскому и французскому философским словарям. Доказывается, что презентационной составляющей введения и предисловия является продвижение словаря как жанра научной коммуникации. Сравнительный анализ паратекстовых образований в русском и французском языке показывает, что коммуникативная стратегия информирования характерна для обоих изданий, вместе с тем для презентации достижений в области отечественной и зарубежной философии используются различные способы авторской самопрезентации. The pre-textual part of any published work is especially important for the readers and includes pragmatic purpose of the content explication and prior notification to the reader about the edition. Such genres contribute to the consideration of the publications providing any preface or introduction as a knowledge product in the publishing industry. The objectives of the article include identifying the linguo-pragmatic features of discourse genres such as preface and introduction to the Russian and French lexicographic practice based on the text-typological approach. The relevance of the study lies in the fact that philosophical discourse reveals not only linguistic, but also communicative features in the scientific communication. Furthermore, the features can exercise a certain degree of influence over a reader in conjunction with the language, that can be considered as a keeper of scientific experience and social foundations. A comparative analysis has illustrated that using paratextual units to inform the reader about the particular book characteristics is a common feature of Russian and French philosophical discourse. Moreover, the prospective orientation of the texts is anchored in the semantics of the terms of Preface and Introduction. The article argues that the pragmatic purpose of the preface is to familiarize the reader with the content of the published work. As for the introduction, the main 198 Сравнительное языкознание purpose of this pre-textual unit is to improve perceptions of the information drawing on the author’s concept and theoretical analysis. The result of the research demonstrates the description of the main communication strategies and tactics, indicating the linguistic and pragmatic features of the discourse genres such as preface and introduction. It was revealed that these pre-textual units are based on a stylistic effect of dialogicity, which includes the use of rhetorical questions and exclamation sentences. Terminological language is actively used as a reflection of the scientific picture of «philosophy». Furthermore, it is proved that the promotion of the dictionary as a scientific genre is a part of the presentation of the texts, evidence of which can be seen in the use of ameliorative assessment of the publications. Various ways of the author’s self-presentation are submitted as a presentation of achievements in the field of philosophy. The tactics of explanation, comparison and the special characteristics of the edition innovation are presented in the Russian dictionary. Whereas the authors’ competence and authority is emphasized in the French dictionary, which also indicates their scientific status and presents detailed information about their workplace. French philosophers actively use the tactics of the use of authoritative source or opinion as the basis of philosophical reflection.

Василий Михайлович Севергин как переводчик Плиния Старшего: к истории рецепции античного наследия в контексте русского естествознания XVIII века

The article is devoted to the study of the reception of the ancient heritage in European culture and its importance for the development of Russian natural science in XVIII century. For this purpose the author turns to the well-known Russian scientist and teacher Vasily Mikhajlovich Severgin (1765-1826), who was the author of the first Russian translation in Russian of the encyclopedic "Natural History" (Naturalis Historia) by Roman scientist Pliny the Elder (24-79 A.D.), many years was teaching at the Mining college (modern Saint-Petersburg Mining University, which celebrates its 250th anniversary in 2023) and is the most important Russian scientist in the field of natural history. It is on the study of the importance of Pliny the Elder and the history of his interpretation and translation for the development of European and especially Russian science in the 18th century that the main attention of the author of the article is directed. The article also covers the peculiarities of science and educational institutions in Russia and Europe in the 18th century; the biography of Severgin; the specifics of ancient Greek and ancient Roman science; the concept of "natural history" and the importance of encyclopedia as a scientific genre for the culture and science of the Enlightenment.

Cultural Deposits of the Latest Time in the Context of Archaeological Research: Stratigraphic ‘Ballast’ or Historical Value

The article is written in the scientific polemic genre and it is a continuation of the discussion that began earlier in the professional environment. The author defends the position to give more attention to culture layers of the 20th during conducting an archaeological excavation. The problem is the uncertainty of the cultural deposits’ status of the 20th century. The purpose of the article is to determine the 20th century culture deposits historical value. Research methodology. Common-scientific methods are used. The typological method is also used, in particular, for 20th century culture deposits classification. The scientific novelty lies in the first, in Ukrainian historiography, attempt to argue a historical value of the 20th-century cultural layers. Conclusion. The modern culture deposits' historical value is in that they are at least a historical source and also an epoch monument. In addition to scientific, individual artifacts or complexes on cultural layers of modern times can have artistic, aesthetic, museum, tourist, anthropological, ethnographic, national, political, ideological, economic, social value.

INVESTIGATING LEXICAL BUNDLES IN THE CORPORA OF ENGLISH AND INDONESIAN RESEARCH ARTICLES WITH THE SKETCH ENGINE

The low publication rate of Indonesian researchers in reputable international journals, particularly in arts and humanities,is caused, among others, by difficulties they faced in producing precise expository texts in English, which are differentfrom texts in Indonesian. The present study examines lexical bundles in the corpora of English and Indonesian researcharticles (RA) on literature and linguistics to describe the similarities and differences of conventionalized phraseology inthe scientific genre of English and Indonesian by using corpus software, namely Sketch Engine. The study focuses onthe frequency, structural and functional characteristics of lexical bundles using a mixed-method research design. TheEnglish corpus comprises 1,351,048 words derived from 124 RA, while the Indonesian corpus consists of 637,910 wordscollected from 124 RA. We found that three-word lexical bundles are more prevalent than four-word lexical bundles inboth corpora. Based on the structural forms, prepositional-based bundles are the most frequent form in English RA, whilenoun-based bundles are the most common form in Indonesian RA. There were no participant-oriented bundles foundin the Indonesian RA corpus in terms of functional classification, whereas the English RA corpus involved more variedfunctional categories of lexical bundles. The findings provide an understanding of phraseological combinations in Englishand Indonesian scientific writing, characterizing disciplinary discourse as well as native and non-native English speakers’rhetorical style, and have pedagogical implications for EAP practitioners.

India: moving forward?!

The article is a classic review of a monograph. Includes such traditional sections as: bibliographic description of the book; the main idea of the research; technical characteristics: design, cover, illustrations; structure of the work and a brief description of its content; scientific genre; personal impressions of the reading and their argumentation; target audience for the monograph; recommendations to readers about the level of usefulness of the work.

Life and activity of Nasir al-Din al-Tusi

At the beginning of the VII century in the political life of the Near and Middle East, fundamental changes have taken place. The Arabs conquered a colossal territory, which included the lands of Iran, North Africa, North-West India, the Asian provinces of Byzantium, most of the former Roman Empire. In the conquered cities of the caliphate, observatories, madaris, libraries were built. At the end of VII century, the first scientific center, an academy, the House of Wisdom, was founded in Baghdad, in which scholars who spoke different languages were assembled. Here the translation and commentary activity were very developed, the main works of ancient thought, such as the writings of Aristotle, Ptolemy were published in the 9th century in the Arabic-speaking world. For two centuries from 750 to 950 years, the works of ancient authors on philosophy, mathematics, medicine, alchemy, and astronomy were translated into Arabic, which indicates the high scientific potential of that time in the East. At the same time, in the XII century, Ibn Rushd composed 38 commentaries on the works of Aristotle, the “Republic” of Plato, the treatise “On the Mind” of Alexander of Aphrodisias, which subsequently had an important influence on the work of Nasir al-Din al-Tusi. Thus, this period in the history of Eastern scientific thought is marked by high intellectual potential. To this day, historians of medieval Arabic literature face a sufficient number of difficulties, since the vast majority of manuscripts remain inaccessible to them. The works of many renowned Arab authors of the middle Ages are more than 1000 years old, so it seems obvious that the manuscripts of the vast majority of authors have not survived to this day. The researchers of the history of Azerbaijan and neighboring countries in the middle Ages, with all the variety of available sources on which they rely, still attract little factual material related to the Arabic-language works of the historical and scientific genre. Undoubtedly, a comprehensive study of the entire complex of information of Nasir al-Din al-Tusi on the history of science in Azerbaijan is of great importance.

The 2030 Challenge in the Quality of Higher Education: Metacognitive, Motivational and Structural Factors, Predictive of Written Argumentation, for the Dissemination of Sustainable Knowledge

The United Nations 2030 agenda includes quality university education, highlighting the importance of writing competence, as a basic skill for the dissemination of sustainable knowledge. However, there is little evidence of the factors that predict effective written communication to support such quality. Among these factors, the literature highlights motivation and writing metacognition, as well as the adequate structuring of the academic and/or scientific genre. The main novelty of the present research is the study of the relationships between the mentioned factors, measured with validated instruments. To this end, content analysis is first applied to determine the rhetorical moves of argumentative essays written by a sample of 72 university students. Secondly, the correlations between each of the rhetorical moves, metacognition and argumentative writing self-efficacy are calculated. The relationships are studied in depth, applying step-by-step linear regression models. Finally, the dependence of the results, observed with respect to unmeasured factors, is contrasted by means of a confirmatory analysis based on structural equations. The analyses show that it is the practical ability to express rhetorical moves—Conclusion and Bibliographic References—which predicts a students’ writing metacognition. Moreover, the minor relationship that argumentative self-efficacy shows with the expression of rhetorical moves, compared to writing metacognition, point to the need to consider another motivational dimension that is driving the learning of the argumentative essay at university level, a hypothesis that is confirmed with the structural equations model. These, and other findings, allow for the establishment of a series of educational quality criteria for the empowerment of written argumentation in academic and scientific contexts.

A Colonial‐Scientific Interface: The Construction, Viewing, and Circulation of Faces via a 1906 German Racial Atlas

ABSTRACTAtlases of anthropometric portraits—a scientific genre that emerged during the last quarter of the nineteenth century in the context of classical physical anthropology—invite readers to compare different races from all over the world. Concentrating on Bernard Hagen's Atlas of Heads and Faces of Asian and Melanesian People (1906), this article describes the apparatus that enabled such a way of viewing. A microanalysis of Hagen's facial atlas reveals the circumstances under which the portraits were produced, the reading strategies the atlas stimulates, as well as the reification of data through their circulation. It shows how precisely a facial atlas could function as an imperceptible interface between harsh colonial practices and German public support for colonizing “missions,” between individual subjectivity and racialized category, and between everyday colonial recognition and scientific analysis of “races.” Obscuring the apparatus facilitating such a vision naturalizes the position of a viewer surveying, analyzing, and comparing people of different geographic backgrounds as races. [colonial history, photography, face, racial science, Dutch East Indies]

과학 장르에 나타난 명사화: 체계 기능 언어학 관점

과학 장르에 나타난 명사화: 체계 기능 언어학 관점

A brief history of physics reviews

A definitive historical study of the review article is yet to be written, but recent advances in the history of scientific publishing provide a better understanding of its emergence and transformations in a broader context. Roberto Lalli discusses review articles in physics, by looking at the historical evolution of this scientific genre. The review article has a rich history and Roberto Lalli tells the story of how this scientific genre evolved in physics.

The Alphabetic Abbreviation Process in Persian Scientific Texts

Abbreviating has a long history. Lots of new services and products are distributed inthe markets daily due to the wide use of languages all over the world. Certainly, labeling these services and merchandise is quitean interesting subject in the domain of language.Moreover, regarding the increasing number of organizations and developments in science and technology, the need for accelerating the process of communication especially linguistic communication is a must. This study examines the process of alphabetic abbreviation and the extent of its application in some Persian scientific journals.The research data were gathered fromThe Pulse of Economy, Air Industry and Future Trademagazines and were analyzed by the analytical research method. Among the mentioned magazines, the Air Industry had the highest number of alphabetic abbreviations; Future Trade was in the second place and The Pulse of Economy was the third in rank. In this article, the use of alphabetic abbreviation was analyzed in Persian and English languages separately and it was determined that 99 percent of abbreviated words were used in English scientific journals whereas in Persian journals this number was only 1 percent. This indicates the high role of borrowing in Persian texts. An explanation for the higher use of abbreviated elements is the scientific genre, which indicates that message transmission in the least possible time period is the main characteristic of any human communication, especially scientific communication.

RHETORICAL MOVES IN MEDICAL RESEARCH ARTICLES: SOME GENRE IMPLICATIONS IN A CROSS-LINGUISTIC STUDY

The medical research article (MRA) has been at the core of debate with reference to all its aspects for over thirty years now. Ever since scholars, such as Swales, Nwogo and more recently Fryer and Davies, have delved into the organization and discourse setup of this scientific genre, the argument for and against the importance of Rhetorical Moves has been heating up. The gravity the latter have on the informational, propositional and cognitive value cannot be overestimated. Little, though, has been done as far as the cross-linguistic side is concerned, since there are no comparative studies exploring potential similarities and differences from culture to culture. The presented article seeks to address this lacuna in an attempt to outline the major discourse and structural markers constructing the very essence of the Rhetorical Moves. Approximately 100 articles from both Bulgarian and English sources have been excerpted, constituting more than 250 000 words. Several areas of exploration have been highlighted - from vocabulary items such as factive reporting verbs, to discourse markers outlining coherence and stance, to thematic structure underpinnings referring to issues such as functional sentence perspective. The results from the contrastive study, though by no means conclusive, are indicative of major informational and discoursal imbalances between Bulgarian and English articles.

De biograaf als bijziende historicus

Abstract The biographer as a short-sighted historian. Biography, micro- and metahistory During the first decades of the twentieth century biography, as a vital and living discipline within academic historiography, became more and more marginalised. Young historians, eager to professionalise their craft and to incorporate new social theories and methods, dismissed biography as a short-sighted, subjective, bias, nationalistic and old-fashioned way of writing history. Today, academia still struggles to recognise biographical writing as a scientific genre, and therefore it remains controversial. Or as Richard Holmes has put it: ‘For the most part, it has been left to itself, outside the established institutes of learning’. Biographers have attempted to counteract the academic loss of status by ‘using’ theoretical concepts from other disciplines like micro- and metahistory. But by doing so they more or less have failed to ask themselves whether biography as a discipline initially was rightfully sacrificed by academic historians in their pursuit of history as a modern, objective and professional science.