1,720,968 research outputs found
An investigation into STEM students’ uses and perceptions of lexical repetition in their own writing
No full textThe repetition of words, lexical repetition, can be an important marker of cohesion in writing, especially in domains where precision and clarity are valued. Contemporary writing in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) is a such a domain. Nevertheless, lexical repetition is sometimes instinctively misunderstood as a feature of an exaggerated style or simplistic language use.Using a classification system inspired by both previous research on lexical cohesion and the specific needs and characteristics of STEM writing, I analysed 15 project proposals written by STEM students and examined their ways of using and avoiding lexical repetition when referring to key concepts. I then reviewed each text with its author(s) in a semi-structured interview. My aim was to understand the students’ perceptions of lexical repetition as STEM writers and English users.Results of the text analysis show that the more experienced student writers frequently chose lexical repetition to refer to key concepts, and that the less experienced student writers tended to use more paraphrases and pronouns instead. This finding challenges the notion that lexical repetition is a feature of inappropriate or simplistic language use. Results of the interviews show that some students had previously been discouraged from repeating lexical items in writing. However, they mostly recognised the value of lexical repetition in STEM writing to avoid ambiguity and ensure inter-sentential cohesion. The majority of the students in this study used lexical repetition assuredly; they were confident in their English, their purpose, and their understanding of their readers’ needs.Keyword
An investigation into STEM students’ uses and perceptions of lexical repetition in their own writing : From early literacy learning to writing in professional life
No full textThe repetition of words, lexical repetition, can be an important marker of cohesion in writing, especially in domains where precision and clarity are valued. Contemporary writing in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) is a such a domain. Nevertheless, lexical repetition is sometimes instinctively misunderstood as a feature of an exaggerated style or simplistic language use. Using a classification system inspired by both previous research on lexical cohesion and the specific needs and characteristics of STEM writing, I have analysed 15 project proposals written by STEM students at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden. The sample is small but representative of KTH’s student population in terms of gender, linguacultural background, and years of academic experience. I examined the students’ ways of using and avoiding lexical repetition when referring to key concepts and also reviewed each text with its author(s) in a semi-structured interview. My aim was to understand the students’ perceptions of lexical repetition as STEM writers and English users. Results of the text analysis show that the more experienced student writers frequently chose lexical repetition to refer to key concepts, and that the less experienced student writers tended to use more paraphrases and pronouns instead. This finding challenges the notion that lexical repetition is a feature of inappropriate or simplistic language use. Results of the interviews show that some students were previously discouraged from repeating lexical items in writing. However, they mostly recognised the value of lexical repetition in STEM writing to avoid ambiguity and ensure inter-sentential cohesion. A second round of text collection and interviews will begin this summer with a focus on newly arrived international students. For the WRAB VI conference, I would like to compare the results of the two rounds of data collection and share some insights from the interviews.</p
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Marking the specific direct object in restrictive relative clauses in spoken Farsi
No full textPersian has a case system whereby specific direct objects are marked with the enclitic را =rā. However, the spoken language presents a greater degree of flexibility with regard to =rā marking, especially in complex clauses such as restrictive relative clauses where a head noun can fulfil more than one syntactic function. Previous descriptions of direct object marking in relative clauses in Persian are routinely based on high-register language, e.g. written literature, and they are inconsistent in their observations. This study is an empirical investigation of the distribution of the =rā marker in restrictive relative clauses in spoken Farsi, and of the degrees of acceptance among Farsi speakers of different patterns of this structure. Examples of the target structure are taken from ten modern Iranian films and fifty English-to-Farsi spoken translation tests. These examples are then used in an acceptability judgement test. The findings of this investigation show that there is a considerable disparity between the written restrictive relative clauses studied in previous research and spoken versions of the same structure. More specifically, it is shown that the omission of the =rā marker is common, that the use of referent pronouns seems no longer to be an acceptable feature of the spoken language, and that the use of the =rā marker and its acceptability judgement change according to the syntactic function of the head noun in the sentence. Persiska har ett kasussystem i vilket specifika direkta objekt markeras med det enklitiska pronomenet را = rā. I talspråket finns det emellertid en viss flexibilitet med avseende på = rā markering, särskilt i komplexa satser som t.ex. restriktiva relativa bisatser där ett korrelat kan fylla mer än en syntaktisk funktion. Tidigare beskrivningar av direkt objektmarkering i relativa bisatser i persiska är baserade på formellt språk, t.ex. skriftlig litteratur, och är inkonsekventa i sina observationer. Denna studie är en empirisk undersökning av fördelningen av =rā markören i restriktiva relativa bisatser i talad farsi och olika grader av acceptans bland farsitalare för olika mönster i denna struktur. Exempel på målstrukturen tas från tio moderna iranska filmer och engelska-till-farsi talade översättningsmeningar av femtio farsitalare. Dessa exempel används sedan i ett bedömningstest. Resultaten av denna undersökning visar att det finns en betydande skillnad mellan de skriftliga restriktiva relativa bisatser som har beskrivits i tidigare forskning och talade versioner av samma struktur. Mer specifikt visas att utelämningen av =rā markören är vanlig, att användningen av referenspronomen inte längre verkar vara accepterad i det talade språket och att användningen av =rā markören och bedömningen av denna som acceptabel förändras enligt den syntaktiska funktionen av korrelatet i meningen
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
Vocabulary and LSP for Global Engineers
No full textIn 2016, the Global Engineers Language Skills (GELS) project set out to identify the most common communication skills required by engineers in industry. With the results of this investigation, we adapted the CEFR self-assessment grid to produce a framework of progressive goals to help language and communication teachers meet the specific needs of student engineers learning an additional language (Rinder et al., 2016). The GELS framework is gaining in popularity, and an increasing number of Language for Specific Purposes (LSP) teachers working at technical universities and engineering departments across Europe are working with it (Geslin et al., 2016). A potential stumbling block, however, is vocabulary. What is meant by “frequently encountered lexis” in the GELS framework? How can LSP teachers, who often have no technical background themselves, provide up-to-date engineering-related vocabulary for their students? This paper gives a brief overview of the GELS project and provides answers to these vocabulary-related questions by describing a pilot project undertaken at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden. The project involves students translating words and phrases based on the Academic Word List (Coxhead, 1998), producing glossaries for their content courses, and translating the glossaries into their first language (e.g. Arabic, Chinese, English, Farsi, French, German, Hindi, Japanese, Serbian, Spanish, and Swedish). The first results of this work already reveal three important foci for discussion: first, the suitability of an academic word list in English for other languages and academic cultures; second, the obstacles preventing students learning and using topic-specific vocabulary effectively; thirdly, the importance of students using languages other than English for academic communication The paper will address the potential uses of the glossaries and translations, the strengths and weaknesses of the work done so far, and the ways in which this work fits into the GELS project and LSP more generally.</p
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