A Contrastive Study On Features Of Reporting Verbs In Introduction Sections Of Chinese And English Scholars’Research Articles

Reporting and reporting verbs (RVs) are playing a significant role in academic research articles. Reporting verbs are considered as reporting signals conveying messages. By using reporting and RVs, writers can properly introduce the studies conducted by the previous authors; state the authors’viewpoints and their findings. Therefore, whether the usage of reporting and RVs is appropriate or not has greatly influenced the quality of research articles. And in research articles, reporting plays an important role in the third step in Introduction section, from which it can be seen that the employing of reporting and RVs are necessary and indispensable. However, some researchers have found that the usage of reporting and RVs is a considerable challenge for a large number of Chinese learners of English (CLE).Recent years have seen the improvement and progress of studies on reporting and RVs. Nevertheless, the studies are mainly focusing on the grammar and functions of reporting; semantic and pragmatic analysis on RVs in the past decades of years. There are only a few number of corpus-based contrastive studies between CLE and native speakers of English (NSE). As to the contrastive studies on reporting and RVs in introduction sections of research articles, it remains unexplored.The current study is based on two self-built English corpora, namely Chinese learners’psychological corpus (CLPC) and native speakers’psychological corpus (NSPC). Applying both computer software and manual work to collect and analyze data, the study aims at having a comparison between the using of reporting and RVs by Chinese and English scholars in terms of reporting forms, reporting structures, overall frequencies of RVs, semantic categories of RVs and the phraseological patterns of RVs. The findings can help to know about how Chinese scholars have mastered reporting and RVs as well as their inadequacy on the use of reporting and RVs. The results of the study convey several points as follows:Firstly, there are remarkable similarities and considerable differences in the use of reporting and RVs between Chinese and English scholars. Secondly, in terms of reporting forms, Chinese scholars tend to use integral citations which indicate that they lay more focus on the previous authors than the research process and findings. Thirdly, Chinese scholars employ a smaller range of vocabulary and a smaller quantity of reporting verbs in their research articles than English scholars. Fourthly, in perspective of semantic categories of RVs, both Chinese and English scholars prefer to use research verbs and discourse verbs and seldom employ cognitive verbs. However, Chinese scholars are inclined to use research procedure verbs and tentative doubt verbs than English scholars, which presents Chinese scholars like to show their opinions tentatively and they have a preference for the descriptions of research procedures. Fifthly, in terms of phraseological patterns of RVs, by observing the two corpora, there are two key patterns:"Integral citation Human subject+past tense RV+that clause ",and "Non-integral citation+Non-human subject+present tense RV+that clause’The reasons lead to the phenomenon found in the research can be suggested tentatively as follows:the influences of different cultural background, thinking patterns and writing awareness, or the negative transfer of Chinese in second language acquisition. Through contrastive analysis on the use of reporting and RVs in CLPC and NSPC, the current study attempts to help Chinese scholars better understand and use reporting and RVs. At the same time, it can contribute to teaching English in China and EAP teaching and learning.