A Contrastive Study On Reporting Verbs In English M.A. Theses

Reporting verbs, as an inseparable part of academic writing and an important language phenomenon, is used to introduce or talk about researches done previously. It helps writers build their own research space and make their studies more persuasive. Researchers have found that EFL learners including postgraduate students who are proficient in their fields have problems in choosing and using proper reporting verbs to support their arguments by reporting previous researches accurately and effectively when they compose their academic writings.The present study intends to explore similarities and differences as well as possible reasons causing these similarities and differences in using RVs through a contrastive analysis between60English M. A. theses written by Chinese postgraduate students and American native speakers thus to give pedagogical implications. AntConc (3.3.5) is employed to retrieve, contrast, analyze and illustrate the use of RVs in both data. The present author intends to answer questions as follows.(1) What are the similarities and differences in the use of RVs in both data from aspects of evaluative potential, denotative meaning, top frequently used RVs, ways of reporting, tense of RVs and voice of RVs?(2) What are the possible reasons causing these similarities and differences?The results reveal that there are similarities and differences in the use of RVs between two data. The results are as follows.Generally speaking, DNS writers use more tokens and2fewer types than DCEL writers; as for top24frequently used RVs, total number of tokens in DNS is higher than in DCEL. In terms of evaluative potential, both writers in DNS and DCEL prefer to use positive verbs to gain, support from writers while the number of neutral RVs are similar. Negative RVs are seldom used in both data. As for denotative meaning, writers in both data have preference in using discourse RVs while cognitive RVs are seldom used, the numbers of these three aspects in DCEL are higher than in DNS, which means DCEL writers have concentration on using certain RVs.As for ways of reporting, indirect reporting predominates in both data and both amounts of indirect reporting and direct reporting in DNS are larger than in DCEL. Definite reporting also plays a predominant role in ways of reporting, and the results in both data are similar, which shows that both writers want their reporting to be accurate and persuasive.As for tense use, the most frequently used two are the simple past tense and the simple present tense, while the present perfect tense is less frequently used. DCEL writers use simple past tense more often than DNS writers while the numbers of simple present tense and present perfect tense are higher in DNS, which indicates that DNS writers are good at reporting others as what they are and make generalizations on previous works. From the aspect of voice use, it can be seen that active voice takes a major proportion in both data, which means that both of them are not good at reporting conflicting information from others. DNS writers employ more active voices as well as passive voices than DCEL writers.The present author hopes that this study can shed light on teaching and learning of academic writings and help teachers improve teaching skills of academic writings and help students compose more persuasive academic writings when RVs are involved.