A Comparative Study Of Repetition In English And Chinese MOOC

Repetition is a universal linguistic phenomenon and it is a major resource in interpersonal interaction.Repetitions are widely used both in written discourses and spoken discourses.Due to the fact that most previous studies on repetition used written discourses as data,there is a lack of research focusing on the repetitions in spoken discourses and much should be done to investigate the uses of repetitions in online educational talks.The thesis adopts both quantitative and qualitative methods.The qualitative analysis is based on the framework proposed by Bazzanella(2011).The thesis mainly focuses on the exact repetition forms and four macro-functions of repetition in MOOC.The features of repetition in lecturers' spoken language will be explored.The data are gathered from two series of open online courses with the same topic from the MOOC platform.One of them is called China X lectured by Professor Peter K.Bol.from Harvard University(41,322 words)while the other titled Wen wu jing pin yu wen hua zhong guo was given by Professor Pen Lin from Tinghua University(47,538 words).Using Ant Conc 3.4.3,the thesis analyzes the distribution of repetitions in the selected Chinese and English MOOC discourses,aiming to figure out the similarities and differences of repetition used in the two corpora.The findings offer a new understanding of repetitions in English and Chinese MOOC.The highly occurrences of repetitions indicate that repetition plays a critical role in MOOC discourses.The differences of repetition forms reflect the lexical features of Chinese and English.Although the repetition functions vary in different occasions,the cognitive function accounts the most percentage among other macro-functions in the two corpora,which also reflects the importance of repetition as a classroom discourse strategy.The study implies some practical significance to the traditional class,providing an exciting opportunity to advance our knowledge of language strategies in the use of repetition.We can also get some inspiration from the study and try to use repetition properly to make our communication more natural and comfortable.