A Corpus-based Study On The Features Of Reporting Verbs In Chinese EFL Learners' English Academic Writing

In academic writing,reporting verbs are not only used to restate information,but also to express their attitude toward previous research by using reporting verbs(RVs).But recent study shows that there is a huge gap between Chinese EFL learners and international journal authors in academic writing,especially in misusing and wrongly using reporting verbs.Thus,over these years,usage of RVs in academic writing has aroused domestic and foreign scholars' concern.This study selects 30 articles of Applied Linguistics(international SSCI authoritative journal)to build Corpus of International Journal Authors(CIJA),which is regarded as reference corpus.Thirty Chinese MA students' theses and thirty Ph D students' dissertations,which are in the field of Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics,are sorted to establish Corpus of Chinese EFL Learners(CCEL),and there are two sub-corpus: Sub-corpus of Chinese MA Students(SCMS)and Sub-corpus of Chinese Ph D students(SCPS)involved.Comparing usage of RVs in CIJA with that in CCEL,and SCMS with SCPS,two research questions are discussed:(1)What are the similarities and differences of RVs used by Chinese EFL learners and international journal authors?(2)From the perspective of denotative meaning,evaluative potential,tenses and voices,what are developmental features of RVs from Chinese MA students to Chinese Ph D students?To analyze data and conduct case study,tools like Ant Conc,LLX2-Chi-square and Log-likelihood Calculator are adopted,and both qualitative and quantitative methods,especially contrastive analysis are employed comprehensively to draw following conclusions.The similarities and differences of RVs that are used by Chinese EFL learners and international journal authors are clarified in the following four aspects.First,for denotative meaning,Chinese EFL learners and international journal authors are more inclined to use discourse RVs and research RVs,and cognitive RVs are the least frequently used.Besides,there is significant difference in using research RVs and cognitive RVs.Second,for evaluative potential,CEL and IJA are in favor of using positive RVs and neutral RVs,but their distribution is different.CEL employ more neutral RVs,while IJA use more positive RVs.Third,for tenses,there is slight difference between them except in using present perfect tense.IJA use far more present perfect tense than CEL.Last,for voices,CEL and IJA are more fond of using active voice,and there is no significant difference between them.The developmental features of RVs used by Chinese EFL learners are shown as follows.First,from the aspect of denotative meaning,Chinese MA students and Ph D students are in favor of using discourse RVs.And they have obvious differences in using cognitive RVs and discourse RVs.Second,for evaluative potential,MA students tend to use more neutral RVs,while Ph D students regard positive RVs as their priority.For denotative meaning and evaluative potential,the gap is narrowed with the increase of their proficiency level.Third,for tenses,simple present tense is the most frequently used by MA students and Ph D students,and this phenomenon is more distinct from the phase of MA degree to Ph D degree.Simple past tense is also wildly used,and there is no significant difference among MA students,Ph D students and international journal authors.Last,for voices,Chinese MA students and Ph D students prefer to use active voice,and there is no obvious difference.But Chinese MA students' usage of voice is closer to international journal authors.This research tries to explore the differences and similarities between CEL and IJA and the developmental features from CMS to CPS in using RVs,so that it can provide some implications for further studies.