A Corpus based analysis of the use of reporting verbs in master dissertations
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Date
2017
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university of Oum- El- Bouaghi
Abstract
The present study is concerned with a crucial element in reporting that is considered to be the key and complex feature in academic writing i.e. reporting verbs. These lexical items are chosen carefully by writers to report others claim and to present their evaluative judgments on those claims. Therefore, this study is called for with an attempt to figure out how this type of verbs is used in MA postgraduates literature reviews at the department of English, Larbi Ben M'hidi University in OEB. The corpus consists of 10 MA theses that were selected from both streams at the department of English "The University of Oum El Bouaghi". RVs were tallied using AntConc and SPSS software. After that, they were classified using Hyland's (2002) classification of RVs. The results demonstrated that both streams used a limited number and type of RVs that was different from the one used by the other stream. What was shared, by both streams, is the arbitrary and non organized use of these lexical items. Consequently, RVs should be implemented within teachers' goals and included in future syllabuses so that MA postgraduates will be aware of the appropriate use of these lexical items.
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Keywords
Academic writing, Reporting verb, Lexical items