Discursive features of Literature Reviews in Academic Writing

Afifi, Nur (2021) Discursive features of Literature Reviews in Academic Writing. ASFLA2021 Conference Program.

Text 7 ASFLA 2021 Program Booklet (20210917).pdf Download (1MB)

Abstract

Literature review writing can be considered as one of the most difficult skills to attain. The advanced literacy skills -such as critical reading, summarizing, paraphrasing, synthesizing, negotiating the different voices and stances of different authors, and finally presenting the writing in an academically-valued manner- required in writing literature review can be extremely challenging for EFL learners, and even for L1 writers of English (Alan, 1970; Leki, 1992). This study was conducted based on the result of the classroom-based action research project in an EFL tertiary education context in Indonesia. This project had a number of successes (e.g. developing student understanding of the social purpose of literature reviews, and their ability to write acceptable simple literature reviews as taught in the program), but ultimately it was not able to change a number of the practices of the students in their writing of literature reviews outside the course. The data were model texts of 60 sections of literature reviews from journal articles, reference books and theses in applied linguistics which for pedagogical purposes were narrowed down into seven texts that were identified as being the most suitable models for the students, based on their clearer schematic structure, and providing a range of lexicogrammatical and discourse-semantic features from simple to more sophisticated. To determine the discursive features of those literature review text models, four SFL based analyses were conducted, two of which will be presented here: Theme analysis and thematic progression analysis. The Theme analysis showed human participants as common unmarked Themes, while the marked Themes often indicate the spatial location of a study (either the physical space or the metaphorical space). Textual Themes are commonly additive (often ‘and’) and the textual Theme ‘that’ is widely used in projection. Interpersonal Themes are not common in the data. Three common patterns of Theme progression were identified in paragraphs in the data, as well as combinations of the patterns. Together, these findings provide useful material for the next iteration of the action-research process.

Item Type:	Article
Subjects:	08 INFORMATION AND COMPUTING SCIENCES > 0806 Information Systems > 080608 Information Systems Development Methodologies
Divisions:	Dosen IAIN Kediri
Depositing User:	Muhamad Hamim
Date Deposited:	16 Jan 2023 07:02
Last Modified:	27 Feb 2023 04:29
URI:	http://repository.iainkediri.ac.id/id/eprint/799

Actions (login required)

View Item