The Story of Writing: From Classical Rhetoric to Rhetoric and Composition

Written to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the rubric “Academic Writing and Research Competences” established by the journal’s late editor-in-chief Mikhail Sapunov, the paper focuses on the origins of academic writing and traces its development in terms of rhetoric. The five stages of classical rhetoric are interpreted as five key components of academic writing: research, logic, culture, knowledge, and language. This approach helps visualize academic writing as a wholesome model composed of cognitive and linguistic elements, describe the impact of this model on the rhetorical and publishing conventions of the global academic discourse, and define the problems in knowledge construction as deviations from the model’s unity in various sociocultural contexts. The study concludes that the low quality of an academic text may result from either losing the predominance of the first two stages of rhetoric (invention and arrangement) or of the other three (style, memory, and delivery). The former signifies an ideological pressure on researchers to substitute their own rhetoric with quotes from canonized sources, whereas the latter provokes them to disregard language and style as inferior to research, because of which texts diminish in clarity. In either case, communication lacks in efficiency. The study of academic writing in the historical perspective contributes to better understanding of the latest trends in its development and elicits the problems which impede the quality of Russian scholarly and academic texts.

Article promotion on Twitter and Facebook: A case study of Cell journal

Social media has become an increasingly important channel of scholarly communication, especially for promoting the latest research outputs, so its role in facilitating access to academic texts is worth exploring. Based on 324 posts containing scholarly articles shared by journal Cell on Twitter and Facebook, this study compared the user engagement performance of articles posted on both platforms and examined the effect of such social media promotion and user engagement on article visiting. The user engagement performance of the articles was measured by retweets, shares, reactions, and likes, while click data tracked through bitly.com were used to indicate article visits. Statistical analysis, correlation analysis, and regression analysis were applied to explore and understand these data. For Cell, Facebook posts have a more significant influence than similar tweets in terms of volume. The user engagement on Facebook is 2.5~4 times as much as on Twitter. Moreover, the click metric of short links shows that Cell’s posts on Facebook directed twice as many visitors to the papers as posts on Twitter. However, the efficiency of the two platforms is approximate when the difference in the volume of followers is eliminated. The correlation and regression analysis suggested that user engagement positively affects the visiting of Cell’s papers. Both reactions and shares would affect the clicks of the short links to paper text. The results shed light on the implications of sharing scholarly articles on social media platforms for the promotion of article visits.

Industrial Policies Under Xi Jinping: A Steering Theory Perspective

Xi Jinping’s ascension to power and subsequent developments in Chinese governance have stoked the flames on the debate on industrial policies, both in China and across the globe. At least partly, the debate results from the perception that industrial policies have been important for China’s economic rise, growing competitiveness and drive to innovate. Outside China, this perception has already prompted some governments to suggest that their countries should react to China’s rise by also promulgating industrial policies. But inspite of the growing interest in the topic, there is hardly a consensus on the character of China’s industrial policies nor their efficiency and effectiveness, neither inside nor outside of China. This paper will shed light on these issues by looking at Chinese industrial policies from the perspective of political steering theory. It will first review the political steering theory, identify key concepts (steering modes, steering objects and subjects, etc.) and then explain the rationale of applying the theoretical deliberations to industrial policymaking and implementation in China’s EV and solar sectors. Against this background, this paper will identify different types of industrial policies and look into Chinese industrial policy development and academic discussion over time with a specific focus on changes in industrial policy steering following the inauguration of the Xi Jinping administration. This paper aims to make a conceptual contribution based on the analysis of policy documents and academic texts as well as discussions and interviews with Chinese economists and political scientists. It is part of a larger research project that focuses on how political steering through industrial policies affects China’s energy transition under Xi.

Unbestimmte Subjekte: zur problematischen Äquivalenz von deutschem man und italienischem si

German sentences with man and Italian sentences with si impersonale or si passivante are often presented as equivalent in contrastive grammars. However, this functional equation proves to be problematic when Italian students refer with man to their own role as authors, such as in: “Darauf wird man aber im folgenden Kapitel eingehen”. Evidently, man cannot refer to the speaker role, while in the same context the Italian si is well suitable. Starting from this interference error, the paper examines the possible range of reference of the two pronouns. It turns out that the most common reading of man and si in both languages is the generic one, which can be paraphrased as “everyone”. Systematic divergences, on the other hand, occur in the particular reading, i. e. when referring to single unspecified subjects. While the German man characterizes the subject as anonymous and does never include listeners or speakers (e. g: Gestern hat man bei uns eingebrochen; man ≈ ‘jemand’, ‘somebody’), the Italian si, according to the verb class (transitive, unergative, unaccusative, etc.), can or must be read as speaker-exclusive (Mi si è raccontato che ...; si ≈ ‘qualcuno’, ‘someone’) or as speaker-inclusive (Ieri si è andati al ristorante; si ≈ ‘noi’, ‘we’). The speaker-inclusive reading also occurs when si is used in academic texts as a substitute for the established form of speaker (author) reference by means of the 1st person plural (noi, ‘we’). In addition to man and si, other forms of indeterminate subjects are examined, namely the non-anaphoric uses of German “sie (pl.)” (Sie haben schon wieder die Preise erhöht.) and of the Italian 3rd person plural null subject (Ti hanno cercato.) as well as the so-called impersonal passive form in German (Es wird gemurmelt.).

Como ler um texto acadêmico? Diretrizes para estudantes universitários

Objetivo. Propor diretrizes para orientar estudantes universitários na leitura de textos acadêmicos. Desenvolvimento. O artigo apresenta dados sobre a importância do desenvolvimento de um repertório de leitura eficiente e ações a serem apresentadas pelos estudantes para que sejam capazes de ler textos acadêmicos de forma mais produtiva e crítica, divididas em oito diretrizes, sendo elas: caracterizar a estrutura de um texto acadêmico; definir objetivos para a leitura; elaborar perguntas com base no título e subtítulos; avaliar a própria compreensão do texto; avaliar as informações apresentadas; identificar informações desconhecidas; relacionar as informações do texto com outras fontes de informação; e produzir algo novo a partir da leitura. Implicações. Espera-se que as diretrizes apresentadas auxiliem estudantes ou profissionais que necessitem aperfeiçoar o repertório de leitura de textos acadêmicos, e que possam utilizar esse conhecimento também diante de outras fontes de informação, examinando notícias e textos de forma mais crítica e autônoma.Palavras-chave. Leitura funcional; Artigo científico; Avaliação crítica; Ensino superior; Letramento científico. How to read an academic text? Guidelines for college studentsAbstract:Objective. Propose guidelines to guide university students in the reading of academic texts. Development. The article presents data on the importance of developing an efficient reading repertoire and actions to be presented by students so that they are able to read academic texts in a more productive and critical way, divided into eight guidelines, which are: to characterize the structure of an academic text; define objectives for reading; prepare questions based on title and subtitles; evaluate the very understanding of the text; evaluate the information presented; identify unknown information; relate text information to other sources of information; and produce something new from reading. Implications. It is expected that the guidelines presented can help students or professionals who need to improve the repertoire of reading academic texts, and who can use this knowledge also to read other sources of information, examining news and texts in a more critical and autonomous way.Keywords. Functional reading; scientific article; critical evaluation; higher education; scientific literacy.

Metadiscursive Markers and Text Genre: A Metareview

Given the interest in the study of metadiscourse as the communication of ideas and the way people use language in different communicative situations, this paper attempted to find the degree of confluence between metadiscourse markers from different studies and to show how patterns of metadiscourse analysis based on various written genres can be applied to a wider range. The mean values for the frequency of marker use and their respective deviations were determined by comparing a significant number of studies on metadiscourse elements. To ensure comparability, those following Hyland’s model were chosen. The units of analysis were grouped into two broad categories based on discursive characteristics: Academic genres (research articles, theses, and textbooks) and non-academic genres, which included documents ranging from newspaper editorials or opinion columns to Internet texts and other forms of digital communication. The results of our study highlight that the disparity in interactive markers between academic and non-academic texts is relatively small. This difference has been identified by previous studies, and it is confirmed herein that the difference may be related to the use of academic language, the topic, or the object of study. In contrast, the mean values of the interactive markers in non-academic texts are considerably higher than those in academic texts. At the same time, the texts seem to be organised along two axes (interactional and interactive) in distinct areas. Despite our initial assumptions that the data would be subject to individual variations, that differences would be found between different sections of the same genre within the same academic discipline, and that the results would vary if certain texts were added or excluded, we observed certain trends in the behaviour of the documents, although it prevailed that, within each category, the texts should be studied individually.

Usage and empirical productivity of international adjectival suffixes in Slovak based on general and specialised corpora

The paper attempts to identify the usage and productivity of five different international suffixes in Slovak by means of corpus evidence. The analysis focuses on real and potential productivity in a two-stage comparison: 1) tokens/lemmas occurring in a general balanced corpus vs general corpus of specialised and academic texts, 2) general corpus of specialised and academic texts vs specialised (sub)corpora of medical, legal, economic and religious texts. The aim of the analysis is to explore whether productivity varies across registers by means of statistical measures.

METACOGNITIVE READING STRATEGIES APPLICATION AMONG HIGH AND LOW PROFICIENT READERS AT PRE-UNIVERSITY LEVEL

In higher education, reading of academic texts is considered as an essential access to scientific knowledge. Therefore, in this survey study will utilize the inventory of Survey on Reading Strategies Questionnaire (SOR) developed by Mokhtari and Sheory. It is explored to identify the two types of readers: high (HPR) and low (LPR) proficient readers at Form Sixth Cenre of Government School in Sabah, Malaysia. There are three major reading strategies: GLOB (Global), SUPP (Support) and PROB (Problem Solving) strategies. This quantitative approach is done by operating the descriptive (mean and standard of deviation) and inferential (Magnitude of effect) statistics. 250 participants from pre-university students randomly selected to respond to the questionnaire The questionnaire finding revealed that PROB strategy was favoured by both readers. To strengthen scrupulous answer, Effect size had given a better interpretation of the finding. The questionnaire provided all reading strategies to be negative effect to the high proficient readers (HPR) yet large positive effect to the low proficient readers (LPR).

The Impact of Teacher Feedback Via Google Doc in L2 Learners’ Writing

Academic writing of assignments is challenging for many undergraduate students of English, and therefore, instructors' written evaluative comments are needed to help students obtain information about their performance in such academic written tasks. As a qualitative case study, this study was carried out on one undergraduate course, specifically on the instructor's written comments on 10 learners' peer academic writing of article reports, how students revise their texts in responding to written comments and how they view such comments and academic writing via Google Docs. The data was collected from the written comments, students’ text revisions and a focus group interview. The findings show that the instructor commented on issues and errors at the global and local levels of academic texts directly and indirectly. Quantification of the data illustrated that the instructor provided the five pairs of learners with an overall number of 1440 which targeted 373 (25%) global issues and 1067 (75%) local issues in the writing of the five pairs. In terms of direction, 977 (68%) accounted for direct feedback, while 463 (32%) accounted for indirect feedback. Distribution of the feedback received by the learners varied across the five pairs of students. The findings indicate that most of the learners’ text revisions were made based on teacher feedback (1187/93%), while only 95 (7%) revisions were self-made revisions. The thematic analysis of the follow-up interview underlies students’ perceived value of teacher feedback in improving their writing, their preference for direct feedback on their writing, their perceived role of Google doc in editing their written assignments. Yet, a few students reported a few restrictions of Google Dos-peer writing and editing. The current study implied that teachers should act as mediators, be aware of the role of feedback in facilitating their students’ development of writing and misinterpretation and confusion their feedback can cause to our students in the process of writing revision, and decide what issues their feedback needs to target, focus on what issues actually challenge their learners in writing. Finally, feedback practices should be made innovative through integration of technological tools.