Journal of English for Academic Purposes最新文献

Metadiscursive nouns in academic argument: ChatGPT vs student practices

IF 3.1 1区文学

Journal of English for Academic Purposes Pub Date : 2025-04-13 DOI: 10.1016/j.jeap.2025.101514

Feng (Kevin) Jiang , Ken Hyland

{"title":"Metadiscursive nouns in academic argument: ChatGPT vs student practices","authors":"Feng (Kevin) Jiang , Ken Hyland","doi":"10.1016/j.jeap.2025.101514","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jeap.2025.101514","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The ability of ChatGPT to create grammatically accurate and coherent texts has generated considerable anxiety among those concerned that students might use such large language models (LLMs) to write their assignments. The extent to which LLMs can mimic human writers is starting to be explored, but we know little about their ability to use nominal resources to create effective academic texts. This study investigates metadiscursive nouns in argumentative essays, comparing how ChatGPT and university students employ these devices to organise text, express stance, and construct persuasive arguments. By analysing 145 essays from each source, we examine the syntactic patterns, interactive functions, and interactional uses of metadiscursive nouns. The analysis reveals that while overall frequencies were similar, ChatGPT has distinct preferences for simpler syntactic constructions (particularly the <em>determiner + N</em> pattern) and relies heavily on anaphoric references, whereas students demonstrate more balanced syntactic distribution and greater use of cataphoric references. Interactionally, ChatGPT prefers manner nouns for descriptive precision, while students favour status nouns for evaluative reasoning and evidential nouns for empirical grounding. These findings show that, while structurally coherent, LLM-generated texts often lack the rhetorical flexibility and evaluative sophistication of human academic writing, offering valuable insights for EAP pedagogy.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47717,"journal":{"name":"Journal of English for Academic Purposes","volume":"75 ","pages":"Article 101514"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-04-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143824428","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Exploring first-year Chinese doctoral students’ metacognitive awareness and self-efficacy in an L2 genre-based academic writing course 探究一年级中国博士生在以第二语言体裁为基础的学术写作课程中的元认知意识和自我效能感

IF 3.1 1区文学

Journal of English for Academic Purposes Pub Date : 2025-04-13 DOI: 10.1016/j.jeap.2025.101515

Jing Chen, Qian Zhu

{"title":"Exploring first-year Chinese doctoral students’ metacognitive awareness and self-efficacy in an L2 genre-based academic writing course","authors":"Jing Chen, Qian Zhu","doi":"10.1016/j.jeap.2025.101515","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jeap.2025.101515","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This qualitative case study (<em>N</em> = 11) explores first-year Chinese doctoral students' metacognitive awareness of task perception and self-efficacy in academic writing. Drawing on data from learning journals in a L2 genre-based writing course for doctoral students in sciences, this study identified a continuum of stages in their reported self-efficacy for academic writing, including low, balanced, and emerging self-efficacy. Students' descriptions of metacognitive awareness of task perception encompassed awareness of rhetorical, content, and linguistic considerations. Analyses of how students reported metacognitive awareness of task perception and their self-efficacy revealed that low self-efficacy tended to co-occur with relatively sophisticated metacognitive awareness of rhetorical considerations, while emerging, positive self-efficacy seemed to co-occur with metacognitive awareness of content or language conventions. The study reveals the first-year doctoral students' miscalibration of self-efficacy for academic writing, posing a potential challenge for English for Academic Purposes (EAP) writing instructors to address in genre-based writing instruction. It also demonstrates the crucial role of mastery experience, vicarious experience, and emotional states in enhancing students’ academic writing self-efficacy, suggesting the necessity of providing opportunities for students to achieve success in writing, observe peers, and obtain positive feedback in L2 genre-based writing classrooms.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47717,"journal":{"name":"Journal of English for Academic Purposes","volume":"75 ","pages":"Article 101515"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-04-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143824427","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Understanding “the” in L2 writing: Article use in formulaic sequences among beginning and intermediate Chinese learners of English

IF 3.1 1区文学

Journal of English for Academic Purposes Pub Date : 2025-04-11 DOI: 10.1016/j.jeap.2025.101512

Detong Xia , Hye K. Pae

{"title":"Understanding “the” in L2 writing: Article use in formulaic sequences among beginning and intermediate Chinese learners of English","authors":"Detong Xia , Hye K. Pae","doi":"10.1016/j.jeap.2025.101512","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jeap.2025.101512","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study investigates the use of articles in formulaic sequences in L2 English writing by Chinese learners, focusing on both target sequences and ungrammatical instances. Writing samples from two learner corpora were analyzed, one at the beginning level (N = 802,974 words) and the other at the intermediate level (N = 803,008 words), derived from the EF Cambridge Open Language Database. The learner corpora were analyzed for article-embedded formulaic sequences, which had previously been identified as fundamental expressions in academic speaking and writing. The core expression approach was used to identify errors related to articles, which were categorized as omission, addition, and misformation errors. Error types in both learner corpora were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. The findings indicated that intermediate learners produced more article-embedded formulaic sequences than beginners, but with comparable accuracy. Specifically, intermediate learners produced greater numbers of omission errors, but fewer misformation errors than their counterparts. This study offers insights into the cross-proficiency variations in the use of article-embedded formulaic sequences in L2 writing, with implications for teaching these sequences to enhance L2 academic writing.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47717,"journal":{"name":"Journal of English for Academic Purposes","volume":"75 ","pages":"Article 101512"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-04-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143815667","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

IF 3.1 1区文学

Journal of English for Academic Purposes Pub Date : 2025-04-08 DOI: 10.1016/j.jeap.2025.101509

Chunmei Lu

引用次数: 0

Evaluating an AI speaking assessment tool: Score accuracy, perceived validity, and oral peer feedback as feedback enhancement 评估人工智能口语评估工具：评分准确性、感知有效性和作为反馈强化的口头同伴反馈

IF 3.1 1区文学

Journal of English for Academic Purposes Pub Date : 2025-04-07 DOI: 10.1016/j.jeap.2025.101505

Xu Jared Liu , Jingwen Wang , Bin Zou

{"title":"Evaluating an AI speaking assessment tool: Score accuracy, perceived validity, and oral peer feedback as feedback enhancement","authors":"Xu Jared Liu , Jingwen Wang , Bin Zou","doi":"10.1016/j.jeap.2025.101505","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jeap.2025.101505","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Artificial Intelligence (AI) has significantly transformed language learning approaches and outcomes. However, research on AI-assisted English for Academic Purposes (EAP) speaking classrooms remains sparse. This study evaluates \"EAP Talk\", an AI-assisted speaking assessment tool, examining its effectiveness in two contexts: controlled tasks (Reading Aloud) that elicit non-spontaneous speech, and uncontrolled tasks (Presentation) that generate spontaneous speech. The research assessed accuracy and validity of EAP Talk scores through analysing 20 Reading Aloud and 20 Presentation recordings randomly selected from a pool of 64 undergraduate students. These recordings were graded by five experienced EAP teachers using Adaptive Comparative Judgment (ACJ) – a comparative scoring method – and the traditional rubric rating approach. Acknowledging the limitation of EAP Talk in providing scores without detailed feedback, the study further investigated its perceived validity and examined oral peer feedback as a complementary enhancement strategy. Semi-structured interviews with four students were conducted to investigate their perceptions of the AI-assisted assessment process, focusing on the benefits of EAP Talk in enhancing learning, its limitations, and the effectiveness of oral peer feedback. Scoring concordance analysis shows that EAP Talk performs well in the controlled task but less so in the uncontrolled one. Content analysis on the interview data reveals that EAP Talk facilitates student confidence and positively shapes learning styles, while oral peer feedback markedly improves speaking skills through effective human-computer collaboration. The study calls for more precise AI assessments in uncontrolled tasks and proposes pedagogical strategies to better integrate AI into EAP speaking contexts.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47717,"journal":{"name":"Journal of English for Academic Purposes","volume":"75 ","pages":"Article 101505"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-04-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143786287","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

IF 3.1 1区文学

Journal of English for Academic Purposes Pub Date : 2025-04-02 DOI: 10.1016/j.jeap.2025.101508

Yimin Zhang

引用次数: 0

Utilization of appraisal resources for acknowledging limitations within doctoral theses across disciplines

IF 3.1 1区文学

Journal of English for Academic Purposes Pub Date : 2025-04-01 DOI: 10.1016/j.jeap.2025.101511

Shuyi (Amelia) Sun , Feng (Kevin) Jiang

{"title":"Utilization of appraisal resources for acknowledging limitations within doctoral theses across disciplines","authors":"Shuyi (Amelia) Sun , Feng (Kevin) Jiang","doi":"10.1016/j.jeap.2025.101511","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jeap.2025.101511","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In doctoral thesis composition, the acknowledgment of limitations not only showcases writers' capacity for self-evaluation but may operate to sway disciplinary examiners to perceive caveats in a more positive light, hereby constituting a crucial element in determining the acceptability and justification of research within disciplinary communities. Nonetheless, scant consideration has been given to the disciplinary interpersonal strategies for acknowledging limitations within the ESAP literature. To remedy the oversight, this study investigated the mediation of interpersonal discursive practices through the <em>appraisal</em> system (Martin & White, 2005) alongside any disciplinary variation in the limitations of 120 doctoral theses across hard and soft disciplines. Results showed prevalent utilization of diverse <em>appraisal</em> features, serving to convey authorial viewpoints, negotiate potential alternative perspectives, and fortify compromises with expert examiners. Cross-disciplinary analyses further revealed soft-disciplinary writers’ notable preference for most <em>appraisal</em> resources, suggesting variations in disciplinary knowledge structure and conventional practice. The findings are anticipated to inform interpersonal strategies for delivering limitations, develop the current comprehension of disciplinary modes of knowing and social practice, and offer pedagogical insights for thesis writing instruction.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47717,"journal":{"name":"Journal of English for Academic Purposes","volume":"75 ","pages":"Article 101511"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143747649","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Chinese university students’ self-regulated strategic learning in English medium instruction from a sociocultural perspective

IF 3.1 1区文学

Journal of English for Academic Purposes Pub Date : 2025-04-01 DOI: 10.1016/j.jeap.2025.101510

Pengzhan Yang, Wenqian Huang, Hui-zhong Shen, Hongzhi Yang, Chuan Gao

{"title":"Chinese university students’ self-regulated strategic learning in English medium instruction from a sociocultural perspective","authors":"Pengzhan Yang, Wenqian Huang, Hui-zhong Shen, Hongzhi Yang, Chuan Gao","doi":"10.1016/j.jeap.2025.101510","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jeap.2025.101510","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Recently, there has been growing interest in research on learning strategies employed by students to regulate their learning in English medium instruction (EMI) settings. This study examines the self-regulated strategic learning by Chinese university students in an EMI programme over an extended period of time. Data were collected from 262 students through a questionnaire on learning strategies to gauge the way they learn as well as the role of their English proficiency and year of study in their self-regulated learning. Interviews and learning journals were also utilised with nine students to offer in-depth insights into their self-regulation through the lens of sociocultural theory. The findings revealed that students actively adopted metacognitive and cognitive strategies to internalise external mediating resources (e.g., course materials, technology tools) and assistance from peer discussions and teacher instruction. However, participants' less use of social and affective strategies indicated their insufficient socially mediated self-regulation, highlighting the need for scaffolded training to cultivate students' self-regulatory skills. The findings further demonstrated the role of students’ English proficiency and year of study in their self-regulated learning, which has implications for fostering an interactive learning community to facilitate optimal student learning in EMI.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47717,"journal":{"name":"Journal of English for Academic Purposes","volume":"75 ","pages":"Article 101510"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143738259","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

“Figure 2 shows that …”: Evidentiality in Chinese graduate students’ research articles

IF 3.1 1区文学

Journal of English for Academic Purposes Pub Date : 2025-03-31 DOI: 10.1016/j.jeap.2025.101507

Zhongqing He, Haowen Zhou

{"title":"“Figure 2 shows that …”: Evidentiality in Chinese graduate students’ research articles","authors":"Zhongqing He, Haowen Zhou","doi":"10.1016/j.jeap.2025.101507","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jeap.2025.101507","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Evidentiality is an important interpersonal resource in academic discourse, indicating sources of information and authorial commitment to propositions. Compared to other interpersonal resources in academic writing, however, evidentiality is an understudied area. In particular, much is unknown about the possible similarities/differences between student writers and expert writers in their use of evidentiality in research articles (RAs). The present study, adopting a systemic functional linguistics perspective, reports a corpus-based comparative examination of evidentiality in Chinese graduate students' coursework RAs and expert writers' published RAs. The study's aim is to discern the extent to which Chinese graduate students differ from expert writers in their use of evidentiality in English RAs in four disciplines: mathematics, physics, metallurgy, and materials science. The results showed that Chinese graduate students, as English as a foreign language (EFL) writers, use significantly more evidentials in their RAs than expert writers and their repertoire of evidentials is relatively limited. Chinese graduate students also show strong preferences for certain types and realizations of evidentiality and thus display less variety and flexibility in their use of evidentials in their RAs. This study provides evidence for the relationship between writers' writing skills and language proficiency and their use of evidentiality in RAs, and may contribute to our understanding of evidentiality in academic discourse.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47717,"journal":{"name":"Journal of English for Academic Purposes","volume":"75 ","pages":"Article 101507"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143738256","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

A systematic analysis of first-person identity roles in agricultural sciences

IF 3.1 1区文学

Journal of English for Academic Purposes Pub Date : 2025-03-30 DOI: 10.1016/j.jeap.2025.101506

Julia T. Williams-Camus

{"title":"A systematic analysis of first-person identity roles in agricultural sciences","authors":"Julia T. Williams-Camus","doi":"10.1016/j.jeap.2025.101506","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jeap.2025.101506","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper presents a systematic quantitative and qualitative analysis of first-person reference in a corpus of 30 Agricultural Science research articles. The analysis is based on Tang and John’s (1999) taxonomy of authorial identity roles cross-referenced with rhetorical functions within the IMRaD structure. A total of 795 instances (39.3 per 10,000 words) were found, the most frequent roles being <em>recounter</em> (59.5 %) and <em>opinion-holder</em> (32.8 %) spread across all sections. The highest density, however, was observed in the short Conclusion section and Abstract (84.1 and 75.7 per 10k, respectively). Interestingly, the qualitative analysis revealed that instances of presenting reasoned decisions for procedural choices outnumbered plain description of procedures through first-person reference in Methods. These were also frequent in the Results section, where stating results with the first-person was relatively rare (21 of 62 tokens). In the Discussion section, use of the possessive was higher than that of the subject pronoun (52.2 % vs. 46 % instances), which was attributable to writers employing <em>our</em> to identify the source of the data under consideration in the control of the different voices in the text. The study provides new insights into the diverse ways that authors imprint their presence on their discourse through self-reference.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47717,"journal":{"name":"Journal of English for Academic Purposes","volume":"75 ","pages":"Article 101506"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2025-03-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143734652","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0