Polly Tse

Bio: Polly Tse is an academic researcher from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. The author has contributed to research in topics: Metadiscourse & Rhetorical question. The author has an hindex of 13, co-authored 18 publications receiving 1897 citations. Previous affiliations of Polly Tse include The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Metadiscourse in academic writing: A reappraisal

Abstract: Metadiscourse is self-reflective linguistic material referring to the evolving text and to the writer and imagined reader of that text. It is based on a view of writing as social engagement and in academic contexts reveals the ways that writers project themselves into their discourse to signal their attitude towards both the propositional content and the audience of the text. Despite considerable interest in metadiscourse by teachers and applied linguists, however, it has failed to achieve its explanatory potential due to a lack of theoretical rigour and empirical confusion. Based on an analysis of 240 L2 postgraduate dissertations totalling 4 million words, we offer a reassessment of metadiscourse, propose what we hope is a more robust model, and use this to explore how these students used metadiscourse. Essentially our argument is that metadiscourse offers a way of understanding the interpersonal resources writers use to present propositional material and therefore a means of uncovering something of the rhetorical and social distinctiveness of disciplinary communities.

Is There an "Academic Vocabulary"?

Abstract: This article considers the notion of academic vocabulary: the assumption that students of English for academic purposes (EAP) should study a core of high frequency words because they are common in an English academic register. We examine the value of the term by using Coxhead's (2000) Academic Word List (AWL) to explore the distribution of its 570 word families in a corpus of 3.3 million words from a range of academic disciplines and genres. The findings suggest that although the AWL covers 10.6% of the corpus, individual lexical items on the list often occur and behave in different ways across disciplines in terms of range, frequency, collocation, and meaning. This result suggests that the AWL might not be as general as it was intended to be and, more importantly, questions the widely held assumption that students need a single core vocabulary for academic study. We argue that the different practices and discourses of disciplinary communities undermine the usefulness of such lists and recommend that teachers help students develop a more restricted, discipline-based lexical repertoire.

Evaluative 'that' constructions: signalling stance in research abstracts

Abstract: The study of interpersonal features of academic texts, through which writers evaluate their material and engage their readers, has been one of the most productive areas of discourse studies of the past decade. Scholarly writing involves adopting a position and persuading readers of claims, and the linguistic resources used to achieve these goals have been described in terms of evaluation, stance and metadiscourse. A relatively overlooked interpersonal feature however is what we shall call evaluative that constructions, a structure which allows a writer to thematize attitudinal meanings and present an explicit statement of evaluation by presenting a complement clause within a super-ordinate clause. In this paper we explore the disciplinary variations in the frequencies, forms and functions of evaluative that structures in 240 research article abstracts from six disciplines. We find that this structure is widely employed in these abstracts, about once every five sentences, and is an important means of providing author comment and evaluation. Evaluative that therefore helps writers to manage their discourse in various ways and to signal a clear stance towards the information they present.

“I would like to thank my supervisor”. Acknowledgements in graduate dissertations

Abstract: While acknowledgements have been largely neglected in the EAP literature, they are almost universal in dissertation writing, where they offer students a unique rhetorical space to convey their genuine gratitude for assistance and to promote a favourable social and scholarly character. This article explores the importance of this genre and examines the generic structure and linguistic patterns used to express thanks. The study is based on analyses of the acknowledgements accompanying 240 Masters and PhD dissertations in six academic disciplines written by students at five Hong Kong universities, and on interviews with postgraduate writers. The results confirm the importance of this genre, with around 90% of the texts containing this section and some 1400 separate acts of acknowledgement. Genre patterns reveal a three-move structure sub-divided into a number of steps realised by a relatively restricted range of lexico-grammatical patterns. The analysis also shows that PhD students, particularly those in the “soft” sciences, tended to construct generically more complex acknowledgements with a greater variety of patterns. It is argued that the unexamined nature of acknowledgements may disadvantage non-native writers, and the authors suggest that EAP teachers assist their students by raising their awareness of the ways they can structure their acknowledgements to promote a competent academic identity.

Teaching For Quality Learning At University

Abstract: generalize create, solve unseen problems, extrapolate to unknown domains 22831.indb 124 6/15/11 2:11 PM Designing intended learning outcomes 125 • the verb at the appropriate level of understanding or of performance intended; • the topic content the verb is meant to address, the object of the verb in other words; • the context of the content discipline in which the verb is to be deployed. The ILOs for the course The Nature of Teaching and Learning illustrate these points: 1 Explain why a particular course topic is important to teaching. 2 Apply a course topic to your own teaching. 3 Refl ect on your teaching in terms of a working theory you have gained from the course. 4 Evaluate a situation that has gone wrong and apply a solution. The fi rst refers to declarative knowledge: the students have to reach a level of understanding that requires them to explain something, not just describe or list it: the latter only display multistructural levels of understanding, but explaining requires students to be able to relate the topic to the context of teaching and is at a relational level of understanding. The second is a functioning knowledge example also at the relational level as it requires a level of understanding that enables the student to apply the topic to teaching. The other two are also about functioning knowledge and should be at the relational to extended abstract level of understanding, depending on the originality of the student’s response. The content in (3) is the student’s own working theory and the context the student’s own teaching, and in (4), the content is the theory used in evaluating and the context the problematic situation in teaching. As a note on the number of ILOs per course, we stated earlier that there should be no more fi ve or six ILOs for any course, even though there may be up to ten topics that need addressing. The answer is to write integrating ILOs that address several topics, or, as in ILOs (1) and (2) above, the ILO allows the student to select just one topic for demonstrating ability to achieve the ILO. Another thing to watch out for are redundant ILOs, such as ‘Describe and explain . . .’. ‘Describe’ is redundant because if the student can explain the topic, he or she can certainly describe it. The other matter one should keep in mind at this stage is that desirable but unintended outcomes, or outcomes unforeseen by the teacher, may emerge. This is the nature of extended abstract responses by the student, and they will be accounted for in the normal assessment, but others may simply be things that the student sees as important and relevant learning. This matter becomes a practical issue during assessment, and we address it in Chapter 10. You should now be in a position to design and write your own ILOs for a course you are teaching (Task 7.1). 22831.indb 125 6/15/11 2:11 PM 126 Designing constructively aligned outcomes-based teaching and learning Task 7.1 Writing course ILOs Take a course that you are teaching. Consider the course aim and write the course ILOs by identifying: a the kind of knowledge to be learned (declarative or functioning). b the content or topic to be learned. c the level of understanding or performance to be achieved. d any particular context in which the outcome verb is to be enacted. The following grid may be a useful framework to help you think. Kind of knowledge Level of Content topic Context Declar/function understanding (outcome verb) ______________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________ Now go across the rows and write out the course ILOs by stating the intended level of understanding or performance (outcome verb), topic and the context in which the verb is to be enacted. There is no need to include the kind of knowledge in the ILO as that is defi ned by the verb(s) you use. To recap an example of a course ILO from our course The Nature of Teaching and Learning : Students should be able to: Refl ect (level of understanding and performance) on your teaching (context) in terms of a working theory you have gained from the course (content). Now write your course ILOs. Students should be able to: ILO1: _______________________________________________________ ILO2: _______________________________________________________ ILO3: _______________________________________________________ 22831.indb 126 6/15/11 2:11 PM Designing intended learning outcomes 127 Aligning ILOs at three levels: curriculum mapping Now that we have written the course ILOs, we have the task of checking to see that the three levels of intended outcomes, graduate, programme and course, are aligned. We can achieve this by curriculum mapping (Huet et al. 2009), which is a systematic means of ensuring alignment between programme ILOs and graduate outcomes, and course ILOs and programme ILOs. Graduate outcomes and programme ILOs Table 7.4 shows a simply way of checking the alignment between graduate outcomes and programme ILOs. The table is a device to ensure that the match between programme ILOs and graduate outcomes has at least been considered. Programme ILOs should not be forced to match graduate outcomes that don’t belong in the programme. Because of the different natures of different disciplines or professions, different programmes may have different emphases in addressing the graduate outcomes. It is not necessary that every programme should address all graduate outcomes to the same extent because some may not be relevant to the programme. Programme ILOs are simply the reasons that the programme is being taught, which is a matter of professional and academic judgment. However, university policy will prevail on this. Task 7.2 parallels Table 7.4: it asks you to align programme ILOs with the graduate outcomes of your university, if it has any. If the programme ILOs ILO4: _______________________________________________________ ILO5:_______________________________________________________ ILO6:_______________________________________________________ Review the ILOs to see whether: a the kind of knowledge, content and level of understanding or performance are relevant to achieve the course aim. b they cover all the main reasons for teaching the course. c they are clearly written, especially in identifying the level of understanding or performance to be achieved by the students, and the context (if appropriate). d the number is manageable for designing aligned teaching/learning activities and assessment tasks. How does this new set of course ILOs compare to your existing course ‘objectives’? Does the existing set need to be rewritten? 22831.indb 127 6/15/11 2:11 PM 128 Designing constructively aligned outcomes-based teaching and learning haven’t yet been articulated, discuss them with the programme coordinator and derive a set, then match them with the graduate outcomes. This should give you a clearer idea of how graduate outcomes can suitably be addressed in your teaching. How does your attempt gel with your university’s policy on this? Gelade and Fursenko (2007) also describe a tool for systematically mapping courses and programmes for graduate outcomes. Task 7.2 Aligning programme ILOs with graduate outcomes 1 Take a programme in which you are teaching and either list the programme ILOs if they are already articulated or, if they are not, sit down with the programme coordinator or programme committee chairperson and fi rst write the aims of the programme and a list of programme ILOs that meet those aims. 2 What are the graduate outcomes of your university? List them in the left-hand column in the grid below. 3 In the right-hand column list the programme ILOs that would address the graduate outcomes. Are all graduate outcomes addressed somewhere? Which are not? Does it matter?’ Graduate outcomes Programme ILO 1 2 etc. Table 7.4 An example of aligning programme ILOs with graduate outcomes Graduate outcomes Programme ILO Competent in professional Analyse and apply principles to real-life practice accounting situations Communicate effectively Communicate as a professional with clients and colleagues in real-life accounting situations Teamwork Operate effectively and ethically as a team member in real-life accounting situations Ethical professional As above 22831.indb 128 6/15/11 2:11 PM Designing intended learning outcomes 129 Programme ILOs and course ILOs The next level of alignment is between the programme and the course ILOs. As each programme is served by its constituent courses, it is important that, when aligning course ILOs to the programme ILOs, the course ILOs in total address all aspects of the programme ILOs. Often a programme ILO will be addressed by several courses, from different and increasingly more complex angles. You may attempt this in Task 7.3. Task 7.3 Aligning course ILOs with programme ILOs For individual teachers 1 List the programme ILOs of the programme. 2 List the course ILOs of the courses that you are teaching in a given programme. 3 Consider what programme ILO(s) each of the course ILOs addresses in the following table. Programme ILOs Course 1 ILOs Course 2 ILOs Course 3 ILOs

Speech Genres and Other Late Essays

Abstract: Note on Translation Introduction by Michael Holquist Response to a Question from the Novy Mir Editorial Staff The Bildungsroman and Its Significance in the History of Realism (Toward a Historical Typology of the Novel) The Problem of Speech Genres The Problem of the Text in Linguistics, Philology, and the Human Sciences: An Experiment in Philosophical Analysis From Notes Made in 1970-71 Toward a Methodology for the Human Sciences Index

Teaching and Learning Vocabulary

Abstract: The study reported here examines the English language knowledge and performance of bilingual school children of Middle School age in Britain, in particular their acquisition and use of vocabulary. One of the chief premises of the research is that pupils from bilingual minority ethnic backgrounds suffer a major disadvantage while learning from the National Curriculum because they lack the necessary richness of word knowledge, accompanied by the conceptual frameworks expected in learning subjects such as science and geography. Furthermore, it is believed that by raising awareness among teachers and by the adoption of appropriate methods of vocabulary teaching founded on research, the vocabulary learning of bilingual pupils can be greatly increased. The aim of the study is to identify, describe and evaluate methods of vocabulary instruction currently used and to provide recommendations for suitable methods to be introduced. By means of an action research methodology implemented in a middle school, and with the joint participation of some members of staff and some pupils, classroom data was collected over a two and a half year period from teachers of science, geography and English and their pupils, supplemented with semi-structured interviews with teachers and support staff and conversations with children. These data provided material for a detailed analysis of exactly how individual words develop from first introduction into the pupils’ active vocabulary.

Stance and engagement: a model of interaction in academic discourse

Abstract: A great deal of research has now established that written texts embody interactions between writers and readers. A range of linguistic features have been identified as contributing to the writer's ...