Applying Corpus-based Genre Analysis into the Teaching of Academic Chinese Writing

Abstract With an increasing number of international students coming to China for higher education, the learning needs of academic Chinese increased sharply. However, Chinese for Academic Purposes (CAP) is still in its infancy in both academic research and teaching practice. As a result, students lack the support for their academic Chinese skills and encounter difficulties according to their feedback. Meanwhile, the studies on English for Academic Purposes (EAP) pedagogy are fruitful. Among all the pedagogies, corpus-based instruction with genre analysis were found to be an effective approach in improving students’ EAP writing abilities. This study thus applied corpus-based genre analysis teaching approach to CAP teaching and examined the effectiveness. Through the construction and analysis of a specific corpus, this paper first investigated the move structure and high-frequency words and expressions of Chinese research article (RA) abstracts in the discipline of Economics and Management Science. Afterwards, a mini learning corpus was compiled for students’ exploration. The learning materials and sample tasks were introduced and data were collected from students’ feedback and writing samples before and after the teaching intervention. The results revealed that, firstly, the conventional move structure of Chinese RA abstracts in Economics and Management Science was I-MR-D, which is similar to English RA abstracts. Method and Results are two conventional moves. Second, corpus-based genre analysis can partially improve students’ performances in academic writing. After the teaching intervention, students’ awareness of text structure and the use of academic Chinese expressions improved noticeably. Though based on a small sample size, the research findings contribute towards the understanding of linguistic conventions of Chinese RA abstracts. Moreover, the materials and pedagogy used in this project shed new light on the instruction of Chinese writing as well as CAP curriculum development. Keywords Academic Chinese writing, research article abstracts, corpus-assisted language teaching, genre analysis 基于语料库的体裁分析教学法在学术汉语写作课程中的应用 周思佳 西交利物浦大学,中国 闻婷 西交利物浦大学,中国 邓舒 西交利物浦大学,中国 摘要 随着越来越多的国际学生来华接受高等教育,学术汉语的学习需求急剧增加。然而,学术汉语的本体研究和教学实践都尚处于起步阶段。学生在论文写作中缺乏足够的指导和支持,由此遇到了诸多困难。另一方面,学术英语的教学和研究成果丰硕。在所有教学法中,基于语料库的体裁分析教学法在近年来受到了颇多关注并在实践中被证明能够有效提高学生的学术英语写作能力。本文拟将该方法应用于学术汉语的写作教学并检验其有效性。以经济与管理学学科的中文论文摘要为研究对象,本文首先构建研究语料库,分析摘要的语步结构和高频词汇及句式。基于研究语料库的发现,筛选语料,构建学习语料库,指导学生对学习语料库中的样本进行语步分析和高频词汇及结构整理。最后,通过调查问卷和学生课程前后写作样本的比较来验证基于语料库的体裁教学法对于提升留学生写作能力的有效性。研究发现:首先,经管类论文摘要的主要语步结构和英文摘要类似,为 I-M-R-D 结构,方法和结论为摘要中的常规语步;其次,基于语料库的体裁分析教学法能够在一定程度上提高学生学术汉语写作能力。在课程后,学生的语步意识和学术汉语词汇的使用均有较大进步。本研究有助于增进对摘要这一文体的结构和语言特征的了解,为学术汉语写作教学和学术汉语课程的建设提供新的思路。 关键词 学术汉语写作,论文摘要 ,语料库辅助语言教学,体裁教学