Acknowledgements are a widely used genre in academic discourse to express gratitude towards various types of assistance and contribution of individuals and institutions, and they have been reported to be contextually and culturally... more
Acknowledgements are a widely used genre in academic discourse to express gratitude towards various types of assistance and contribution of individuals and institutions, and they have been reported to be contextually and culturally interwoven. Despite a number of acknowledgement studies in various settings, little is known of how these texts are composed by EFL writers in Vietnam and whether or not the culture has any influence on the composition of acknowledgements as reported in previous studies of acknowledgements. Following Hyland's (2004) and Hyland and Tse's (2004) frameworks, this study investigates the generic structures and linguistic elements of acknowledgements in 202 TESOL master's theses written by Vietnamese postgraduates. The findings were compared with those in the literature to explore cross-cultural variations in acknowledgement writing. Semi-structured interviews were also conducted with actual thesis writers. The results revealed that these writers generally followed Hyland's (2004) three-tier structure of writing thesis acknowledgements, but they were frank and less reserved in expressing their gratitude than their Chinese-speaking counterparts. Moreover, socio-cultural expectations, personal dispositions, and individual writing styles mainly affected their move constructions, inclusions of acknowledgees and linguistic choices.
Writing is a rigorous process. It is sometimes slow and is sometimes more difficult than it should be, because many students are not sure about how to approach the critical reading and writing aspects of Project Work. The Written Report... more
Writing is a rigorous process. It is sometimes slow and is sometimes more difficult than it should be, because many students are not sure about how to approach the critical reading and writing aspects of Project Work. The Written Report (WR) is particularly demanding for an average junior college student who has largely written narrative pieces of about 300 words in secondary schools and a few argumentative text types of 500 words in the Junior College.
It is also their first encounter with the academic writing genre. Not surprisingly, many students and teachers find the writing component to be the most difficult and challenging component of Project Work. This chapter will provide a description of generic structure of written reports and explore the impact of the task prompts on the Project Work essay.
In this highly significant paper, I outline the implications of the critical methodology used in Demonstrations of Degree Absolutism: Zero-and-Four-Quarters Ontologies and objectively-coherent category theory in general (predominately in... more
In this highly significant paper, I outline the implications of the critical methodology used in Demonstrations of Degree Absolutism: Zero-and-Four-Quarters Ontologies and objectively-coherent category theory in general (predominately in the work of Nathan Coppedge).
