Quantitative metrics to the CARS model in academic discourse in biology introductions

Charles Lam, Nonso Nnamoko


Abstract
Writing research articles is crucial in any academic’s development and is thus an important component of the academic discourse. The Introduction section is often seen as a difficult task within the research article genre. This study presents two metrics of rhetorical moves in academic writing: step-n-grams and lengths of steps. While scholars agree that expert writers follow the general pattern described in the CARS model (Swales, 1990), this study complements previous studies with empirical quantitative data that highlight how writers progress from one rhetorical function to another in practice, based on 50 recent papers by expert writers. The discussion shows the significance of the results in relation to writing instructors and data-driven learning.
Anthology ID:
2024.codi-1.7
Volume:
Proceedings of the 5th Workshop on Computational Approaches to Discourse (CODI 2024)
Month:
March
Year:
2024
Address:
St. Julians, Malta
Editors:
Michael Strube, Chloe Braud, Christian Hardmeier, Junyi Jessy Li, Sharid Loaiciga, Amir Zeldes, Chuyuan Li
Venues:
CODI | WS
SIG:
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
71–77
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2024.codi-1.7
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Charles Lam and Nonso Nnamoko. 2024. Quantitative metrics to the CARS model in academic discourse in biology introductions. In Proceedings of the 5th Workshop on Computational Approaches to Discourse (CODI 2024), pages 71–77, St. Julians, Malta. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
Quantitative metrics to the CARS model in academic discourse in biology introductions (Lam & Nnamoko, CODI-WS 2024)
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https://aclanthology.org/2024.codi-1.7.pdf
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