Children learning Chinese must cope with an opaque orthography lacking transparent relations between oral pronunciations and written characters: a challenge heightened for L2 learners. Use of digital Pinyin input may facilitate connections between oral and written language by allowing learners to access vocabulary they cannot yet write. We…

The patterns of paragraph writing as commonly used in the international journal are deemed necessary to be studied by scholars of non-English background wishing to write an article for publication in the international journals. Scholars of non-English speaking background, according to a number of research reports on rhetoric contrastive, have a…

Students feel more comfortable in a new language when they understand its jokes. And when the jokes are puns, they build metalinguistic awareness. This article describes four categories of English puns--soundalike puns, lookalike puns, close-sounding puns, and texting puns--and suggests how they can be incorporated into English language…

Abstract is of a pivotal genre in scientific communication, assisting not only highly selective readers with judgment of the pertinent articles but also researchers in disseminating new knowledge and intellectual discoveries. Difficult yet challenging, however, is the task of writing effective abstracts particularly among non-English speaking…

This primarily methodological article makes a proposition for linguistic exploration of textual resources available through the "Google Scholar" search engine. These resources ("Google Scholar virtual corpus") are significantly larger than any existing corpus of academic writing. "Google Scholar", however, was not designed for linguistic searches…

English has gradually become the lingua franca of medical publications and conferences across Europe, with scholars from "smaller" languages opting for English because of the greater scientific impact and prestige associated with a wide international audience; at the same time, however, this transition has disrupted well-established textual…

The author responds to a critical analysis by Peter Crompton of definitions in literature on hedge, a linguistic phenomenon understood by linguists in different ways. This analysis of the definition and subsequent test offered by the first author is offered to demonstrate the weaknesses of the proposed thesis. (MSE)

The author replies to criticism of his definition of hedge, a linguistic phenomenon, defending his line of argument and making his assumptions explicit. Concludes that if hedging is to be treated as a linguistic phenomenon, it is the job of linguists to describe it in terms of the choices available within the language system as a whole. (MSE)

A study investigated 42 native English-speakers' (NSs) perceptions of the pragmatic appropriateness of refusal statements. The NSs rated the appropriateness of 24 written statements in 4 different refusal scenarios, which were collected from both native speakers and non-native speakers. Four weeks later, as a reliability check, the subjects rated…

The inventory presented here was produced by listing 13 sentence elements (subject, object, etc.) with specifications as to mutual exclusiveness and then presenting them to a computer with a request for permutations. Those items for which no examples could be found were excluded from the output, and the remaining patterns constitute the inventory…

Describes a study showing how the classical Chinese world view finds its way into Chinese students' written compositions. English teachers must help students progress from writing based on reasoning and rhetoric indigenous to their own culture, to writing in line with the thought and rhetoric patterns of the English-speaking context. (CB)

Discusses complexities inherent in correcting second language students' spoken and written errors. Alternatives to current error correction methods (1) focus on the use of error correction to improve students' language form, (2) involve the real communicative consequences of inaccuracy, (3) suggest strategies for attending to form when listening…

Analysis of adult English-as-a-Second-Language students' dialogue journal communication with their native speaking teacher found that 5 of the 12 conversations analyzed were reciprocal in most of the "move" (sharing of information or opinions unknown by the other) categories, but only 4 were reciprocal in initiating solicits, and only 1 extended…

This paper summarizes the 1986 findings of Kyoko Oi on the distinctive features of differences in discourse pattern between English and Japanese, using results from the argumentative English as a Second Language (ESL) writing of 87 Japanese students in Japan. Specifically, the study aims to examine whether the inner-argumentative analysis will…

Reports the investigation of the organizational structure of introductory sections of research papers written by Polish authors in English and Polish. The aim of the study was to test whether in view of cultural differences, reflected in the Anglo-American and Polish intellectual styles, the rhetorical pattern of research papers would vary between…