A Study On The Differences Of Moves And Lexical Bundles In English Abstracts

With the world's rapid development,more and more international academic conferences and communications are held every year.So academic paper becomes an important way for the scholars from all over the world to conduct academic exchanges.Abstract is the essence of content in an academic paper,and for scholars,it is also the most convenient way to understand the content of it.In recent years,postgraduates at home have begun to attend large-scale international academic conferences and make reports.But under the influence of“Chinglish”,the English expressions of them,especially their English abstract,are not accurate.It can even cause the ambiguity in understanding,which may affect their academic exchanges.English abstract writing is usually ignored in school English teaching.Therefore,to find out the problems existing in abstract writing by comparison and put forward some feasible advice seem to be quite significant.The method of text analysis is adopted in this study,and the software SPSS 17.0 is used in the data analysis.Text analysis is based on 120 English abstracts in the master degree theses of law,among which 60 pieces are randomly selected from ten universities in China,and another 60 are from six universities in Canada,making up two corpora(CSC and NSC).In the process of analysis,based on the theory of genre analysis and the classification of move,the author made an analysis on move from macroscopic and microscopic perspectives between the two corpora,exploring the differences of move patterns and the factors that caused the phenomena.Next according to Hyland,from the functional perspective for the classification of lexical bundles,the three kinds of lexical bundles and their 11 sub-categoriesin each move of CSC and NSC were identified and collected.The SPSS was used to make data analysis,and then the frequency and distribution of them in each move were worked out.Finally the results were presented in Tables and Figures which can show the different use of lexical bundles and their sub-categories at home and abroad.After data collection and analysis,it can be seen that:(1)in the discipline of law,there are some differences in move structure between CSC and NSC,such as move missing,move merging and so on.(2)There are also differences in the use of lexical bundles in certain moves for Chinese and foreign students.For example,in “objective” and “method” move,the use of “research-oriented” bundles in CSC is obviously less than that in NSC.However,in the same two moves,the use of “text-oriented” and “participant-oriented” bundles in CSC and NSC are almost the same.(3)Through further exploration,under the three kinds of lexical bundles,there are also similarities and differences about the use of 11 kinds of sub-categories for Chinese and foreign students.Generally speaking,the use of lexical bundles in the abstracts written by Chinese students is not as rich and accurate as those written by native speakers.Based on the research results,some advice from the perspectives of teachers and students was given in this study.Thus it can improve students' English abstracts writing,so that their academic views are expressed clearly and directly,thereby eliminating the barriers that exist in the academic communication.