A Study On The Structural And Textual Features Of Literature Reviews In Master’s Theses Of International Students Majoring In Teaching Chinese To Speakers Of Other Languages

International Chinese Language Education has entered a new stage of high-quality development,and the demands of Chinese learners are showing a trend of diversification and specialization.Among them,academic Chinese teaching and research have received increasing attention from academia.The thesis serves as a comprehensive presentation of international students’proficiency in academic Chinese,and the literature review is not only a crucial component but also a writing challenge.However,there are few academic achievements on the writing of literature reviews of international students’ Chinese theses.Therefore,how to improve the writing ability of international students in literature reviews of Chinese theses is a topic worth further exploration.Based on the move analysis model and the meta-discourse analysis framework,this paper describes the textual characteristics of 50 literature reviews in the graduate theses of the international students majoring in TCSOL.By conducting statistical analyses on the quantity and configurations of move strategies as well as the number of meta-discourse types,and comparing them with the corresponding items in 50 literature reviews of the Chinese masters’ theses in the same major,more structural and metalingual features of the research object have been observed.The ultimate goal of this study is to provide assistance for academic Chinese writing and its teaching.The main research findings of this article are as follows:The structural integrity of the international students’ literature reviews needs to be improved,as only 18%of the literature reviews include the introductory and conclusive texts.This article incorporates the introductory and conclusive part into the move model and finds that there is a new move in the introductory section.In terms of move usage,compared with the Chinese students,the international students use the strategy A of move one "summarizing the state of research" and the subordinate strategies of move two "creating a research niche" less frequently.This indicates that international students need to enhance their ability to synthesize and critically evaluate existing research.In addition,both Chinese and international students seldom use move three"occupying a research niche".Regarding the use of meta-discourse,the international students primarily rely on interactive meta-discourse items supplemented by interactional meta-discourse resources in their literature reviews.The data of item usage are very similar between the international students and their Chinese counterparts,and the samples are highly coincident.Both Chinese and international students prioritize objective and systematic introduction of the research topic in literature reviews.However,the international students have more grammatical issues in using transitions and require targeted instruction.Through corpus analysis,this paper has developed a more comprehensive move model and a meta-discourse framework of literature reviews.Furthermore,a "move and meta-discourse" template of literature reviews and related teaching suggestions have been proposed.We believe that academic writing instruction should guide international students to improve awareness of moves and meta-discourse,thus enhancing their academic writing proficiency in Chinese.