Comparative Study Of Formulaic Sequence In Humanities Abstracts Between Chinese Master Students And International Scholars

Formulaic sequences are a sequence of frequently recurring vocabularies stored and extracted in the human memory;it has advanced academic characteristics,high frequency,and stability that is otherwise not analyzed by language grammar.Formulaic sequences are one of the key features of academic discourse.However,as an academic novice,many Chinese master students lack the ability to use it properly in academic writing,which is more than likely to affect their acceptance rate of research publications by international journals and likewise.Therefore,by building two corpora as the foundational statistics,this comparative study investigates the use of formulaic sequences in research article abstracts from the fields of linguistics,literature,history,and philosophy in terms of the frequency,structural features and functional features of the four-word expressions in English abstracts of top international journal authors and domestic masters’ theses in the humanities field.Based on Hyland’s structural and functional classification,the study analyzes(1)the frequency of 4-grams formulaic sequences for Chinese masters and international journal experts in selected humanities fields;(2)the characteristics of these 4-grams formulaic sequences used by Chinese masters and international journal scholars structurally and functionally,and their disciplinary distribution;and the study also discusses(3)what kinds of factors cause these differences between experts and masters.Results show that(1)in the aspect of frequency use,Chinese master students in humanities appear to use formulaic sequences more frequently but with less diversity in abstract writing than international scholars.They are likely to lack the acquisition of some formulaic sequences,and the language learned by masters’ students is often not as rich and idiomatic as that of international journal authors.In addition,Chinese master students have the tendency to express certain formulaic sequences that do not correspond to the use of formulaic sequences employed by international journal scholars.(2)Chinese master students in humanities prefer nominal structure,prepositional structure and passive structure in their abstract writing,while international scholars tend to use prepositional structure.Functionally,there are slight differences between Chinese humanities master students and international journal scholars in their abstract writing,but this result also shows that it is a complex task and challenge for Chinese humanities masters to use correctly participant-oriented expressions.In the writing of academic abstracts,international journal scholars may describe the research better as a whole.(3)The factors that cause these differences may include insufficient accumulation of formulaic sequences,rigid language expression,single structure with the transfer of mother tongue thinking.Finally,through the above discussion,the findings show that the writing level of academic abstracts of Chinese master students in humanities still need to be further strengthened,and at the same time,the research also reflects the insufficiency of academic training and input of Chinese learners,which can contribute to further understanding the characteristics of formulaic sequences in academic abstract writing and improving the teaching of academic writing.