Дискурсивно-стилистический анализ английской письменной научной речи. Учебное пособие

to do the following – to write an unfamiliar word in a notebook 15 times. This method, of course, contributes to memorizing the spelling of a word, its graphic designation, as well as bringing the writing skills to automaticity. However, this is not always enough. What if this memorization is only short-lived? When a student writes a given word, he remembers it at this particular moment, but does not necessarily recall it after a certain period of time.

In addition to the mechanical and repeated spelling of a foreign word, to memorize it for a long time, it is recommended to write the word as slowly and thoughtfully as possible. Each letter must be written as long as possible, and a student should constantly think about the word during this exercise, about what it means and how it looks graphically. This technique allows him to memorize foreign words much more efficiently than the usual method of spelling of a word several times.

Thus, the widespread way of memorizing the spelling of foreign words, namely, spelling a word many times in a row, is sometimes not so efficient as it is needed. In order for a word to stay in a long-term memory, not just in a short-term one, it is necessary to use the so-called “thoughtful writing” technique.

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PART II. ACADEMIC TEXT:

COMPOSITION AND TEXTURE

1. Paragraphing

Paragraph structure

Atypical English has the following structure: I. Topic sentence

II. Supporting sentences III. Concluding sentence

The topic sentence introduces the topic and tell the main point on which the author wants to elaborate in the paragraph.

The supporting sentences follow the topic sentence, they explain and provide specific details, thus supporting the main idea of the paragraph.

The concluding sentence repeats the information in the topic sentence in a different way. It summarizes the content of the paragraph. Let us consider the following sample paragraph.

Morphemes are categorized into two classes: free morphemes and bound morphemes. A free morpheme can stand alone as an independent word in a phrase, such as the word tree in John sat in the tree. A bound morpheme cannot stand alone but must be attached to another morpheme – as, for example, the plural morpheme -s, which can only occur attached to nouns, or cran-, which must be combined with berry (or, more recently, with apple, grape, or some other fruit). Certain bound morphemes are known as affixes (e.g., -s), others as bound base morphemes (e.g., cran-). Affixes are referred to as prefixes when they are attached to the beginning of another morpheme (like re–in words such as redo, rewrite, rethink) and as suffixes when they are attached to the end of another morpheme (like -ize in words such as modernize, equalize, centralize). The morpheme to which an affix is attached is the base (or stem) morpheme. A base morpheme may be free (like tree; tree is thus

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both a free morpheme and a free base) or bound (like cran). A basic classification of English morphemes is summarized in figure 2.1.

The paragraph structure may be analyzed in the following way.

Topic Sentence

The topic sentence is the most general statement of the paragraph. It is the key sentence because it namesthe subject and the controlling

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idea: the writer’s main idea about that topic.The topic sentence can come at the beginning or at the end of a paragraph. In most cases, the topic sentence is the first or the second sentence.

The topic sentence of your paragraph must also havea controlling idea. The controlling idea is the main point, opinion or feeling that you have about the subject, and it controls or limits what you will write about it in your paragraph. For example, the controlling idea in the sentences is as follows:

All languages share the categories noun and verb. English has grammatical categories not found in Japanese.

Indiscussionsaboutwords,adistinctionismadebetweenopen-class words and closed-class words.

A topic sentence must not be a simple fact or a specific detail. The controlling idea must present information that can be supported, developed or argued for. The controlling idea must not be too general or too specific.

English is a language. (too general)

English is spoken by 1,5 billion people. (too specific)

In English new words can be formed from already existing words by a process known as compounding. (effective topic sentence)

The last sentence is effective because it introduces the topic (new words in English) and has a controlling idea that can be developed in the supporting sentences. The paragraph will probably introduce compounding as a method of word building in English.

Exercise 23. Identify the effective topic sentences.

1.Learning languages is difficult.

2.Academic vocabulary contains many words.

3.Academic vocabulary is different from general vocabulary.

4.There are four main methods of word formation in English.

5.In the study of word formation, a distinction has often been drawn between inflectional and derivational morphology.

6.Russian has many new words loaned from English.

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Exercise 24.Write effective topic sentences for the following topics.

1.Academic writing

2.Learning foreign languages

3.English grammar

4.Translation

5.English-speaking countries

Exercise 25. Read the following paragraphs. Write effective topic sentences for each of the paragraphs.

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It is the grammar’s way of articulating the writer’s verdict, without making first person explicit. In the first text, modality is utilized to express his position regarding WADA decision about their chances of banning the drug. The writer says that the previous year WADA was studying the drug, and the athletes needed to take warning that the drug could be burned soon. On the other hand, on the Evans text, he writes that Sharapova that after ITF hearing, she will be allowed to play again. The “will” in this text represents the probability of her being allowed to participate in tennis game again.

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The title is nowadays a commercial decision and sometimes a complete change is required in a translator’s activity in order to attract the world of consumers, readers. The decision of changing or adapting a title must be made tough based on the content of the specific text. One of the cases where the title was kept in the translated text as original is the case of Sandra Smith – the one who translated the book “la suite Francaise” – who decided to keep the title in French despite the fact that she was skeptical about the acceptance of her translation in the American market. However the book was a great success in UK AND US in 2007. The Italian Levi Primo did not agree to change the title of his books. The title of one of his books “If this is a man” was an integral part of the book, but it was changed in the American edition into “Escape from Auschwitz” a title which he considered inappropriate and vulgar. Literary translators should be creative when it comes to decide for the best title when translating a book.

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Memory strategies are learning strategies that help students store and retrieve new information and mainly include strategies, such as grouping or inferencing, creating mental linkages, and applying images and sounds. Cognitive strategies are strategies that enable learners to understand and produce new language by a variety of different means. Summarizing and reasoning deductively are examples of cognitive strategies. Additional examples include practicing, receiving and sending messages, analyzing and reasoning, and creating structure for input and output. Compensation strategies are strategies that allow learners to use the language despite their large gaps in knowledge base. Guessing intelligently, using synonyms, and overcoming limitations in speaking and writing are included in this type of strategies. Memory strategies, cognitive strategies and compensations strategies can be combined to learn vocabulary more effectively.

(taken from the website https://www.ukessays.com/essays/linguistics/)

Paragraph development

The idea introduced by a topic sentence is further developed in supporting sentences. Supporting sentence elaborate on the main idea of a paragraph, provide details, examples or explanations.

There are a number of methods to develop the topic sentence:

•Use examples and illustrations;

•Cite data (facts, statistics, evidence, details, and others);

•Examine testimony (what other people say such as quotes and paraphrases);

•Define terms in the paragraph;

•Compare and contrast;

•Evaluate causes and reasons;

•Examine effects and consequences;

•Analyze the topic;

•Describe the topic;

•Offer a chronology of an event (time segments).

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Exercise 26. Read the following paragraphs. Identify the methods which are used to develop and support the main idea.

1.The hearer is also able to use context and the Conversational Presumptions to find the speakers indirect communicative intent. Once the hearer identifies why the speaker cannot merely be speaking directly, he is able to use this information to aid in recognizing her indirect intent. Thus, reporting a desire for a tank of gas at a service station would be contextually inappropriate if that were all the speaker was doing. Since requesting expresses the desire that the hearer do something, it would be natural in the circumstances for him to conclude that in reporting this desire the speaker was also requesting the gas since requesting would be the contextually appropriate thing to do.

2.Proverbs are traditional sayings having a fixed general sentential form, alluding to a common truth or general wisdom, with some (rudimentary) literary value, used to guide action, explain a situation,

or induce a feeling or attitude. For example, suppose Sheila has a wasp's nest that she wants to remove from her garage and she is approaching it with a broom. Harry says, “Let sleeping dogs lie”. Harry has communicated something – what and how? First, Harry advised Sheila not to whack the nest with the broom. Second, he did this by alluding to a common truth or general wisdom associated with the words, something like “Sometimes it is better to leave things alone”. Sheila is expected to equate sleeping dogs in the proverb with the wasp's nest, and to equate let lie in the proverb with not hitting the nest with the broom. Putting these together, Sheila gets “Don't hit the wasp’s nest with the broom – it's better to leave it alone”.

3. English is universal language. It is the world’s second native language, the formal language in 70 countries, and English-speak- ing countries are accountable for about 40% of world’s total GNP. English can be used everywhere with educated people around the world. It can be used in media, cinema, pop music, TV and ... for anyone who knows English (Bond, Michael, 1751). From Old and Middle English, English was spoken early in the last one thousand

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years. Examples of language written at that time, such as the works of Chaucer (mid to late 1300’s) are useful in supervising linguistic evolution over the last thousand years. In these works, often spellings will be indistinguishable, but once pronounced phonetically, are understandable to modern English speakers (Sapir, Edward, 1871).

4.Attrition is the non-pathological, not age-related loss of a language. Speakers learning a second language often experience a change in the way they process their native language, a process called L1 attrition. L1 attrition often occurs in migrant individuals, since they immerse themselves fully into another language. It is expected that, as someone learns an L2 in an immersion environment, some crosslinguistic interference might happen. This interference can happen in both directions: just as the L2 is influenced by the L1, the L1 can assimilate to the L2.

5.The twentieth-century newspaper’s language was shaped by a wave of technologies competing with the newspaper as the prime provider of topical information about the world. First radio, then television, satellite and most recently the internet have all forced newspapers to alter the structure and address of their language as they bid to retain a profitable and influential share of the market for news and entertainment. Out of the patterns of these media interventions over the twentieth century, one form of newspaper language has been developed to such an extent that its influence is to be observed everywhere: the tabloid. It would be no exaggeration to say that it was indeed the tabloid century, as the style of this language has had profound social and political effects upon the wider contemporary media world.

Cohesion and coherence

The sentence in a paragraph must be linked in order to provide the logical and coherent representation of a phenomenon or an event to be described. Any language has special means to serve this purpose. Generally, these means can be divided into grammatical and lexical means of cohesion.

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Lexical cohesion

Lexical cohesion refers to the ties created between lexical elements which contain semantic elements with the same or similar meaning, thus serving to convey the meaning in a unified and coherent way. The primary types of lexical cohesion are repetition, synonymy, hyponymy and meronymy.

Repetition means using the same lexical element several times. A writer can repeat the same word in the same form or in a different form (write – wrote). In addition, repetition means also using the same base in different words (write – writer). In the following sentence the concept “translate” is repeated four times and demonstrates different types of repetition.

The term translation itself has several meanings: it can refer to the general subject field, the product (the text that has been translated) or the process (the act of producing the translation, otherwise known as translating).

Synonymy refers to the use of words with the same or similar meanings. For example, study – research, linguistics – language studies.

Hyponymy refers to the use of words, which represent a superclass (hypernym) a subclass (hyponym) to the related concept. For example, affix (hypernym) – suffix, prefix (hyponyms).

Meronymy is the use of words that refer to parts of a whole. For example, a text – a sentence, a phrase, a word.

General nouns (also known as summary words) refer to the type of cohesion whereby two items have the same referent. General noun class is a small set of nouns having generalized reference within the major noun class, such as human noun, place noun, fact noun etc. Such nouns can summarize the meaning of several words and can refer back to the whole phrases in the previous context. The word “conclusions” in the example summarizes the meaning of the previous sentence, thus linking the first and the second sentence.

Research suggests that the schemata of L2 and L1 writers differ in their preferred ways of organizing ideas. These conclusions have been supported by a range of studies over the past decade.

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Grammatical cohesion

Grammatical cohesion refers to use of grammatical means to create a unified textual structure. The basic means of grammatical cohesion include reference, ellipsis, substitution and transitional words, or connectors (coordinators and subordinators).

Reference refers to resources for referring to a participant or circumstantial element whose identity is recoverable. The relevant resources include demonstratives (this, that, these, those), the definite article, pronouns (personal, possessive and relative pronouns), comparatives, and the phoric adverbs (here, there, now, then).

Ellipsis refers to resources for omitting a clause, or some part of a clause or group, in contexts where it can be assumed. For example: Did they win? – Yes, they did. English has a set of place holders which can be used to signal the omission – e.g. so and not for clauses, do for verbal groups, and one for nominal groups. This resource of place holders is referred to as substitution.

Transitional words (linking words, transitions or connectors) include a large inventory of words or phrases which link clauses and sentences in discourse. Transitions help to establish the relationship between parts of the sentences and paragraphs or sections in a re - search publication. Transitions provide valuable signals to the reader about the relationships between parts of the text.

Let us consider the following paragraph exemplifying the use of different cohesive means.

When we think about our native language, the existence of words seems obvious. After all, when we hear others speaking our native language, we hear them uttering words. In reading a printed passage, we see words on the pager neatly separated by spaces. But now imagineyourselfinasituationwhereeveryonearoundyouisspeaking a foreign language that you have just started to study. Suddenly the existence of words no longer seems obvious. While listening to a native speaker of French, or Navajo, or Japanese, all you hear is a blur of sound, as you strain to recognize words you have learned. If

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