Variation in Citational Practice in a Corpus of Student Biology Papers

Written Communication Jan 2014

Variation in Citational Practice in a Corpus of Student Biology Papers

John M. Swales University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

Abstract

This is a corpus-based study of a key aspect of academic writing in one discipline (biology) by final-year undergraduates and first-, second-, and third-year graduate students. The papers come from the Michigan Corpus of Upper-level Student Papers, a freely available electronic database. The principal aim of the study is to examine the extent of variation in citation practice in the biology subcorpus. To that end, it explores citation practices from a number of perspectives, including the distribution of integral versus parenthetical citations, the choice of reporting verbs, the effect of citing system, and the occurrence of selected features such as the use of citees’ first names. Results show little difference between the undergraduate and graduate papers, some effect of the citing system, and a somewhat richer intertextuality in the “evolutionary” as opposed to the “molecular” biology papers. Overall, this is an impressive body of student work from the viewpoint of textual variation in citation practice, but it should be remembered that the corpus consists of only “A” papers from a flagship research university.

Journal: Written Communication
Published: 2014-01-01
DOI: 10.1177/0741088313515166
Open Access: Closed
Topics: graduate education

Citation Context

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Borrowed Authority

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Cites in this index (3)

Harwood et al. (2012)

Performance in the Citing Behavior of Two Student Writers

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Paul et al. (2001)

Moving beyond the Moment

Journal of Business and Technical Communication
HAAS (1994)

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CrossRef global citation count: 84 View in citation network →