文献综述 写作教学.pdf

An Approach to Teaching the Writing of Literature Reviews Elizabeth Turner John Bitchener Auckland University of Technology Auckland University of Technology Abstract Students face difficulties in writing literature reviews that relate in particular to limited knowledge of the genre (Bruce, 1992; E. Turner, 2005). While there has been valuable research relating to genre and discourse analysis of the literature review (such as Bunton, 2002; Kwan, 2006; O’Connell and Jin, 2001), there is a lack of research into the effectiveness of published writing support programmes. Furthermore, with exceptions such as Ridley (2000) and Swales and Lindemann (2002), there is little explicit advice on how to approach the teaching of the literature review. This paper reports on one of two studies described at the 4th International EATAW conference 2007. It describes an evaluation of the effectiveness of an approach at a New Zealand university to teaching the writing of literature reviews. It focuses on a 15-hour unit of teaching as part of a six-day EAL graduate writing course. The study found clear evidence of improvement in all areas that were targeted. Introduction both graduate and postgradate levels, while some EAL Taught papers in graduate diploma and postgraduate students are able to give a fairly accurate summary programmes often include literature review assign- of the functions of a literature review, not one has ments, and these have even emerged as a form of been able to explain the concept of argument in the written assessment at undergraduate level in some context of academic genres, even though this term is disciplines (Turner, 2005). The literature review is frequently use