The Study of Reporting Clauses in MA Theses

Abstract

Citation plays a key role in academic writing. It enables writers to establish his or her own academic authority based on the current research state of the field. However, citation has challenged many novice writers, especially the L2 learners due to the complexity. The paper studies reporting clauses with that- clause complement and draws upon to MA theses in applied linguistics. The findings show that MA students use integral citations with a human subject most frequently. Compared with journal articles, they use too much Think verbs.