Citation Practices in Academic Corpora: Implications for EAP Writing

Explicit reference to the work of other authors is an essential feature of most academic research writings. Corpus analysis of academic text can reveal much about what writers actually do and why they do so. Application of corpus tools in language education has been well documented by many scholars (Pedersen, 1995, Swales, 1990, Thompson, 2000). They demonstrate how computer technology can assist in the effective analysis of corpus based data. For teaching purposes, tills recent research provides insights in the areas of English for Academe Purposes (EAP). The need for such support is evident when students have to use appropriate citations in their writings. Using Swales' (1990) division of citation forms into integral and non-integral and Thompson and Tnbble's (2001) classification scheme, this paper codifies academic texts in a corpus. The texts are academic research articles from different disciplines. The results lead into a comparison of the citation practices m different disciplines. Finally, it is argued that the information obtained in this study is useful for EAP writing courses in EFL countries.