Making a bigger deal of the smaller words: Function words and other key items in research writing by Chinese learners

In many mainland Chinese universities, undergraduate students specializing in English language and applied linguistics are required to write a dissertation, in English, of about 5000 words exploring some aspect of original research. This is a task which is of considerable difficulty not only at the genre or discourse level but also at the lexico-grammatical level. The teaching of academic writing in Chinese universities tends to focus on general...