VERB CHOICE IN MEDICAL RESEARCH ARTICLES (ESP)

Abstract

The corpus-based analysis of high frequency verbs used in research articles aims at establishing the lexical core, native and non-native researchers need for publishing in medicine. The verbs, extracted from two self-compiled corpora are structured as per the established format of the research article genre. The findings showed that in the Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion sections there is great variation in the use of verbs, related to data observation, presentation, and description. Areas of difference in evaluative language and the preferred lexical structures in reporting scientific results are indicated. The predicative adjective construction is identified as a frequent strong verb substitute in the non-native scientific writing. Specific verb lists form a valuable source for the creation of teaching materials for university and PhD students.

Keywords

• english for specific purposes
• medical research articles
• verb variety