College Students' Use of Reporting Verbs and Verb Complements in Academic Papers

Abstract

College students are required to cite sources they incorporate into their research papers. Sources integrated into sentences are to have the author's name (or a pronoun referring to the author), a reporting verb, and a verb complement. Although most students are able to choose an appropriate verb, some students use unconventional verb complements. This small-scale qualitative study contributes to the growing research on the use of reporting verbs in academic discourse by looking at these unconventional verb + complement patterns to ascertain the types of patterns that students have not fully acquired.

Keywords: reporting verbs, verb complements, academic writing

DOI: 10.7176/JLLL/55-04

Publication date: April 30^th 2019