Comparing Native and Non-native English Language Writers’ Use of Reporting Verbs in Results and Discussion Sections of Research Papers

Dehghan, Fereshte; Ebrahimi, Seyed Foad; Saadabadimotlagh, Hossein

doi:10.30470/irelc.2025.2054452.1014

Comparing Native and Non-native English Language Writers’ Use of Reporting Verbs in Results and Discussion Sections of Research Papers

Document Type : Research Article

Authors

Fereshte Dehghan ¹

Seyed Foad Ebrahimi ²

Hossein Saadabadimotlagh ¹

¹ Department of English, Bushehr Branch, Islamic Azad University, Bushehr, Iran

² Department of English, Shadegan Branch, Islamic Azad University, Shadegan, Iran

10.30470/irelc.2025.2054452.1014

Abstract

Reporting verbs (RVs) have garnered considerable attention in corpus-based studies over the past few decades, owing to their essential role in establishing authors’ claims and positioning within academic discourse. The appropriate and accurate use of RVs is critical for conveying stance, argumentation, and attribution in scholarly writing. While RVs have been extensively examined, research specifically focusing on their use by native and non-native English-speaking writers in the Results and Discussion sections of scientific articles remains limited. The present study aimed to investigate the frequency and variation of RV usage among native and non-native English academic writers. To this end, a corpus comprising 200 research article excerpts—100 from each group—was compiled from the Results and Discussion sections of peer-reviewed scientific papers. The data were analyzed using the framework proposed by Thomas and Hawes (2002), which categorizes reporting verbs into three functional types: (a) empirical and real-world activity verbs, (b) discourse activity verbs, and (c) cognition verbs. The findings indicate that although both groups employed the same categories of reporting verbs, the frequency of usage varied significantly between native and non-native writers. These differences have important pedagogical implications, particularly for novice researchers across scientific disciplines, as they greater awareness of how reporting verbs contribute to effective academic argumentation and credible knowledge presentation.

Keywords

Native Writers

Non-native Writers

Research Articles

Reporting Verbs

Results and Discussion Sections

Subjects