Form and Meaning of Verbs in Problem Statement Subsections of PhD Dissertations in English Language Teaching

One of the most difficult and challenging subsections of a dissertation to write is the problem statement. This subsection is written to justify objectives of the study. Having the importance of the problem statement subsection in mind, this study intended to focus on form and meaning of verbs used in the problem statement subsections of PhD dissertations in English Language Teaching discipline. To this end, twenty PhD dissertations from discipline of English Language Teaching were downloaded from Proquest data base. The dissertations were examined at English native universities between 2009-2014. The dissertations were analyzed for form (tense, aspect, voice) and semantic meanings of verbs. The results suggested that the common tense and aspect were present tense and simple aspect. These results suggested that the common voice was active. Such a use could help in making topic generalizations and announcing present research in problem statement subsections. Concerning semantic meaning of verbs, the common semantic meanings were mental and activity. The results of this study could have implications for PhD students to improve writing problem statement subsections in their dissertations.