Citation behaviour and intertextuality in EFL writing: The case of EFL writers’ undergraduate projects and their MA theses compared

The present study probed into the citation behavior and intertextuality use of EFL writers. The literature sections of 12 BA projects and those of 12 MA theses in applied linguistics written by the same writers were compared in terms of intertextuality and citation types. The results showed that the most frequent intertextuality type in both BA projects and MA theses was the unconventional intertextuality. The second frequent type was conventional intertextuality which was more frequent in MA projects due to the educational conditions and the readership. The third frequent type was ‘deceptive’ used equally in both undergraduate and MA projects. As for the citation behavior, the most frequent one in both MA and BA projects was the integral citation whose sub-type ‘verb controlling’ was more frequent in MA and its non-citation subtype was more frequent in BA projects probably due to cultural reasons or because of the students’ ignorance of the functions and applications of citation types. This type was followed by improper citations and non-integral citations in both BA and MA projects. As for the relationship between intertextuality and citation, the results showed a strong relationship between unconventional intertextuality and improper citations in B.A projects, a weak correlation between conventional intertextuality and both non-integral and integral citations in B.A projects, a strong correlation between conventional intertextuality and both integral and non-integral citations in M.A theses and also a weak correlation between unconventional intertextuality and improper citations in M.A theses. Also, in both MA theses and BA projects, conventional intertextuality included all subcategories of non-integral citations and two subcategories of integral citations including verb-controlling and naming. The study could serve MA and BA project raters and the instructors of research courses in undergraduate and graduate levels.