Becoming an applied linguist

2016 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-157 ◽  
Author(s):  
Celia Thompson ◽  
Janne Morton ◽  
Neomy Storch
Keyword(s):  
Doctoral Students ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Academic Discourse ◽  
Writing Teachers ◽  
Authorial Identity

The need to establish an authorial identity in academic discourse has been considered to be critical for all doctoral students by academic writing teachers and researchers for some time. For students for whom English is an additional language (EAL) in particular, the challenges are not only how to communicate this identity effectively in English, but also how to develop from a writer who simply ventriloquizes the voices of scholarly others to an author who writes with authority and discipline-specific rhetorical knowledge. In the current project, we explored how three EAL students constructed authorial voices through the use of personal and impersonal forms of self-representation and evaluative stance in the Introduction sections of their written PhD Confirmation Reports. Our findings indicate that students combined a complex range of linguistic and rhetorical resources, such as integral and non-integral attribution of sources and attitudinal markers of stance, in their quest to project credible authorial identities as Applied Linguists. We also discovered the effect of these resources on readers to be cumulative. We recommend further research, including interviews with students, supervisors and examiners from across the disciplines, to explore and extend the scope of the present study.

scholarly journals Building and Breaking Discursive Conventions in Academic Writing

2010 ◽  
Vol 6 (1-2 (7)) ◽  
pp. 7-29
Author(s):  
Maurizio Gotti
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Academic Discourse ◽  
Economic Discourse ◽  
Authorial Identity ◽  
Individual Style

The present article examines the complex and constantly developing relations between characteristics typical of academic discourse and individual style. The analysis has been conducted from the diachronic perspective since it compares the argumentative styles of various authors in different stages of the development of English academic and particularly of economic discourse. Analyzing the authorial identity as an element of discourse identity in the works of two celebrated scholars Robert Boil and John M. Mains, the article demonstrates how the leading scholars contribute to the establishment of new principles of academic discourse overcoming the barrier between the established norms and authorial preferences.

scholarly journals The use of metadiscourse in academic writing by Malaysian first-year ESL doctoral students

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 271-282
Author(s):  
Yueh Yea Lo ◽  
Juliana Othman ◽  
Jia Wei Lim
Keyword(s):  
Educational Research ◽  
Doctoral Students ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Academic Discourse ◽  
Corpus Analysis ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
First Year ◽  
Over Time

Metadiscourse refers to linguistic items, which functions to establish a connection with imagined readers of a text (Hyland, 2004). The use of metadiscourse has received much attention in various contexts, yet, little works are focusing on disciplinary metadiscourse, that has been carried out. To address this gap, this study explored, described, and compared the use of disciplinary metadiscourse by eight Malaysian first-year ESL doctoral students across four areas of study in education. The study reported in this article focuses on development or changes in writing over time. This study is quantitative in nature with a corpus-based approach utilizing AntConc (3.4.4) to examine the frequency of three dimensions of academic discourse in their writing, namely textual, engagement, and evaluative The results of this analysis show that (i) the engagement dimension (3.1%) was the lowest of all three dimensions in written work, reinforcing the argument that first-year ESL doctoral students are less experienced at using textual metadiscourse resources, and (ii) frequency of all three dimensions of academic discourse in their writing differs across time between first written drafts to the final written drafts. These are first-year ESL doctoral students, who are writing in different fields of educational research. The implication is that teaching and learning of disciplinary metadiscourse should involve explicit explanation, demonstration, and practice of its use, and development in the academic writing process.Academic writing; corpus analysis; ESL doctoral students; metadiscourse

scholarly journals Get a Room! How Writing Groups Aid the Development of Junior Academics’ Writing Practice and Writer Identity

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-74
Author(s):  
Jenny Mattsson ◽  
Emma-Karin Brandin ◽  
Ann-Kristin Hult
Keyword(s):  
Doctoral Students ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Structured Interview ◽  
Writing Groups ◽  
Writer Identity ◽  
Main Research ◽  
Writing Group ◽  
Key Characteristics ◽  
The University ◽  
Writing Practice

The present study revisits writing retreat participants who have spontaneously formed writing groups before or after attending a retreat hosted by the Unit for Academic Language at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. All in all, 11 doctoral students and 1 post doc were interviewed using a semi-structured interview model. The answers were thematically analysed based on Murray’s (2014) concept of coherence in writing groups as well as parts of Aitchison and Lee’s (2006) key characteristics of writing groups. The two main research questions posed concern (i) whether the informants have changed their writing practice and/or the way they think and feel about writing since joining a writing group, and (ii) whether possible changes have aided the development of their identity as academic writers. Results show that the informants have indeed changed central aspects of their writing practice and that this in turn has positively influenced how they now think and feel about writing. This has to some extent contributed to the informants’ development of their writer identity; however, the present study also sheds light on the fact that more needs to be done at departmental levels across the university to make academic writing visible.

scholarly journals THE DEVELOPMENT OF ORAL COMPOTENCY THROUGH DIDACTIC DEMONSTRATIONS BY DOCTORAL STUDENTS

2020 ◽  
pp. 496-502
Author(s):  
S. Taubaeva ◽  
◽  
S. Imanbaeva ◽  
Zh. Baltabaeva ◽  
◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Doctoral Students ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Public Speaking ◽  
Postgraduate Education ◽  
Design Experiment ◽  
Academic Reading ◽  
The Past ◽  
Scientific Report ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Pedagogical Research

The academic literacy among students development problem, which includes academic reading, academic writing, and academic performance, becomes relevant in the Republic of Kazakhstan, in the system of higher and postgraduate education. PhD students in the field of pedagogy study the basic discipline "Pedagogy Philosophy and Methodology". This discipline is designed to educate them in public speaking to an audience with their search and experiment results throughout their studies. For a speech to the audience, students prepare a scientific report. Report (scientific), researcher public presentation, which is a summary of his scientific search results, design, experiment. The purpose, structure and content of the discipline allows the teacher to systematize didactic presentations in six areas and use them in lectures and seminars. Over the past ten years, these presentations have contributed to the deeper understanding and assimilation by PhD students of the pedagogy philosophical and methodological foundations, and the pedagogical research methodological tools.

scholarly journals The Prevalence and Frequency of Authorial Identity among Undergraduate Students in Fiji

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (6) ◽  
pp. 136
Author(s):  
Jasbir Karneil Singh ◽  
Ben K. Daniel
Keyword(s):  
Academic Success ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
First Year ◽  
Esl Students ◽  
First Year Students ◽  
Student Writers ◽  
Authorial Identity ◽  
National University ◽  
Authorial Voice

Expressing an authoritative voice is an essential part of academic writing at university. However, the performance of the authorial self in writing is complex yet fundamental to academic success as a large part of academic assessment involves writing to the academy. More specifically, the performance of the authorial self can be complex for English as a Second Language (ESL) student-writers. This research investigated the extent to which ESL first-year students at the Fiji National University perform their authorial voice using interactional metadiscourse in their academic writing. The study employed a quantitative analysis of corpus produced by 16 Fijian ESL undergraduate students enrolled in an EAP course. The research found that the ESL authorial voice was predominantly expressed through boosters and attitude markers, with relatively little usage of other interactional metadiscoursal elements such as hedges, engagement markers and self-mentions. Further, the research showed that this particular cohort expressed their authorial voice and identity through boosted arguments and avoiding language that directly mentions the authorial self. The study concludes that the ESL authorial self for this cohort manifests itself in a selected range of selected interactional metadiscoursal elements, requiring the need to raise the awareness of self-reflective expressions for ESL students. The study also encourages further exploration of ESL authorial identity construction in academic writing at undergraduate level and beyond.

scholarly journals PhD Students Learning the Process of Academic Writing: The Role of the Rhetorical Rectangle

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 136-162
Author(s):  
Beverly FitzPatrick ◽  
Mike Chong ◽  
James Tuff ◽  
Sana Jamil ◽  
Khalid Al Hariri ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Doctoral Students ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Personal Narratives ◽  
Formal Group ◽  
Scholarly Writing ◽  
Group Discussions ◽  
Writing Group ◽  
Second Year ◽  
Doctoral Writing

PhD students are enculturated into scholarly writing through relationships with their supervisors and other faculty. As part of a doctoral writing group, we explored students’ experiences that affected their writing, both cognitively and affectively, and how these experiences made them feel about themselves as academic writers. Six first and second year doctoral students participated in formal group discussions, using Edward de Bono’s (1985/1992) Six Thinking Hats to guide the discussions. In addition, the students wrote personal narratives about their writing experiences. Data were analyzed according to the rhetorical rectangle of logos, ethos, pathos, and kairos. Analysis revealed that students were having struggles with their identities as academic writers, not feeling as confident as they had before their programs, and questioning some of the pedagogy of teaching academic writing.

scholarly journals Transitivity Structure of Research Articles: Variations across Sections

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (8) ◽  
pp. 8
Author(s):  
Xindi Zheng
Keyword(s):  
Academic Writing ◽  
Applied Linguistics ◽  
Academic Discourse ◽  
Meaning Construction ◽  
Research Articles ◽  
Writing Courses ◽  
Experiential Meaning

This study investigates the transitivity structure of research articles and examines the variations of process types across sections, aiming to explore experiential meaning construction in academic discourse. The corpus for this study consists of ten applied linguistics research articles published from 2018 to 2020 in the top journals of the discipline. Features of the transitivity structure of the whole research articles are presented. The distribution of different process types is also examined in relation to the rhetorical purposes and stylistic features of the abstract, introduction, method, results and discussion, and conclusion sections. The findings reveal that transitivity structure could largely reflect the stylistic features of research articles, which are characterized as being informative and objective as well as interpersonal. Results also show that the distribution of process types may contribute to the regularity manifestation and purpose fulfillment of distinctive sections. This study has implications for both academic writers and academic writing courses.   

Summer Mentoring Experiences for Students in Online Doctoral Programs

2021 ◽  
pp. 109-131
Author(s):  
Julie Smit ◽  
Elizabeth Jones ◽  
Michael Ladick ◽  
Mellinee Lesley
Keyword(s):  
Doctoral Students ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Sense Of Belonging ◽  
Doctoral Programs ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Doctoral Program ◽  
University Faculty ◽  
Student Centered ◽  
Self Worth ◽  
Online Doctoral Programs

University faculty created the Llano Estacado Writers' Alliance (LEWA) in response to improving the quality and rigor of online doctoral programs. The goal for LEWA was to promote meaningful academic writing and transform doctoral students' identities as agentic academic writers. After LEWA's inception, the authors incorporated the perspectives of their alumni and advanced doctoral students to help address students' needs. This chapter documents the four-year journey of forming LEWA and developing new approaches to mentoring online doctoral students. Specifically, the authors recount the evolution from the faculty-led, week-long summer intensives that addressed students' anxieties and uncertainties about the doctoral program to the writing intensives that were more student centered, responsive, and primarily focused on the mores of academic writing. Results demonstrated the benefits of professor-led and peer-led networks in developing students' sense of belonging, sense of accountability to their peers, and a sense of self-worth as capable academic writers.

The Autoethnographic Undertaking: A Day in Ron Pelias’ Life

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (10) ◽  
pp. 1250-1263
Author(s):  
Georgina Oana Gabor
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Academic Discourse ◽  
Ivory Tower ◽  
Cultural Meanings

Ronald Pelias revolutionizes the style of academic writing by illustrating an innovative version. He prompts academics to understand and take responsibility for the personal, engaged dimension of academic writing. Academic discourse can integrate, rather than exclude, readers’ perspectives. Autoethnography brings the “ivory tower” of the academy closer to everyday life. Pelias’s piece functions as an incentive for our own critical and (self-)revelatory engagement in our interactions with people, cultural meanings, and our own bodies. If we face up to the challenge, society becomes a place for transformation, rather than conformation—which our writing sufficiently prepares to hear our voices.

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