Challenges, feelings, and attitudes towards writing in ERPP in semi-periphery countries

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-159
Author(s):  
Arturo Mendoza ◽  
Viviana Oropez ◽  
Daniel Rodríguez ◽  
Zazil Sobrevilla ◽  
Joaquín Martínez
Keyword(s):  
Graduate Students ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Structured Interview ◽  
Public University ◽  
English Writing ◽  
Research Article ◽  
Writing Course ◽  
Admission Requirements ◽  
Additional Burden ◽  
Method Approach

Abstract This paper addresses writing in ERPP for graduate students matriculated in a Mexican Public University where the medium of instruction is Spanish. The students who were involved in our study registered for an academic writing course in ERPP, and submitted a draft research article in English as part of the admission requirements. Following a mixed-method approach, through a survey and a semi-structured interview, we aimed to explore the various ways in which students use English for research and publication purposes, the discursive and non-discursive challenges they perceived while drafting the article, and their feelings and attitudes towards writing in ERPP. The findings suggest that the discursive and non-discursive challenges perceived were aggravated by the lack of critical-pragmatic approaches, the poor English writing skills developed for academic purposes, and the lack of support for editing their papers in English, particularly from thesis supervisors. This led them to experience feelings of anxiety, frustration and discomfort about writing in English. We would argue that this additional burden and pressure for graduate students to publish in English in semi-periphery countries translates into a lack of confidence and feeling of disadvantage in comparison with their counterparts located in anglophone research communities in centre countries.

scholarly journals Voices from EFL Thai learners towards English writing

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (6) ◽  
pp. 1495-1507
Author(s):  
Chutamas Sundrarajun
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
English Language ◽  
Structured Interview ◽  
Educational Organizations ◽  
Business English ◽  
English Writing ◽  
Writing Course ◽  
Language Writing ◽  
Written Assignments

English language writing is seen as one of the most difficult skills for undergraduate students. When composing a piece of writing, students usually face various problems ranging from grammatical aspects to expressing ideas and opinions. To answer the research questions, this study employed a mixed method of both qualitative and quantitative approaches to identify the students’ perceptions towards Business Article Writing Course, as well as to pinpoint their challenges when working on the written assignments. The intensive data were collected from 20 fourth year students majoring in Business English via the use of questionnaire and a semi-structured interview. The findings give teachers, course designers, and educational organizations an insight into students’ problems in learning English language writing. It also highlights the need to integrate different genres of writing to enhance students’ writing skills so that they can use such techniques to overcome any struggles when composing a piece of writing.   Keywords:  Academic Writing, EFL, Writing Strategies, Peer Feedback

Instruction of Nominalization by Applying Enabling of POA

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 342-358
Author(s):  
Hao Chen
Keyword(s):  
Academic Writing ◽  
English Learners ◽  
Academic English ◽  
English Writing ◽  
Writing Course ◽  
Learning Journals ◽  
English Majors ◽  
Chinese English Learners ◽  
Oriented Approach

AbstractIt is noticeable that the academic papers written by Chinese English learners are lacking in academic features largely due to their poor ability to use nominalization. Therefore, the instruction of nominalization in an academic English writing course is badly needed. The author conducted one-semester-long instruction of nominalization to 90 non-English majors under the guidance of the production-oriented approach (POA). This research demonstrated how to apply POA, specifically, the enabling procedure to the teaching of nominalization. By triangulating the data of students’ interviews, learning journals and written output, and the data of 4 teachers’ class observations and interviews, this study found that the accurate application of the three criteria of effective enabling contributed to the improvement of the quantity and quality of nominalization in academic writing.

scholarly journals Genre Pedagogy and Bilingual Graduate Students’ Academic Writing

Publications ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Teresa Morell ◽  
Susana Pastor Cesteros
Keyword(s):  
Graduate Students ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Applied Linguistics ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Discourse Community ◽  
Graduate Course ◽  
Positive Effects ◽  
Research Article ◽  
Genre Awareness ◽  
Analysis Task

Genre pedagogy plays an important role in helping graduate students to enter the discourse community of their fields. Although familiarity with research genres benefits graduate students, few studies have explored the influences of instruction on learners’ subsequent generic practices. In this study, we describe the genre-based approach used in a bilingual (English and Spanish) Applied Linguistics graduate course, which aimed to enhance students’ research genre awareness to allow them to be better able to confront their own work as investigators. The description of the course is followed by a study to determine if and how a research article discourse analysis task influenced the students’ academic writing in their own papers. Our research question was the following: To what extent can course instruction influence students’ academic writing? The study entails a survey to elicit students’ perspectives on the influence of the course and its tasks on their academic writing, as well as teachers’ comments on the students’ written work. Although learning to do research at the graduate level requires a broad range of competencies that go beyond genre awareness, the findings from the survey confirmed the positive effects of genre knowledge gains in accomplishing further research goals.

scholarly journals Investigating writing difficulties in essay writing: Tertiary students’ perspectives

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 61
Author(s):  
Suhaimah Bulqiyah ◽  
Moh. Arif Mahbub ◽  
Dyah Ayu Nugraheni
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Structured Interview ◽  
Writing Difficulties ◽  
Essay Writing ◽  
Writing Course ◽  
Efl Students ◽  
Language And Education ◽  
Cognitive Problems

This study is primarily designed for investigating the tertiary students’ perspectives on the writing difficulties of essays. This study was conducted in explanatory research in which quantitative and qualitative data were obtained from the web-based questionnaire and semi-structured interview, then analyzed separately. 21 undergraduate students have enrolled in the survey and 6 of them were invited to the interview section. This research reveals tertiary students' problems in essay writing course are categorized into: affective problems which raise from students’ and lecturers’ attitude while teaching and learning Essay Writing Course, cognitive problems that considered as the difficulties in the areas of writing viewpoint, transferring language, and the process of writing, and linguistic problems in the area of lexico-grammar, vocabulary, and the structure of the essay. Due to the findings, those aspects of academic writing should be serious attention for both EFL students and teachers to overcome the problems. The findings of this study have implications for EFL writing course designers as basic data of material improvement and for researchers particularly in the realms of language and education.

scholarly journals Chinese graduate students’ translanguaging practice in the context of academic writing in English

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Xuezi Zhang ◽  
Xenia Hadjioannou
Keyword(s):  
Graduate Students ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Perceived Barriers ◽  
English Writing ◽  
Study Approach ◽  
Chinese Graduate Students ◽  
Literacy Knowledge ◽  
Negative Perceptions ◽  
English Academic Writing

Abstract This study explores the complexity of the languaging processes of Chinese graduate students in the context of their English academic writing. Utilizing a qualitative case study approach, we found that translanguaging was ubiquitously present in the writing processes of the Chinese graduate student participants. The participants leveraged translanguaging tools and strategies to support their English writing by accessing and utilizing resources in Chinese, using Chinese to support thinking and drafting, and integrating literacy knowledge across their linguistic repertoires. However, negative perceptions of these practices contributed to ambivalent bilingual identities and hindered them as writers. Findings also revealed perceived barriers and process hindrances that challenged the participants when composing academic text in English. The study highlights the importance of creating translanguaging spaces to support international students in higher education, but also the need to provide instruction in academic writing to support their academic performance.

scholarly journals Extending the flipped classroom model: Developing second language writing skills through student-created digital videos

2014 ◽  
pp. 12-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marion Engin
Keyword(s):  
Academic Writing ◽  
Flipped Classroom ◽  
Second Language Writing ◽  
Academic English ◽  
Digital Videos ◽  
English Writing ◽  
Video Tutorial ◽  
Model Research ◽  
Writing Course ◽  
Language Writing

Abstract: This paper describes a project which aimed to leverage the students’ interest and experience of technology and multi-modal environments in an academic English writing course. Students were expected to follow a model, research a topic, and craft a digital video tutorial on an aspect of academic writing which would form part of the established flipped classroom model. Evaluation from students suggests that student-created videos can promote deeper understanding of the topic through the activity of teaching, as well as encourage students to monitor their English and strive for accuracy. However, it was also noted that students prefer a teacher explanation than a peer explanation and there were concerns over the “trustworthiness” of a peer-produced video tutorial. 

scholarly journals Process genre approach to L2 academic writing: An intervention study

XLinguae ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 30-51
Author(s):  
Svetlana Hanusova ◽  
Olga Dontcheva-Navratilova ◽  
Marie Lahodova Valisova ◽  
Marketa Matulova
Keyword(s):  
Graduate Students ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
English Language ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Thinking Skills ◽  
Critical Thinking Skills ◽  
Study Program ◽  
Writing Courses ◽  
Academic Texts ◽  
Writing Course

The paper presents the research study of academic writing of Czech university students in an English Language Teacher Education study program. The authors apply an interdisciplinary approach integrating the perspectives of linguistics and language pedagogy in the evaluation of the design of the Academic Writing course and its impact on the development of students’ academic writing skills. Adopting a process genre approach (Badger, White, 2000) to writing instruction as a key design principle, our study combines the genre analysis framework (Swales, 1990) and the intercultural rhetoric perspective (Connor, 2004) to design an innovated academic writing course for graduate students focusing on developing critical thinking skills and context-aware writing. The course, informed by an analysis of the academic writing needs of the students, aimed at familiarizing them with the rhetorical structure of academic texts with a focus on the genre of the Master’s thesis and at introducing them to the academic writing conventions in the area of soft sciences. Piloted in 2019, the course was implemented as a blended course, where the contact sessions were complemented by online support in VLE Moodle. Apart from analyses of written texts, classroom writing, and homework tasks, it also included discourse editing tasks and peerreviewing with peer-reviewer feedback and teacher feedback. We believe that our research findings will shed light on the potential of academic writing courses based on the process-genre approach to contribute to the enhancement of the quality of English academic texts by non-native academic writers, and specifically Czech graduate students.

scholarly journals Strategies of Writing Used by the Students of Higher and Lower Proficiency Level: A Case Study

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Md. Ruhul Amin
Keyword(s):  
Academic Writing ◽  
Structured Interview ◽  
Low Achievers ◽  
High Achievers ◽  
Writing Strategies ◽  
Writing Quality ◽  
Proficiency Level ◽  
Program Language ◽  
Method Approach

<p><em>The objectives of the current study were to determine the types of writing strategies used by the students and to describe the differences of writing strategies utilization between high and low achievers. This research was conducted at academic writing program, Language Training Center of NPI University of Bangladesh. The subjects were three of high achievers and three of low achievers who had enrolled in the program. The study applied a qualitative method approach. Structured interview and open-ended questionnaire based on Cazrl and Petric writing strategies, inventory were employed in collecting data. The result showed that all twenty writing strategies investigated in this research were employed by the subjects; secondly, high proficiencies employ writing strategies more frequently than those with low proficiencies. The implication of the study is that by understanding the writing strategies, employment of the high and the low students to upgrade the students writing quality into a better writing.</em></p>

scholarly journals Exploring teacher-initiated humour in Academic English classes

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 221-235
Author(s):  
Aziz Kholmatov
Keyword(s):  
Academic Writing ◽  
Data Extraction ◽  
Structured Interview ◽  
Extraction Methods ◽  
Smooth Transition ◽  
Academic English ◽  
Online Questionnaire ◽  
English Writing ◽  
English Classes ◽  
Teaching Grammar

As a subject focused on teaching grammar forms needed for academic studies and genres of academic writing, Academic English may seem tedious at times. Sometimes it is a complex subject for students who are fresh to academia and it needs a peculiar didactic approach to provide a smooth transition of students from general to academic English writing at a university level. One of these approaches may be using humour during classes. The current research explores teacher-initiated humour in Academic English classes at the Westminster International University in Tashkent and its effects on students. Besides, it seeks answers to questions as to what types of humour teachers employ during the class mostly, how often they use humour, as well as students’ and teachers’ recommendations given on how to use humour in class. This study uses both qualitative and quantitative data extraction methods in the form of an online questionnaire with students and a semi-structured interview with teachers. Obtained results show that affective and social roles of humour, its quality of lessening anxiety, creates favourable conditions for students and teacher’s connectedness, which outweighs other humour’s roles. Besides, mnemonic and engaging roles of humour received solid support by the respondents. To obtain a more positive effect, it is recommended that teachers, when incorporating humour in class, apply a systematic approach. Humour should be planned beforehand and needs to be appropriate. Moreover, it should be used with moderation.

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