Academic writing in a foreign language

Advanced Reading and Writing Skills in ELT: APA Style Handbook aims to offer two syllabuses for Advanced Reading and Writing Skills Course in two semesters. Thus, this book mainly provides information on academic writing skills in English Language Teaching in relation with APA style. Following the introduction into academic writing, it introduces how to connect ideas with reference to unity and coherence and how to refer to other sources by employing in-text citations rules appropriately. Related information on reviewing literature, parts of an academic paper, headings, writing a list of references, and presenting tables and figures is also provided. Moreover, to familiarize readers with academic style of writing, it also presents information on the notion of reading process, reading strategies, models of reading, assessing reading, and background knowledge and nativization. In this respect, reading researchers may also benefit from this text.
Apart from undergraduate ELT students and lecturers of Advanced Reading and Writing Skills Course, postgraduate students and researchers will discover that Advanced Reading and Writing Skills in ELT: APA Style Handbook helps them in writing their assignments, theses, and manuscripts by providing examples on APA rules. Although APA Publication Manual lists rules on academic writing, many post graduate students, even experienced researchers, may experience difficulty in applying these rules in their studies. Therefore, the text provides samples on a variety of topics in relation with academic writing in ELT.

... instruction, Pecorari supports “learning by doing” (p. 50), ie apprentice-type arrangements through which novices ... reporting of content from a source without distortion; (4) the effectiveness of using sources for ... to be called plagiarism, but any of the texts in this corpus could have ...

Abstract. References to other scholars’ work is an important component of research writing, and one which requires careful attention in order to convey the writer’s stance toward the reported propositions and their relationship to each other and to the writer’s own work. Second language writers often find it difficult to master the skill of selecting appropriate forms for reporting verbs, and this is an area in which English for Academic Purposes (EAP) materials and teachers are called upon to provide guidance. However, accounts of reporting verb usage have demonstrated that this is a complex area, and simple prescriptions or proscriptions are not sufficient: appropriate choices are dependent on the relationship between form and function, both locally and globally in the citing text. The present paper extends the existing research literature on reporting verbs by examining some of the factors which guide the citing writer’s choices. Implications for the EAP classroom are also taken up.

This pragmatic descriptive study is aimed at investigating the use of hedging by Arab speakers of English. It is geared towards answering the question of how frequently hedging is used in the abstracts of the Linguistics Master theses written by Saudi students enrolled in the English department at the College of Languages and Translation, Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud Islamic University, Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. A corpus of 100 randomly selected Linguistics Master Theses abstracts (27,411 words), written between 2013 and 2016, were carefully examined quantitatively, and analyzed according to Hyland's (2000) classification of hedging words, using the online LEXICOOL text analyzer. The results indicate that Saudi students rarely use hedging words in writing the abstracts of their Linguistics Master theses. The limited number of hedging words used in the corpus reflects the students' lack of pragmatic competence and cross-cultural variation. The present study is limited to a single genre, i.e., Linguistics Master Theses Abstracts. Further studies combining both discourse analysis and qualitative interviews, focusing on the use of hedging by Arab speakers of English, with more diverse academic texts in different genres, would enhance the findings, and help explain whether pragmatic competence or cross-cultural variation affects the use of hedging by Arab speakers of English.

English language learning and teaching, as any educational process, is penetrated by several
dynamic concepts which are in a state of constant flux, dialogue, tension, and
complementarity. One of such concepts is that of authenticity, the main theme of the 42nd
FAAPI Conference and the contributions included here.
It is not within the scope of this introduction to provide a definition of authenticity
because, even though definitions are necessary, it would be reductive to do so. Instead, we
attempt here to indicate some roads which the concept invites us to explore in relation to our
professional practices inscribed in larger situated contexts.

Similarity reports of plagiarism detectors should be approached with caution as they may not be sufficient to support allegations of plagiarism. This study developed a 50-item rubric to simplify and standardize evaluation of academic papers. In the spring semester of 2011-2012 academic year, 161 freshmen’s papers at the English Language Teaching Department of Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University, Turkey, were assessed using the rubric. Validity and reliability were established. The results indicated citation as a particularly problematic aspect, and indicated that fairer assessment could be achieved by using the rubric along with plagiarism detectors’ similarity results.

Esta experiencia educativa nace a raíz de la aplicación de un proyecto de innovación
docente (PIE19-128) que tiene como objetivo principal mejorar la destreza escrita en
lengua inglesa de los estudiantes del Grado de Estudios Ingleses de la Universidad de
Málaga. Habiendo detectado carencias en este sentido en el alumnado de primer año y
coordinando el trabajo con los asistentes de conversación del programa Fullbright, se
interviene en la asignatura de Inglés Instrumental (I) de la siguiente forma: haciendo
sesiones específicas de inglés académico de forma presencial y online, fomentando tareas
digitales relacionadas con el mundo real para la mejora de la escritura académica y
creando un modelo docente de “mini talleres de escritura” (presenciales y virtuales),
donde el alumnado corrige sus tareas escritas, recibe retroalimentación y resuelve dudas
relacionadas con la escritura académica. Se observa que este método facilita la
elaboración y corrección de tareas escritas en gran medida y mejora la motivación y la
destreza de los estudiantes. Se propone trabajar en la creación de un writing center (centro
de escritura) permanente para poder realizar esta tarea a gran escala y de forma
continuada.

Plagiarism is a pervasive challenge throughout academia perpetuated by the advent of technology, lack of ethical education, and the ambiguity in its definition. Plagiarism in the United States’ higher education settings has gained more attention over the years as international student population has increased. Considering how higher education institutions are growing as international spaces due to globalization, it is crucial to closely examine ethical issues concerning the diverse and multicultural student population. A prevailing view of plagiarism asserts that international students’ plagiarized texts are influenced by their ethical judgment and cultural backgrounds. This invites the question of whether ethical decision-making processes and cross-cultural perspectives are taken into consideration when instructors encounter instances of plagiarism committed by international or multicultural students. This paper intends to expand on the concept of culture in regard to the ethical dilemmas of plagiarism. Extending the discussions of cross-cultural influences surrounding plagiarism and ethical judgments in higher education, we position ourselves as viewing culture through the expanded lenses of macro- and micro-level cultural practices. In response to the internationalization of higher education, we advocate for changes in higher education curricula and instruction towards more cultural responsiveness and inclusivity. Instead of questioning or criminalizing ethics based on cultural background, especially in the cases of plagiarism committed by international students, we suggest approaching culture using the expanded perspectives of macro- and micro-cultural practices. The paper also provides recommendations for higher education instructors when tackling ethical dilemmas while preventing and managing situations of plagiarism.

http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/2175-8026.2016v69n3p173Desde a década de 1990, na Argentina, tem havido uma preocupação considerável sobre se as instituições de ensino superior devem assumir a responsabilidade de ensinar habilidades acadêmicas a sua população estudantil ou se ambos os graduandos e graduados devem lidar com o processo de enculturação sem assistência. Embora acadêmicos pareçam ter chegado a um acordo e uma série de ações destinadas a facilitar o acesso dos estudantes universitários em suas comunidades de discurso alvo tenham sido apresentadas, ainda há um debate acalorado sobre a forma como a questão deve ser abordada. Neste artigo vamos descrever as iniciativas levadas a cabo em duas faculdades de engenharia (a Facultad de Ciencias de la Alimentación e a Faculdad de Ingeniería pertencente à Universidad Nacional de Entre Ríos) que abriram o caminho para a integração entre ensino e aprendizagem de habilidades de literacia acadêmica no currículo.

Academic writing is a critical aspect of any doctoral program; yet the majority of graduate-level students do not possess adequate writing skills. This issue is especially problematic for non-native English-speaking (NNES) Ph.D. candidates who are required to present their dissertations in the English language. This study was designed as an action research project to investigate the effects of a process-based approach on the attitudes of Turkish Ph.D. students toward academic writing. The results demonstrate that the participants found the experience to have a positive impact on the development of their academic writing skills. Some specific suggestions are offered for supporting graduate students in terms of organizing, self-regulation, academic writing standards and evaluation of their own work.

This case study followed for six months four undergraduate senior students conducting academic writing tasks in more than one language.  It investigated, from a sociocultural standpoint, the internal resources that mediated students’ writing (internal mediational tools) and the contextual elements that contributed to shaping these resources.  Sources included a prompted electronic journal, in-depth interviews with the students and their instructors, course materials and documents, university-wide documents, text written by the students, and class observations.  In-depth qualitative analysis of the data resulted in the identification of four internal mediational tools, each used by at least two of the participants when conducting academic writing tasks across languages: (a) knowledge of audience, (b) cultural knowledge, (c) knowledge of discourse conventions, and (d) experiential lenses.  Previous writing instruction, extended time spent abroad, college courses, and family and personal background emerged as major contextual influences that shaped the four internal mediational tools.  Analysis of the commonalities and the idiosyncrasies across the four writers lead to a hypothesis that each writer’s internal mediational tools were interconnected and influenced by a complex interaction of diachronic and simultaneous external contextual elements.  There were specific indications that knowledge of language may be tied to cultural knowledge and be connected to the consideration of multiple perspectives.  In addition, I hypothesized that each student’s internal motives contributed to shape their mediational tools.  Only a systemic view that included contextual elements and motives could contribute to account for the unique specificity that the same mediational tool took in each writer.

This paper reports on the initial stages of a larger study on plurilingual rhetorical communicative competences.  Experiential evidence indicated a mismatch between the academic writing competences desired from and those displayed by the participants—adult bilingual (L1 Spanish, L+ English) English-language teacher trainees in a postgraduate program at Colombian university.  We examined participants’ beliefs and practices concerning academic writing to identify the sources of their challenges and develop the evidential basis for identifying appropriate remedial strategies.  This was a mixed methods study, in which we analyzed data from semi-structured interviews, questionnaires, and student artifacts through the grounded theory approach and descriptive statistics.  The results suggest that participants’ challenges with rhetorical aspects of academic writing stem from a lack of training.  However, participants were relatively successful with aspects of writing in which they had been ...

Esta experiencia educativa es parte de la implantación del Proyecto de Innovación
Educativa (PIE19-128) “La escritura académica en el Grado en Estudios Ingleses (III):
evaluación y reflexión del progreso y mejora de writing skills en el alumnado del Grado”
financiado por la Universidad de Málaga. Al igual que otros PIEs anteriores, su objetivo
es la mejora de la escritura académica en lengua inglesa en el Grado de Estudios Ingleses
de la Universidad de Málaga. En este contexto, se lleva a cabo una experiencia educativa
en la asignatura de Inglés Instrumental I. Se crean pequeños talleres de trabajo sobre la
escritura en inglés académico mediante el uso de herramientas digitales y la coordinación
de la docente con un auxiliar de conversación Fullbright con el objetivo de acercar el
inglés académico a la vida real de los estudiantes. Se observa que, mediante estos
pequeños talleres, el alumnado consigue mejorar su destreza escrita al tiempo que mejora
su atención y motivación, además de que es posible realizar una corrección más
individualizada. Se propone, por tanto, trabajar en la implantación de estos talleres de
forma permanente, en la forma de un centro de escritura donde se pudiera realizar esta
tarea a mayor escala, de forma continuada y coordinada por varios docentes.

1-Les conditions de production textuelle favorisant le recours à la copie Dans le cadre de la rédaction scolaire de textes longs en L2, les élèves de niveau avancé peuvent souvent être amenés à une production qui se fonde entre autres sur des activités de copie dans les écrits-sources. Ces activités d'emprunt sont variées dans leur étendue et leur nature. Elles sont le résultat de plusieurs paramètres qui se combinent et que nous énumérons à présent :-le degré de (mé)connaissance chez l'élève du thème à traiter en relation avec l'objectif à satisfaire en production écrite en français L2. Cette méconnaissance du thème est le résultat d'un manque de lectures antérieures sur le contenu concerné qui n'ont pu activer la constitution d'un fonds de données permettant à l'élève de mettre en place dans son espace cognitif et mental les conditions favorables à la représentation d'une problématique. Les premières lectures sur le nouveau thème constituent les seules formulations connues;-les habitudes procédurales dans la production du genre textuel scolaire type en L1. Si nous prenons les habitudes d'écriture scolaire dans de nombreuses cultures éducatives, nous constatons que les manuels de langue et littérature en L1 proposent, la plupart du temps, des textes-modèles constitués en autorités du savoir et en autorités linguistiques. Ces modèles, des commentaires littéraires, sont réutilisables par la reprise notamment ou la reformulation;-le degré de compétence en production de la L2. Il serait plus judicieux de se limiter à la représentation que l'apprenant a lui-même de sa compétence d'expression toujours mesurée par rapport à la crainte du non-respect de la correction linguistique qui est le critère essentiel dans l'évaluation d'un texte de L2. Ajoutons que les élèves, dans nos exemples, ne sont pas entraînés à des mises en texte long. L'apprenant à le sentiment que sa compétence en production écrite en L2 n'est pas à la hauteur de sa compétence de lecture. Dans la représentation de l'apprenant, l'écart se creuse entre la compétence de lecture et celle d'écriture au détriment de la dernière. Les activités de copie représentent un moyen pour réduire l'écart entre les deux compétences; Nous travaillons à partir d'exemples extraits de dossiers de civilisation 1 (4 à 6 pages dactylographiées ou saisies sur ordinateur) produits en autonomie partielle et hétérodirigée (travail à la maison) par des élèves de classes terminales de sections bilingues en français d'un lycée de Bucarest, en Roumanie. Dans cette étude, nous examinons quelques cas d'activités d'emprunt générant une production textuelle propre dans le corps de texte des dossiers des élèves. 2-Le texte-source sert de base lexicale à partir de laquelle est généré le texte-cible. Le texte-source sert souvent de base lexicale dont l'élève extrait le vocabulaire utile et qu'il retraite aux fins discursives du dossier. Nous prendrons un exemple extrait d'un dossier intitulé Jeanne d'Arc, le destin d'une légende. L'élève a emprunté essentiellement à deux sources : à la Préface par G. B. Shaw de Sainte Jeanne et à un ensemble d'articles paru dans L'événement du jeudi (7 au 13 mai 1992) consacré à Jeanne d'Arc. Nous avons choisi de 1 Cf. Omer : 2001 : 51-54.

The "Study Skills Webinar Series " was funded, conceptualised, and produced by the Research Development Unit at Thammasat University's Faculty of Liberal Arts. Each short webinar can be viewed by following the YouTube link, and the PDF provides a short summary of its contents.

Note.- this book was priced at $5.99 to be affordable for scholars in developing countries. You may download kindle apps for free on various devices if you do not have a kindle.

This book is designed to help English as Second Language scholars get published in English language peer-reviewed journals. Even though there are many books on academic writing and publishing, the needs of ESL Scholars are unique. The authors provide specific guidance to write strong, scholarly articles and tips to overcome the challenges of creating those articles in a language that is not their first. Scholars from the sciences, arts and humanities, professional disciplines, and the behavioral and social sciences learn a step-wise approach from generating ideas, through creating the architecture of an article, to managing the peer review process.

Written communication is essential for all teachers and students of business. All business graduates will need to communicate with people who use English as their alternative language. For example, a graduate is likely to communicate with importers, exporters, and international clients, and their professional colleagues. Global English is a concise guide for writing and speaking English that can be learned easily. Accordingly, business educators should require students to use Global English as part of their written and oral communications. Students and staff should all learn and teach Global English in our business school!

Related:
Mellalieu, P. J. (2008). Writing to learn argument and persuasion: A “Trojan Horse” for promoting the adoption of “Writing Across the Curriculum” (WAC) principles (Working paper). Auckland, NZ: Unitec New Zealand Centre for Innovation & Entrepreneurship. Retrieved from http://web.me.com/petermellalieu/Teacher/Blog/Entries/2009/9/30_Slide_show__Writing_to_learn_argument_and_persuasion.html


Mellalieu, P. J. (2007, July 6). The Massey Writing Across the Curriculum Model: A manifesto for the renaissance of an international business school? Peter Mellalieu - Teacher. Retrieved October 11, 2009, from http://preview.tinyurl.com/masseywac

This paper reports on the initial stages of a larger study on plurilingual rhetorical communicative competences.  Experiential evidence indicated a mismatch between the academic writing competences desired from and those displayed by the participants—adult bilingual (L1 Spanish, L+ English) English-language teacher trainees in a postgraduate program at Colombian university.  We examined participants’ beliefs and practices concerning academic writing to identify the sources of their challenges and develop the evidential basis for identifying appropriate remedial strategies.  This was a mixed methods study, in which we analyzed data from semi-structured interviews, questionnaires, and student artifacts through the grounded theory approach and descriptive statistics.  The results suggest that participants’ challenges with rhetorical aspects of academic writing stem from a lack of training.  However, participants were relatively successful with aspects of writing in which they had been ...

This paper reports on an innovative approach to the implementation of a cycle of blogging activities within different levels of courses in an English for academic purposes/composition program in an English medium university in Japan. Blogs, which are interactive homepages that are easy to set up and manage, enable students to engage in online exchanges, thereby expanding their language study and learning community beyond the physical classroom. Regular blogging also encourages more autonomous learning. When a student’s audience includes his or her classmates, the teacher and potentially anyone with an internet connection, motivation to engage in meaningful written communication appears to increase. At the same time, when a teacher utilizing blogs implements a “blogging buddy” system, which assigns each student a peer review partner to help with editing before a piece of writing (the blog post) is uploaded, the result can be an effective means of facilitating greater learner interact...