Academic Writing in a Second or Foreign Language

Issues and Challenges Facing ESL/EFL Academic Writers in Higher Education Contexts

Ramona Tang

• Publisher: Continuum
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781472522665
• eBook ISBN: 9781441153340
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

It can be a challenge writing in a language that is not your native tongue. Constructing academic essays, dissertations and research articles in this second or foreign language is even more challenging, yet across the globe thousands of academics and students do so, some out of choice, some out of necessity. This book looks at a major issue within the field of English for Academic Purposes (EAP). It focuses on the issues confronting non-native-English-speaking academics, scholars and students, who face increasing pressure to write and publish in English, now widely acknowledged as the academic lingua franca. Questions of identity, access, pedagogy and empowerment naturally arise. This book looks at both student and professional academic writers, using qualitative text analysis, quantitative questionnaire data, corpus investigations and ethnographic approaches to searchingly examine issues central to the EAP field.

Chapter 1

The Issues and Challenges Facing Academic Writers from ESL/EFL Contexts: An Overview

Ramona Tang

There are increasing numbers of academic writers around the world these days for whom English is not their first language, but for whom producing written academic work in English is either a necessity or a personal choice. Included in such a group are the many Asian and European undergraduate and postgraduate students studying in universities in English-dominant countries, and those choosing to study English at a university in their home countries. Also included are academics from English as a Second Language (ESL) or English as a Foreign Language (EFL) contexts now working within BANA (British, Australian and North American) academic institutions, as well as the many scholars who, while staying within their own non-native-English-speaking contexts, face increasing pressures to publish in English in order to establish a presence in the English-dominant international academic scene and to advance in their careers.

This volume seeks to explore some of the issues and challenges facing these academic writers, by pulling together the voices of academic writing researchers from a variety of different contexts and backgrounds. Some of the contributors appearing in this volume would describe themselves as native speakers of English, some would identify themselves as EFL scholars and writers, and some would probably try to question any such labelling. But across all the chapters, we see professionals who have devoted a significant part of their careers to working with non-native-English-speaking students and/or academics, engaging with issues that concern them, and studying the texts that they produce. In some chapters, we see a pedagogic and normative intent to demystify dominant Anglo-American discourse practices so as to make them accessible to those who wish, for whatever reason, to learn and to adopt them. In other cases, we note a more transformative intent, to problematise and challenge dominant discourse practices and to offer alternative ways of understanding and making meaning within academia.

The chapters in this volume thus offer perspectives from (or some might say ‘windows into’) different Asian and European contexts, and I hope that what comes across will be that the voices, experiences, and goals of those of us working in the area of ESL/EFL academic writing are varied, as are the voices, experiences, and goals of the people who populate our research. In seeking to better understand the issues and challenges facing non-native-English-speaking academic writers, it would be prudent to remember that we are by no means talking about a homogeneous group. The degree of linguistic relatedness between English and an EFL scholar’s first language, the extent to which Anglo-American culture is prevalent in his/her home country, the field within which he/she is working or studying, the extent to which English is privileged over local/national languages in academic publication within a country, the societal perception of ‘studying abroad’, personal goals and perceptions of ‘identity’, the extent to which a person is influenced by intrinsic motivation versus extrinsic rewards – these and other factors have an impact on how ESL/EFL students and professionals approach academic writing in English. By and large, therefore, the individual chapters in this volume serve to highlight very particular concerns of ESL/EFL academic writers in a range of very specific contexts.

At the same time, however, the chapters as a collection also bring to the fore a number of issues which are central to the field of academic writing research (which I will take to encompass the related fields of Academic Literacies, English for Academic Purposes and Second Language Writing). These include:

• the privileged status of English as the international lingua franca of academic research,
• the different ways in which students and scholars learn to write for academic purposes,
• the challenges associated with ‘transitioning’ from one context to another,
• the identity work involved in academic writing,
• the creation of opportunities for ‘novices’ or ‘outsiders’ to participate in the wider disciplinary conversation, and
• the relation and/or contrast between personal motivations and institutional demands.

It is the recurring nature of these themes across the different chapters of this volume which ties the volume together, and gives this volume, and the field, its unity.

This chapter sets the stage for the rest of this volume by sketching out a backdrop against which the research reported in the subsequent chapters can be read.

1 The Privileged Status of English as the International Lingua Franca of Academic Research

One of the keys to understanding the impetus behind research on academic writing in English as a second or foreign language and to appreciating the pedagogic and research work reported in the chapters in this volume is to recognise the privileged status that English currently enjoys as the international lingua franca of academic research and scholarship. The work that we do to make sense of the issues and challenges facing non-native-English-speaking academic writers would hardly be as compelling if there did not exist real and strong reasons for non-native-English-speaking students and academics to write in English.

The privileged status of English as the international language of academia is, by now, widely acknowledged (e.g. Canagarajah, 2002; Ferguson et al., 2011; Flowerdew & Li, 2009; Hamp-Lyons, 2011; Hyland, 2009; Lillis & Curry, 2010; Swales, 2004). Despite some collective academic and nationalistic concern about whether such a phenomenon is desirable, around the world many individual ESL/EFL students and academics have come to the not unreasonable conclusion that, all other things being equal, an ability to participate in the academic endeavour in the English language could be advantageous for them in terms of their career prospects. Studies have shown, for instance, that in this age of the ‘internationalisation’ of higher education (e.g. Gu, 2009; Knight, 1999; Teichler, 2009), students from EFL backgrounds, if they choose to pursue higher education abroad, tend to favour English-speaking countries, and there has in recent years been an increased demand by such students for undergraduate and postgraduate degrees from English-speaking countries (Abubakar et al., 2010; Vandermensbrugghe, 2004). According to Vandermensbrugghe (2004), international students choose to study in English-speaking countries ‘to acquire internationally recognised linguistic and cultural competencies, which can be very useful in a global context’, and believe that their degree from a university in an English-speaking country could be their ‘passport’ to the world (p. 418).

For ESL/EFL academics looking to establish their careers and to get their voices heard within their chosen disciplinary communities, academic publication is likely to be foremost on their minds since this is the primary means by which knowledge is constructed, negotiated, and disseminated within academic discourse communities (e.g. Becher & Trowler, 2001; Hyland, 2000, 2009). Increasingly, as matters of employment, promotion and tenure within universities are tied to research output and publications (Becher & Trowler, 2001; Belcher, 2007; Burgess & Martín-Martín, 2008; Curry & Lillis, 2010; Flowerdew & Li, 2009; Lillis & Curry, 2010; Pérez-Llantada et al., 2011; Uzuner, 2008), the pressure on academic faculty not just to publish, but to publish in ‘international’ journals with a ‘high impact’ factor is growing stronger. At first glance, this seems to be a reasonable expectation – if a scholar wishes to establish his/her membership within the wider discourse community, then certainly it makes sense for his/her research to be published in an ‘international’ publication. However, as Swales (2004) has noted, the term ‘international’ in the context of academic publication typically means publishing in English. Thus, we see in research reported from countries such as Armenia (Sahakyan & Sivasubramaniam, 2008), China (Cargill & O’Connor, 2006, this volume; Flowerdew & Li, 2009), Indonesia (Adnan, 2009), Italy (Giannoni, 2008), Korea (Cho, 2009), Poland (Duszak & Lewkowicz, 2008), Spain (Ferguson et al., 2011; Pérez-Llantada et al., 2011), Sudan (ElMalik & Nesi, 2008) and Hungary, Slovakia, and Spain (Curry & Lillis, 2004), that there is considerable pressure on non-native-English-speaking academics to publish in English in order to achieve international visibility and institutional recognition (often, though not always, in that order). In some EFL countries, universities with an eye on raising the international profile of their faculty and institutions even offer monetary rewards for successful publication in top-tier, usually English-medium, journals (Adnan, 2009; Flowerdew & Li, 2009; Lillis & Curry, 2010).

Recognising that this ‘English-dominant reality’ is what many real, working non-native-English-speaking students and academics face on a daily basis is central to the work that we do as researchers and practitioners in the area of ESL/EFL academic writing. This does not mean, of course, that we do not recognise the problems inherent in such a state of affairs. While there are, no doubt, advantages to having a common language through which research ideas can be exchanged internationally, the marked dominance of English in this respect does raise concerns for some. There is the sense, for instance, that research has to be published in English in order to feature on the radar of the global disciplinary community, as considerable research output published around the world in languages other than English (e.g. Chinese, French, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish) sits ‘lost’ behind language barriers and unappreciated beyond national boundaries (Meneghini & Packer, 2007). There are also concerns about the attrition of national languages in the academic sphere as English supersedes local languages as the medium of choice for the dissemination of research (Duszak & Lewkowicz, 2008; Ferguson et al., 2011; Giannoni, 2008). And there are concerns about issues of linguistic inequality as ESL/EFL scholars may find themselves disadvantaged, not due to the lack of rigour or interest-value of their research, but because of issues to do with academic discourse in English.

Acknowledging the privileged status of English as the international lingua franca of academic research, then, I would argue, is simply that. It is not tantamount to ignoring the potentially negative aspects of the dominance of English in the academic sphere. Neither, I would point out, is it necessarily tantamount to homogenising the experience of non-native-English-speaking students and scholars around the world. We note, for instance, that despite an undeniable general trend that privileges English as the academic lingua franca, the actual extent to which English is favoured over local languages for publication in specific contexts is still dependent on many other factors, including the discipline within which one works, the nature of the research being undertaken, the flexibility of institutional policies of academic recognition, the level of nationalistic pride in the local language(s), academics’ own personal goals for their research and the readership perceived as potentially benefiting the most from the research findings. (For discussions of these factors, see Casanave (2002), Duszak and Lewkowicz (2008), Flowerdew and Li (2009), Giannoni (2008), Lillis and Curry (2010), Petersen and Shaw (2002) and Polo and Varela (2009).)

The fact that English is currently the international lingua franca of academia, then, does not dictate the practices of non-native-English-speaking academic writers. It is however an essential part of the context within which our research in the field of ESL/EFL academic writing needs to be situated.

2 Problems Faced by ESL/EFL Scholars and Students Writing in English

Underlying all the chapters in this volume is the notion that non-native-English-speaking academic writers face writing-related challenges. It is one of the distinct characteristics of research on academic writing in English as a second or foreign language that the ‘problems’ associated with this endeavour are what dominate our research agenda. A read through Belcher and Braine’s seminal 1995 volume Academic Writing in a Second Language, for instance, reveals a similar preoccupation with diagnosing and addressing the problems in the teaching of academic writing to non-native-English-speaking students. The issues addressed in the current volume, then, can be seen as extending a long tradition of research in this area and can best be appreciated when read in the context of this tradition.

The particular challenges that have been identified over the years as being associated with ESL/EFL undergraduate and postgraduate student writers have included both linguistic problems observable through textual analysis, as well as mental or psychological issues (e.g. expectations, attitudes, culturally-informed schemas) unearthed through ethnographic, or ethnographically-related, approaches. We find, for example, discussions of linguistic difficulties to do with grammar, vocabulary and sentence construction (e.g. Chan, 2010; Qian & Krugly-Smolska, 2008; Santos, 1988; Zhou, 2009), studies highlighting students’ difficulties with reporting verbs (e.g. John, this volume; Neff et al., 2003; Thompson & Ye, 1991) and reports detailing difficulties with cohesive devices (e.g. Hinkel, 2001; Mu & Carrington, 2007; Nesi & Moreton, this volume), and we find research reporting uncertainty about textual borrowing or citation practices and the concept of plagiarism (e.g. Chandrasoma et al., 2004; Deckert, 1993; Pecorari, 2006; Shi, 2010). We also find discussions of students’ difficulties with translating declarative knowledge about academic writing requirements (e.g. the need to ‘critically evaluate sources’) into actual practice (Wang, 2010), accounts of non-native-English-speaking students’ difficulties with using idiomatic, and not merely grammatically-correct, academic English (Mu & Carrington, 2007), and reports of students having an inadequate understanding of the demands of the genres expected of them at the univers...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Continuum Studies
• Title
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Contributors
• Chapter 1: The Issues and Challenges Facing Academic Writers from ESL/EFL Contexts: An Overview
• Part One: Learning to Write for Academic Purposes
• Part Two: Features of ESL/EFL Learner Discourses
• Part Three: Identity Work and Professional Opportunities in Academic Writing
• Afterword
• eCopyright