This article details an attempt to understand better how first-year doctoral students construct persuasive arguments in academic writing by exploring the patterns of boosters in drafts of doctoral research proposals. Eight Malaysian first-year ESL doctoral students produced 43 drafts of doctoral research proposals across four areas of study in education during their first year of doctoral studies. These drafts were analysed by coding the various linguistic items used to persuade readers of a text, and the analysis was based on Hyland’s (2005) model of metadiscourse. Results show that the (i) overall frequency of booster markers used is relatively low (n=158), reinforcing the argument that first-year doctoral students lack understanding about the interaction between booster markers and the context in a more complicated discussion in academic writing such as the doctoral research proposal. Then, the (ii) further analysis of booster marker sub-categories indicates that Malaysian first-year doctoral students struggle to make appropriate booster markers with different meanings and strengths in academic writing when used in context. Therefore, our study suggests that direct and explicit teaching of using various booster markers categories should be implemented in postgraduate writing courses to heightened the students’ perceptiveness regarding semantic features associated with creating convincing arguments in academic writing.

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

Willingness to communicate (WTC) as introduced by McCroskey and Bear (1985) has developed and been perceived by many as a critical field. Unfortunately, there is a noticeable gap in research on the willingness to communicate (WTC) in English among ESL teachers in the Malaysian context. This study aims to investigate the ESL teachers' willingness to communicate in English in terms of gender and school locations. The four constructs of communication in WTC are group discussions, interpersonal, public, and talking in meetings. Through both criterion and convenience sampling, 250 ESL teachers from twenty-five schools were chosen for this research. Survey questionnaire with a total of 20 items adopted from McCroskey (1992) was used as the data collection instrument. Findings reveal that ESL teachers' willingness to communicate in English is generally high and that the teachers were more willing to converse and exchange ideas orally in English during the meeting rather than in group or public. Female participants were significantly different in their overall willingness to communicate as they were more willing to communicate in groups and public. The within-group comparison also shows that school locations (urban and rural) affect ESL teachers' willingness to communicate in English. The findings also suggest that schools should encourage more ESL teachers to participate in activities such as debates, drama, public speaking, English language clubs/society, and empower them by providing professional development workshops or training.

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Research in academic writing initially focuses on the output of writing, but it is now increasingly turned to writer identity. This article analyses how the acceptance of self as academic writers is difficult. The acceptance of self as an academic writer is quite complex, especially for first-year doctoral students who must engage with the demands of academic language in an academic context. Research acknowledges that self-acceptance as academic writers come with many implications and doctoral students are often hesitant to describe themselves as academic writers. This article seeks to address this complexity through empirical research focused on self-perception in the construction of an academic writer identity. This study involved ten first-year ESL doctoral students in the field of education at an established Malaysian institution. From the findings of this study, we identify four aspects that they experienced in becoming academic writers: creator, interpreter, communicator and academic presenter. These four aspects are experienced in different ways by each participant, illustrated by narratives of their life history and writing practice. In particular, it is hoped that this article can provide some pedagogical implications for the teaching of academic writing in institutes of higher education and offer a lens through which researchers and teachers of writing can further explore academic writer identity.