Individualism, academic writing, and ESL writers

Ramanathan, Vai; Atkinson, Dwight

doi:10.1016/s1060-3743(99)80112-x

Cited by 224 publications

(106 citation statements)

References 49 publications

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“…This helped the writer to be authoritative in building up multiple voices of her own through confident expression of other resources with a very consistent pattern of building one upon the other. These results are in line with the research of Ramanathan and Atkinson (1999) who have indicated that in Western culture, achieving the cultural goal of independence requires one to reference an idea to one's own individual voice rather than by referencing it to the thoughts feelings, and actions only of others.…”

Section: Also Isupporting

confidence: 91%

“…This matter has been discussed over the last decades by many academic researchers in a variety of writing teaching contexts (Ivanic & Camps, 2001;Ramanathan & Atkinson, 1999;Viete & Phan Le Ha, 2002). Ramanathan and Atkinson (1999) These writers emphasise the need for establishing individual academic voices in ESL writing contexts. However, this might pose a much greater challenge for international students as these students are socially constructed by their home context.…”

Section: Individual Voice and Academic Writingmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Investigating Individual Voice in Thematic Development in Academic Assignments Written by Iraqi and Australian Postgraduate Students

Bakaa¹

2014

IJELE

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The notion of individual voice is an important aspect of functional grammar in student's academic writing, as taking a stance is one of the most important requirements of academic assignments at Australian universities. Jalilifar (2009), for instance, demarcated thematic development as an element which plays a crucial role in the message function of language. This raises an important question as to how postgraduate students as academic writers deal with the function of thematic development in terms of individual voice in demonstrating a critical argument. Unfortunately, few studies have focused on this aspect in relation to Iraqi postgraduate students in the Australian context of writing. To this end, four academic assignments were selected and analysed to uncover the similarities and differences in the function of the thematic development, and to determine whether and how students of different cultures stamp their individual voice on the text through the thematic development elements of their academic arguments. Using Eggin's (2004) model of thematic development, this paper concerns a corpus of four academic assignments from four Masters Students (two Iraqi and two Australian students). The data analysis revealed marked differences in these four academic assignments regarding the functions of thematic development as a starting point for their academic argument. The findings showed that the Iraqi postgraduate students struggled both in expressing their individual voice through the function of thematic development, and in supporting their claims with evidence from what they had read. The study presents a critique of Kaplan's claims (1966) that the zig-zag pattern is a characteristic of Arab students' writing, in contrast to the linearity of English writers. Instead it found that the Iraqi non-native writers of English were writing their assignments by copying and writing what they read from their texts and one reason for this was that the element of individual International Journal of English Language Education

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Section: Also Isupporting

confidence: 91%

Section: Individual Voice and Academic Writingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Investigating Individual Voice in Thematic Development in Academic Assignments Written by Iraqi and Australian Postgraduate Students

Bakaa¹

2014

IJELE

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“…In other words, during the writing process, the student writer interacts with audiences in a specific context, and then at an intrapersonal level, the student-writer filters the interaction through his or her experiences, observations and prior knowledge. As Ramanathan and Atkinson (1999) convincingly argue, in order for a student writer to think critically, he or she must have an individual voice that is not affected by the concepts of 'collectivism' or any other foreign agent such as alternative claims or arguments. Such an assertion implies that in order to possess the ability of critical thinking skills in writing, a student writer must have the freedom to voice his or her ideas comfortably.…”

Section: Critical Thinking In L2 Composition Classroomsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One possible reason might be that critical thinking and self-voice are not acceptable in the traditional educational system. Therefore, EFL teachers often believe that because their students have not been taught to think critically and independently in their first language (L1) writing, they may lack critical thinking and individualized voice in their second language (L2) writing (Ramanathan & Atkinson, 1999). Another reason may be that college EFL teachers have not paid much attention to the notion of critical thinking and self-voice in their writing instructions as they often assume that their students are incapable of critically positing their voices, judgment and beliefs into written texts.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Finding a Place for Critical Thinking and Self-voice in College English as a Foreign Language Writing Classrooms

Barnawi¹

2011

ELT

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Although the concepts of critical thinking and self-voice have been extensively discussed in a second language writing, little attention has been given, on the pedagogical level, to critical thinking and self-voice in college EFL writing instruction. To fill such a void, this paper attempts to propose some pedagogical tasks namely: persuasive writing tasks, draft workshops one-on-one mentoring approaches for finding a place for critical thinking and self-voice in EFL classrooms. In doing so, this paper provides the operational definitions of critical thinking and self-voice concepts. It then discusses how these two concepts are closely related to complement EFL writing learning. In what follows, it presents the rationale for finding a place for critical thinking and self-voice in EFL writing. It then touches on some pedagogical practices for developing critical thinking and self-voice in classrooms. Lastly, it addresses some challenges related to implementing critical thinking and self-voice tasks in EFL classrooms.

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“…The term is understood and used in different ways and in different contexts, such as writing at school and writing in higher education. In some research on English as a Second Language (ESL), the term voice is used to take up issues of power, accusing Western writing culture of favoring an individualized voice (Helms-Park & Stapleton, 2003;Ramanathan & Atkinson, 1999;Stapleton, 2002); however, these discussions about voice are often limited to the use of 'I' and the presence of the writer in the text. The confusion in the discussion about the importance of voice is not only that the term voice is understood in different ways, but that some researchers take a common understanding for granted and fail to clarify their interpretation of the term.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Voice features in academic texts – A review of empirical studies

Stock

Eik-Nes

2016

Journal of English for Academic Purposes

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The term voice is frequently used in current writing research. This review gives an overview of empirical studies which aimed to identify voice features in academic texts written by students and/or professional writers. The purpose of this article is to show how the understanding of voice and the aims and approaches used in the studies are intertwined. Many studies build on Hyland's (2008) interactional model which has contributed to insights into voice-related issues in academic writing. However, the overemphasis on linguistic features, such as the use of first person pronouns, entails the risk that research on voice ignores content-related features that might be more relevant in the construction of voice. In addition, this review emphasizes the need to relate voice features to the specific context where the writing occurs. The reader-based approach used in the studies by Matsuda and Tardy (Matsuda & Tardy, 2007;Tardy & Matsuda, 2009) or the combination of different methodological tools, as used by Dressen-Hammouda (2014), allows taking into account contextual aspects such as the insider knowledge of the disciplinary community and/or the genre, thus demonstrating how the writer's voice is always embedded in ways of knowledge making and writing traditions.

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Individualism, academic writing, and ESL writers

Cited by 224 publications

References 49 publications

Investigating Individual Voice in Thematic Development in Academic Assignments Written by Iraqi and Australian Postgraduate Students

Investigating Individual Voice in Thematic Development in Academic Assignments Written by Iraqi and Australian Postgraduate Students

Finding a Place for Critical Thinking and Self-voice in College English as a Foreign Language Writing Classrooms

Voice features in academic texts – A review of empirical studies

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