Thesis writing for international students: A question of identity?

Cadman, Kate

doi:10.1016/s0889-4906(96)00029-4

Cited by 112 publications

(69 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…However, Wang and Linda's study was not done in Tanzanian context, as was the case with the current study. Another similar study was conducted by Cadman (1997) in which it was revealed that the main cause of the challenges that students faced in writing their theses and dissertations could be attributed to different epistemologies in which the students had been trained and in which their identities as learners were rooted.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 95%

Challenges of writing theses and dissertations among postgraduate students in Tanzanian higher learning institutions

Komba¹

2015

IJRSE

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This study sought to investigate challenges of writing theses and dissertations among postgraduate students. A total of 103 research reports, including 39 theses and 64 dissertations from three universities in Tanzania, were reviewed. The findings indicated that the majority (more than 50%) of the candidates, whose theses and dissertations were reviewed, faced numerous challenges in writing their theses and dissertations. The candidates seemed to have challenges in writing all chapters which were included in their research reports. The challenges included inappropriateness in presenting different chapters of the reports and lack of academic writing skills. Based on the findings of this study, it is recommended, among others, that research methods courses offered in the universities should be reviewed in terms of contents and teaching approaches in order to overcome the challenges as portrayed by the candidates in the reviewed theses and dissertations.

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Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 95%

Challenges of writing theses and dissertations among postgraduate students in Tanzanian higher learning institutions

Komba¹

2015

IJRSE

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“…Bunton 2002Bunton , 2005, use of citation (Sun, 2008), and writer identity development (e.g. Cadman, 1997), with little investigation into their lexicogrammatical features and the linguistic development of student writers. However, as a considerable number of research students whose L1 (first language) is other than English have to write dissertations in this academic lingua franca, linguistic challenges stand out as equally important.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Noun Phrase Complexity in EFL Academic Writing: A Corpus-based Study of Postgraduate Academic Writing

Liu¹,

Li²

2016

The Journal of AsiaTEFL

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Noun phrase (NP) centered structures are distinctive syntactic devices in academic discourse. The commonly employed subordination-based complexity measures cannot adequately capture the development of syntactic complexity of noun phrases expected of advanced student academic writing (Biber, Gray, & Poonpon, 2011). Following the call for more research in this area (e.g. Lu, 2011, p. 57), the current study compared noun phrase complexity in two corpora: one is a corpus of MA dissertations written by Chinese EFL students and the other comprises published research articles in applied linguistics journals. The study examined overall noun phrase complexity using an automatic syntactic complexity analyzer and specifically identified features of one aspect of NP complexity: NP postmodification. The quantitative results were further contextualized in a textual analysis of excerpts from the two corpora for demonstrating the significance of NP complexity to the establishment of discourse coherence. Results of the analyses showed significant underdevelopment of NP postmodification complexity in student writing relative to published texts, meanwhile explicating the circumstances under which the difference is meaningful. Implications of the findings for the teaching of EFL academic writing were also discussed.

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“…The concept of metadiscourse offers "a broad perspective on the way that academic writers engage their readers; shaping their propositions to create convincing, coherent texts by making language choices in social contexts peopled by readers, prior experiences, and other texts" (Hyland & Tse, 2004, p.167). Various researchers have argued that the management of such interaction is particularly challenging for undergraduate students (Ivanic & Simpson, 1992;Mitchell, 1994;White, 1998) and for second language writers (Cadman, 1997;Gao, 2007;Hu, 2005). Metadiscourse is a linguistic resource through which the writer may project their voice or, more deterministically, through which a writer's voice may find itself constructed.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Metadiscourse repertoire of L1 Mandarin undergraduates writing in English: A cross-contextual, cross-disciplinary study

Wharton

2012

Journal of English for Academic Purposes

103

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A note on versions:The version presented here may differ from the published version or, version of record, if you wish to cite this item you are advised to consult the publisher's version. Please see the 'permanent WRAP url' above for details on accessing the published version and note that access may require a subscription. AbstractThis article presents a qualitative, comparative study of metadiscourse in the academic writing of two groups of undergraduate students working in two different disciplines. The groups of students were: 1) Native speakers of Mandarin studying in China through the medium of English; 2) Native speakers of Mandarin studying in the UK through the medium of English. For each group of students, we examined writing undertaken in two undergraduate disciplinary courses: Literary Criticism and Translation Studies. Our aim was to extend research into English writing by L1 Mandarin speakers, and to identify patterns of difference and similarity both between educational contexts and between disciplines.Results suggest that patterns of metadiscourse use in our corpus are associated with both disciplinary and contextual factors, but that contextual factors may have a stronger effect than disciplinary factors. For our data, local institutional culture seems to have a noticeable influence on student writers' use of metadiscourse. 1.

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Thesis writing for international students: A question of identity?

Cited by 112 publications

References 5 publications

Challenges of writing theses and dissertations among postgraduate students in Tanzanian higher learning institutions

Challenges of writing theses and dissertations among postgraduate students in Tanzanian higher learning institutions

Noun Phrase Complexity in EFL Academic Writing: A Corpus-based Study of Postgraduate Academic Writing

Metadiscourse repertoire of L1 Mandarin undergraduates writing in English: A cross-contextual, cross-disciplinary study

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