Adapting to the requirements of written academic discourse
on entering university
Dissertation summary A doktori (PhD) értekezés tézisei
Francis J. Prescott Pickup
Consultant: Dr. Kontra Edit, habil. , egyetemi docens
Language Pedagogy PhD Programme Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest
2012
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1 Introduction
Any teacher of academic writing will agree that there are huge differences between how their students tackle their writing assignments and the quality of the writing they produce. As an experienced teacher in this area I have long been interested in how best to cope with these differences in my classroom. Combined with this interest I have been increasingly aware that many of my colleagues, both in my own Department of English Applied Linguistics (DEAL) and in other departments in the School of English and American Studies (SEAS) at my university have a pessimistic view of the standard of students’ writing. In short, they believe that the standard is dropping noticeably and that student writing has become a problem which is very difficult to deal with.
On the other hand, the demanding nature of the step up from high school to university for students has often been pointed out, not only in first language contexts (e.g., Kruse, 2003), but particularly in contexts where English, as the preeminent global language, is the medium of instruction for university students who have a different first language (Spack, 1988; Hyland, 2002, 2011; Paltridge, 2004;
Zhu, 2004). The teaching of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) to English as a Second Language (ESL) and English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students is intended to help these students.
As a teacher of an EAP course in the English school of a large university in Hungary, which was intended primarily to teach academic writing skills, I decided to investigate the enculturation of
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new students into written academic discourse to find out more about the process and what the problems of the students were. For this purpose I interviewed 20 student volunteers over the course of their first year and observed some of their Academic Skills Course (ASC) classes in order to construct a theory, based on the analysed data, which would help me to understand better the process of enculturation of students into academic discourse. This technique is known as grounded theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967)
1.2 Research aims
The principle aim of the research was to construct a grounded theory of first-year student enculturation into written academic discourse. The theory was intended to enhance understanding of the process and the inter-relationship of the main factors involved, with a view to making the teaching of first-year students more effective. Three batteries of sub-questions concerning the students, the ASC the ASC teachers emerged during the piloting stage of the research:
The student
What are her/his experiences, attitudes and problems?
What are the causes of these problems?
How aware is the student of them what she/he should do about them?
The ASC
Does the course help the students adapt to academic discourse requirements in the university?
What do the students think of the course?
In what ways (if any) do they think the course helps them with their writing at university?
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How could the course be improved from both the standpoint of the students and of the teachers?
The ASC teacher
What are his/her attitudes and feelings about the course?
What are her/his attitudes and feelings about the students and their problems?
What are her/his beliefs concerning the teaching of academic writing and the role of the course?
How do the teacher’s beliefs affect the teaching of the course?
These questions served as the focus points for the first phase of the research.
1.3 Overview of the dissertation
Chapter 2 of the thesis gives a full account of the theoretical background of the study and explains how it fits in with previous research on this topic. Other relevant literature related to the main aspects of the study are also discussed. In Chapter 3 the philosophical underpinnings of qualitative research are outlined and the main principles of grounded theory research are explained. The main differences between the classical grounded theory first developed by Glaser and Strauss (1967) and the constructivist approach to grounded theory proposed by Charmaz (2000; 2006) that was used in this study are set out. The research method is described in detail in Chapter 4 and in Chapter 5 the analysis and coding of the data is explained with examples and the main conceptual categories which emerged are presented. Chapter 6 gives a detailed account of the principal categories that formed the basis of the theoretical model
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and the relationship between them, and in Chapter 7 the model itself is presented and discussed with reference to relevant research literature. The conclusion summarises the main findings, looking at the strengths and weaknesses of the research as a whole, as well as considering some practical implications and the effect in terms of personal growth on the researcher.
2 Theoretical Background
The research is based on two different theoretical views of learning. The first is the idea of the discourse community, which arose as dissatisfaction with a general approach to writing as an internal cognitive process led to an increased focus on understanding the social context of writing in the early 1980s.
It was Patricia Bizzell, in a 1982 article dealing with how writing composition teachers’ theoretical view of writing affects the teaching of students in the classroom, who first seems to have used the term “discourse community” (1982). Citing Flower and Hayes as leading representatives of the view of writing as an inner-directed activity, Bizzell maintained that writing must also be seen as being outer-directed, and therefore influenced by social context. Following on from this, she claimed that it is the responsibility of those helping students learn to write to “explain that their writing takes place in a community, and to explain what the community’s conventions are”
(p. 230).
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The linguist and teacher John Swales, because of his research into the use of English in academic settings and the teaching of English at tertiary level, became interested in the notion of the discourse community, but was dissatisfied with the lack of a clear definition of the term. In his landmark book on genre analysis, he stated that he “wish[ed] to explore and in turn appropriate” the term (Swales, 1990, p.21). In order to do so he came up with a definition of the term which focused on six defining characteristics of a discourse community:
1. A discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals.
2. A discourse community has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members.
3. A discourse community uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback.
4. A discourse community utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims.
5. In addition to owning genres, a discourse community has acquired some specific lexis.
6. A discourse community has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise.
(Swales, 1990, pp. 24-27, author’s italics)
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It was Bizzell’s original concept and Swales definition which informed this research study in its early stages, but in its later stages another social constructivist view of learning, that of Lave and Wenger’s (1991) theory that learning takes place through participation in communities of practice, was influential.
Their initial treatise in 1991 offered a view of learning which sought to foreground its quintessentially social character and move away from purely cognitive accounts of how knowledge is acquired by learners: “we mean to draw attention to the point that learners inevitably participate in communities of practitioners and that the mastery of knowledge and skill requires newcomers to move toward full participation in the sociocultural practices of a community” (p. 29). Lave and Wenger were interested in how novice learners are taken in and become full members through peripheral participation in the practices of the community. By peripheral participation they mean the stage when an apprentice is just beginning to learn by doing small tasks which are only a small part of the set of skills possessed by full members of the community.
As already stated, both these theories influenced the present research. The idea of new students entering a series of overlapping discourse communities was the conceptual starting point with which the research was framed. The idea of overlapping ADCs gave a framework to the research but it was part of the aim of the research to investigate exactly what these ADCs were and how they worked in this particular setting.
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Once the research the process of data gathering and analysis had already begun, major categories began to develop from the initial coding. It was at this stage that Lave and Wenger’s conceptual model of situated learning in communities of practice was used, not to impose ‘outside’ categories on the data, but to examine the emerging categories through Lave and Wenger’s
“conceptual lense” in order to assist understanding of the learning processes within this particular setting. Some of their conceptual ideas of how learning takes place proved to be helpful in getting an analytical grip on major categories and what they might mean.
There are several examples of studies of learning that have adopted the theoretical model of Lave and Wenger. For example, at the level of Higher Education (HE), Flowerdew (2000) applied elements of both Swales’ 1990 view of discourse community and Lave and Wenger’s 1991 notion of legitimate peripheral participation to interpret the difficulties of a non-native-English speaking doctoral graduate attempting to get an article published in an international refereed journal. O’Donnell and Tobbell (2007) used communities of practice theory to explore the transition of adult students to HE through a UK university program designed for that purpose. And Hall (2003) examined the effect of a web-based learning project in motivating participation of undergraduates in several English university departments using ideas of collaborative learning and communities of practice.
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3. Method
The research used a longitudinal ethnographic design, involving long interviews with the participants done over more than a year.
3.1 Participants
The participants were 20 first-year students, who all volunteered to take part in the study. They were attending four different ASC seminars which were observed over the first semester of the academic year beginning in September 2005. The ASC teachers were also interviewed and 10 subject teachers (five Literature teachers and five Linguistics teachers) who had taught the students were also interviewed.
3.2 Data collection
The principal data for the study consisted of interview data.
For the students six rounds of semi-structured interviews were conducted over their first three semesters of study. This allowed trust to be built up and the interviews became progressively longer as a result.
3.3 Data analysis
The data, principally transcribed interview data, was analysed using the basic principles of the constant comparative method developed by Glaser and Strauss (1967). This involves fracturing the data into small parts and then progressively reassembling the parts to build an abstract representation of the research phenomenon. The first stage is to break up the initial
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transcribed data into smaller units and code them according to the idea they contain. This stage is known as open coding.
At the same time initial memo writing of the researcher’s thoughts about the emerging concepts is done to give insights into what codes mean and how they are related. Then, as initial concepts emerge and connections are made with previously coded data, larger categories are built up from the more substantial codes, and their properties in the form of related sub-categories emerge as more and more data is coded. More substantial memos aid the researcher’s thinking at this point.
As coding and category building takes place, memo writing allows thinking to develop. Memos allow the researcher to compare the data and to explore ideas about the codes. Memos can also provide direction for further data gathering. As categories build so memos become more advanced and so theoretical thinking becomes more sophisticated. Eventually advanced memos can be integrated to provide the basis for the theoretical model.
3.4 Trustworthiness
As an answer to the traditional scientific judgement of research according to its reliability and validity, Guba (1981) pointed to the difference in the philosophical underpinnings of the two paradigms, rationalistic and naturalistic, and put forward four criteria for assessing the trustworthiness of naturalistic studies and explaining methods by which they could be achieved. These are the following: credibility, transferability, dependability and
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conformability. These were the standards followed by the present study.
4. Main Findings
Figure 1 is a diagram representing the main categories in the theoretical model which describes the process under investigation.
Figure 1. Model of the enculturation of first-year students into university academic writing practices.
What the model shows is that the students previous experience, particularly in writing, has a determining effect on how easily students become socialised into academic discourse communities (ADCs) but there are a number of other inter-connecting factors which can affect the process, one of them being how quickly students adapt to the culture shock of entering university and taking
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responsibility for organising their own learning. Other important factors are the home papers that students are given in their subjects which act as drivers of learning for formal requirements and library research skills. The classroom learning experience of the students and the nature of the feedback they get on their writing can also affect their development in a positive or negative way.
The ASC was perceived as useful by all students, although it was mostly because it helped them develop their general writing skills and not because it helped them with the discipline specific requirements of the home papers they had to write.
At the end of their first year the students had found a new identity for themselves depending on the extent of their socialisation into their new ADCs. However, some students had not been able to cope and had decided to leave. The students who remained could be put into three categories depending on how successfully they had mastered disciplinary discourse conventions: survivors, apprentices and acolytes.
5. Conclusions
The usefulness of this model is that it enables a better understanding of what the successful enculturation of novice students into the conventions of academic written discourse depends on. By highlighting the main factors involved, it also points to how the process can be made easier. For the weaker students it highlights the need for continued help with learning the basic skills but also
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with understanding disciplinary conventions of academic writing. It provides a way of looking at the struggles of these students to enter ADCs not in terms of their writing being seen as a problem, but rather in terms of what would make it easier for them to grasp disciplinary conventions and ways of writing about knowledge while at the same time improving their proficiency.
Through the construction of this grounded theory of student enculturation into written academic discourse, I was able to understand much more clearly what my students were experiencing and as a result, my teaching of those students in my own ASC become more effective. For me personally, doing this research was enlightening in many ways: I became a better, more resourceful and more reflective researcher and also a better teacher because I was able to draw so much of what I had learnt from the research into my own teaching. It is my hope that by sharing the main findings of the research with a wider audience I might be able to assist other teachers in a similar way. I will now consider the main pedagogical implications of the research.
References.
Bizzell, P. (1982). Cognition, convention, and certainty: What we need to know about writing. Pre/Text 3, 213-243.
Charmaz, K. (2000). Grounded theory: Objectivist and constructivist methods. In N. Denzin & Y. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (2nd ed.) (pp. 509-535). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
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Charmaz, K. (2006). Constructing grounded theory: A practical guide through qualitative analysis. London, England:
SAGE.
Flowerdew, J. (2000). Discourse community, legitimate peripheral participation, and the non-native-English speaking scholar.
TESOL Quarterly, 34, 127-150.
Glaser, B. G., & Strauss, A. L. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research. Chicago, IL:
Aldine.
Guba, E. G. (1981). Criteria for assessing the trustworthiness of naturalistic inquiries. Educational Communication and Technology Journal, 29(2), 75-91.
Hall, R. (2003). Forging a learning community: A pragmatic approach to co-operative learning. Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, 2, 155-172.
Hyland, K. (2002). Options of identity in academic writing. ELT Journal, 56, 351-358.
Hyland, K. (2011). Writing in the university: Education, knowledge, and reputation. Language Teaching, Plenary Speeches.
Kruse, O. (2003). Getting started: Academic writing in the first year of a university education. In L. Björk, G. Bräuer, L.
Rienecker & P. S. Jörgenson (Eds.), Studies in writing: Vol.
12. Teaching academic writing in European Higher Education (pp. 19-28). Amsterdam, Holland: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
O’Donnell, V.L., & Tobbell, J. (2007). The transition of adult students to Higher Education: Legitimate peripheral participation in a community of practice? Adult Education Quarterly, 57, 312-328.
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Paltridge, B. (2004). Academic writing. Language Teaching, 37, 87- 105.
Spack, R. (1988). Inititiating ESL students into the academic discourse community: How far should we go? TESOL Quarterly, 22, 29-51.
Swales, J.M. (1990). Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Zhu, W. (2004a). Faculty views on the importance of writing, the nature of academic writing, and teaching and responding to writing in the disciplines. Journal of Second Language Writing 13, 29–48.
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Publications by the author
Prescott, F. J. (2003). Encouraging autonomy in first-year university students. (Unpublished PhD seminar paper). Eötvös Loránd Science University, Budapest, Hungary.
Prescott, F. J. (2006). The importance of the group: A case study of a university first-year academic skills class. In M. Nikolov &
J. Horváth (Eds.), University of Pécs Roundtable 2006:
Empirical studies in English applied linguistics. Pécs, Hungary: Lingua Franca Csoport. Retrieved from http://www.pte.hu/uprt/
Prescott, F. J. (2007). Organisational strategies in the writing of entry-level university students. WoPalP (Working Papers in Language Pedagogy) 5, 16-38. Retrieved from http://langped.elte.hu/WoPaLParticles/W1Prescott.pdf Prescott, F. J. (2010). Entering an academic discourse community:
First-year students adapting to the requirements of university. In T. Frank & K. Károly (Eds.), Gateways to English: Current Hungarian doctoral research (pp. 311- 327). Budapest, Hungary: Eötvös University Press.
Prescott, F. J. (2011). Validating a long interview schedule. WoPalP (Working Papers in Language Pedagogy) 1, 17-37.
Retrieved from http://langped.elte.hu/WoPaLParticles/
W5Prescott.pdf
Precott, F. J. (2011). Using social networks to create parallel digital classrooms and teach digital literacy. Proceedings of the HUSSE10 Conference, 27–29 January.
