Abstract
With the current rise of interest in the field of teaching academic writing to non-native speakers of English (NNS), both researchers and teachers will find Ramona Tang’s book, Academic Writing in a Second or Foreign Language, a source of inspiration. The book consists of a collection of studies by noted researchers who examine a number of issues related to texts written by NNS. The methodologies vary – from quantitative, through qualitative to ethnographic studies, while also documenting several new approaches to teaching academic writing to ESL/EFL (English as a Second Language/English as a Foreign Language) students. In addition to this, the research studies either significantly extend the existing research (e.g. Hilary Nesi and Emma Moreton’s work on cohesive devices) or point out new directions for further research (Jo Lewkowicz’s work on NNS dissertations). The book is divided into three main parts: Learning to Write for Academic Purposes, Features of ESL/EFL Learner Discourses, and Identity Work and Professional Opportunities in Academic Writing. These are preceded by an introduction by the author (The Issues and Challenges Facing Academic Writers from ESL/EFL Contexts) and followed by an afterword by Theresa Lillis (English Medium Writing for Academic Purposes: Foundational Categories, Certainty and Contingency).
In her introduction (Chapter 1), Tang discusses a number of factors relating to the current position of English as the international lingua franca influencing NNS writers’ decisions on whether to choose English as their medium or to write in their mother tongue. The author considers the decision of NNS writers to write using English as positive rather than problematic. Her belief is that – with their cultural and linguistic diversity – NNS writers can enhance academic discourse within the English-speaking academic world; she later goes on to further develop this in Chapter 11. Subsequent chapters proceed in the same spirit, describing several teaching programmes and/or research studies into emerging NNS academic discourses.
All four chapters of Part One showcase the importance of social and cultural dimensions of academic writing. Chapter 2 by Margaret Cargill and Patrick O’Connor covers a study of Chinese students and scholars, participating in an innovative training programme for writing scientific articles with the benefit of close collaboration between language and subject specialists. In Chapter 3, Giuliana Diani describes an academic writing course, combining discourse analysis and corpus study, again with the aim of helping NNS students to fully participate in the discourses of their specific disciplines. In Chapter 4, Guangwei Hu and Hongwei Ren discuss how various socio-cultural and personal factors affect the way Chinese students receive peer and teacher feedback, and the title of Chapter 5 by Brian Paltridge and Lindy Woodrow also points beyond linguistic competence and towards socio-cultural competence: Thesis and Dissertation Writing: Moving Beyond the Text. The study focuses on reflective journals written by NNS Master’s and Doctoral students at an Australian university. The authors conclude that the social and cultural knowledge involved in writing a thesis or dissertation is just as important to the successful writing of a thesis or dissertation as is linguistic competence.
Part Two presents three studies of ‘micro-issues’ related to NNS discourse. In Chapter 6, Lewkowicz analyses a small corpus of PhD theses written by students at a Polish university. The study emphasizes the role of local influences (such as the expectations of the local audience; in this case, the dissertations’ reviewers) rather than globally accepted practices; the author also underscores the need for students to be able to ‘express their own voice’ (p. 123). The following two chapters focus on the use of shell nouns (‘inanimate abstract nouns that can perform a cohesive function’, p. 126 in Chapter 7 by Hilary Nesi and Emma Moreton), the use of tables (as well as other visual information) and also lists by NNS and NS writers (Chapter 8 by Maria Leedham). Both topics often receive little attention in the practice of teaching academic writing, and the authors of both chapters present an interesting discussion of the pedagogic implications of their studies – certainly worth considering.
Part Three covers several issues related to a writer’s identity and voice. Chapter 9 by Hanako Okada and Christine Pearson Casanave relates the story of a Japanese doctoral student, who has chosen to write a dissertation on the subject of language identities of students and scholars who – like herself – used academic English as their primary medium of communication, but whose native language is not English. We hear both her voice and that of her supervisor, Christine Casanave, reflecting on the need to go beyond the often misleading (but convenient) dichotomous categories of native and non-native. Chapter 10 by Suganthi John demonstrates how writers can express their voice by devoting more attention to certain linguistic choices, such as reporting verbs, adverbs and the ‘as’ structure in citations, and how these choices reveal the writers’ evaluation of their sources. In Chapter 11, Ramona Tang further reaffirms her critique of the negative way in which ESL/EFL participation in academic discourses is mostly framed. Tang presents us with personal and professional narratives from several NNS academics, and – based on their experiences as well as her own – argues for a more positive framing of the discussion about ESL/EFL speaker discourses and a better recognition of ESL/EFL scholars’ potential to contribute to their disciplinary communities.
This remarkable book sheds interesting light on the complex realities experienced by many ESL/EFL students and scholars, who live and write in English in such geographically and institutionally diverse countries as Australia, China, Japan, Italy and Poland. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in NNS written discourse, wishing to understand these complexities better. As a teacher of academic writing and a non-native speaker of English, I often grapple with language problems in texts written by my students or by myself – and, in this respect, I personally find many of its chapters pedagogically useful. But – above all – this book has deepened my understanding of ‘writing as social practice’ (p. 246) and has raised my awareness of the complex social and cultural issues involved in writing in academia across the world.