Academic Writing in a Second or Foreign Language: Issues and Challenges Facing ESL/EFL Academic Writers in Higher Education Contexts

(Paperback)

Available Formats

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

It can be a challenge writing in a language that is not your native tongue. Constructing academic essays, dissertations and research articles in this second or foreign language is even more challenging, yet across the globe thousands of academics and students do so, some out of choice, some out of necessity. This book looks at a major issue within the field of English for Academic Purposes (EAP). It focuses on the issues confronting non-native-English-speaking academics, scholars and students, who face increasing pressure to write and publish in English, now widely acknowledged as the academic lingua franca. Questions of identity, access, pedagogy and empowerment naturally arise. This book looks at both student and professional academic writers, using qualitative text analysis, quantitative questionnaire data, corpus investigations and ethnographic approaches to searchingly examine issues central to the EAP field.

Reviews

This collection is both thought-provoking and motivating for the teacher, as well as researcher ... The book would be relevant to applied linguists, academic writing teachers and their postgraduate students. Recommended. -- Clare Anderson, EAP Coordinator, Cambridge Arts and Sciences, UK * Journal of IATEFL ESP SIG *
Welcome in its honesty and attempt at balancing out what is gained and what is lost by our having one language at present that is privileged over others. -- Patricia Friedrich, New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, Arizona State University * World Englishes *
This book consists of an eclectic selection of issues in academic writing relevant to ESL/EFL background scholars and their teachers. The books contributors, from many countries, offer perspectives on writers from a range of Asian and European backgrounds, at a range of professional levels, and from a range of writing contexts... The book provides a valuable contribution to those areas of applied linguistics concerned with issues of academic writing, with issues faced by users of English as an additional language, and with some ways in which academic English discourse norms can be made more transparent. While the book will be of particular interest to anyone involved in supporting the academic work of ESL/EFL writers, it also offers, in several chapters, valuable and practical information for writers of any background, English L1 included, who want greater insight into specific academic English discursive norms... The afterword adds a refreshingly provocative overview of some major issues of concern for those interested in some of the broader philosophical issues and assumptions. -- Constance Ellwood, University of Melbourne * Australian Review of Applied Linguistics *
highly interesting for academics engaged in research on the real world academic practices of academics and PhD students who want to make justified choices in relation to their careers, but also for the wider academic community, the administrators, and the policymakers who strive for a more equitable and just system that enables knowledge exchange and accessibility among individuals and communities located in different parts of the world. * ELT Journal *
This finely-edited and timely collection represents a splendid analysis of issues and challenges facing ESL/EFL academic writers at textual and sociocultural levels. It achieves this by profiling wide-ranging geographical and learning contexts and presenting a kaleidoscope of research topics and approaches. Without doubt, the book will remain a landmark anthology and a standard citation in research on ESL/EFL academic writing in years to come. -- Yongyan Li, Assistant Professor of Education, University of Hong Kong, PRC
Ramona Tang has assembled a collection of chapters that brings together a wealth of practical knowledge and experience of teaching and researching academic writing, together with insightful discussion of the position of and practices that surround English in higher education and academia more generally. This book captures the breadth of current thinking around academic writing and will be invaluable for practitioners and researchers. -- Ann Hewings, Senior Lecturer in Language and Communication, The Open University, UK
Overall, this collection has brought to the fore a wide range of topics under the theme of 'academic writing in a second or foreign language' for the sake of both scholars under pressure to publish in the medium of English (Lillis, 2006) and tertiary-level students from non-English-speaking backgrounds facing L2 writing difficulties (Kroll, 2003). Diverse in research topics, sites, participants, methodologies and approaches, this volume should prove to be of great use to academic writers, especially non-native English students and scholars, and can provide insightful teaching implications for EAP instructors as well. - Nana Xu is a graduate student majoring in second language acquisition in the English language department at Nankai University. Her research interests focus on classroom reticence and self-regulated language learning. -- Linguist
This collection is both thought-provoking and motivating for the teacher, as well as researcher. It reflects the wide-ranging nature of the study of academic writing, indicating future thinking, including closer links with writing in the profesions. The book would be relevant to applied linguists, academic writing teachers and their postgraduate students. -- Clare Anderson, Cambridge Arts and Sciences, UK * Journal of Professional and Academic English *
This is an interesting and innovative collection ... from leading contributors in their fields ... [It] is both thought-provoking and motivating for the teacher, as well as the researcher. * IATEFL ESP SIG Journal *

Author Bio

Ramona Tang is Assistant Professor at the National Institute of Education, Singapore.