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In this study, we examined how the explicit instructional use of paraphrasing guidelines can help international graduate students who are non-native English speakers to paraphrase information in text sources. This case study involved 14 graduate students enrolled in an academic writing class at a university in the northwest United States. Data were collected through seven sources: a background questionnaire, video of instruction, pretest, posttest, student task documents, stimulated recall interviews, and teacher interviews, which together addressed the three research questions. The data show that the participants' perceptions of using the guidelines were positive and that their paraphrases in the posttest had improved according to the guidelines. The study concludes that the use of the guidelines should be accompanied by meaningful support through explicit instruction and sufficient practice over time. The implications of this study include recommendations for paraphrasing instruction and future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes the effects of sequential non-residential writing retreats on graduate students the development of sustainable writing practices in the latter stages of writing theses and dissertations. Our study looks to understand how graduate students implement techniques of academic writing productivity. We collected data from three short, non-residential graduate student writing retreats in 2017. The retreats were hosted by a research support programme at a large public university in the United States (U.S.). We used a qualitative case study design and employed grounded theory. We analysed participant responses on exit evaluations and in interviews about their experiences in one or more retreats. Graduate students who participated in more than one retreat within a year expressed feelings of greater writing confidence and productivity, thus, exhibiting of the value of non-residential retreats to student thesis and dissertation writing processes. We found many graduate students have difficulty post-retreat maintaining writing habits. Our findings concur with existing studies about the benefits of retreats for academic writing productivity and expand on those studies to note that graduate student researchers can benefit from attending multiple retreats to build and sustain a regular writing practice among their campus community of writers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars focus on the social nature of academic writing to refine an understanding of feedback interactions in higher education. However, studies on the various sources of feedback - feedback networks - have been scarce, particularly during the initial years of doctoral education. Using a qualitative case study approach, multiple sources of feedback for four students in one doctoral program in the United States were identified in line with broader trends focusing on feedback as a social practice. Informed by the academic socialization framework [Duff, Patricia A. 2012. “Second Language Socialization.” In Handbook of Language Socialization, edited by Alessandro Duranti, Elinor Ochs, and Bambi B. Schieffelin, 564-586. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell], this study aims (1) to navigate the landscape of graduate feedback, including interactions beyond class as well as oral and written feedback, and (2) to elucidate the socialization process. Findings suggest that academic writing development is defined as how feedback is situated within disciplinary, academic communities of interaction. This article describes how the larger network of feedback creates the types of interaction that characterizes the community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a critical study, researchers explored academic writing experiences of three international female graduate students at a southern U.S. university in order to understand their perspectives of themselves as writers across cultures, their experiences with academic writing, and their coping strategies for academic writing assignments. Findings revealed participants' challenges and self-doubts about second-language writing abilities. Participants both challenged disconfirmation of their writing and at times were submissive as they negotiated a graduate degree program. The study demonstrates need for universities to recognize marginalized groups' knowledge and ways of knowing and to create spaces to discuss new possibilities for academic writing experiences among international students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because of the importance of English as a scientific lingua franca among academic communities, a great emphasis is put on English education - especially in higher education - in countries where English is a second or foreign language. Therefore, the significant productions of graduate studies such as research articles and dissertations are often required to be written in English. This study examines the needs, means, and successful practices of academic writing in English through a comprehensive survey, in-depth interviews, and samples of academic writing. Results indicate that if parties in higher education (students, professors, and instructors) become conscious of each other's expectations and practices, higher education through second/foreign language would most likely produce successful writers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers interested in psychological factors affecting writers in higher-education institutions, or academic writers, are concerned with internal variables affecting writing productivity; however few empirical studies explore these factors with samples of students who are in the process of earning master’s or doctoral degrees (i.e., graduate students). In this study, we examined writing anxiety, self-efficacy and emotional intelligence (EI) in a sample of graduate students at a large, research-intensive university in the United States. Using a survey, we collected measures on these variables in addition to demographic information from the participants. We then used the measures to descriptively compare groups of students with similar characteristics and to run three regression models to identify which variables best predicted writing anxiety. Our findings indicate self-efficacy is a statistically significant and large predictor of writing anxiety while EI is not, though descriptive data showed moderate effects between EI and first language (i.e., whether or not a student reported English as a first language). In the presence of self-efficacy, gender remained a significant predictor of writing anxiety, while first language did not. We discuss implications for future research and practice focused on helping graduate student academic writers succeed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Writing scholars often note the heterogeneity of the second language (L2) student population in higher education writing courses, but only recently have researchers begun to carefully examine differences in the writing ability of international L2 learners and U.S. resident L2 learners. Most of the empirical research to date focuses on the two groups' grammatical accuracy to the exclusion of other dimensions of writing ability. Such a limited focus not only underrepresents the multifaceted construct of writing ability, but also overlooks potential areas where noticeable differences across the two groups' writing ability might surface. Although arguably less salient than grammatical (in)accuracy, and not as prevalent in scoring rubrics, students' use of sociopragmatic features in writing offers an alternative approach for comparing the two groups of learners beyond their use of grammatical forms. Thus, the current study describes and compares how international and U.S. resident L2 learners used certain sociopragmatic markers in their writing. By focusing on the meanings associated with these markers, the study suggests that students' use of such markers reflects their sociopragmatic awareness. Findings indicate that the two groups of writers may be more similar than different, contrary to previous research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As demands for research productivity increase, engineering faculty, particularly untenured junior faculty, must efficiently expedite the development of their graduate students' disciplinary writing skills. This paper reports on the outcomes of a semester-long graduate course offered to facilitate engineering students' production of a manuscript ready, or near ready, for submission to a peer-reviewed engineering journal at the end of the semester. Course content addressed the purpose of and information included in each of four sections of a standard engineering research paper. Data generated from course participants and their faculty advisers were used to assess the extent to which course participation resulted in publication submission, textual production in each of four standard article sections, and perceived changes in student writing that was attributable to course participation. Findings suggest implications for policies and practices supporting the development of engineering students as disciplinary writers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While there is no official style for business writing, the most common citation style in business research has not been determined previously. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the top scholarly business journals to determine the most commonly used citation style in business academic research. The author used the list of 452 top business journals included in the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) Journal Citation Report. The results show that 69% of business journals use a publisher-dictated style, whereas of the “traditional” citation styles, 11% use the American Psychological Association style, 10% use Harvard style, 8% use Chicago style, and none use Modern Language Association style. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: The use of anti-plagiarism services has grown very quickly in recent years to the point where over half of American universities now have a license. The most popular of these services, Turnitin, claims that it is licensed in 126 countries and available in 10 languages suggesting that the service is becoming widely used around the world. In order to assess the effectiveness of this service, the present study compares the writing behavior of students in two equivalent classes, one of which was aware that their essays would be assessed for originality, while the other was not. Results revealed that the class which was unaware of Turnitin had significantly higher rates of matching text, near copies and intentional plagiarism than the class which was aware of Turnitin. This finding suggests that Turnitin had a deterrent effect on plagiarism. However, while the raw percentages generated by Turnitin did provide a reasonable overall estimation of plagiarism, they did not always accurately reflect the extent of intentional plagiarism. The study concludes that anti-plagiarism services provide a useful deterrent, but care must be taken in assessing the results. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

While the study of written discourse that informs ESL writing has provided a number of insights into its conventional features and structures, individual variations such as voice and identity have largely been neglected. To examine how a socially situated notion of voice plays a role in disciplinary online writing, this study explored the co-construction of an author's identity by peer readers in online written exchanges. The goal of this paper is thus to explore how voice articulated as sociocultural point of view is developed through dialogic interactions with others and how such development can be traced through the discursive constructs such as positioning, epistemic/affective stance, and intertextual relations. This study has important educational implications in relation to academic writing that is a critical issue for many Korean college students who pursue their studies in the United States in that the number of Korean international students has continued to increase in the U.S. universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Studies on academic biliteracy have had a tendency to focus on multilingual scholars’ current status of academic biliteracy and not on their prior experiences in their home countries. However, these experiences are vital to understanding their current status of academic biliteracy because the multilingual scholars’ distinctive experiences in acquiring both first and second language literacy produce different attitudes and orientations towards each literacy development. This article examines how Korean scholars in the U.S. negotiate their multilingual literacy identities in the second language context, tracing their experiences back to their first and second language literacy experiences in their home countries. I analyzed narratives of four Korean scholars who were engaged in academia in various ways both in Korea and the U.S. The results indicate that the Korean scholars do academic writing mainly in English and use Korean writing for personal purposes. The complete distinction of Korean writing purposes from those of English not only comes from the scholars’ current social conditions but also draws on the values and meanings they attribute to their Korean writing ability in the home country. To help them develop academic biliteracy in the second language context, taking into account multilingual scholars’ experiences in the first language context is suggested. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Undergraduate research paper has long been a tradition in US freshman composition programs, although whether the research paper should or can be taught in the English department continues to be debated. In many of the English departments in Taiwan, students are also required to compose a research paper for their composition class. However, there has been little research conducted on the writing process and on the student perceptions of this specific genre in an EFL learning context. This qualitative study, involving one American instructor and seven Taiwanese college students majoring in English, traced a research writing project, carried out as part of the writing curriculum, from start to finish. Three semi-structured interviews were conducted with each of the students in the beginning, middle and end of the research project. The findings indicate that the students saw information arrangement and display as the main purpose of the research paper. For various reasons, the students perceived the research project as beneficial, although during the implementation of the project they encountered difficulties such as time and resource constraints, problems with using sources in Chinese, difficulties with synthesizing information from multiple sources, among others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This article examines the genre of syllabus in higher education. In particular, it focuses on the intertextuality and interdiscursivity of paper-based and web-mediated syllabi and the ways they are used to promote links between various academic – classroom and research – genres and discourse communities. The corpus consists of ten syllabi with different interactivity levels. To avoid discrepancy in content, only syllabi for introductory linguistics courses offered at several US universities have been selected. The study shows that the syllabus is not only a document, but also a site of intertextuality and interdiscursivity. It is also demonstrated that the syllabus is utilized by instructors both to manifest their membership in multiple discourse communities and to socialize students into (some of) them. Finally, it is suggested that even though the digital medium increases interactivity of the syllabus, web-mediated and paper-based syllabi can still be treated as instantiations of the same genre. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]