Chapter 14 - “You cannot ignore”: L2 graduate students' response to discipline-based written feedback

Summary

Graduate students studying in a second language may find themselves knowing a great deal about the subject matter they study, yet feeling much less in command of the writing skills required to display and to further develop that knowledge within their disciplines. Their awareness of this discrepancy may be painful or embarrassing as well as frustrating (Braine, 2002; Cho, 2004; Hirvela & Belcher, 2001; Ivanic & Camps, 2001; Schneider & Fujishima, 1995; Silva, 1992). Some L2 graduate students, particularly science and technology students, may not only be writing in English for the first time but also writing for the first time at all at any length (Dong, 1998). Furthermore, these L2 graduate students may find themselves called upon to write sophisticated disciplinespecific texts, including theses and dissertations, with the curricular aid of only elementary and general-focus L2 writing courses (Hansen, 2000). The difficulty these students face is exacerbated by the fact that literacy requirements at the graduate level in disciplinary courses are often implicit (Carson, 2001; Raymond & Parks, 2002). How do they learn the genres, disciplinary language, and discourse conventions for papers in graduate courses, articles for publication (sometimes in collaboration with advisors), and theses and dissertations?

One formative aspect of graduate literacy education is feedback on writing, as clearly exemplified in L1 by Berkenkotter, Huckin, and Ackermann's study (1988) of a graduate student's development of expertise in a discipline's written genres.