Visible and occluded citation features in postgraduate second-language writing (original) (raw)
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Citations in search of a purpose: Source use and authorial voice in L2 student writing
International Journal for Educational Integrity, 2012
Although much of the research into source use by international students has tended to focus on issues of plagiarism, there has recently been recognition that their difficulties in this respect may be more pedagogical than moral. However, much remains to be known about the nature of such students" source use. In order to throw light on the ways in which novice L2 writers use source material in their writing and to understand what difficulties they experience, this paper reports on a small case study involving a group of Japanese postgraduate students. Analysis of five Pre-Master"s dissertations written by these students, as well as interviews conducted with the writers, revealed that they varied in their ability to handle source material effectively. In many cases, their use of source material appeared to be symptomatic of weak authorial stance and apparent lack of a clear argument. Based on these findings, the study concludes with the recommendation that instruction on the use of source material focus to a greater extent on its rhetorical function in constructing knowledge.
Citation practices of L2 university students in first-year writing: Form, function, and stance
Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 2018
This study reports findings of an analysis of the citation practices of L2 undergraduate students in the context of first-year writing (FYW). Data consist of a corpus of 100 source-based research papers written by L2 students in a FYW course. Taking a multi-perspective analytical approach, we examine L2 undergraduate students' citation practices in terms of surface forms, rhetorical functions, and writer stance. Results indicate that L2 students use a restricted range of reporting structures, and they primarily use sources for attribution function to display their knowledge of the topics. Furthermore, as opposed to taking a strong positive or negative position, the findings show that L2 student writers mainly adopt a non-committal stance by merely acknowledging or distancing themselves from cited materials, suggesting that L2 students are inclined to show deference to the perceived authority of published sources. We conclude with pedagogical options for enhancing L2 university students' citation practices.
Language in Academic Writing: Features and Topical Issues
Proceedings of The 2nd International Conference on Research in Social Sciences and Humanities, 2020
The quality of language of a scholarly paper determines its acceptability for academic publication. Different academic publications have house styles that include language, referencing and citation. Whether books, editorials or journals, there are distinguished styles of expressions, sentence construction, lexicon and mode of writing or reporting within the academic domain. Given that authors are expected to communicate the organized thoughts and research findings with accuracy and sensitivity, challenges abound in conformity to house style or grammar. Sometimes, the authors encounter the interference of structural construction or the interference of the mother tongue for a non-native speaker, writing in a second language. Through a review of the literature and guidelines laid by some academic house styles like APA 6th Edition, this paper examines the specific features of language that an author writing in any language for publication need to consider for acceptability. The paper posits that scholarly research is a specialty, thus the language is within the unique set of rules governing academic writing. The nature of some scholarly research disposes the report to an exclusive audience which might demand language conceptualized within the boundaries of the discipline. Language barrier between thoughts and written words constitute hindrance for non-native speakers. Academic writing needs special tutoring in the language both for native and non-native speakers. Academic brokerage should be encouraged.
2018
The present study probed into the citation behavior and intertextuality use of EFL writers. The literature sections of 12 BA projects and those of 12 MA theses in applied linguistics written by the same writers were compared in terms of intertextuality and citation types. The results showed that the most frequent intertextuality type in both BA projects and MA theses was the unconventional intertextuality. The second frequent type was conventional intertextuality which was more frequent in MA projects due to the educational conditions and the readership. The third frequent type was ‘deceptive’ used equally in both undergraduate and MA projects. As for the citation behavior, the most frequent one in both MA and BA projects was the integral citation whose sub-type ‘verb controlling’ was more frequent in MA and its non-citation subtype was more frequent in BA projects probably due to cultural reasons or because of the students’ ignorance of the functions and applications of citation ty...
2023. "Citation Integration as A Fault Line in Academic Writing: The Stylistics of Student Essays"
Etudes de Stylistique Anglaise 18, 2023
In this paper, I study citation integration in a small corpus of undergraduate essays written in English in an English Department in France. With the concept of the ‘quotation sandwich’ in mind, I study the various parts of nearly 250 examples. Roughly half the examples seem errorfree, while the other half have problems in nearly equal proportions in their claims, reporting clauses and quotations, or follow-up comments. I discuss some possible causes of the errors, as well as some new ideas for research in stylistics. This article is in Memory of Professor Zoltán Dörnyei (1960-2022), my former colleague at the University of Nottingham.
Analysis of Efl Students’ Citation Practices and Problems in Academic Writing
International Journal of Educational Best Practices, 2018
Citing sources correctly is vital in academic writing including research proposals. Despite its significance, students seem to perform it poorly due to lack of knowledge and awareness of its role in their writing. As the result, they are often accused of committing plagiarism. One of the ways to prevent students from committing plagiarism is by providing them with sufficient knowledge and skills related to proper citations. This study is a preliminary effort to identify student citation practices within the English Education department of a state university in West Kalimantan, Indonesia. Employing qualitative content analysis, the researcher examined samples of students' proposals to describe the ways in which citations were written and the common problems that occurred. The findings suggest that students mostly cited as nonintegral/non-reporting. The study also reveals that students' most common mistakes in the citation are found in language and content. The study concludes with the need to provide students with clear guidelines for citation and strong remarks on plagiarism.
Academic writing: at the interface of corpus and discourse
2010
explores the interaction between two traditions of investigating academic writing that might broadly be called 'discourse analysis' and 'corpus linguistics'. All the contributors in this volume acknowledge the common ground of these two traditions and hold that future research will profit from combining both approaches.
An Analysis of the Citation Practices of Undergraduate Spanish Students
One basic skill of academic writers is to be able to locate their claims within a disciplinary framework. However, undergraduate students find it difficult to integrate sources into their own writing successfully, which often results in inappropriate textual borrowing and poor referencing. The aim of the research reported here was to identify problematic or inappropriate use of sources in texts produced by undergraduate Spanish students and examine the reasons for these unacceptable citation practices. For this purpose, I analyzed a learner corpus consisting of 35 literature reviews written by students of an EAP subject in the third year of a Bachelor's Degree in English Studies. The results suggest that their inappropriate use of sources arises mainly from three factors: (i) an unawareness of the dialogic nature of academic texts and of the functions of citation in these texts; (ii) low linguistic level and low level of academic literacy regarding the procedures involved in paraphrasing and synthesizing; (iii) lack of familiarity with the language of citations.
Citations in Academic Writing of Undergraduate Students of National University of Lesotho
Citing other people's work is a convention in academic writing and it reflects the writer as someone who is aware of the trends or discussions going on in his/her field. It is through that awareness that writers are able to make a meaningful contribution to the existing body of knowledge. This paper examines the types, forms and functions of citations in the writing of National University of Lesotho undergraduate students. The data were collected from the discussion sections of the final year undergraduate students' research projects in six faculties at the university. Frequency counts indicated that students used a total of 374 citations. These consisted of both integral and non-integral citations. As regards to the forms, it was observed that the students used four citation forms-parentheses, source plus reporting verb phrase, footnotes and according to X structure. As regards the functions, it was observed that the students used citations mainly for attribution. That is, reporting what the cited authors said or did. They also used citations for other functions, such as comparison with other studies or establishing links between sources. The study concludes that using citations for these other purposes was an indication that students had advanced their reading and interpretive skills as they were able to establish differences or similarities between the different studies.