Journal of English for Academic Purposes最新文献

As international students and English-medium Instruction (EMI) programs increase, Japanese universities need to adapt their programs to fulfill the needs of these students. One often overlooked area is academic writing in English. This paper discusses an action research study examining the challenges of providing formal academic writing support for English-speaking students in an EMI-program at one large private university in Tokyo. The study utilizes a participatory action research approach (Burns, 2009). The study attempted to examine what aspects of academic writing are these students most confident and most insecure about, and what aspects of the writing course did the students feel are most useful for them in preparing them for further academic writing, and how this EMI program can help students overcome these challenges. The data comes from a multiple choice and open answer questionnaire as well as focus group interviews. Suggestions on how to create and implement successful academic writing courses in an EMI context, based on the lessons learned from this course from the administrative point-of-view as well as both from faculty and students’ perspectives will be provided to conclude.

Explainers are a relatively new genre increasingly used to provide readers with background information, disseminate specialised knowledge and enhance public outreach. These functions were particularly crucial during the Covid-19 pandemic which demanded accurate and widespread health-related information to counter considerable social media disinformation. Based on 81 academic and 81 popular explainers on the topic of Covid-19, we explore how writers employ a range of engagement features to assist them to hook and inform readers of important public health information. The results reveal considerable use of engagement features in both forms of the genre as a way of establishing interpersonal rapport with audiences to better inform them of key issues. Popular explainers contained more features overall and had higher frequencies of reader-mentions, directives and personal asides while academic explainers emphasized shared knowledge and addressed the audience with questions. These variations are explained in terms of the experiences of writers with specific persuasive forms and of the slightly different audiences. The findings are a contribution to the literature on engagement and to an understanding of communication at a time of public health crisis.

Internationalisation of higher education has increased the number of EAL students studying in Anglophone countries, including Australia. Required English language proficiency tests (e.g., IELTS) do not reflect discipline-specific terminology nor prior learning necessary for successful study. Furthermore, anatomy study, the focus of this paper, requires an extensive terminology, predominantly derived from Latin or Greek, that creates significant learning challenge for all students, particularly EAL students.

This pilot study was based in a large first-year anatomy course at an Australian university, with >30% EAL students. To address challenges for EAL students (as identified by teaching staff), translanguaging pedagogies were implemented through repeated cycles of action research. Translanguaging approaches, beyond simply translation of resources, employ EAL students’ full linguistic repertoire in the classroom to support acquisition of discipline content and the target language.

Collaboration between the teaching team, a translanguaging expert and past EAL students identified specific translanguaging strategies for implementation. These strategies included a translanguaging workshop for teaching staff, encouragement of students’ use of home languages and targeted translated documents. A mixed methods approach was applied to evaluate the implementation. Initial findings show a positive response from both staff and students with additional reflections for future implementation and transferability to similar educational contexts.

Plain Language Summary (PLS) has been increasingly required for manuscript submission by leading academic journals across various disciplines. While Abstract is an important academic genre for communication with fellow researchers, PLS targets the general public with limited disciplinary knowledge. Few studies to date have explored the linguistic differences between PLSs and Abstracts. Addressing this issue, however, is important for understanding how scholars adapt their language choices for different audiences and for providing guidance and affordance for the PLS writing practice. Drawing on a parallel corpus of Abstracts and PLSs of Marine Science research articles, this study investigates the variations in syntactic complexity between PLSs and Abstracts. Our results demonstrate that Abstracts utilize longer production units and more complex nominals than PLSs, while PLSs employ more subordinate clauses and nominal subjects per clause than Abstracts. Implications for PLS writing practice and pedagogy are discussed.

EFL graduate students often require EAP reading and writing proficiency to fulfill graduation requirements. These skills gain more importance as English medium instruction becomes increasingly prevalent. However, limited research has investigated EFL graduate students' EAP reading and writing needs, and their perceptions of EAP courses. To address this gap, this study identified the EAP reading and writing needs of Taiwanese graduate students and investigated both students' and teachers' perceptions of EAP courses. By surveying 1155 students and interviewing 62 participants, this study identified several themes. First, master's students mainly needed EAP reading, but their writing needs considerably increased when they continued doctoral studies. Second, professors showed greater concern about students' problems than the students. While not perceiving reading and writing as challenging, students reported more problems with reading and writing speed, with those in science and engineering facing more difficulties than their counterparts. However, less than 30% of the students took EAP courses, and they expressed low-to-medium satisfaction. Drawing from the participants' feedback, an EAP reading and writing curriculum framework is proposed. This framework is grounded in the needs of Taiwanese graduate students and is believed to serve the greatest interests of students in Taiwan and other similar contexts.