Publishing a research paper in reputable journals: doctoral students’ perspectives

This study aimed to enquire about the English foreign language (EFL) doctoral students’ perspective, especially in the non-English department, concerning the Indonesian government policy, which obliges an article published in a reputable international journal as a requirement to receive a doctoral degree. Their challenges in publishing their papers in Scopus or Web of Science (WOS)-indexed journals and their resolutions were also analyzed. A mixed-methods technique was used to obtain quantitative and qualitative information. The study consisted of 57 respondents, comprising 25 males and 32 females, who were EFL doctoral students of education departments from five universities. The purposive sampling method with several criteria was used to determine the study participants. Data were then collected through questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. Subsequently, the findings showed that the policy of publishing a paper in Scopus or WOS-indexed journals to obtain an EFL doctoral degree was burdensome to the majority of the students. Other findings showed that the students faced several challenges in publishing their papers in these journals, including language problems, cost of publication, journal selection, lack of experience, duration to publish, writing difficulties, revising, and stress. The actions to resolve these challenges were also provided in this study

Disciplinary Writing for Publication in English: Empowering and Equipping EFL Doctoral Students with Writing Skills and Tools

The paper presents two approaches to teaching disciplinary writing, namely a corpus-based and process-based approach. In the former, the distinction is made between large general corpora, used for grammatical, lexical, and stylistic questions, and small genre- and journal-specific corpora, suitable for conventionalized use of discipline-specific language. In the latter approach, specific techniques for generating ideas within the prewriting phase are discussed such as free writing, mind/concept mapping, and skeleton/patch writing

Exploring EFL Doctoral Students’ Perceptions of Employment Interviews for a Faculty Position

In a growing competitive employment market, the employability of EFL doctoral graduates at Algerian universities is becoming of great concern to many parties due to the large pools of applicants and the short hiring windows, over the last years under the umbrella of LMD system. Among the selection methods used by faculties in the hiring process is the job interview. Due to the fact that most candidates, may have similar CVs in terms of qualifications and experience, their performance during employment interviews could make the difference in getting a faculty position or not. The aim of this paper is to investigate the faculty hiring interview from the lenses of applicants (interviewees) in order to determine EFL doctoral students’ readiness and consciousness of the employment interview that they are likely to take after graduation to get an assistant lecturer position. To reach this aim, a survey is conducted with twenty EFL doctoral students from different Algerian universities using an online questionnaire. Results highlight two major findings: doctoral students’unconsciousness about selection procedures in the hiring process; and needs to enhance applicants’ communicative skills in employment interviews

Needs analysis and competence profiling through ethnographic methods: the case of the Academic English course at the Graduate School of a Spanish university

This paper reports findings from a micro-ethnographic study of the academic literacy practices of the doctoral students that participate in the course in Academic English (AE) taught at the Graduate School of the University of Zaragoza (UZ), Spain. So far there is no evidence regarding the degree of competence in spoken and written communication in academic English to be expected from the students that enroll in the course. Accordingly, the UZ has funded a Teaching Innovation Project (TIP) with the aim of developing ethnographic study protocols capable of providing empirical data on competence profiles, and analysing the learning needs of a specific type of EFL adult learner. The aim of this paper is, therefore, to report on those results that can help to improve the AE course by planning it more efficiently on the basis of a needs analysis that takes disciplinary factors, among others, into account. Reading specialized bibliography, writing a dissertation, giving an oral presentation... all seem to constitute manifestations of, or generic competences for, Academic English in tertiary education, but the acquisition of those competences in an EFL environment may become a challenge for the young researcher attending the AE course. Nowadays, effective teaching in that context requires going beyond mere experience and gathering empirical, ethnographic information suitable for competence profiling (see e.g. Bocanegra-Valle, 2016). Consequently, our study draws on relevant ethnographic techniques in the field of EAP (see e.g. Dressen-Hamouda, 2012), the paper thus beginning by reporting on the results of the analysis of the answers to a structured questionnaire administered to students as the starting point for small-scale semi- structured interviews. Our ultimate aim is the examination of the acquisition and learning of second-language academic literacy practices in line with e.g. 'New Literacies' studies such as Seloni (2012)

Perspectives of EFL Doctoral Students on Challenges of Citations in Academic Writing

Purpose - Citation is vital in academic writing but particularly challenging for novice writers who use English as a second or foreign language. While much is known about citations types and functions, scarce knowledge is available about what makes citing a complicated procedure. Hence, this study explores the difficulties in citing and integrating information from academic sources into the literature review chapter of PhD proposals. Methodology - The study, which falls under New Rhetoric studies, involved conducting individual discourse-based interviews with six male Arab doctoral students who were selected purposefully from the Information Technology department of a Malaysian public university. The participants literature review chapters were employed in a stimulated recall to retrieve their inner perceptions when writing their PhD proposals. Hand analysis, mind mapping, and visual mapping were used in the analysis of the data. Multiple codes were initially obtained and further reduced to form four major themes and several sub-themes. Findings - The findings revealed that challenges in citation included addressing the credibility of information in published sources, adopting a stance toward the citations, insufficient knowledge about using citations, and second language difficulties. Significance - The findings highlight that EFL Arab students lacked both awareness of using citations and advanced skills in academic writing. Consequently, the study has pedagogical implications in that it points to a need to enhance EFL Arab students skills in citing, evaluating, and writing academically. This could be probably achieved through developing discipline-specific teaching materials that take into consideration the different practices of citation in various academic disciplines

Strategies employed by EFL doctoral candidates in dissertation writing completion

This research study aimed at revealing the strategies employed by successful English as a Foreign Language (EFL) doctoral candidates in accomplishing their dissertation writing and their perspectives in association with the stages of research report writing.  This is a narrative qualitative inquiry, and the data were collected through an in-depth interview with ten successful EFL fresh graduates who had completed their dissertation writing within six and seven semesters. Using a retrospective technique, the respondents were asked to recall their experiences and activities during the process of writing their dissertation. The results reveal that the successful doctoral candidates used four main strategies of dissertation writing: cognitive, metacognitive, affective, and social strategies. In completing each of the dissertation stages, the doctoral candidates spent much time reading a huge collection of research articles, writing their dissertation on a daily basis, and having intensive consultation with their advisors. This study would be useful for EFL doctoral students to avoid delay in completing their studies and to meet their academic timeline so that they can face their challenging dissertation writing to complete their study on time

Investigation into the research on doctoral writing: A synthesis of recent research (2010-2019)

Doctoral writing has been concerned by linguistic scholars and the practitioners of English for academic purposes. This review explores the literature on doctoral writing which got published in peer-reviewed international journals of English between 2010 and 2019 to examine three questions: (1) From which perspectives do the recent researches adopt when examining doctoral writing of the ESOL students? (2) What methodology do the authors apply to research doctoral writing? (3) What kind of text or resource was analyzed by the authors? The goal of the review is to provide the pedagogical suggestions to the future teaching of doctoral writing and viable supports for the writing practice of doctoral students by a comprehensive analysis of the current research. After the overall search on Scopus, 210 titles and abstracts have been searched out through a combination of search terms. The inclusion and exclusion criteria have been used to identify the qualified articles for this study and disqualify the possibly irrelevant articles from the included. Ultimately, 82 articles have been confirmed to be further reviewed for the solution of research questions. This review indicates the relationship between doctoral writing and pedagogical and social context is complex, and thus necessary supports from inside and outside of doctoral community need to be given to improve the writing competence of doctoral students

Academic Writing Pedagogies: Adopting Best Practices for Mastering Research Genres in English

This paper investigates the main approaches to teaching academic writing to university students of English as a foreign language. The investigation takes as its points of departure the text (the end-product of writing), the process (the stages of writing), and practice (the social dimension of writing). Several recommendations are offered for the effective implementation of these approaches in learning to write research genres

Test-taking Strategy Use and iBT Reading Performance of Taiwanese EFL Learners

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Plagiarism: A Global Phenomenon

Academic writing is specially a challenging task for ESL/EFL students as it entails an assortment of cognitive and linguistic processes which is beyond their capability. Consequently, to fulfill the writing requirement of academia, an unexperienced writer very often ventures to make use of other peoples’ words and ideas without citing the source-a practice commonly known as “plagiarism”. Scholars have traced various kinds of plagiarism in student academic writing. However, there exists an underlying contradiction among the scholars regarding the reasons for plagiarism in academic writing committed by students. One segment of researchers believes students as exclusively liable for committing plagiarism. On the Contrary, the researchers with opposite views, underscore the concern of responsibility of educational institutions and academics. This article aims to collate seminal works on plagiarism which concentrate on the aspects- reasons, and types of plagiarism, and the role of education institutions to minimize plagiarism. Keywords: academic writing, plagiarism, reason, types, institution role. DOI: 10.7176/JEP/12-3-08 Publication date: January 31st 202