Intervention and revision: Expertise and interaction in text mediation

Many EAL (English as an Additional Language) scholars enlist text mediators’ support when faced with the challenges of writing for international publication. However, the contributions these individuals are able to make in improving scientific manuscripts remains unclear, especially when language professionals such as English teachers do this work. In this article, we explore this topic by examining how three mediators employed their very different expertise and brought different processes to bear on the same discussion section of a medical manuscript written by a novice scholar in China. We find that successfully mediated texts are often the result of an interplay between the mediator’s expertise and the relationship between the participants. Our findings contradict those of previous studies that question the role of English teachers in this process and have the potential to inform both text mediation practices and revision studies

Hidden expectations: Scaffolding subject specialists' genre knowledge of the assignments they set

Subject specialists’ knowledge of academic and disciplinary literacy is often tacit. We tackle the issue of how to elicit subject specialists’ tacit knowledge in order to develop their pedagogical practices and enable them to communicate this knowledge to students. Drawing on theories of genre and metacognition, a professional development activity was designed and delivered. Our aims were to (1) build participants’ genre knowledge and (2) scaffold metacognitive awareness of how genre knowledge can enhance their pedagogical practices. The findings reveal that participants built a genre-based understanding of academic literacy and that the tasks provided them with an accessible framework to articulate and reflect upon their knowledge of disciplinary literacy. Participants gained metacognitive awareness of misalignments between what they teach and what they expect from students, their assumptions about students’ prior learning and genre-based strategies to adapt their practice to students’ needs. Our approach provides a theoretically grounded professional development tool for the HE sector

The curation of Mental Health Recovery Narrative Collections: systematic review and qualitative synthesis

Background: Mental health recovery narratives are first-person lived experience accounts of recovery from mental health problems, which refer to events or actions over a period of time. They are readily available, either individually, or in collections of recovery narratives published in books, health service booklets or online. Collection of recovery narratives have been used in a range of mental health interventions, and organisations or individuals who curate collections can therefore influence how mental health problems are seen and understood. No systematic review has been conducted of research into curatorial decision making. Objective: To produce a conceptual framework identifying and categorising decisions made in the curation of mental health recovery narrative collections. Methods: A conceptual framework was produced through a systematic review and qualitative evidence synthesis. Research articles were identified through searching of bibliographic databases (n=13), indexes of specific journals (n=3) and grey literature repositories (n=4). Informal documents presenting knowledge about curation was identified from editorial chapters of electronically-available books (n=50), public documents provided by online collections (n=50), and prefaces of health-service booklets identified through expert consultation (n=3). Narrative summaries of included research articles were produced. A qualitative evidence synthesis was conducted on all included documents through inductive thematic analysis. Sub-group analyses were conducted to identify differences in curatorial concerns between online and printed collections. The review protocol was pre-registered (PROSPERO CRD42018086997). Results: 5,410 documents were screened. 23 documents were included. These comprised 1 research publication and 22 informal documents. Nine higher level themes were identified, which considered the intended purpose and audience of the collection, how to support safety of narrators, recipients and third parties, the processes of collecting, selecting, organising and presenting recovery narratives, ethical and legal issues around collections, and the relationship to society of the collection. Online collections placed more emphasis on (1) providing benefits for narrators (2) safety for recipients. Printed collections placed more emphasis on the ordering of narrative within printed material, and the political context. Conclusions: Only one research article was identified, despite extensive searches, and hence this review has revealed a lack of peer-reviewed empirical research regarding the curation of recovery narrative collections. The conceptual framework can be used as a preliminary version of reporting guidelines for use when reporting on healthcare interventions which make use of narrative collections. It provides a theory base to inform the development of new narrative collections for use in complex mental health interventions. Collections can serve as a mechanism for supporting collective rather than individual discourses around mental health

Paving the way for research findings: writers' rhetorical choices in education and applied linguistics

Notwithstanding the existence of previous investigations into how research results are presented in different academic disciplines, fewer studies have looked into how authors pave the way for their results, the interdisciplinary differences in ‘result pavements’, and the interconnections between their communicative functions and linguistic choices. Using the techniques of genre analysis, I have analyzed two corpora of research reports in applied linguistics and education in order to identify the possible ways in which experienced writers schematically pave the way for their findings. Using evidence based on authentic research articles, this study demonstrates how writers set the stage for their research results by (i) demonstrating their control of the structure and flow of result-related information, (ii) connecting past research with a current finding while furnishing pertinent background elements that lead the readership progressively to specific findings, (iii) regenerating readers’ interest in their initial research purposes, and (iv) deploying locatives to embed results in a ‘space-saving strategy’ aimed at presenting an abridged Results section. I have also analyzed interdisciplinary differences in the frequencies of these rhetorical steps and the range of intricate linguistic mechanisms employed by authors as communicative resources in each step to establish a smooth rhetorical transition that sets the stage for their research results

Research Methodologies and Business Discourse Teaching

This chapter will:; ; ; Define English for specific purposes and indicate the specific ways in which it has been influential on business discourse teaching;; ; ; Discuss the most relevant approaches to genre analysis that have been used in business discourse teaching;; ; ; Explore the most relevant approaches to critical discourse analysis and organizational rhetoric for business discourse teaching;; ; ; Identify the most relevant aspects of multimodal discourse analysis for business discourse teaching;; ; ; Provide a case study that illustrates the use of one approach to business discourse teaching, showing how practitioners can incorporate it into their classroom- or consultancy-based ideas

The Nature of Knowledge in Composition and Literary Understanding: The Question of Specificity

↵PETER SMAGORINSKY is Assistant Professor, College of Education, University of Oklahoma, 820 Van Vleet Oval, Norman, OK 73019-0. He specializes in classroom literacy.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline

Explanations for death by suicide in northern Britain during the long eighteenth century

This article explores how professionals explicated and contextualised the deaths of their clients or subjects, delineated the relationship between madness and death, and advised and counselled families on the deaths of their mentally ill members. It uses coroners’ inquest findings, media such as newspapers, magazines, pamphlets and broadsides, and family correspondence (all drawn from Scotland and the north of England) as well as medical and legal writings to explore perceptions of the link between state of mind and voluntary death. It asks how doctors, families and ‘society’ at large conceptualized, responded to and coped with mental problems culminating in suicide. The aim is to square the apparent simplicity of measured professional understandings with the more emotionally charged yet complex ways those close to attempted or successful suicides related to their situation.PostprintPeer reviewe

United States Bureau of Mines Bulletin 7935

Report issued by the Bureau of Mines over gold-bearing deposits of Nevada County, California. Drilling and sampling of these gold deposits are discussed. This report includes tables, maps, illustrations, and photographs