English-medium journals in Serbia: editors' perspectives

This chapter examines the growing phenomenon of English-medium journals in non-Anglophone countries, few of which achieve considerable international visibility as measured by inclusion in SCI and SSCI lists. The study investigates this phenomenon in Serbia, where a similar rise in English-medium journals is taking place, by exploring the views of editors of English-medium journals published in Serbia. Editors have been chosen as informants for the study because of their influential position as shapers of the practices and policies of the journals they edit and because of their privileged access to journal-related information that is not publicly available. The participants were fifteen editors of English-medium journals in Serbia in a range of disciplines. In addition to gathering bibliometric data about the participants’ journals, face-to-face interviews were conducted with five editors, and ten editors responded to a list of open-ended questions by email. This chapter reports and discusses two major themes: (i) the editors’ perspectives on the motivations behind the journals’ adoption of English and their related goals enabled by the use of English, and (ii) the editors views on the nature of their journals vis-à-vis the national/international dichotomy. It is shown that English-medium journals in Serbia constitute a diverse category, with different histories, goals and practices related to the use of English. Editors’ perspectives show that the use of English as the medium of publication is motivated by a range of goals at different levels, from local institutional goals to goals related to international exchange, as well as by both ‘push’ and ‘pull’ factors. In terms of the nature of English-medium journals on the semiperiphery, it is argued that they should be understood as a translocal phenomenon due to the knowledge flows they enable between various local contexts as well as with higher-than-local levels. The chapter closes by discussing the implications of the findings about the roles English-medium journals play in the local academic community, on the semiperiphery, and in global academic publishing

Love and enjoyment in context: four case studies of adolescent EFL learners

This study explores the foreign language learning emotions of four EFL adolescent students in Romania and the ways in which their emotions emerge in their sociocultural context. Multiple qualitative methods were employed over a school semester, including a written task, semi-structured interviews with the learners and their teachers, and lesson observations. It was found that, while all four participants reported experiencing positive emotions in language learning, a distinction was identified in the intensity and stability of their emotions. Two participants expressed a strong and stable emotion of love towards English, while the other two participants experienced enjoyment in their English language learning without an intense emotional attachment to English. Unlike enjoyment, love was found to be the driving force in the learning process, creating effective coping mechanisms when there was a lack of enjoyment in certain classroom situations and motivating learners to invest greater effort into language learning in and out of the classroom. The findings thus revealed that, unlike enjoyment, love broadened cognition and maintained engagement in learning. The study emphasises the role of strong, enduring positive emotions in teenage students’ language learning process

Adaptive master's dissertation supervision: a longitudinal case study

Drawing on supervisor and supervisee interviews, analysis of supervisor feedback on the supervisee’s draft chapters, and departmental supervisory guidelines, this study focuses on the roles a master’s dissertation supervisor plays during the course of supervision. These roles are discussed referring to models of supervisory pedagogy, the teaching, partnership, apprenticeship, contractual, pastoral, and non-interfering models. Supervisee and supervisor agreed that the supervisor aligned with different roles at different times for different purposes, showing this was a case of adaptive supervision. Nonetheless, the supervisor’s feedback indicated supervision was more directive than his interview data suggested, illustrating the need to collect data from multiple sources to capture the complexities of the supervisory dynamic. We conclude that the dangers of departments attempting to formulate homogenized supervisory practices are highlighted by our case

Editorial: selected papers from the 8th conference of the European Association for the Teaching of Academic Writing

The editoral has no abstrac

Academic socialisation through collaboration: textual interventions in supporting exiled scholars’ academic literacies development

This paper explores how co-authorship, as a type of collaborative writing practice, facilitates the academic literacies development of scholars in exile who use English as an Additional Language (EAL). Drawing on examples from a larger study looking into Syrian exiled scholars’ academic literacies development, we discuss Areas and Levels of Textual Intervention (AoTI and LoTI) in co-authorship practices

Helping international master’s students navigate dissertation supervision: research-informed discussion and awareness-raising activities

Drawing on a longitudinal case study of supervisees’ and supervisors’ experiences of master’s dissertation supervision in a UK university, we identify prominent themes emerging and use excerpts from our data to design pedagogic activities for teaching and learning staff to use in workshops with staff and students focused on supervisory practice. The activities ask discussants to consider experiential supervisory narratives involving students’ social networks, problems interpreting supervisors’ feedback, problems with differing supervisor/supervisee role expectations, and problems with supervisor-supervisee miscommunication. Each scenario is followed by our literature-informed commentary. We argue that these empirically informed, grounded awareness-raising activities will alert supervisors and supervisees to common problems experienced during supervisory journeys, and will encourage them to consider their own supervisory expectations and practices more deeply

Students' conceptions of voice in academic writing

Book synopsis: The view that academic discourse is, by definition, impersonal has long been superseded. It seems unquestionable now that the interpersonal component of texts, that is, the ways in which the writers project themselves and their audience in the discourse, is an essential factor determining the success of scholarly communication and has become a fundamental issue in the field of English for Academic Purposes (EAP). Interpersonality is the key issue around which the articles in this edited book focus on. The eighteen contributions included in this volume provide a wide exploratory view of the many academic genres in which interpersonality is manifested and the various analytical approaches from which the textual manifestation of that interpersonality can be studied. The varied origin of the contributors is also representative of the global interest that the issue of interpersonality arouses in the field of academic discourse analysis at an international level. The present volume constitutes a highly valuable tool for applied linguists and discourse analysts with an interest in EAP as well as for students, instructors and language teachers interested in academic discourse. The book may also be of interest to other agents intervening in the research publication process, such as translators, proofreaders, reviewers and editors

Contrastive rhetoric in the writing classroom: a case study

This note explores the role of contrastive rhetoric in writing pedagogy in the context of a monolingual class, in this case a group of students from the Russian Federation studying at an English medium university in Central Europe. The study compares students’ argumentative essays written before and after a short writing course, which aimed to address cultural differences in writing in a non-prescriptive, exploratory, manner. The comparison focuses on, in this case, a culturally based textual element: the thesis statement. The analysis reveals that the essays written after the course display higher occurrence of thesis statements, more uniformity in the position of the thesis statements and less variation in the thesis statement sentence structure and lexical choices. The implications for the role of contrastive rhetoric in writing pedagogy are discussed