Citation as a social practice in a TESOL graduate program: A language socialization approach

Abstract

Abstract Using the theoretical framework of language socialization, this paper investigates the local contexts in which four international students were initiated into citation during their first semester in a Masters in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (MA-TESOL) program. Drawing from 38 hours of observation and audiotaping in two teaching methods courses, interviews with instructors and students, and students’ texts, it situates students’ citation practices within the discourses surrounding source use in the classroom and in the program. Instructors envisioned “doing citation” as embedded within larger processes of academic and professional enculturation through which students would dialogue with sources and develop professional voices as members of a TESOL/applied linguistics community who based teaching practice on theory and research rather than personal experience. However, socializing interactions around citation focused on its formal aspects and characterized it as a requirement for writing done in the program, but with little relevance otherwise. Analysis of students’ texts reveals that they were being socialized into citation as a school-based academic convention, but provides little evidence of dialogue with sources and suggests that students regarded the theoretical and the personal as two distinct and irreconcilable ways of knowing.