Margaret Cargill

An Integrated Bridging Program for International Postgraduate Students

ABSTRACT International postgraduate students from language backgrounds other than English face difficulties in Australian universities related not only to language but also to learning and relational styles and discipline‐specific expectations. Academic staff who supervise these students are often well aware of these issues but may lack specialist skills to help improve outcomes. At The University of Adelaide, collaboration between language and learning staff and discipline specialists has resulted in an integrated model of language and academic skill development which may be widely applicable in the Australian context. The Integrated Bridging Program (IBP) has been trialled in seven faculties and subsequently introduced university‐wide. This paper describes the development of the IBP and its 1994 pilot, summarises the evaluative data collected and outlines resulting changes. The final section discusses factors found to have been important to the success of the program and suggests ways in which they may ...

Using genre analysis and corpus linguistics to teach research article writing

Abstract: This chapter describes an approach to the teaching of academic writing using genre analysis and analysis of linguistic corpora. We discuss the origins of both kinds of analysis, explain in detail what they entail and show how they can be applied to the teaching of writing for research publication purposes, particularly where authors who use English as an additional language are our clients and the research article is the main type of writing in which these clients engage. Although the approach has largely been used in classroom settings with groups of varying size, we suggest that it can be used in other situations, including one-to-one mentoring of clients.

A collaborating colleague model for inducting international engineering students into the language and culture of a foreign research environment

Practitioners of research in a particular field have extensive knowledge of how to operate successfully in that field and communicate effectively with others, within the boundaries of their own language and culture. However, when it comes to inducting novice researchers into these skills, difficulties are often encountered, and more so when the novice comes from a different language and cultural background. At the same time, specialists in English teaching or cross-cultural communication aiming to prepare novices to enter such a research environment often lack access to the details of how things are really done there. At The University of Adelaide, South Australia, this situation is being addressed through a new program for international postgraduate students in their first semester of enrolment. This Integrated Bridging Program (IBP) relies on collaboration between the discipline specialist researcher and language and learning specialists and is informed by the perspectives of systemic functional linguistics (SFL). This paper presents an overview of the IBP, followed by details of its operation in the Faculty of Engineering. Information is included on outcomes of the collaboration in specific instances, and how SFL theory has been applied to develop a flexible and effective induction which is highly valued by both staff and student participants.

Publishing Research in English as an Additional Language: Practices, Pathways and Potentials

Many universities worldwide now require established and novice scholars, as well as PhD students, to publish in English in international journals. This growing trend gives rise to multiple interrelated questions, which this volume seeks to address through the perspectives of a group of researchers and practitioners who met in Coimbra, Portugal in 2015 for the PRISEAL and MET conferences. The volume offers truly global coverage, with chapters focusing on vastly different geo-social areas, and disciplines from the humanities to the hard sciences. It will be of interest to applied linguists, particularly those working in the area of English for Research Publication Purposes, and to language professionals working in research writing support, research supervision and academic publishing, as well as to journal editors and managers.

Embedding Publication Skills in Science Research Training: A Writing Group Programme Based on Applied Linguistics Frameworks and Facilitated by a Scientist.

ABSTRACT Few systematic efforts have been reported to develop higher degree by research student skills for writing publishable articles in science and technology fields. There is a need to address this lack in the light of the current importance of publication to science research students and the high supervisor workload entailed in repeated draft correction, especially when students use English as an additional language. An interdisciplinary teaching approach to address this need has recently been developed featuring analysis frameworks from applied linguistics (AL) research, with successful outcomes in short, stand-alone workshops facilitated by an applied linguist teaching alone or in teams with scientists. Its use by a scientist alone has not previously been investigated, although scientists are well placed to address this development need. We investigate the suitability and effectiveness of this approach for use by a scientist to embed training, in the context of the first two years of operation of a school-level writing group programme, and identify features of the approach that align with participants’ perceptions of benefit. Student response to the programme has been strongly positive, with increased confidence to write for publication and complete their degrees, and high activity towards publishing papers on their degree research. The presenter reports maintenance of his own publication output in spite of the time spent on this training, as a result of increased writing efficiency. Features of the approach that map to perceived benefit include its basis in AL frameworks for analysis of student-provided example papers; incorporation of relevant aspects of English usage and grammar in the frameworks; and inclusion of response to reviewer comments as an integral part of article writing.

The Value of Writing for Publication Workshops

Based on analysis of extensive international experience, Cargill presents the Writing for Publication workshop as a valuable teaching format to support novice authors of scholarly articles and those who supervise and mentor them. Participants of her Collaborative Interdisciplinary Publication Skills Education workshops report significantly increased confidence to write and publish scientific research articles, and to mentor their students in these tasks. As professional development provision undergoes rapid change, important advantages of the workshop format are its flexibility, alongside the ability to target specific participant needs at optimal times in the writing trajectory and take advantage of potential synergies between different types of presenter through collaboration. Highly usable decision-support tools are presented to enable effective workshop planning for specific contexts.

Introduction to the Special Issue: Researching, Teaching, and Supporting Research Publication—Issues for Users of English as an Additional Language

The ‘industry’ of research publication has now grown to mammoth proportions and its participants—authors, reviewers, editors, publishers and more—come from increasingly diverse locations and backgrounds, including of language.[...]

Vignette 12 Structuring interdisciplinary collaboration to develop research students’ skills for publishing research internationally: Lessons from implementation

This vignette reports on a range of implementation models for an approach dubbed Collaborative Interdisciplinary Publication Skills Education (CIPSE). CIPSE aims to develop the skills of early-career researchers, including higher degree by research students, to write about their research in ways that meet the expectations of external assessors – editors and referees of international journals. CIPSE involves expert researchers from a specific field, in this case scientists, and English language specialists with specific expertise in research communication working together on the planning, design and implementation stages of education programmes adapted to fit local contextual constraints. It combines the knowledges and skills of scientists/reviewers/editors, matched to the research discipline of students, and the skills of language educators experienced in genre analysis and language-based elements of English writing. The programme develops skills in three interwoven components: genre analysis, the deconstruction of the scientific journal article genre into functional steps and learning of skills required for each identified component of the genre; gatekeeper awareness, understanding and anticipating the role of reviewers, and developing strategies for presenting quality research and negotiating the acceptance phase of publishing; and story development, packaging and value-adding to data, analysis and information to present and discuss the most important and novel findings of research to the chosen audience. The vignette presents an analysis of CIPSE implementation in two types of higher education contexts, in order to draw out principles of general relevance to the sector: three science disciplines in a research-intensive Australian university and three sites beyond Australia where English is used as an additional language – one in Spain and two in China. Implications are presented for curriculum design and interdisciplinary practice.