1

Pisarn Bee Chamcharatsri

Dr. Lisya Seloni

Second Language Literacy

16 December 2009

Challenges in publishing as a multilingual graduate student: A case study1

ABSTRACT

Multilingual graduate students who come to English-medium universities are expected to

learn, make contributions to their fields of studies and eventually share what they learn to the

disciplinary communities in which they want to participate in. Since multilingual graduate

students are in the new context, they also need to (co-)construct their identities in new

community of practice by learning acceptable and legitimate discourses. In this sense, they might

be seen in the peripheral stage and will be trained to become full or legitimate members in their

chosen scholarship. Apart from training in schools through instruction and readings, graduate

students need to take a chance and risk to submit their manuscripts to journals. Casanave (2002)

encourages “novice scholars, no matter what their mother tongues, also need to understand that

one of the purposes for publishing is to add their own voices to authoritative conversations in a

field, and thus help change the field and its practices” (p. 185). In this paper, I would like to

explore processes a multilingual graduate student goes through in order to publish his work as he

is still in the graduate school because publishing is one of crucial activities to contribute

knowledge and to gain visibility in the scholarship.

1 I had only an interview with an international graduate student. Another interview was with an American student;

therefore, I did not include it in this draft.

2

Introduction

Many graduate institutions students also encourage their students to investigate their

research projects according to their interests in which these students need to write their projects

in the publishable quality (Casanave, 2002; Casanave & Li, 2008; Casanave & Vandrick, 2003;

Lee & Norton, 2003). This requirement aims to educate and produce their graduate students to

produce academically sound projects. Academic presentations and publications are challenging

to graduate students regardless of their language background (Casanave, 2008; Hedgcock, 2008).

Further, graduate students are trained to be equipped with academic literacies practices such as

engaging in academic conversation, presenting at conferences, and submitting papers for

refereed publications. Besides taking classes, students are also encouraged to attend and present

their research papers at in-house, local, regional, national, or international conferences around

the world. When attending conferences, students are encouraged to create social networking with

scholars whose research interests are similar to them.

Braine (2002) states that graduate students need to build their rapports with professors

and colleagues, acquire research and writing skills as well as “adapt smoothly to the linguistic

and social milieu of their host environment and to the culture of their academic departments and

institutions” (p. 60). As Hedgcock (2008) puts it succinctly that “…writing in graduate wasn’t

just a pedagogical exercise…[but it]…was designed to stimulate the professional conversations

in which scholars engage through their publications, editorial activities, and conference

presentations” (p. 36). Though some second language scholars (Casanave, 2008), whose English

is their first language, share their struggles through graduate schools, I believe that graduate

students, who use English as their additional language, need to find ways to enculturate both

academic and nonacademic settings.

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This means that multilingual graduate students are in the process of apprenticeship to

gain their voice and legitimacy in academic publications (Canagarajah, 2002). Canagarajah

(2006) adds that these multilingual graduate students need to shuttle between two discourses

between languages they acquire. Hirvela and Belcher (2001) also agree that multilingual

graduate students who are literate in both their native and English, should not be perceived as

“…voiceless, particularly the mature students with a track record of L1 professional or academic

success in writing” (p. 88). This means that multilingual graduate students are introduced to a

new discourse community where they are going to be a member in their chosen scholarships.

Besides the language issue, multilingual graduate students need to learn survival

academic tasks (not to mention the nonacademic ones) in order to be successful and rewarding to

their graduate study including how to socialize with different peers (Duff, 2003; Seloni, 2008),

compose, struggle, and produce quality publishable manuscripts in different contexts (Casanave,

2002; Spack, 1997), learn how to cite other works (Casanave, 2008; Pennycook, 1996), attend

conferences, build social networking with other scholars, and successfully negotiate their

manuscripts to be appeared in refereed publication pages (Canagarajah, 2006; Lea & Street,

2006; Morita, 2004). From the major tasks, the most challenging ones for graduate students are

attending and presenting at conferences and produce quality publishable manuscripts.

The main reason for publication is to contribute, reaffirm, and expand knowledge, add

new voices and conversations, and gain acceptance in academia. Another complexity of

publishing in academia could be seen as the gate-keeping aspect. For tenure-track position,

professors need to publish research articles to maintain the teaching positions. This might not be

new to university professors to publish since it is one way to communicate and share knowledge

in the scholarship. However, graduate students, especially in doctoral level, are also facing with

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the expectation that they should produce publishable quality paper as their candidacy exams to

gain their acceptance to continue their graduate education.

As argued earlier that publishing is employed by academic institutions as a gate-keeping

tool, the following sections I will describe two different publishing arenas: Publishing in the

Center and Reaching for the Center. The term Center is similar to Kachru’s Inner circle where

English is used as a primary language (McKay, 2002). McKay (2002) also points out that

English language is the most employed in disseminating information both in print and electronic.

Publishing in the Center

There are few studies on academic literacies in both publishing and socializing while

international graduate students were in their first-year graduate school level on how they utilize

their reading and knowledge they gain from classes into their socialization especially in writing

(Braine, 2002; Seloni, 2008; Spack, 1997) or learning from reflections of scholars in the

academe by Casanave and Vandrick’s (2003) Writing for scholarly publication and Casanave

and Li’s (2008) Learning the literacy practices of graduate school: Insiders’ reflections on

academic enculturation in which each contributor narrates her/his own personal experience in

her/his publications.

In Casanave et al. (2003), Lee and Norton (2003) informatively converse myths and

realities of publication from how to turn term papers into publication, choose journals, from

dissertations to books, and issues of collaborative authors, copyright. In the next chapter,

Matsuda (2003) also shares his publishing experience when he was a graduate student. The main

concern for him is the reading he has to do before thinking about relevant topic to work on; “the

length was certainly intimidating, but even more frightening was the amount of reading I would

have to do just to find a suitable topic” (p. 41). Kubota (2003) critically examines her publishing

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experiences in issues of negotiating with reviewers, finding her own voice, and suggesting some

practical implications for publications. As a second language writing scholar, she gives

suggestions that “…it is important for second language scholars to write clearly and

convincingly to appeal to mainstream readers by following conventions of writing. If we do so,

we can participate as legitimate members of the community,…” (Kubota, 2003, p. 65)

Though these contributors reflect from their graduate school experiences, Braine (2002)

suggests that the academic literacies scholarship is in need of first-hand voice of international

graduate students how they gain their academic literacies practices (Braine, 2002, p. 61). This is

supported by Matsuda’s (2003) commitment

[a]s a former…ESL student who learned to write in U.S. higher education and as a non-

native English-speaking (NNES) graduate student who strive to grow as a professional in

fields that had traditionally been dominated by native English speakers, [he] felt the need

to contribute [his] voice to the profession. (p. 40)

However, the act of presenting and publishing is complex, especially for multilingual

graduate students who use English as their additional language, because they need to negotiate

between languages (mother tongue and English) and construct how they will represent

themselves in their writing.

Reaching for the Center

Publishing is the practice for scholars to disseminate ideas, communicate, and gain

academic recognition with other scholars in the fields. However, this practice is also considered

as a gatekeeper as discussed by Belcher (2007), Curry and Lillis (2004), Canagarajah, Li’s

(2006, 2007) participants who must publish their manuscript in international journal in order to

receive doctoral degree. Belcher (2007) explores what strategies periphery scholars use in

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successful negotiation to publication and the differences in reviewers’ responses in term of

content and tone submission from “the Near and Middle East (including North Africa);…the Far

East; and…Latin America/Europe” (6). She suggests that authors should be aware of rhetorical

moves (Swales, 1990) that they engage in and be persistence in revising and resubmitting their

papers for publication.

In this study, Li (2006) discusses the process of writers in the sociopolitical contexts and

approaches. The research shows the participant’s transformation from holding back his personal

remarks to adding his authoritative conversation to the article leading to fruitful publication. In

another study, Li (2007) uses a case study to explore how a chemistry graduate student learn to

write for scholarly publication. The study shows that her participant negotiates the idea in the

research article by blogging to converse the ideas, employing L1 to sharpen the meaning in the

text, and reading and analyzing relevant articles in the scholarship.

Theoretical Background

Discourse Community

By entering in graduate schools, multilingual graduate students need to learn new

academic discourse through classroom discussions, reading research articles, engaging in

academic discussions with peers, and writing up their papers with publishable quality. These

multilingual graduate students have a short period of time to familiarize with these new academic

discourses or discourse community (Flowerdew, 2000; Swales, 1990)—terminologies, language,

concepts or ideas, culture, etc. Swales (1990) categorizes six features of discourse community:

(1) common goals, (2) full participation, (3) information exchange, (4) appropriate genres, (5)

familiarity of specialized terminologies, (6) extended threshold of expertise (Flowerdew, 2000).

Tardy (2009) attempts to theorize the discourse community in terms of genre knowledge by

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forming into four overlapping categories: “formal, process, rhetorical, or subject-matter

knowledge” (Tardy, 2009, p. 20).

As for formal knowledge, this will focus on both oral and written textual discourses.

Multilingual graduate students need to know styles and conventions scholars compose and

socialize in their publications. Process knowledge concerns of how the knowledge is carried out

in the scholarship. Discussing about publication process, multilingual graduate students might

know the process of publications that it involves the process of blind reviews, revising after

receiving feedback and comments, and resubmission for publication. This process might take

about one year prior to appearing onto papers and/or on line publications.

Rhetorical knowledge includes the purposes of the genre and “an awareness of the

dynamics of persuasion within a sociohistorical contexts…[it] also includes the writer’s

understanding of his or her own positioning vis-à-vis the context and the specific readers”

(Tardy, 2009, p. 21). Multilingual graduate students need to consider and situate audiences in

their publications and how their works will affect to the wider communities. The last category,

subject-matter knowledge, concerns with relevant and related content in the scholarship;

“subject-matter knowledge is essential in pushing writers toward expertise in many genres”

(Tardy, 2009, p. 22). Writing for publications does not entail only relevant knowledge, but

multilingual graduate students need to know how to synthesize and appropriate existing

knowledge into their own discourse.

Community of Practice

Apart from gaining discourse and genre knowledge, multilingual graduate students will

also be trained academic skills--reading, writing, researching, presenting, socializing, and

publishing--by scholars in their related fields through what Lave and Wenger’s (1991) and

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Wenger’s (1998) concept of “community of practice” (CoP) (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Wenger

(1998) discusses further in the process of negotiating new practices that “[i]t includes our social

relations as factors in the negotiation...[i]t is also used to suggest an accomplishment that

requires sustained attention and readjustment” (p. 53).

The acts of presenting at conferences and publishing manuscripts are new literacies

practices for multilingual graduate students because these acts are not registered in their graduate

study repertoire in which professors are in the position of mentors, and students mentees

(Simpson & Matsuda, 2008). As Wenger (1998) describes the “shared repertoire” (p. 82) that

professors or “old-timer” (Lave & Wenger, 1991, p. 29) will train or mentor students or

“newcomers” (Lave & Wenger, 1991, p. 29) into the literacies communities where they are

engaged in; “the repertoire combines both reificative and participative aspects. It includes the

discourse by which members create meaningful statements about the world, as well as the styles

by which they express their forms of membership and their identities as members” (Wenger,

1998, p. 83). In this research project, I aim to explore the negotiation process of multilingual

graduate students go through when they submit their papers for publication.

Methodology

I will employ a case study in this project. I will focus on a multilingual graduate student

who is in the process of revising his paper for publication. Li(2007) points out that case studies

are useful research tools for “comparison and theory-building…[and] for highlighting the student

writers’ own perspective” (p. 56).

Data Collection

By the time this paper is written, the data for this project included one interview session

with me and a draft of on-going of participants’ manuscript. I have conducted two interviews to a

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multilingual graduate student regarding his experiences in the process of submitting their

manuscripts to refereed publications.

Result

The following section will include Edmond’s (a pseudonym) literacy interview. I will

walk you through his written literacy from his Masters degree, his first experience in publication,

and how he incorporates his learning into practice. The data included in this result are first

interview and his prior-revision paper.

Edmond, a multilingual graduate student, is currently doing his doctoral study at a

middle-size university in Western Pennsylvania. Before he came to the United States, he has

completed his Masters degree in England and has 5 years teaching experiences in both high

school and 4-year college levels.

Learning new genre

By the time he studied his Masters degree in TESL in UK, he did not have any

experience in writing academic papers in English. He went to see the director of the program to

consult this problem with him/her; “she gave me the guideline. I spent a couple of weeks to

familiarize with…the genre with the transition, vocabulary, and all these stuff” (Lines 32-33). He

further gives example of the guideline of the introduction section that it includes:

…there’s sort of generality or general statements about let’s say like a writing is important in the field of second language acquisition full stop and then centrality which relates to the central or the main focus of the paper and then the black boxing by black boxing I mean like who are you relying argument based on like let’s say Vygotsky or Dana Ferris in feedback and writing or Truscott for example the black boxing and the gaps the gaps you found she said that it will show okay the that your way in to the field of TESOL and then . the gap will show you have a sharp view within this notion and then to fill this gap when you fill in this is what we call the contribution to the field so I mean just to restate what I just said briefly she said generality centrality black boxing gaps and contribution. (my emphasis, Interview I, November 20, 2009)

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He also shares his experience in writing conventions between his mother tongue and in English;

“I’m from Saudi background we have different conventions of writing and even though we know

how to write in English but they we articulate our sentence is totally different for example…it’s

reader responsibility” (Interview I, November 20, 2009).

“I don’t wanna miss the chance”

In England, Edmond never has a chance to conduct empirical research because the genre

that he has been written for classes in English were all “pedagogical paper—a theoretical based

paper, the first ten pages [I] review the literature and conceptualize or pedagogical tasks like

classroom activity, lesson plan, or strategies for promoting any certain skills in the notion of

academic” (Interview I, November 20, 2009). From this interview answer, it reflects from his

soon-to-published paper, which he recently finished revising the article according to reviewers’

comments.

Prior to this publication, he has already published two articles in online-refereed journals.

His experiences with online –refereed journals did not turn out well. He recalls his bitter

experience, “the first publication I sent my publication … to the publisher they didn’t reply it

back to me and the paper just got published without informing me” (Interview I, November 20,

2009). As for the second publication, he also reiterates as follow,

…my second publication was okay I sent to another refereed journal they gave me a revision and it was all the revision nothing to do with the content it’s kind of format regarding the APA and MLA style this is the only revision they ask me to do it so I did revise it accordingly and I sent it back and then it got published. (Interview I, November 20, 2009)

After these two online-refereed publications, he feels skeptic about online journal because he

feels that these journals do not have standard comparing to paper based publication. He recalls

his first exposure to academic articles from the following journals: TESOL Quarterly, ELT

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Journal, Language Awareness. He also states that these journals are difficult to publish due to

their high standard. His third publication entitled, Promoting noticing through collaborative

feedback tasks in EFL college writing classroom, was submitted and accepted to TESOL

Journal. The reason of choosing this journal is as follow:

I will just give you the name of the journal the journal called the TESOL Journal TESOL Journal is the only sister of TESOL Quarterly so why I don’t [want to] miss the chance of my paper getting published in that journal because my first exposure to publication I mean to research while in the UK as I have said earlier in the UK while I was doing my Masters in TESOL. (Interview I, November 20, 2009)

Reflecting from his learning experience from UK, Edmond writes the introduction of his prior-

revision paper according to the guideline of the director regarding the introduction of his paper in

the UK:

The issue of noticing in field of second language acquisition (SLA)2, by and large, has long been examined and debated by researchers (e.g., Ellis, 1991; Robinson, 1995; Schmidt, 1990). However, few studies (e.g., Qi & Lapkin, 2001; Riddiford, 2006; Tang & Tithecott, 1999)3 have addressed the issue of promoting noticing through collaborative feedback tasks (CFTs) in EFL writing classrooms4. … More crucially, issues on how students find gaps and sources of the gaps in their pieces of writing, negotiate those gaps, and re-notice the revised versions of writing seem not to be addressed in detail5. In order to fill such voids, I would like to propose the implementation of promoting noticing through CFTs in an EFL college writing classroom6. (Edmond).

“I wasn’t trained, I wasn’t trained, I wasn’t trained”

When Edmond comes to pursue his Ph.D. in the United States, he expresses his

disappointment with American educational system. He felt that the educational system in the

United States does not prepare him well in terms of training students to write academic prose. By

comparing his experience in the UK where he was given a guideline lesson to write introduction

2 General statement3 Black boxing4 Centrality5 The gap6 His contribution

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section, he states that he needs graduate school in the United States to explicitly teach graduate

students to write for publication.

…to be frank I wasn’t trained I wasn’t trained I wasn’t trained three times the reason why I am saying simply because they just give us the guideline as any other university in academic institutions like other universities in the UK they gave us the guideline this is a portfolio this is a literature review how you write it okay if you don’t follow that guideline you would fail the course you see so it’s kind of like a behavioristic style…( Interview I, November 20, 2009)

Interestingly, he actually has taken a course, Writing for scholarly Publication, offered by the

department. He states that though the course helps students to be prepared for publication;

however, he thinks that the course is designed for graduate students who have some publishing

experiences. Edmond says that “last year Dr. Douglas taught a course writing for scholarly

publications okay even in that course they just..they expect that the students are already trained

in that program it’s better to start from the scratch” (Interview I, November 20, 2009). Instead,

he wants to have a course called Training for Publication as a prerequisite course before offering

a course Writing for Publication. As for the course content, he wants to professors to explicitly

analyze rhetorical move of published studies. This way, Edmond states, will help graduate

students to be ready for writing for publication in the future.

“When I received an email from the editor…”

Edmond recalls his experience after receiving an email from editor that he feels excited

and frustrated at the same time.

…first of all I got the letter from the editors okay ah the reviewers have just finished their comments okay or their reviewing and commenting your paper your paper is kind of really interesting it’s revise and articulate the topic very well they kind of give you sort of very fancy words at the second or three sentences and suddenly they just put however and but this but or however okay it kind of really scare me because there are certain part that okay need to be addressed in order to meet the standard of our journal so what is the standard of your journal okay this term or style kind of like irritating sometimes and encouraging… (Interview I, November 20, 2009)

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After receiving the comments, he locates the journal from the library and read some articles,

which are similar in nature to his paper. He tries to study the rhetorical aspect of the paper so that

he can revise his own paper accordingly. He states that “…I went to previous issue of the same

journal because they are talking about the standard and requirement…I found a paper okay

there’s kind of like similar to my paper in nature whether it’s my paper is empirical I have to

read empirical if pedagogical I read pedagogical I did it/ I read it line by line” (Interview I,

November 20, 2009).

At the moment of interview, Edmond has been working on his revision process after

receiving comments from the journal editor and two reviewers. Reflecting from his previous

online-publishing experiences, he thinks that this is the most challenging task for him to revise

his paper according to reviewers’ comments. He asks both professors and his colleagues to give

him feedback on his revised draft before he re-submits it to the journal editor.

…I usually select like two or three professors okay in the field and just email him and tell him that I have a paper been accepted for publication address the review according to the comments of reviewers I don’t want to bother you all I need is just need your global feedback so with this global feedback when I meet the professors so the comment that the part that two reviewers disagree they didn’t reach mutual agreement I intentionally drop that question to that professor and see where is his standing with whom is he standing with the first reviewer or the second reviewer okay accordingly to maximize the chance or the possibility or likelihood of my paper to get published (Interview I, November 20, 2009)

Discussion and Implication

In this section, I will discuss the findings from Edmond’s interviews, the process he has

been through, and end with implications for teachers. Although this paper does not aim to

analyze my participant’s rhetorical moves, I will include Edmond’s writing samples to show how

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his revisions has been made after he had consulted with his colleagues and his professors

regarding his soon-to-publish paper.

By reading Edmond’s academic experiences from Masters level in the UK to Ph. D. level

in the United States, he has been going through different discourse communities and CoP. He

believes that he is a newcomer in this learning community. He is aware of his meta-linguistic

skills in writing in English that his style of writing is not appropriate to employ for class

assignment. He knows that writing is one of academic survival tools in graduate studies.

Wenger (1998) discusses in the process of negotiating new practices that “[i]t includes

our social relations as factors in the negotiation...[i]t is also used to suggest an accomplishment

that requires sustained attention and readjustment” (p. 53). The writing practice from his home

country could not serve the academic purposes; this made him decided to seek for advice from

the director of the Masters program. By doing so, he takes the director’s advice as the old timer,

who is more experienced in writing for academic purposes. He recalls that experience:

…she said let me give you a formative assignment by formative assignment I mean there is not grade it’s just a formative assignment she gave me the guidelines of like academic writing journals I followed the guideline okay I spend like a couple of weeks to familiarize with self with the genre with the transition vocabulary and all these stuff and I did it anyway I didn’t expect like it’s gonna meet her expectation but I was so amazed even though my first paper after I submit it she gave me uh I mean grade mark and a very positive feedback (Interview I, November 20, 2009)

As discussed by Tardy’s (2009) formal knowledge on textual discourse, Edmond negotiates his

rhetorical discourse by practicing according to his director’s advice. He follows the guideline

that the director provides for him. After he receives the affirmation from the director of the

program, he gains back his confidence in academic writing. He is also introduced to different

communities through course readings such as articles from TESOL Quarterly, ELT Journal, and

Language Awareness.

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By the time he comes to the United States, he has to renegotiate the way he writes for a

different community. In this setting, writing is not only for professors, but also for public

audiences. It is Edmond’s first time to hear the word “publication” in graduate courses in Unites

States. Since he thought that he has no experiences in ‘writing for publication,’ he decides to take

a course specially design for students who want to know more about this practice. In this class,

Edmond is surrounded with both professor and graduate students with the same interests:

contribution to the scholarship. Wenger (1998) describes this community as a “shared repertoire”

(p. 82) that people with mutual interests come and share their experiences to one another.

However, he feels that the course did not match up with this expectation. He felt that he

was an outsider in that course, as he states that he needs a prerequisite course called “training for

publication” prior to taking “writing for publication” course. He also feels after the course that he

needs explicit instructions in how to write for publication:

…it’s kind of training I think for publication so this is how to invite all the students to bring their questions to understand to construct deconstruct reconstruct and coconstruct the task of publication and then for the other class they would bring like pedagogical based paper for the second class the theoretical or survey paper and empirical paper (Interview I, November 20, 2009)

He further states that the word “publication” has been used in the celebratory way, but never

taken seriously inside classrooms. This might be seen as a mismatch between Edmond’s and

teachers’ expectations in teaching and learning. I believe that teachers want their graduate

students to be aware that they need to learn to become active members in scholarship; however,

Edmond misunderstands this intention by sharing his experiences of reading his colleagues’

papers, which receive ‘A’s for such low quality (from his perspective). This could be explained

by Hirvela and Belcher (2001) that multilingual graduate students should not be perceived as

16

“…voiceless, particularly the mature students with a track record of L1 professional or academic

success in writing” (p. 88). This means that multilingual graduate students are introduced to a

new discourse community where they are going to be a member in their chosen scholarships.

Edmond uses his personal experience in looking at other works and judge them from his

viewpoint.

Interestingly, Edmond never perceives himself to be a successful language learner or

“novice researcher” (Edmond, Interview 2, November 25, 2009), as he seeks help from others by

sending emails to professors and his colleagues to give him some feedback for his paper. He also

wants the school to provide an explicit course in “writing for publication.” He wants the school

to hold a course, which analyzes rhetorical moves in the successful published articles. He states

that this will help him and other (multilingual) graduate students to be more conscious of how to

construct arguments in writing papers. This might also help graduate students to take more risk

in submitting their papers for publications.

Edmond took his risk by submitting his first paper to five to six journals at the same time.

He states that “…I usually send my publication for like five six journals because you don’t know

who gonna reply or who don’t gonna reply to you so within five six journals four or five will

come with rejection or revision so the one who accept your paper and give this revision…”

(Interview I, November 20, 2009). He later found out that one of the journals published his work

without notifying him about his paper being published.

As I have stated earlier that Edmond is in the process of revising his ‘accepted’ paper

according to reviewers’ comments, the first draft of his paper prior to revising contains relatively

long sentences. Many sentences are in passive format. These are examples of reviewers’

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comments to his preceding draft. Comments from the reviewers, his colleagues, and his professor

make his introduction paragraph more tighten as seen below:

The issue of noticing in field of second language acquisition (SLA), by and large, has long been examined and debated by researchers (e.g., Ellis, 1991; Robinson, 1995; Schmidt, 1990). However, few studies (e.g., Qi & Lapkin, 2001; Riddiford, 2006; Tang & Tithecott, 1999) have addressed the issue of promoting noticing through collaborative feedback tasks (CFTs) in EFL writing classrooms. … More crucially, issues on how students find gaps and sources of the gaps in their pieces of writing, negotiate those gaps, and re-notice the revised versions of writing seem not to be addressed in detail. In order to fill such voids, I would like to propose the implementation of promoting noticing through CFTs in an EFL college writing classroom. (Edmond, prior-to-revision draft)

Noticing as a phenomenon that arises while paying attention to language input and output in the field of second language acquisition (SLA) has been widely examined and discussed by researchers (e.g., Ellis, 1991; Robinson, 1995; Schmidt, 1990). However, there are very few studies which have addressed noticing through collaborative feedback tasks (CFTs) in EFL writing classrooms (e.g., Qi & Lapkin, 2001; Riddiford, 2006; Tang & Tithecott, 1999). Even those few studies that have addressed noticing through CFTs were based only on asking students to compare their original pieces of writing and the revised ones at the end of the feedback process. Nevertheless, issues on how students find gaps and sources of the gaps in their pieces of writing, negotiate those gaps, and re-notice the revised versions of writing were not addressed particularly on a pedagogical level. (Edmond, revised draft)

As noticed, the revised draft reads more tighten and stronger in terms of the voice in

writing. The idea is more articulated and direct to the point. However, the rhetorical move is

relatively similar in terms of pointing to the gap of this issue of noticing in responding to

students’ writing. Since this paper does not aim to provide discourse analysis, I will not focus on

his rhetorical structure between these two paragraphs. His main reason for publication is to

contribute to the scholarship. He also states that he has been reading extensively on this topic

prior to see “the way in” (Edmond, Interview 2, November 25, 2009). This is confirmed by

Matsuda’s (2003) reflection that he also has been through the same process of extensive

readings.

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From Edmond’s action in submitting one publication to multiple journals, I think that

graduate schools need to think about how to prepare their multilingual graduate students by

emphasizing the ethical issue in publication in the United States. I believe this is a crucial part

that multilingual graduate students should be well informed and practiced. At the same time,

professors should also monitor their students as well. Edmond’s comments on having a “training

for publication” course might be too difficult to attend because there are different journals with

different discourses; however, I believe that professors can and should include at least one class

session discussing and analyzing published articles discourses to students. This will help

graduate students to be more aware of rhetorical moves and how to construct their arguments in

paper effectively.

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References

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(Eds.), What writing does and how it does it: An introduction to analyzing texts and

textual practices (pp. 83-96). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Belcher, D. (2007). Seeking acceptance in an English-only research world. Journal of Second

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