Making the transformation in academic writing: Some strategies for students from Asian background
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Authors
Wee, Cindy
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2021-07-07
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Conference Contribution - Oral Presentation
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Auckland (N.Z.)
New Zealand
Asian students
academic writing
student success
Unitec courses
New Zealand
Asian students
academic writing
student success
Unitec courses
ANZSRC Field of Research Code (2020)
Citation
Wee, C. (2021, July, 7-8). Making the transformation in academic writing: Some strategies for students from Asian background [Paper presentation]. 11th Conference of European Association for the Teaching of the Academic Writing, Ostrava, Czech Republic
Abstract
The notion of the “threshold concept” (Meyer & Land, 2003) can be used to examine strategies for inducting Asian students into Western academic writing practices. A threshold concept is integral to a given discipline; it functions as a portal, and creates a new way of thinking about key topics in that discipline. In academic writing, for learners to progress, they must understand threshold concepts in terms of academic literacy and make transformational progress from their literacy background to a Western way of writing. It involves learning and overcoming some troublesome knowledge influenced by the Asian students’ pedagogy of teaching and learning and cultural background (Green, 2007; Loh & Teo, 2017; Zhang, 2018).
This presentation reports on the author’s practices in using appropriate strategies to assist Asian students, particularly international students from China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, to cross the threshold of Western academic writing conventions. It begins by considering the shared practices of Asian academic writing style, which these students have to start from when learning to write in a Western education context. It will discuss the significant differences between the Asian and Western writing conventions that writing teachers need to be aware of. It then shares strate gies in terms of explicit teaching the features of Western academic writing, modelling of writing coherent academic texts, helping students develop critical thinking, paraphrasing and summarising skills, and showing students how to use proper referencing systems. Finally, the presentation concludes with feedback from students and sample lessons/resources that the author uses to assist students in making the transformation in their academic writing.
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