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Challenges, feelings, and attitudes towards writing in ERPP in semi-periphery countries
The case of Mexican graduate students
This paper addresses writing in ERPP for graduate students matriculated in a Mexican Public University where the medium of instruction is Spanish. The students who were involved in our study registered for an academic writing course in ERPP, and submitted a draft research article in English as part of the admission requirements. Following a mixed-method approach, through a survey and a semi-structured interview, we aimed to explore the various ways in which students use English for research and publication purposes, the discursive and non-discursive challenges they perceived while drafting the article, and their feelings and attitudes towards writing in ERPP. The findings suggest that the discursive and non-discursive challenges perceived were aggravated by the lack of critical-pragmatic approaches, the poor English writing skills developed for academic purposes, and the lack of support for editing their papers in English, particularly from thesis supervisors. This led them to experience feelings of anxiety, frustration and discomfort about writing in English. We would argue that this additional burden and pressure for graduate students to publish in English in semi-periphery countries translates into a lack of confidence and feeling of disadvantage in comparison with their counterparts located in anglophone research communities in centre countries.
Article outline
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1.Semi-periphery graduate students’ challenges writing in English for Research Publication Purposes
- 1.1Context
- 1.2Aim of the study and research questions
- 2.Method
- 2.1Participants
- 2.2Data collection
- 2.3Data analysis
- 3.Results
- 3.1Use of ERPP at this MPU
- 3.2Discursive and non-discursive challenges perceived by graduate students writing in ERPP
- 3.3Graduate students’ feelings and attitudes to writing in ERPP
- 4.Discussion, limitations and future research
- 5.Conclusion
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Acknowledgements
- Note
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References
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