The Asian ESP Journal Autumn Edition December 2012 Volume 8 Issue 4

194 Pages·2013·0.78 MB·English

The Asian ESP Journal
Autumn Edition
December 2012
Volume 8 Issue 4

Chief Editors: Professor Winnie Cheng
Dr. Paul Robertson

Published by the Asian ESP Journal Press
A Division of Academic Scholars Publishing House UK

http://www.asian-esp-journal.com
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© Academic Scholars Publishing House UK

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Index.
1. Foreword. Professor Winnie Cheng 4
2. Yi-Huey Guo. The Intertextual Distance in English Writing and Scientific 6-29
Writing: A Case Study on a Hydraulics Major Student’s Drafting Strategies
for International Scholarly Publication
3. Ping Huang. A Genre-based Approach to Teaching Chinese Engineering 30-62
Graduates Writing Research Articles
4. Hossein Khani-Arani. Sajad Davoudi-Mobarakeh & Abbas Eslami-Rasekh. 63-92
Investigating Associations between Metacognitive Strategies and Reading
Comprehension in EAP in Iran
5. Priya Kumari and Md. Mojibur Rahman. A Needs Analysis of Underprivileged 93-124
Technical Students at Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad, India
6. Manvender Kaur Sarjit Singh and Sarimah Shamsudin. Writing Professional 125-161
Discourse: The Challenges Faced by Malaysian Engineers
7. Razieh Rabbani Yekta and Mansoor Tavakoli. Moving Along General – 162-194
Specific Purpose English Continuum in Assembling a Test: On the Dimensionality
of an Admission Language Test for Accounting

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Foreword
Welcome to the Winter Edition 2012 of The Asian ESP Journal!
The authors of the six articles published in this issue come from China, India, Iran,
Malaysia, and Taiwan. Two papers are authored by researchers from Iran.
The research studies reported in six articles cover a wide range, from a case study of the
drafting and writing strategies adopted by a Hydraulics major student for publishing in
international journals (Yi-Huey Guo), the use of a genre-based approach to the teaching of
research article writing to a group of Chinese engineering graduates (Ping Huang), a study of the
relationships between the use of metacognitive strategies and reading comprehension
performance among EAP learners in Iran (Hossein Khani-Arani, Sajad Davoudi-Mobarakeh and
Abbas Eslami-Rasekh), a language needs analysis of a group of underprivileged students of a
Bachelor of Technology in India (Priya Kumari and Md. Mojibur Rahman), a study of the
requirements and professional writing, written competence, and challenges with regard to
engineers in the petroleum industry in Malaysia (Manvender Kaur Sarjit Singh and Sarimah
Shamsudin), to an exploration of the dimensionality structure of the items in an admission test in
an ESP context in Iran (Razieh Rabbani Yekta and Mansoor Tavakoli).
I hope you will enjoy reading the articles and recommend them to your colleagues and
students to further disseminate the findings and enhance the impact of the research studies.
Last but not least, I would like to take this opportunity to express my heartfelt gratitude to
the professional contribution of our Associate Editors and Academic Editors* whose quality
review work has made the current issue possible. I also wish to thank our proof readers for their
great work!

Chief Editor
The Asian ESP Journal
Winnie Cheng
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
* Details about our Associate Editors, Academic Editors and proof readers can be found on
http://www.asian-esp-journal.com/asian-esp-journal-
beta/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=90&Itemid=53.

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The Intertextual Distance in English Writing and Scientific Writing:
A Case Study on a Hydraulics Major Student’s Drafting Strategies for
International Scholarly Publication
Yi-Huey Guo
Tunghai University, Taiwan

Biodata
Yi-Huey Guo is an assistant professor of Foreign Languages & Literature Department at Tunghai
University, Taiwan. Her research centres around qualitative research, writing and rhetoric studies.
She can be reached at
intention to diminish the intertextual distance between him and the international hydraulics
research communities. By treating English writing and scientific writing as separate norm-
developing processes, this study shows a new way of analyzing NNES scientific writers’ English
manuscript writing. The contribution of this study also adds to our knowledge of how a NNES
novice scientific writer goes about preparing English manuscripts for international publication.
Keywords: writing for international publication, intertextual analysis, scientific writing, second
language writing

1. Introduction
With the “globalization” and “marketization” of the academy (Flowerdew, 2008), publication in
international journals has become not merely a “primary forum for the publication of research
results” (Li, 2006, p. 161) but “a criterion for achieving academic promotion and competitive
research funding” for academic individuals or institutions (Kamler, 2008, p. 283). Many think
that international journal publication has a great impact on international research communities
since regional/local journals attract limited readership (Duszak & Lewkowicz, 2008). Such an
attitude is particularly seen in engineering and science fields in Asian tertiary institutions because
more have started to require their doctoral students of engineering/science majors to have
international scholarly publications as the qualification for the degree. This causes an increase in
Asian doctoral students’ manuscript submission rate since these institutions/academic programs
tend to hold the view that only those with international scholarly publications are distinguished
researchers. Among various international academic databases, the SCI journals, which are
journals indexed by the Science Citation Index, are largely adopted by some Asian tertiary
institutions (Li & Flowerdew, 2007) to be a main criterion for the assessment of one’s research
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ability and quality. In the present study, doctoral students of science and engineering majors in
Taiwanese universities are required to have at least two SCI journal publications in order to be
qualified for the doctoral degree. However, international journals are journals in English among
which Anglo-American journals are the majority. This often poses some challenges for
Taiwanese academic professionals, who are of non-native English speaking (henceforth NNES)
backgrounds. They not only need to write the manuscript in good English but also need to be
familiar with the registers of research articles (henceforth RA) in their own disciplines.
Many researchers have noticed NNES academic professionals’ increasing need of English
manuscript writing and started to research their related writing activities/strategies (Beck, 2004;
Duszak & Lewkowicz, 2008; Godin & Gingras, 1999; Gosden, 1995; Martinez, 2005; Misak,
Marusic, & Marusic, 2005; Sitar, 2004). Works most pertinent to the present study include
Flowerdew’s works (1999a, 1999b, 2000; 2008) and his later work with Li (Flowerdew & Li,
2007). Their studies provide the most thorough analysis of the group of Chinese academic
professionals. They report that NNES writers such as their Chinese research participants are
frequently criticized by journal editors/reviewers for incorrect use of grammar, poorly-written
sentences, unclear presentation of ideas, and difficult-to-follow wordings (Li & Flowerdew,
2007). The occurrence of these has much to do with the writer’s limited English writing ability
(Englander, 2009; Mungra & Webber, 2010; Ward, 2009), the lack of professional English
editing help (Li, 2006; Li & Flowerdew, 2007), and the influence of sociocultural value (ElMalik
& Nesi, 2008; Kanoksilapatham, 2005; Sheldon, 2009; Swales, et al., 1998). As a result, some
NNES academic professionals felt stigmatized by international research communities in their
endeavors to publish internationally (Flowerdew, 2008). For example, some Korean scientific
professionals who considered their limited English writing skills a barrier to the success of their
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publication tended to feel disadvantaged in international scholarly publications (Cho, 2009).
In reviewing prior studies, we can see that researchers have mostly examined practices by
NNES practicing academics while those of NNES research writers such as doctoral students
have received less attention. Understanding how the latter group struggles with writing for
international publication is much needed, for this helps writing instructors and NNES tertiary
institutions to know the kind of writing instructions needed by this group of writers. Writers of
this group are generally engaged in two writing situations: first, the need of using English
language as the only accepted linguistic medium in the final version of their manuscripts, and
second, the need to be familiar with current research topics and with the use of source texts
preferred by international scholarly journals (since each international journal has its preferred
rhetorical norms, aims, and scope, and cares about whether the author’s work attracts the interest
of international audience). Writing for international publications is a “hard, norm-developing
process of interaction” (Gosden, 1995, p. 37) for many of the NNES academics, since they need
to write for different groups of “academic public” (Kamler, 2008). Some of them do not use the
same “linguistic medium” as they use (Li, 2006) and some do not even belong to the same
locally-situated research community as they do.
This study contends that NNES’ research writing be framed as two intertwined processes:
one of learning to write in English and the other one learning the discipline-specific genre
conventions of the RA, such as register and rhetorical structures. Upon entering the study
program, doctoral students learn to adapt to genres and registers for a “fuller participation in a
given community’s activities” (Englander, 2009, p. 37). Take doctoral students of
science/engineering majors as an example, they are engaged in varied forms of scholarly writing
practices, including running computer simulations and writing different specialised genres such
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as laboratory reports, term papers, dissertations, conference papers, and manuscripts. They are
likely to select and organize source texts “in fits and starts, with pauses and flurries,
discontinuities and conflicts” (Prior, 2004, p. 171), through which they learn to “take an
authoritative stance in a field of expert others, and to assert their contribution to that field”
(Kamler, 2008, p. 286). Writing in/for the academy is thus a “micro-political activity”
(Kamberelis & Luna, 2004, p. 244).
The present study observes longitudinally the English manuscript writing process of one
Taiwanese hydraulics major doctoral student. It looks specifically at the “intertextual distance”
(Bazerman, 2004) of his hydraulics writing and English writing. According to Bazerman (2004),
“almost every word and phrase we use we have heard or seen before” (p. 83). The history of the
words/ideas used by the writer is thus traceable and the nature of his/her writing is intertextual.
Studying one’s intertextual construction is to study the purposes of his/her “borrowing” of
textual chunks in writing and the situated meaning of those textual chunks in the context through
which “some distance in time, space, culture, or institution” involved is shown (Bazerman, 2004).
Examining the research participant’s intertextual distance is to know how his varied use of
intellectual resources in manuscript writing reflects the distance between him and the
international hydraulics journal community and how such distance is affected by the Taiwanese
hydraulics research community as well as Chinese language community he was engaged in. By
means of case analysis, the study provides Asian ESP researchers and Taiwanese tertiary
institutions that require their engineering/science doctoral students to have international scholarly
publications with a better understanding of NNES novice scientific writers’ progression into
academic globalization.
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