Abstract
This study investigates the practices of native, native-like and non-native speakers of English in academic writing. The researchers developed and validated a survey with Likert items. The items in the survey were created using the researchers’ personal experience, the literature and an open-ended survey with three items administered to 31 researchers. The resulting survey was validated through cognitive interviewing and piloting with 30 respondents. The survey conducted with 190 participants provided comparative insight into how the three groups differ in their use of technology, strategies and dictionaries along with challenges they faced in academic writing. The results globally indicated that non-native speakers used strategies more frequently than native-like English speakers or native speakers. Similarly, the integration of technology into academic writing process and dictionary use were a favourite activity among the non-native speakers. However, all three groups of researchers experienced similar challenges in academic writing, which globally suggests that language per se is not enough for success in scholarly writing and publishing.
Keywords: academic writing, native speakers, non-native speakers, strategies
References
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Bocanegra-Valle, A. (2014). “‘English is my default academic language’: voices from LSP scholars publishing in a multilingual journal”. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 13: 65-77.
Candarli, D., Bayyurt, Y., & Marti, L. (2015). “Authorial presence in L1 and L2 novice academic writing: Cross-linguistic and cross-cultural perspectives.” Journal of English for Academic Purposes 20: 192–202. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2015.10.001
Casanave, C. P. (2008). “The stigmatizing effect of Goffman’s stigma label: a response to John Flowerdew.” Journal of English for Academic Purposes 7: 264–267. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2008.10.013
Cavaleri, M. R., & Dianati, S. (2016). “You want me to check your grammar again? The usefulness of an online grammar checker as perceived by students”. Journal of Academic Language and Learning 10: 223-236.
Chireshe, R., Oupa, L., & Soul, S. (2014). “Challenges in academic publishing: Editors’ views”. Journal of Communication, 5: 95-100.
Chitez, M., Rapp, C., & Kruse, O. (2015). Corpus-supported academic writing: How can technology help? In F. Helm, L. Bradley, M. Guarda, & S. Thouseny (Eds), Critical CALL-Proceedings of the 2015 EUROCALL Conference (pp. 125–132). Dublin: Research Publishing.
Cook, V. J. (1997). “L2 Users and English spelling”. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 18: 474-488, DOI:10.1080/01434639708666335
Cuff, E. (2014). “The effect and importance of technology in the research process”. Journal of Educational Technology Systems 43: 75-97.
Elbow, P. (2010). How does reading aloud improve writing. University of Massachusetts Amherst. Emeritus Faculty Author Gallery, 11-12.
Ferguson, G. (2007). “The global spread of English, scientific communication and ESP: Questions of equity, access and domain loss”. Ibérica 13: 7-38.
Ferguson, G., Perez-Llantada, C., & Plo, R. (2010). “English as an international language of scientific publication: A study of attitudes”. World Englishes 30: 41–59. https://doi.org/10.2104/aral0828
Flowerdew, J. (2001). “Attitudes of journal editors to non-native speaker contributions”. TESOL Quarterly 35: 121–150. https://doi:10.2307/3587862
Flowerdew, J. (2007). “The non-Anglophone scholar on the periphery of scholarly publication”. AILA Review 20: 14-27
Flowerdew, J. (2008). “Scholarly writers who use English as an Additional Language: What can Goffman’s “Stigma” tell us?” Journal of English for Academic Purposes 7: 77–86. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2008.03.002
Given, L. M. (2016). 100 questions (and answers) about qualitative research. Los Angeles, California: SAGE.
Goh, C. L., & Lepage, Y. (2019). Word embeddings in place of dictionary lookup in the context of academic writing. Education, Proceedings of the 25th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Processing Society, 1161-1164.
Gungor, F. (2019). “It was found that…: Introductory it patterns by native and non-native authors”. Eurasian Journal of Applied Linguistics 5: 473-493.
Guraya, S. Y., & Guraya, S. S. (2017). “The confounding factors leading to plagiarism in academic writing and some suggested remedies: A systematic review”. The Journal of the Pakistan Medical Association 67: 767-772.
Helgesson, G., & Eriksson, S. (2015). “Plagiarism in research”. Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 18: 91-101.
Huang, J. C. (2010). “Publishing and learning writing for publication in English: Perspectives of NNES PhD students in science”. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 9: 33–44. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2009.10.001
Hyland K. (2009). Academic Discourse. English in a Global Context. London: Continuum.
Hyland, F. (2016a). “Academic publishing and the myth of linguistic injustice”. Journal of Second Language Writing 31: 58-69
Hyland, F. (2016b). “Challenges faced by second language doctoral student writers in Hong Kong and their writing strategies”. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 39: 158-180.
Hynninen, N., & Kuteeva, M. (2017). “Good” and “acceptable” English in L2 research writing: Ideals and realities in history and computer science”. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 30: 53–65. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2017.10.009
Jatin, S., Anand, S., & Ricardo, P. (2009). “Scientific writing of novice researchers: what difficulties and encouragements do they encounter?” Academic Medicine: Journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges 84: 511.
Jenkins, J. (2011). Accommodating (to) ELF in the international university. Journal of Pragmatics 43: 926–936. https://doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2010.05.011
Johnson, K. (2010). “The University of Minnesota’s Student Writing Guide”. Minnesota: The Regents of the University of Minnesota. Retrieved from http://writing.umn.edu/sws/assets/pdf/2010swg.pdf [09/08/20]
Johnstone, A. (1983). “The Writer’s hell: Approaches to writer’s block”. Journal of Teaching Writing 2: 155-165.
Jomaa, N. J., & Bidin, S. J. (2017). “Perspectives of EFL doctoral students on challenges of citations in academic writing”. Malaysian Journal of Learning and Instruction 14: 177-209.
Kali, A. (2016). “Reference management: A critical element of scientific writing”. Journal of Aadvanced Ppharmaceutical Ttechnology & Rresearch 7: 27–29. https://doi.org/10.4103/2231-4040.169875
Karakaş, A., Uysal, H., Bilgin, S., & Bulut, T. (2016). “Turkish EFL learners’ perceptions of native English-speaking teachers and non-native English-speaking teachers in higher education”. Novitas-ROYAL 10: 180–206.
Katz, A. (2018). “How technology affects academic writing skills”. Retrieved from https://www.tmcnet.com/topics/articles/2018/06/18/438494-how-technology-affects-academic-writing-skills.htm [09/09/20]
Kaufman, G. (1992) Shame, the Power of Caring, (3rd ed.). Rochester, Vermont: Schenkman Books.
Kotamjani, S. S., Abd Samad, A., & Fahimirad, M. (2018). “International postgraduate students’ perception of challenges in academic writing in Malaysian public universities”. International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature, 7: 191-195.
Krashen, S. (1989). “We acquire vocabulary and spelling by reading: Additional evidence for the input hypothesis”. The Modern Language Journal 73: 440-464.
Langum, V., & Sullivan, K. P. (2017). “Writing academic English as a doctoral student in Sweden: Narrative perspectives”. Journal of Second Language Writing 35: 20-25.
Lillis, T. & Scott, M. (2007). “Defining academic literacies research: issues of epistemology, ideology and strategy. Special issue – New Directions in Academic Literacies”. Journal of Applied Linguistics 48: 5-32
Martín, P., Rey-Rocha, J., Burgess, S., & Moreno, A. I. (2014). “Publishing research in English-language journals: Attitudes, strategies and difficulties of multilingual scholars of medicine”. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 16: 57–67. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2014.08.001
Mauranen, A. (2006). “A rich domain of ELF-the ELFA corpus of academic discourse”. Nordic Journal of English Studies 5: 145-59.
Mauranen, A. (2012). Exploring ELF: Academic English shaped by non-native speakers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Murray, R. & Moore, S. (2006). Handbook of Academic Writing: A Fresh Approach. Buckingham: Open University Press.
O’Neill, M., Booth, S., & Lamb, J. (2018). “Using NVivoTM for literature reviews: The eight-step pedagogy (N7+1)”. The Qualitative Report 23: 21–39.
Oermann, M. H., Nicoll, L. H., Chinn, P. L., Conklin, J. L., McCarty, M., & Amarasekara, S. (2018). “Quality of author guidelines in nursing journals”. Journal of Nursing Scholarship, 50: 333-340.
Politzer-Ahles, S., Holliday, J. J., Girolamo, T., Spychalska, M., & Berkson, K. H. (2016). “Is Linguistic Injustice a Myth? A Response to Hyland”. Journal of Second Language Writing 34: 3-8.
Rahmat, N. H. (2020). “Writers’ block for writers: How far is it true?” Global Journal of Social Sciences Studies 6: 51-63.
Rucker, M. (2015). “Top 15 tools to help you with writing a literature review”. Retrieved from https://unstick.me/top-15-tools-to-help-you-with-writing-a-literature-review/ [09/09/20]
Salazar, D. (2014). Lexical bundles in native and non-native scientific writing: Applying a corpus-based study to language teaching. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Schriger, D. L., Arora, S., & Altman, D. G. (2006). “The content of medical journal instructions for authors”. Annals of Emergency Medicine 48: 743-749.
Voon, H. (2010). “The use of brainstorming and role playing as pre-writing strategy”. The International Journal of Learning 17: 537–558.
Wajdi, M., Sumartana, I. M., & Hudiananingsih, N. P. D. (2018). “Avoiding plagiarism in writing a research paper”. Soshum: Jurnal Sosial dan Humaniora [Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities] 8: 94-102.
Walkinshaw, I. S., & Oanh, D. H. (2014). “Native and non-native English language teachers: Student perceptions in Vietnam and Japan”. SAGE Open 4: 1-9
Winkler, A. C. & Metherell, J. R. (2011). Writing the research paper: A handbook, (8th ed). Wadsworth: Cengage Learning.
Wischgoll, A. (2017). “Improving undergraduates and postgraduates academic writing skills with strategy training and feedback”. Frontiers in Education 2: 1-15. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2017.00033
Zhan, J., Pan, H., & Fu, H. (2016). Using technology in an academic writing course: Application and attitudes. 3rd Intl Academic Writing Conference.
Zhao, J. (2017). “Native speaker advantage in academic writing? Conjunctive realizations in EAP writing by four groups of writers”. Ampersand 4: 47–57. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amper.2017.07.001
Bocanegra-Valle, A. (2014). “‘English is my default academic language’: voices from LSP scholars publishing in a multilingual journal”. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 13: 65-77.
Candarli, D., Bayyurt, Y., & Marti, L. (2015). “Authorial presence in L1 and L2 novice academic writing: Cross-linguistic and cross-cultural perspectives.” Journal of English for Academic Purposes 20: 192–202. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2015.10.001
Casanave, C. P. (2008). “The stigmatizing effect of Goffman’s stigma label: a response to John Flowerdew.” Journal of English for Academic Purposes 7: 264–267. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2008.10.013
Cavaleri, M. R., & Dianati, S. (2016). “You want me to check your grammar again? The usefulness of an online grammar checker as perceived by students”. Journal of Academic Language and Learning 10: 223-236.
Chireshe, R., Oupa, L., & Soul, S. (2014). “Challenges in academic publishing: Editors’ views”. Journal of Communication, 5: 95-100.
Chitez, M., Rapp, C., & Kruse, O. (2015). Corpus-supported academic writing: How can technology help? In F. Helm, L. Bradley, M. Guarda, & S. Thouseny (Eds), Critical CALL-Proceedings of the 2015 EUROCALL Conference (pp. 125–132). Dublin: Research Publishing.
Cook, V. J. (1997). “L2 Users and English spelling”. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 18: 474-488, DOI:10.1080/01434639708666335
Cuff, E. (2014). “The effect and importance of technology in the research process”. Journal of Educational Technology Systems 43: 75-97.
Elbow, P. (2010). How does reading aloud improve writing. University of Massachusetts Amherst. Emeritus Faculty Author Gallery, 11-12.
Ferguson, G. (2007). “The global spread of English, scientific communication and ESP: Questions of equity, access and domain loss”. Ibérica 13: 7-38.
Ferguson, G., Perez-Llantada, C., & Plo, R. (2010). “English as an international language of scientific publication: A study of attitudes”. World Englishes 30: 41–59. https://doi.org/10.2104/aral0828
Flowerdew, J. (2001). “Attitudes of journal editors to non-native speaker contributions”. TESOL Quarterly 35: 121–150. https://doi:10.2307/3587862
Flowerdew, J. (2007). “The non-Anglophone scholar on the periphery of scholarly publication”. AILA Review 20: 14-27
Flowerdew, J. (2008). “Scholarly writers who use English as an Additional Language: What can Goffman’s “Stigma” tell us?” Journal of English for Academic Purposes 7: 77–86. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2008.03.002
Given, L. M. (2016). 100 questions (and answers) about qualitative research. Los Angeles, California: SAGE.
Goh, C. L., & Lepage, Y. (2019). Word embeddings in place of dictionary lookup in the context of academic writing. Education, Proceedings of the 25th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Processing Society, 1161-1164.
Gungor, F. (2019). “It was found that…: Introductory it patterns by native and non-native authors”. Eurasian Journal of Applied Linguistics 5: 473-493.
Guraya, S. Y., & Guraya, S. S. (2017). “The confounding factors leading to plagiarism in academic writing and some suggested remedies: A systematic review”. The Journal of the Pakistan Medical Association 67: 767-772.
Helgesson, G., & Eriksson, S. (2015). “Plagiarism in research”. Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 18: 91-101.
Huang, J. C. (2010). “Publishing and learning writing for publication in English: Perspectives of NNES PhD students in science”. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 9: 33–44. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2009.10.001
Hyland K. (2009). Academic Discourse. English in a Global Context. London: Continuum.
Hyland, F. (2016a). “Academic publishing and the myth of linguistic injustice”. Journal of Second Language Writing 31: 58-69
Hyland, F. (2016b). “Challenges faced by second language doctoral student writers in Hong Kong and their writing strategies”. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 39: 158-180.
Hynninen, N., & Kuteeva, M. (2017). “Good” and “acceptable” English in L2 research writing: Ideals and realities in history and computer science”. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 30: 53–65. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2017.10.009
Jatin, S., Anand, S., & Ricardo, P. (2009). “Scientific writing of novice researchers: what difficulties and encouragements do they encounter?” Academic Medicine: Journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges 84: 511.
Jenkins, J. (2011). Accommodating (to) ELF in the international university. Journal of Pragmatics 43: 926–936. https://doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2010.05.011
Johnson, K. (2010). “The University of Minnesota’s Student Writing Guide”. Minnesota: The Regents of the University of Minnesota. Retrieved from http://writing.umn.edu/sws/assets/pdf/2010swg.pdf [09/08/20]
Johnstone, A. (1983). “The Writer’s hell: Approaches to writer’s block”. Journal of Teaching Writing 2: 155-165.
Jomaa, N. J., & Bidin, S. J. (2017). “Perspectives of EFL doctoral students on challenges of citations in academic writing”. Malaysian Journal of Learning and Instruction 14: 177-209.
Kali, A. (2016). “Reference management: A critical element of scientific writing”. Journal of Aadvanced Ppharmaceutical Ttechnology & Rresearch 7: 27–29. https://doi.org/10.4103/2231-4040.169875
Karakaş, A., Uysal, H., Bilgin, S., & Bulut, T. (2016). “Turkish EFL learners’ perceptions of native English-speaking teachers and non-native English-speaking teachers in higher education”. Novitas-ROYAL 10: 180–206.
Katz, A. (2018). “How technology affects academic writing skills”. Retrieved from https://www.tmcnet.com/topics/articles/2018/06/18/438494-how-technology-affects-academic-writing-skills.htm [09/09/20]
Kaufman, G. (1992) Shame, the Power of Caring, (3rd ed.). Rochester, Vermont: Schenkman Books.
Kotamjani, S. S., Abd Samad, A., & Fahimirad, M. (2018). “International postgraduate students’ perception of challenges in academic writing in Malaysian public universities”. International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature, 7: 191-195.
Krashen, S. (1989). “We acquire vocabulary and spelling by reading: Additional evidence for the input hypothesis”. The Modern Language Journal 73: 440-464.
Langum, V., & Sullivan, K. P. (2017). “Writing academic English as a doctoral student in Sweden: Narrative perspectives”. Journal of Second Language Writing 35: 20-25.
Lillis, T. & Scott, M. (2007). “Defining academic literacies research: issues of epistemology, ideology and strategy. Special issue – New Directions in Academic Literacies”. Journal of Applied Linguistics 48: 5-32
Martín, P., Rey-Rocha, J., Burgess, S., & Moreno, A. I. (2014). “Publishing research in English-language journals: Attitudes, strategies and difficulties of multilingual scholars of medicine”. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 16: 57–67. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2014.08.001
Mauranen, A. (2006). “A rich domain of ELF-the ELFA corpus of academic discourse”. Nordic Journal of English Studies 5: 145-59.
Mauranen, A. (2012). Exploring ELF: Academic English shaped by non-native speakers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Murray, R. & Moore, S. (2006). Handbook of Academic Writing: A Fresh Approach. Buckingham: Open University Press.
O’Neill, M., Booth, S., & Lamb, J. (2018). “Using NVivoTM for literature reviews: The eight-step pedagogy (N7+1)”. The Qualitative Report 23: 21–39.
Oermann, M. H., Nicoll, L. H., Chinn, P. L., Conklin, J. L., McCarty, M., & Amarasekara, S. (2018). “Quality of author guidelines in nursing journals”. Journal of Nursing Scholarship, 50: 333-340.
Politzer-Ahles, S., Holliday, J. J., Girolamo, T., Spychalska, M., & Berkson, K. H. (2016). “Is Linguistic Injustice a Myth? A Response to Hyland”. Journal of Second Language Writing 34: 3-8.
Rahmat, N. H. (2020). “Writers’ block for writers: How far is it true?” Global Journal of Social Sciences Studies 6: 51-63.
Rucker, M. (2015). “Top 15 tools to help you with writing a literature review”. Retrieved from https://unstick.me/top-15-tools-to-help-you-with-writing-a-literature-review/ [09/09/20]
Salazar, D. (2014). Lexical bundles in native and non-native scientific writing: Applying a corpus-based study to language teaching. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Schriger, D. L., Arora, S., & Altman, D. G. (2006). “The content of medical journal instructions for authors”. Annals of Emergency Medicine 48: 743-749.
Voon, H. (2010). “The use of brainstorming and role playing as pre-writing strategy”. The International Journal of Learning 17: 537–558.
Wajdi, M., Sumartana, I. M., & Hudiananingsih, N. P. D. (2018). “Avoiding plagiarism in writing a research paper”. Soshum: Jurnal Sosial dan Humaniora [Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities] 8: 94-102.
Walkinshaw, I. S., & Oanh, D. H. (2014). “Native and non-native English language teachers: Student perceptions in Vietnam and Japan”. SAGE Open 4: 1-9
Winkler, A. C. & Metherell, J. R. (2011). Writing the research paper: A handbook, (8th ed). Wadsworth: Cengage Learning.
Wischgoll, A. (2017). “Improving undergraduates and postgraduates academic writing skills with strategy training and feedback”. Frontiers in Education 2: 1-15. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2017.00033
Zhan, J., Pan, H., & Fu, H. (2016). Using technology in an academic writing course: Application and attitudes. 3rd Intl Academic Writing Conference.
Zhao, J. (2017). “Native speaker advantage in academic writing? Conjunctive realizations in EAP writing by four groups of writers”. Ampersand 4: 47–57. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amper.2017.07.001
Copyright (c) 2022 Arif Bakla, Ali Karakaş
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
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