A Study of Taiwanese EFL Doctoral Students' Perceptions on English Writing of Academic Purposes

• Main Authors: Lin, Chiao-Hsuan, 林巧軒
• Other Authors: You, Yu-Ling
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2016
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/86145416514516385912

碩士 === 國立彰化師範大學 === 英語學系 === 104 === ABSTRACT As English has become the international language in the world, this trend of globalization has been reflected in academic research. To pursue academic achievement, graduate students are acquired to polish their English academic writing ability to get academic writing published internationally. In Taiwan, large numbers of doctoral students are required to publish international research papers before graduation, there has been increasing attention paid to promote doctoral students’ EAP writing ability. However, in Taiwan, the English education at the tertiary education still focuses more on cultivating students’ general English ability, which may not meet their specific language needs. Accordingly, students often have less facility using English for academic purposes (EAP) while writing thesis, dissertations or journal papers in English. To bridge the gap existing between doctoral students’ English needs and current courses, the present study aims to explore the Taiwanese EFL doctoral students’ perceptions of EAP writing to further investigate their difficulties and needs while performing the English academic writing tasks as well as supporting strategies they utilized to facilitate their academic writing tasks. In this study, 12 Taiwanese EFL engineering-majored doctoral students who had the experiences of writing conference papers or journal articles in English at a public university in northern Taiwan recruited. The semi-structured interview including 13 open-ended questions was adopted to explore the participants’ perceptions on EAP writing difficulties, needs and supporting strategies. The findings revealed that when performing the EAP writing tasks the subjects encountered the problems both at the linguistic level and the rhetorical level. Difficulties mentioned by most doctoral student participant included writing Introduction, expressing ideas clearly and logically, using academic styles and showing an appropriate stance. To facilitate academic writing tasks, most doctoral students adopt supporting strategies including making outlines before writing, building academic word banks, using previous literature as models, seeking help from advisors and peers and etc. Moreover, realizing standards of various conference papers and journals helps doctoral students effectively meet reviewers’ needs. Based on the qualitative findings, the researcher further discussed the difficulties and needs encountered by the doctoral students, it is suggested the academic courses should provide more opportunities to practice academic writing in class. Moreover, the doctoral students need specific writing advice and suggestions from the advisors during the process of revising. The findings are expected to lend further insights to the Taiwanese EFL instructors’ understanding of students’ difficulties and needs in EAP writing so as to design proper EAP writing curriculum to meet the students’ needs.