Taking a Stance in Academic Writing: What do PhD Students Need to Know?

GERRARD, Daniel. Taking a Stance in Academic Writing: What do PhD Students Need to Know? In Hradec Králové Anglophone Conference 2023. 2023.

Basic information

• Original name: Taking a Stance in Academic Writing: What do PhD Students Need to Know?
• Authors: GERRARD, Daniel.
• Edition: Hradec Králové Anglophone Conference 2023, 2023.

Other information

• Original language: English
• Type of outcome: Presentations at conferences
• Field of Study: 50301 Education, general; including training, pedagogy, didactics [and education systems]
• Country of publisher: Czech Republic
• Confidentiality degree: is not subject to a state or trade secret
• Organization unit: Faculty of Education
• Keywords in English: needs analysis; stance; academic writing; PhD students

Abstract

PhD students in the Czech Republic face increasing pressure to publish in English in high-impact international journals. Since academic writers aim to persuade readers of the value of their research, students need to not only demonstrate excellent results, but also to express their stance or opinions in a credible way. How stance is expressed by expert writers has been extensively researched, but far less attention has been given to stance-taking by PhD students. This presentation describes my ongoing doctoral research project comparing the use of stance in student and expert academic writing. The main aim is to identify the needs of Czech PhD students regarding stance-taking in research article writing. The study will use a mixed methods research design in the form of a needs analysis, combining corpus-based analysis of stance features in student and expert writing in linguistics with interviews with Czech PhD students and academics. The research should inform the future design of academic writing courses and teaching materials to better prepare PhD students to publish in English in international journals.

Links

• MUNI/A/1335/2022, interní kód MU: Name: Výzkum v didaktice cizích jazyků

Investor: Masaryk University, Research in foreign language didactics