Abstract
Effective authorial voice in academic writing helps researchers establish the value of their scholarly contributions. However, constructing an authorial voice is challenging for many novice L2 writers. Through tracking multiple drafts of master’s theses written by two Chinese EFL (English as a foreign language) graduate students, this case study investigated changes in their authorial voices and the roles of advisor feedback in this process. We drew on three types of data: analysis of multiple thesis drafts for linguistic and content features of voice; advisor feedback on multiple drafts; and a questionnaire for the student writers’ understanding of authorial voice. The results indicate that the linguistic features of voice in their theses have remained largely unchanged, portraying them as unconfident student writers, but the content features have shown significant improvement, conveying authorial voices of novice researchers in the later drafts. Most of the student revisions followed their advisors’ feedback. The student participants’ questionnaire responses indicate their relative lack of awareness of the importance of language in voice construction. The results suggest that the authorial voice construction of the novice student writers is dynamic, developmental, and interactive with their advisors’ feedback over the thesis writing process. Pedagogically, other than feedback on content features of voice, classroom practitioners could also consider providing explicit instruction of and feedback on linguistic features to help students construct authoritative authorial voice in the academic context.
Highlights
Thesis and dissertation writing has attracted increasing attention in recent years to understand how less experienced writers are acculturated into the academic community through this important writing task in their graduate life (Bitchener & Basturkmen, 2006; Botelho de Magalhães et al, 2019; Geng & Wharton, 2016; Morton & Storch, 2019; Peng, 2019)
Our study examined the construction of authorial voice in the master’s theses of two Chinese EFL students (English as a foreign language) by tracking the changes of content and linguistic features of authorial voice in their multiple drafts
In trying to understand the dynamics of authorial voice construction of novice L2 writers and how advisor feedback affects student writers’ voice development in the writing process, in this article, we examined multiple thesis drafts of two Chinese EFL graduate students as well as their advisors’ feedback from a longitudinal perspective rather than only analyzing their final texts
Summary
Thesis and dissertation writing has attracted increasing attention in recent years to understand how less experienced writers are acculturated into the academic community through this important writing task in their graduate life (Bitchener & Basturkmen, 2006; Botelho de Magalhães et al, 2019; Geng & Wharton, 2016; Morton & Storch, 2019; Peng, 2019). Becoming a competent researcher means that one needs to take different voices of “arguer,” “researcher,” “interpreter,” “writer,” “recounter” (Bondi, 2012) to portray them more as knowledge contributors than transmitters While embarking on their academic journey, many graduate students face the challenge of conveying authoritative authorial voice in writing (Botelho de Magalhães et al, 2019; Dressen-Hammouda, 2014; Morton & Storch, 2019). As few studies have investigated content features of voice, and fewer studies have tracked changes during the process of authorial voice construction, Stock and Eik-Nes (2016) called for more studies in those overlooked areas
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