Abstract
Recent years have seen an increased attention being given to thesis and dissertation writing in the ESP literature. Prior (1995) attributes more to a thesis or a dissertation than its rhetorical structure. He lists the factors which influence decisions students make about the form of their text-the research perspective taken up in the study, the purpose of the text, and the extent to which the students have been given advice on the positioning and organisation of their text, etc. For Paltridge (2002), thesis and dissertation writing is a difficult process for native speaker students and often doubly so for non-native speaker students. ESL students may have the level of language proficiency required for admission to their course of study, but not yet the necessary textual knowledge, genre knowledge and social knowledge (Bhatia, 1999) required of them to succeed in this particular setting. Our students need to be presented with the range of thesis options that might be open to them, and consider the reasons why they might make a particular choice. There is no such a thing as “one size fits all” master’s and doctoral thesis. The present paper attempts to look at the pedagogies evolved for teaching research writing.
Highlights
With the emergence of English as a powerful language of publication in the international knowledge-manufacturing industry, teaching of research paper has worked out some space for itself, with more than half the number of publications across the globe being in English, it can be said that English has remained the language of research and will do so for many more years
When ESL scholars are experiencing difficulties in research writing, Non-native Speaker (NNS) researchers are sure to find the exercise of research writing mazy and unattainable
Janice Catterall et al place the practice of writing at the centre stage of research and advocate the need for specific understanding of how words operate in the context of research genres like dissertations, proposals, etc. and how writers defend their critical positions as this purpose is not well served by our general understanding of knowing how to write
Summary
With the emergence of English as a powerful language of publication in the international knowledge-manufacturing industry, teaching of research paper has worked out some space for itself, with more than half the number of publications across the globe being in English, it can be said that English has remained the language of research and will do so for many more years. This is the reason why the contribution of NNS researchers in Anglo-centric research is marginal. The widely recognised and acknowledged difficulty of research writing is a cause for worry and taking research English more seriously
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