Supervisory Feedback on Chinese Doctoral Students’ Drafts of a Research Article

Abstract

Doctoral students need guidance from both language teachers and academic supervisors for academic publication. However, previous studies have predominantly focused on corrective feedback from language teachers. The small number of studies on supervisory feedback were mainly undertaken in English-speaking countries on theses and dissertations, and mostly examined supervisors in applied linguistics, who probably have much in common with language professionals. To fill the research gaps, we investigated the foci of the feedback from a non-English-speaking supervisor on drafts of his doctoral students’ research article intended for a top conference in computer science. The results show that the supervisor commented not only on the content but also on the requirements for research writing, the logical flow of ideas, surface-level language issues, and visual elements. The findings can inform language teachers of what supervisors may value so that language professionals can provide feedback that better caters to the needs of students in research writing.