Volunteer Support of English as an Additional Language (EAL) for Doctoral Students

Abstract

Introduction English-as-an-additional-language (EAL) research students are a prized resource for universities desirous of doctoral output. Universities wanting more annual doctoral completions (see confirmation of these phenomena in Carter, 2006; Powell, 2006; Walsh, 2006) compete for local and international students, with strong growth in the numbers of postgraduate [EAL (English-as-an-additional-language)] students in the major education-provider countries (Ryan & Zuber-Skerritt, 1999, p. 3). Yet international students bring with them the challenges of writing about 80,000 words in competent academic prose in English when it is not their native language: the dissertation. The human stories behind doctoral internationalisation show that Speakers of English as an additional language ... still appear to be less empowered and more disabled in the institution (Hutchings, 2006, p. 248); it is something of an understatement to note that Such students often have difficulty meeting the demands of the kind of writing required of them in this particular genre (Paltridge & Starfield, 2007, p. 2). Resources for EAL students are seldom adequate (Strauss, Sachfleben, & Turner, 2006), and EAL students may feel that they and their writing are somehow marginalised (Ali & Kohun, 2007; Zamel, 1995). Doctoral drop-out rates have traditionally been high--as high as 50% in some disciplines (Bair & Haworth, 1999; McAlpine & Norton, 2006; Mendoza, 2007)--and individuals who struggle with prose may lose hope and leave. In such cases, institutional loss is also personal tragedy; the cost of futility is high. Furthermore, writing frustrations often spill into supervisors' in-trays, yet supervisors are under increasing pressure in a changing university environment (Davies, 2003; Forgasz & Leder, 2006; McGrail, Rickard, & Jones, 2006). How might the responsibilities of a university be synchronised with its desire for fast doctoral completion rates from EAL students? Most tertiary institutions are careful about recruitment, but even those EAL students who have ranked well in International English Language T esting System (IELTS) testing can find the size and complexity of their doctoral writing task disheartening. Many institutions, including my own, provide English for academic writing classes and nonetheless EAL researchers face an enormous challenge in the production of a dissertation. In New Zealand the Ph.D. is commonly based on a dissertation only, so students do not get the same amount of practice within courses that the USA system entails. Many international students arrive at a new campus in a culturally different city to begin the lonely task of writing their dissertation. My response as co-ordinator of a Student Learning Centre doctoral programme has been to establish across-campus support from native English speaker volunteers to EAL doctoral students. This support group is called D.EAL (doctorates for EAL students) following on from a preexisting EAL undergraduate programme named R.EAL (Results for EAL students) that already existed in the Student Learning Centre learning centre. Both international (Asian, European and Pacific Islander) and local students whose first language is not English made use of the support. These students self-identify as EAL. This support is not compulsory, so only candidates who feel they would like to develop their writing choose to attend. D.EAL has now operated for over four years, during which time we have sought to maximis[e] the benefits of volunteerism and improve intergroup relations (Karafantis & Levy, 2004, p. 248). D.EAL provides a case-study of volunteerism that may be adaptable elsewhere. Because the two groups who participated, doctoral students and retired volunteers, both benefitted in a symbiotic relationship, the support has proved to be a sustainable 'community of practice' (Wenger's 1998 term). D.EAL assumes that support, encouragement and motivation are key benefits of writing interventions (McGrail et al. …