How do you express yourself in Academia??
Universities are situated as places to develop both Academic and professional skills. Once you get accpeted in American Universities, you will have to write papers in English. It is a really difficult task for ESL (English as a second language) students who are from foreign countries, but you must complete the task to successfully pass any course. In this situation, some of you may have the following questions:
- How do you write a paper in English?
- How do you include your ideas in the paper?
- How do you express your voice in the paper?
- How do you develop your confidence in English writing ?
Expressing voice in academic disciplines
Whatever genre you work, you are expected to include your ideas, thoughts, and arguments in your paper. Let me use the term, voice, for this (which is my main focus in my dissertation, and I feel more confortable using this). In academic disciplines, your professors really want to see your voice , which refers to the presentation of yourself in paper. However, there are some rules to express yourself depending on an academic community to which you belong (e.g. Art, Economics, Education, English, Computer Science, etc). Hyland (2004) clearly argues the relationshp between writing and academic community:
“Successful academic writing depends on individual writer’s projection of a shared professional context. That is, pursuing their personal and professioanl goals, writers seek to embed their writing in particular social world which they reflect and conjure up through particular approved discourse” (p.1).
As he points out, it is necessary for you to learn to express your voice in a socially approved way. This is one of the key writing skills you are required to develop in academia. This perspective reflects the concept of ‘discoursal self’ which refers to a writer’s identity being constructed in the discourse community he or she joins (Ivanič, 1998). So, you always need to consider how you can express your ideas in your papers.
References
Hyland, K. (2004). Displinary discourses: Social interations in academic writing. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press.
Ivanic, R. (1998). Writing and identity: The discoursal construction of identity in academic writing. Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
arigatou!!!
Hi Atsushi!
I’m going to study in America next spring, so this topic is important to me right now. I think I’ve always been a little stronger writer than speaker, so I haven’t been so worried about writing papers in english than I am about speaking inside the classroom with all the native speakers. But of course I’ve thought about writing too, Marlen has told us about the voice you wrote about and I have to admit that it is a quite new idea for me. I don’t think professors in Finland really talk about expressing our voice, so I’ve never really gave it a thought. But it is a really important thing and I’m very happy that during this course I’ve started to think about it more.
Do you have any other advice on how to survive with the writing tasks as a foreign student? What kind of difficulties I might confront?
Thanks for your ideas, and so sorry for this late response. I was very busy during the last two weeks. As for your first question, I have many ESL students who have different problems such as the length, grammar, transition, or format. The most important strategy is to read carefully the syllabus (you can get it in the first lesson) and to ask questions to your professors if necessary. You can also ask them to show an actual “example” for the course assingment (e.g. if your professor gives you an assigment of “book review”, you can ask them to show an example which demonstrates what it looks like.) Showing examples are part of professors’ responsibility and, without sufficient explicit instruction, I’m sure you are not ready to work on it. Don’t be shy to show your uncertainty about the assignment and feel free to ask questions.
For your second question, you might face difficulties in collaborating with other students. Group work or group project is one of the big assignemts (it depends on your major or the course you will take) and you can guess that your group members are not like you. Some of them may be lazy, and never show up out-of-class. In this case, you have to work more. This may bother, annoy, and dissapoint you, but this may happen to you. You may want to talk with your group members and make sure what to do in a group. It’s important for you guys to share the same understanding of what you are supposed to do.
Thx! As I have to write an essay until next week your blog entry is very helpful for me. You are right in your mother tongue it is always much easier to to express your thoughts than in a second language.
It might be true that it is easier to express your ideas in a first language (L1) than in a second language (L2). However, the more you study L2, the easier you can express your thoughts in L2. It depends on what genre you work on, but in my case, it’s much easier to work on academic writing in English (L2) than Japanese (L1). I get my work published in English, but this doesn’t happen in Japanese.
Hi there Atsushi Iida!
I was really surprised to hear that (if I got it right) the Americn school system prefers and actually requires that “the voice” of the writer is heard. I think this is only a positive thing. Here in Finland it seems to me that the amount of these boring, academic texts we have to write from week after week hold our imagination and personality back. I`ve been told couple of times that my writings are too “colorful” and vivid to be an academic ones. I personally think that it is possible to combine this personal voice and the formal way to write and express yourself. What do you think if I may ask?
Thanks for your concerns, Jenna. Our writing should be “colorful”. You are absolutely right and you can combine your personal voice with your academic essays. Second language teachers tend to focus on teaching grammar or structure in writing, and as a result, we leave something behind (which is voice). In other words, we are not sufficiently educated how to express ourselves in second language. When you write in English, you may want to focus on “what to say (voice)” first and then think about “how you can say it”.