Academic Literacy And The Nonnative Speaker Graduate Student

Academic literacy and the nonnative speaker
graduate student
George Braine1,
*
Department of English, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong
Abstract
In this paper, I examine the acquisition of academic literacy by nonnative speaker graduate
students who choose to study in the English medium. For these students, the concept of aca-
demic literacy extends beyond the ability to read and write. I will critically explore our
understanding of academic literacy by summarizing the research on this issue, identifying the
strengths and weaknesses of the surveys and case studies that have been conducted. I will then
point out the areas that need to be examined, and better approaches that could be utilized to
enhance our understanding of academic literacy. Having been a nonnative speaker graduate
student myself, I will integrate into the paper anecdotes of my experience in gaining academic
literacy in order to both enrich the paper and to substantiate my claims. # 2002 Published by
Elsevier Science Ltd.
Growing up in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in the 1960s and 1970s, I had been up to
my ears in American culture and politics. My father had bought me a subscription
to the Readers’ Digest when I was 12, and I was also reading Free World, a magazine
distributed by the United States Information Agency (USIA). I listened to the Voice
of America regularly and keenly followed the Vietnam War. American pop and
country and western were the most popular types of music on Radio Ceylon. Later,
as a novice teacher of English, I began reading the Forum magazine which the USIA
sent me, my only exposure to what could be termed professional literature in the
teaching of English.
So, when I arrived in the US in the mid-1980s for graduate study in applied lin-
guistics, I thought my long-term acquaintance with America and my maturity had
prepared me for life at an American university. I had been married for more than 10
Journal of English for Academic Purposes
1 (2002) 59–68
www.elsevier.com/locate/jeap
1475-1585/02/$ - see front matter # 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.
PII: S1475-1585(02)00006-1
* Tel.: +852-2609-7445; fax: +852-2603-5270.
E-mail address: georgebraine@cuhk.edu.hk (G. Braine).
1
George Braine is an associate professor of English at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He has
conducted research on English for academic purposes since the late 1970s.

years, had some experience of foreign travel, and was confident of my language and
social skills. Because I arrived on campus a week after the fall semester had begun,
the only space available on campus was a large room in a coed dormitory, to be
shared with five other students, four of whom were undergraduates. One was the
president of the university’s gay and lesbian students’ society, with a hectic social
life, and the others were fun loving students out to have a good time, especially at
the beginning of the academic year. The lights were never switched off in the room,
the phone rang around the clock, and visitors dropped-in at all hours of the day and
night. The sounds of doors swinging open noisily and banging shut, of running feet
and the giggles of young women, pervaded the hallway.
Nothing had prepared me for this. I could not sleep for two weeks. Physically and
nervously exhausted, I appealed to an international student advisor, who arranged
my move to an off-campus apartment. That allowed me to survive and complete my
studies. Some of my classmates were not so lucky. One who had taught English for
years in his country was traumatized with embarrassment when he was told that his
English proficiency was low and was required to take full-time ESL courses for a
whole year before being allowed to take graduate-level courses. Another classmate
from Africa, who had learned English as his third language, simply disappeared
from the university when he too was asked to take a year of ESL courses. A third
classmate, unable to cope with the long parting from her family, saw her studies
falter as a result.
Academic literacy has been narrowly defined as ‘‘the ability to read and write the
various texts assigned in [university]’’ (Spack, 1997). Spack was writing in the con-
text of a study that described a young Japanese student’s journey through the
American undergraduate curriculum. On the other hand, anyone who has attended
graduate school, or taught graduate courses, or supervised graduate students is well
aware that the acquisition of ‘‘academic literacy’’ that is essential for graduate
studies is more than the ability to read and write effectively. As my own experience
and that of my classmates described earlier amply indicate, graduate students not
only need to build interactive relationships with their teachers, thesis supervisors,
and peers, and develop effective research strategies and good writing skills, they also
need to adapt smoothly to the linguistic and social milieu of their host environment
and to the culture of their academic departments and institutions.
Simply stated, a knowledge of one’s chosen field of study, research skills, and
good reading and writing skills form only the foundation for the acquisition of
academic literacy. To build upon this foundation, graduate students must adapt
quickly to both the academic and social culture of their host environments, and the
personalities and demands of their teachers, academic advisors, and classmates.
Graduate students need to acquire advanced academic literacy, and this acquisition
only comes, whether these students like it or not, along with complex and often
confusing baggage.
In this paper, I will first summarize the more relevant research that has been con-
ducted so far into the issues that concern academic literacy and nonnative speaker
(NNS) graduate students. After evaluating these studies and pointing out what they
reveal, I will indicate the areas that need further study and argue for the need to give
60 G. Braine / Journal of English for Academic Purposes 1 (2002) 59–68

voice to current and former NNS graduate students themselves so that they can
express first-hand how they acquired academic literacy.
1. Research on academic literacy and NNS students
The earliest attempts to determine academic literacy were the surveys of under-
graduate academic tasks, a popular form of applied linguistics research for decades
(see Bridgeman & Carlson, 1984; Johns, 1981; Kroll, 1979; for instance). Later,
Horowitz (1986) and Braine (1989) analyzed course syllabi and writing assignments
to obtain a better grasp of undergraduates’ writing needs. Research also focused on
teachers’ evaluations of students’ writing and their judgments of the frequency and
seriousness of the students’ writing problems (see, for instance, Bridgeman & Carl-
son, 1984; Johns, 1981; Vann, Meyer, & Lorenz, 1984).
1.1. Survey research
At the graduate level, three surveys that have left a lasting impression are those of
Canseco and Byrd (1989), Casanave and Hubbard (1992), and Jenkins, Jordan, and
Weiland (1993). Canseco and Byrd (1989) conducted the pioneering survey of writ-
ing tasks assigned to graduate students, focusing on business administration courses
at a university in the US south. They analyzed 55 course syllabi from 48 graduate
courses and determined that seven formats (examinations, problems and assign-
ments, projects, papers, case studies, reports, and what they termed ‘‘miscellaneous’’
assignments) were assigned in these courses. Casanave and Hubbard (1992) surveyed
teachers at Stanford University on the writing they assigned to doctoral students, on
how they evaluated students’ writing, and on their perceptions of the students’
writing problems. Responses were received from 85 teachers in the humanities and
social sciences (HSS) and science and technology (ST). Jenkins et al. (1993) cast a
wider net, surveying engineering teachers at six US universities that enrolled large
numbers of NNS graduate students. Their objectives were to determine the prevail-
ing practices in writing in graduate engineering programs and to explore the atti-
tudes of engineering faculty members about writing skills needed within the
graduate programs and beyond. They received 176 usable responses to their
questionnaire.
1.2. Case studies
As researchers in applied linguistics began to acknowledge that qualitative
research would provide more comprehensive data than surveys and textual analysis,
case studies became more prevalent in the research on academic literacy. Four of the
better known case studies are summarized here.
Belcher (1994) studied two graduate students from China and one from Korea
majoring in Chinese literature, applied mathematics, and human nutrition, respec-
tively. The objective of the study, which was conducted at a major US university,
G. Braine / Journal of English for Academic Purposes 1 (2002) 59–68 61

was to examine the relationship between these students and their academic advisors
and how the students functioned as members of their disciplinary communities.
Over a 10-week academic quarter, Belcher met with the students during a 2-h weekly
session of a dissertation writing class in which the students were enrolled, read their
dissertation installments weekly, and discussed their writing as well the advisors’
responses to the writings with the students. She also met with the advisors in the
middle of the term for loosely structured interviews and met them again 1 year after
the dissertation writing class had ended.
Schneider and Fujishima (1995) focused on a student from Taiwan who was
enrolled at a graduate institution on the West Coast of the US. They examined the
development of both spoken and written English of the subject over a period of four
semesters, collecting both textual and anecdotal data from the student’s writing
samples, journal entries, TOEFL scores, course grades, his English teachers, his
subject area teachers, and the student himself. Due to low TOEFL scores, the sub-
ject’s admission to a program in international Public Administration had been con-
ditional and he was required to take 16-weeks of full-time English courses before
commencing studies in his major.
Dong (1996) studied three Chinese students majoring in biochemistry, genetics,
and ecology at a US institution in the south. The objective of her study was to
determine how native-speaker advisors initiated non-native speaker students to their
respective disciplines through explicit and implicit instructions in knowledge trans-
formation skills—citation norms, citation functions, and dissertation writing for-
mats. During a 6-month period, Dong observed the advisors and the students as the
latter wrote the first chapter of their dissertation, collected textual data (such as
drafts of the dissertations, published and submitted journal articles, and style
manuals), conducted background interviews with the advisors and the students. She
observed two writing conferences and two lab meetings between the advisors and the
students.
Riazi (1997) used questionnaires, interviews, textual analysis, and process logs to
study four Iranian doctoral students in their second year of residency at a Canadian
university. His objective was to determine how these students acquired academic
literacy appropriate to their chosen disciplines. The study was conducted over 5
months as the subjects, all education majors, prepared for and performed writing
tasks assigned in their graduate seminar courses.
Riazi did not attend the seminars nor did he meet with teachers and advisors in
the course of the study.
1.3. Interviews
Gosden (1996) investigated how Japanese doctoral students wrote research articles
in English, handled translations from Japanese to English, and revised their articles
in response to external critiques by interviewing 16 doctoral students majoring in
physics, chemistry, and cell biology at a Japanese university. At the time of the
study, the students were attending an academic writing class taught by Gosden and
were writing and revising their first research article in English.

2. Evaluation of the earlier research
First, the surveys. Although they provide useful information on certain aspects of
advanced academic literacy expected of NNS graduate students, surveys never-
theless have clear shortcomings: they tend to impose preconceived classifications of
academic tasks, or to focus only on narrow aspects of the academic milieu (such as
writing tasks or teachers’ viewpoints), or to ignore the contexts in which the tasks
are assigned and carried out. In fact, Jenkins et al. (1993) explicitly refer to the
shortcomings of survey research. Casanave and Hubbard (1992), claiming that sur-
veys alone cannot provide ‘‘all the information about NNS graduate students aca-
demic needs and problems’’ (p. 45), recommend the use of in-depth case studies of
graduate students and their teachers through the use of interviews, observations,
and the analysis of course syllabi.
To a large extent, these shortcomings were overcome in the case studies that
followed. The researchers, who as English instructors had direct contact with the
student subjects (as in the case of Beicher, 1994, and Schneider & Fujishima, 1995),
or shared cultural and linguistic background with the subjects (as in the cases Dong,
1996, and Riazi, 1997), gained valuable insights into the lives of NNS graduate
students as they navigated the complex and sometimes frustrating world of the
academy. Nevertheless, most case studies focused only on a brief period in a stu-
dent’s academic life—such as 10-weeks or 5-months—and, except Schneider and
Fujishima’s (1995) study, did not obtain data from multiple sources. Academic lit-
eracy is generally acquired over an extended period of time in a complex, dynamic
manner, and data from multiple sources—graduate teachers, advisors, peers, journal
entries, and prescribed and reference texts as well as written assignments—is needed
before a complete picture can be drawn.
In addition, as far as academic literacy is concerned, a fundamental shortcoming
of most of these studies is their focus on writing tasks alone. Admittedly, this was
the stated aim of most studies (Canseco & Byrd, 1989; Casanave & Hubbard, 1992;
Dong, 1997; Gosden, 1996; Jenkins, Jordan, & Weiland, 1993; Riazi, 1997). As I
have stated previously in this paper, academic literacy is much more than the ability
to read and write, and as I argue later, data has to be obtained from multiple sources
for a more comprehensive understanding of the process by which academic literacy
is acquired.
3. What the research reveals
Despite these limitations, these surveys and case studies do provide useful infor-
mation on NNS graduate students and their academic needs. From Canseco and
Byrd (1989), we learn that writing is a major component of graduate business cour-
ses, and that it plays a key role in testing. Writing assignments in these courses
contained detailed, highly structured instructions, indicating that course instructors
carefully controlled the assignments. Nevertheless, students needed to interpret the
assignments in order to better understand the instructors’ expectations. Casanave

and Hubbard (1992) found that teachers of graduate courses in the humanities,
social sciences, science, and technology consider global features of writing (such as
the quality of content and the development of ideas) to be more important than
local features. Teachers in the humanities and social sciences rated ‘‘appropriateness
of vocabulary use’’ as the main problem in the writing of NNS graduate students.
Jenkins et al. (1993), who surveyed engineering teachers, found that the teachers
usually evaluated their NNS and NS students’ writing by the same standards. Fur-
ther, surface level errors such as in grammar and vocabulary were evaluated leni-
ently. They also revealed that teachers expected a high standard of writing from
their students, and ended up writing about 25% of the material in their students’
theses.
Belcher (1994) revealed that thesis advisors and advisees may have distinct notions
of culture that could be irreconcilable, that some students may be prone to display
their self-assumed brilliance as scholars as opposed to fulfilling the instructions of
their advisors, and that lengthy written criticisms of students’ writing by advisors
may not help the writers. Most importantly, Belcher found that, as far as relation-
ships between advisors and advisees are concerned, dialogic was preferable to hier-
archical relationships. A student becomes more receptive to an advisor when the
latter assumes a ‘‘coworker and a colearner’’ (p. 32) role.
Schneider and Fujishima (1995), who obtained data from multiple sources in their
study of a Taiwanese student, analyzed their data according to three categories: the
student’s English proficiency, his ‘‘sociolinguistic competence and motivation for
studying’’ (p. 8), and his learning strategies. Schneider and Fujishima found that a
student’s inability to enhance his/her proficiency in English could be detrimental to
graduate study. Further, a grasp of social graces and social realties, and an inte-
grative motivation, instead of a purely utilitarian or pragmatic one, may be essential
for students to succeed at the graduate level. Furthermore, depending on behavioral
strategies (such as behaving like a model student, pretending to understand what
was going on in class, planning carefully before writing, and taking time to write)
would not compensate for a student’s low proficiency in English, inability to
regroup and show flexibility when confronted with negative feedback, and inability
to use effective learning strategies.
Dong (1996), who studied three Chinese students, noted the importance of a
hands-on approach by the advisor on the students’ research and writing, such as in
providing careful guidance in the selection of a research topic and help with writing
the thesis. This was more effective than ‘‘probing in the dark and learning from
mistakes,’’ which students resorted to without adequate guidance from supervisors.
Dong discovered few conflicts between the students’ L1 and the acquisition of aca-
demic literacy in English, and found the major problematic area for students to be
the ‘‘lack of membership and social contact’’ (p. 453) with their chosen academic
discourse communities.
Riazi (1997), who studied Iranian students in Canada, concluded that graduate
students interpret writing tasks in terms of their personal, educational, and career
perspectives. The writers’ attempts to balance their own interpretations with their
understanding of audience expectations affected the form, substance, and style of the

written product. Learning through writing, the students became better organized
and more logical, reasonable, and communicative, better able to conceptualize and
understand the topics they were writing on, and able to master new terminology of
their disciplines and to apply them in their writing.
Gosden’s (1996) interviews with Japanese doctoral students revealed that none of
the students had been formally taught academic writing in English, and, probably as
a result, the overwhelming majority of them wrote drafts or outlines of their papers
in Japanese before translating them into English. Most students viewed revision as
simple editing for surface level errors and did not think of their audience as they
wrote. The transfer of information appeared to be vertical, from the students to
their Japanese native speaker supervisors only.
To sum up, the research reveals that writing plays a vital role in graduate studies
and that teachers of graduate courses generally consider surface-level errors to be
less important than global errors in their students’ writing. The research also reveals
that a sound relationship between the advisor and advisee is essential to the latter’s
success, and that, in the case of NNS graduate students, hands-on help by the
supervisor from the conception of a research project to the writing of the thesis is the
most effective. In fact, what is needed is a collaborative relationship between the
advisor and advisee. Further, in order to succeed in graduate studies, students not
only need a high proficiency in English and the ability to use appropriate learning
strategies, but also sound social skills. NNS graduate students may need explicit
instruction in academic writing, although they appear to become more accomplished
writers as they proceed through their course work, research, and thesis writing.
4. Where do we go from here?
As a NNS speaker who has traversed the path of a graduate student, what I find
lacking in the research are the authentic voices of NNS graduate students. Dong
(1996) and Riazi (1997), themselves NNS, no doubt brought their experiences and
insights as graduate students to their research. But, bound by the requirements and
limitations placed on dissertation writing and writing for publication, they have
been unable to refer explicitly to their own experiences while they reported on other
NNS graduate students. Nevertheless, NNS scholars in applied linguistics are
beginning to find their own voice (the establishment of the Nonnative Speakers of
English Caucus in TESOL and the publication in 1999 of my anthology Non-native
educators in English language teaching are two examples I can think of) and they
need to add their voice to the issues concerning academic literacy. In fact, the
chapters by Ulla Connor (1999) and Xiaoming Li (1999) in Non-native educators in
English language teaching are two instances where we hear the voice of NNS aca-
demics reflecting upon their initiation to the discourse communities of their dis-
ciplines. Xiaoming Li’s chapter is particularly relevant because she not only
discusses the cross cultural issues of learning to write in English as an older graduate
student, but also her relationships with mentors such as Don Murray and Thomas
Newkirk. Reflections an multiliterate lives, edited by Diane Belcher and Ulla Connor

(2001), also contains some narrations by NNS scholars on how they acquired aca-
demic discourse as graduate students in the US.
While these reflections provide much insight into the acquisition of academic dis-
course, descriptions of relationships with academic advisors, as narrated in the first
person, are rare. The research discussed earlier has shown the importance of the
advisor–advisee relationship in the acquisition of academic literacy. On most occa-
sions, these relationships may proceed smoothly and productively. However, the
large percentage of ‘‘all but dissertation’’ (ABD) students and drop-outs from doc-
toral studies in the US could at least partially be attributed to relationships that
failed. However, for former graduate students, these relationships could be too sen-
sitive or painful to describe or reflect on. On occasion, the power of a single advisor
to decide one’s fate could become an emotionally harrowing experience for a stu-
dent. I am aware of one advisor who delayed signing on a dissertation till his NNS
advisee completed his assigned work on a dictionary that the advisor was compiling.
In frustration, the student threatened to sue the university and this finally paved the
way for his graduation. In my case, of the two advisors who co-chaired my dis-
sertation committee, one took a hands-off approach from the start. It was the gen-
erous help of the other advisor that carried me through. In addition to the lack of
authentic voices on the acquisition of academic literacy, I find the earlier research
wanting in another respect As an academic based in Asia, I am aware of the thou-
sands of NNS graduate students who pursue their Masters and doctoral studies in
the English medium at universities in Hong Kong, Singapore, and other Asian
countries. The findings of the earlier studies (except for that of Gosden, 1996, which
was conducted in Japan) may not be relevant to Asia because, for the most part,
they were conducted at North American universities where non-native speaker stu-
dents are from heterogeneous language backgrounds and are compelled to use
English for communication with their teachers, advisors, and peers, and live and
conduct research in environments where English is the main language of communi-
cation. In contrast, NNS graduate students in Asia must operate in environments
where they are able to use their L1 for research and communication with their tea-
chers and peers, and yet must read and write in English. At present, I am not aware
of triangulated studies focusing on these students.
Whether conducted in Asia, North America, or elsewhere, research on the acqui-
sition of academic literacy by graduate students must be in the form of case studies.
Case studies provide rich information about learners, about the strategies they use
to communicate and learn, how their own personalities, attitudes, and goals interact
with the learning environment, and the nature of their linguistic growth. Case stud-
ies are also descriptive, dynamic, and rely upon naturally occurring data, and are
therefore the most appropriate for studying the acquisition of academic literacy. The
subject students themselves could provide the most important data, such as their
sociocultural and educational backgrounds, previous educational experiences, lan-
guage learning histories and strategies, and research experience. Data could also be
collected through interviews with teachers and thesis advisors, observations of lec-
tures, seminars, and students’ oral presentations, observations of student–teacher
interactions during lectures and seminars, observations of interactions between

students and thesis supervisors, textual analysis of selected text and reference books
used by the students, and the textual analysis of papers and theses written by the
students and the feedback given by their supervisors.
Consider the case of graduate students from China enrolled in Hong Kong uni-
versities for degrees awarded in English. If we are to study the acquisition of aca-
demic literacy by these students, the most appropriate research questions would be
as follows: What are the linguistic, educational, and cultural backgrounds of grad-
uate students from China studying in Hong Kong? What are the reading and writing
tasks required in graduate programs in Hong Kong? How effectively do these stu-
dents perform these tasks? What characteristics of the students’ background help or
hinder them from adapting to Hong Kong’s academic environment in general and
the specific academic departments in particular? The research methodology could
consist of interviews with students, interviews with teachers and thesis advisors,
analysis of course outlines, writing assignments, and text/reference books, observa-
tions of lectures, seminars, and student–teacher/advisor meetings, and the analysis
of students’ writing. Only carefully planned studies providing data from multiple
sources will give us the information we need for a clearer understanding of how
NNS graduate students acquire academic literacy.
References
Belcher, D. (1994). The apprenticeship approach to advanced academic literacy graduate students and
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Braine, G. (1989). Writing in science and technology: an analysis of assignments from ten undergraduate
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