Doctoral Student Reading and Writing: Making Our Processes Visible

Melanie Doyle, Chantelle Caissie — Sun, 21 Jan 2024 00:00:00 -0800

Reading and writing are core components of what it means to be a doctoral student. Although reading and writing are known to be discursive, socialized practices, doctoral programs often focus on the output of these practices and position reading and writing as generic, universal skills. Through collaborative self-study, we sought to examine our reading and writing processes and see what we could learn as doctoral students by making these processes visible. From our analysis, we discovered that understanding our reading and writing processes enabled us to use effective reading and writing strategies; revealed the benefits of blurring personal-professional boundaries; and contributed to shaping our identity as emerging scholars. We conclude that supporting doctoral students to examine their personalized reading and writing processes, opposed to solely focusing on output, can support them to look inward, locate meaning within themselves, and recognize the multiplicity in what it means to read and write at the doctoral level.

Exploring the Writing Process of Multilingual Postsecondary Students

Tessa E. Troughton — Sun, 21 Jan 2024 00:00:00 -0800

With an increasingly multilingual population made up of domestic and international students at Canadian universities, there is a knowledge gap about the writing practices of multilingual students and the needs of multilingual academic writers. In order to address this knowledge gap, more research is required about the writing process of multilingual postsecondary students in Canada. The purpose of this study was to learn in detail about the writing process of multilingual postsecondary students in a mid-sized university in eastern Canada. A qualitative methodology consisting of semi-structured interviews was followed. A small sample size of seven participants consisted of young adults enrolled at the bachelors or graduate level who were recruited through posters on campus. The interviews were transcribed, coded holistically, and thematically analyzed using software. Themes reveal the writing process, prescriptive instruction and adherence to rules, planning prior to writing, prior knowledge of academic writing, and experience versus inexperience in writing. The meta-themes were continua of agency/following instructions, experience/inexperience, and explicit teaching/finding their own methods Secondary findings highlight the impact of instructor feedback on learner attitudes and English language learners’ need for extra time to develop their academic English. Additional findings show that multilingual postsecondary students use translanguaging as a strategic tool when composing in English. These findings offer insights into the translingual writing process of multilingual postsecondary students.

Discourse and Writing/Rédactologie

Doctoral Student Reading and Writing: Making Our Processes Visible

Exploring the Writing Process of Multilingual Postsecondary Students