CRITICAL READING 8

CRITICAL READING OF CHINESE EFL UNDERGRADUATES’ ACADEMIC WRITING: RHETORICAL DIFFICULTIES AND SUGGESTIONS

Xiaoyun Bian

Xiaohong Wang

Published by Indonesian Journal of Applied Linguistics

Vol. 6 No. 1, July 2016, pp. 20-29

Academic writing become a popular research field to be investigated recently. it happened because academic writing is the requirement subject should be mastered by advanced learner. In the process of learning academic writing, both teacher  and student found some difficulties. Based on that problem, many research aim to reveal what the difficulties are.

One of the newest research was conducted by Bian and Wang. Their research aimed to investigate rhetorical difficulties faced by Chinese EFL undergraduate academic writer and suggestion from the supervisors. The difficulty of this study was categorized into two: Process-related difficulties (during the process ) and product-related difficulties (error find in final written product).

They use qualitative design to dig in-depth the information about its difficulties. Thus, interview and documentation were the technique of collecting data used to get supervisors and students’ perspective and comments draft. The participant of the study are senior students and their thesis supervisors from an English Studies Department at a university in Beijing, China.

The finding of this study divided into three parts.  1) finding from supervisors’perspective in process-related difficulties were limiting the topic, creating effective paragraphs, creating a logical sequence of ideas, and appropriately using coherence devices, focusing on thesis topic. While in the product-related difficulties, two supervisors perceived that their students’ process-related difficulties persisted, then one supervisor perceived that final thesis draft was not problematic rhetorically. 2) finding from students’ perspective in process-related difficulties were remaining on the topic, developing effective paragraphs, sequencing ideas. While in the product-related difficulties were broaden thesis topic, irrelevant not effective paragraph, full of empty word. 3) finding from supervisor’ comment draft in process-related difficulties were using appropriate cohesion and coherence device. Furthermore, related to the suggestion,  the supervisors and students in this study all referred to teacher-student communication when asked to provide suggestions for dealing with rhetorical difficulties.

From the finding above, we can learn that writing academic work (thesis) is challenging to do. There are many step that should be mastered by the student  and the supervisors in teaching learning process. We should pay more attention in the topic of the thesis. The supervisor should know well what topic of student thesis to build the theory supported the topic.  The student should be aware in constructing appropriate paragraph related to the topic. and the student also have to be an active person to. 

furthermore, to minimize the error of thesis final draft, between student and supervisor should have good communication discussion. This is in with Wang and Yang (2012)’s study indicated that, to build good supervisor-student communication, students have to make good preparation before meetings with supervisors, actively negotiating with their supervisors, and take a positive attitude towards supervisor-student negotiation