Thesis and Dissertation Writing in a Second Language: a handbook for Supervisors

parties and with agreements as to timeframes and schedules being made
orally and with little explicit negotiation of expectations of mutual responsi-
bilities. The second-language student may come from an educational setting
in which such informal relationships are most unusual and quite disconcert-
ing. Uncertainty over the levels of formality in face-to-face interactions is
often mentioned by second-language international students. The ‘rules’ gov-
erning these are often not easily discernible to outsiders. In many western,
anglophone university settings, students and supervisors are regularly on

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Working with second-language speakers of English
first-name terms which may, as Myles and Cheng (2003) point out, be unset-
tling for students used to much more formal, distant relationships between
student and professor. They may also mistake informality for friendship and
not be aware of invisible boundaries circumscribing the relationship. An
Indian student studying in Canada commented:
Culture is different. We respect teachers a lot in my culture ... at first I
felt so confused. I just don’t feel good to call them David or ... I don’t feel
good to call them by their first names ... . You need to think every time
which term I need to call them.
(cited in Myles and Cheng 2003: 253)
It may be that the student comes from a different ‘politeness system’ – one
that relies more on demonstrating deference to a socially defined ‘superior’,
whereas the supervisor, although perhaps only superficially so, is ambivalent
towards such a system and wishes to appear more egalitarian (Cargill 1998).
The issue of the use of the first name versus the academic title may be a sur-
face manifestation of a more fundamental mismatch in communication styles,
to which the supervisor needs to be sensitive. In cross-linguistic and cross-
cultural supervisory conversations, supervisors should, for example, be aware
that pauses may have different meaning. In English, a longish pause may
indicate that the other partner (the student) may now introduce a new topic.
The student may, however, be from a culture in which the person with higher
social status has the right to introduce the new topic so the student’s silence
may be interpreted as the student having nothing to say, while the student is
in fact waiting for the supervisor to speak. If this is a persistent pattern, the
supervisor may be tempted to ‘fill in the gaps’ and the student may come to
be seen as linguistically less able than they may in fact be. For instance, Mei’s
perception of this mismatch of communication patterns was that her supervi-
sor expected that she ‘interrupt all the time and not worry about being rude.
He wanted me to be more like the Australian students’ (Aspland 1999: 31).
As Kiley (1998) points out, differing expectations may affect students’
ability to approach their supervisor. Indonesian postgraduate students in
Australia, for example, may believe that it is the supervisor who needs to take
the initiative in calling a meeting, whereas Australian supervisors often feel
that it is up to the student to contact the supervisor if they have a problem
and will assume that if they don’t hear from the student then all is going well.
She quotes ‘Watie’, an Indonesian student who commented: ‘A supervisor
should be understanding about the culture. Like here, if you don’t ask any-
thing then it means that everything is OK, but in Indonesia it means that
everything is wrong’ (Kiley 1998: 197).
Dong (1998: 379) identified a similar potential for a mismatch in expecta-
tions among the second-language graduate students she surveyed:

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Working with second-language speakers of English
31
‘if he [my advisor] can read and correct or even rephrase the whole thing,
I will learn how the same thing could have been communicated in a
rather effective manner’ (Urdu speaker).
‘I want my advisor to provide me with the newest research development
and materials concerning my topics’ (Korean speaker).
‘just be more interested [in what I am doing]’ (German speaker).
‘[my advisor] make me aware of the requirements of the school’ (Tamil
speaker).
Similarly, in a laboratory situation, simply asking ‘do you understand the
problem?’ may elicit ‘yes’ for an answer from second-language students expe-
riencing difficulty with an experiment, but may be masking a lack of
confidence or a feeling that asking for help is an expression of failure.
Supervisors need to observe the student closely and to provide more explicit
guidance and direction as well as trying to develop a relationship in which
the student will feel more comfortable expressing uncertainty. Directing the
student to other more established students in the laboratory may also help the
student build support networks (Frost 1999: 106).
In addition, students may have good written academic English skills but be
less fluent in face-to-face oral communication or more colloquial English.
Myles and Cheng (2003) cite the example of an international second-language
student who felt her supervisor was critical of her English ability because she
struggled with the more colloquial language needed to draft a questionnaire.
Students with high entry-level test scores may still experience major difficul-
ties with everyday interactions, both socially and academically, as well as with
intercultural adjustment (Dong 1997). Similarly, students may also have diffi-
culty communicating about emotional or personal matters directly affecting
their study as they may not have the resources in English to express feelings
that are tied to their first language or they may feel uncomfortable talking to
someone from a different cultural background and/or gender (Bradley 2000).
Yuriko Nagata, a Japanese woman who completed graduate studies in the US
and Australia, commented on her early experience of studying in another lan-
guage: ‘I used to suffer from my own double perception of myself – the mature
socially functioning person in my native language and the incompetent non-
communicator in the target language’ (Nagata 1999: 18).
An Australian study (Geake and Maingard 1999) found that whereas for
supervisors, language- and writing-related problems were seen as highly sig-
nificant, the second-language students believed that, having been admitted
to the university, their language was appropriate for academic study.
Supervisors should also be aware that studies of advanced language learners in
academic settings consistently indicate that scientific vocabulary acquisition
remains a difficulty for second-language speakers, even those who are rela-
tively highly proficient in English (Banerjee 2003; Shaw 1991). Students

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Working with second-language speakers of English
may be familiar with terms in a written context but may also be unfamiliar
with these terms in spoken English (i.e. when pronounced) and may not
immediately understand what the supervisor is referring to. Politeness strate-
gies may impinge on the students’ ability to ask for clarification as they may
not wish to appear not to know the meaning of a term.
Supervisors should be aware that the use of indirect suggestions (e.g. ‘per-
haps you might want to look at X’: a politeness strategy that suggests equality)
may create the impression that the student has the option not to follow up on
the suggestion when, in fact, the existence of the power relationship means that
the student does not have an option. Similarly, students, when making sugges-
tions, may be so tentative (not wanting to appear lacking in deference) that they
may run the risk of appearing to lack drive and initiative (Cargill 1998).
Second-language students may expect their supervisors to demonstrate a
sensitivity to cultural diversity. Myles and Cheng cite a Taiwanese student
studying in Canada who was critical of what she perceived to be a professor’s
limited awareness:
Like if you want to teach, you need to know your students, right. And
nowadays your students come from all over the world so should all the
content they teach. [...] Do they point out their cultural bias or do they
point out their conceptual baggage? [...] Like one Prof., it’s a joke among
international students here and he says, ‘I went to the conference. We
have planners from all over the world, Los Angeles, Vancouver, Toronto,
Chicago, New York.’ Actually all the cities he mentioned are U.S. and
Canada. That’s all over the world to them already.
(Myles and Cheng 2003: 252)