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

Behavioural issues
Many students struggle with writing as they labour under the romantic belief
that writing is a creative and spontaneous act of inspiration: that they can write
only when the ‘muse’ descends. However, as Zerubavel (1999) persuasively
argues in his highly recommended study of successful writers, writing needs to
become a habit. It is paradoxically through writing regularly, ideally on a daily
basis, that the ‘muse’ – inspiration – comes, hence the title of his book, The
Clockwork Muse. It is most important that the second-language writer under-
stands the need to ‘write early and write often’. Text production leads to more
text production. One of the greatest obstacles to students’ writing is the little
phrase ‘writing up’ – which leads to students putting off writing until such
time as the research is perceived to be ‘done’. Your students need to see writing
as an integral part of the research process and to be encouraged to write from
early on in this process, whether it be initially through notes and reflections,
through logs and diaries or through early drafts of a literature review. For the
second-language speaker, this is vital as the skills of writing are acquired devel-
opmentally over time and language continues to develop incrementally.
Introducing students to the idea of writing as a process can be extremely
helpful. We have found Figures 3.1 and 3.2 (on pp.46 and 47) very enlight-
ening to our students as they realize the amount and extent of revision that
experienced and successful writers undertake. Figure 3.1 illustrates how early
Thesis writing in English as a second language
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studies of the processes writers go through as they write conceptualized writ-
ing as a process involving prewriting or planning, drafting, getting feedback,
revising and then editing before ‘submitting’.
More recently, research has demonstrated the even greater complexity of
the processes we engage in when writing (see Figure 3.2), highlighting the
non-linear nature of writing and the multiple iterations involved. The useful-
ness of this research for second-language thesis writers is that it helps break a
highly complex set of processes into a series of simpler stages or sub-tasks
which enable them to ‘get started’ and have a sense of accomplishment as
these smaller tasks are completed. They also become aware of the key role of
feedback and the essential role of revising and that there will be times at
which they may need to redraft (go back closer to the beginning). Extensive
drafting and feedback should also effectively reduce potential plagiarism as
the writer will be receiving feedback on a continuous basis.
Academic writing at an advanced level is therefore more than ‘just getting
ideas down on paper’ and being sure that they are in ‘good English’ (Atkinson
and Curtis 1998: 17). What student writers need to grasp is that there is a
reciprocal relationship between thinking and writing (see Figure 3.3).
Writing is an essential means of clarifying our thoughts which is why delay-
ing writing can become an obstacle to the development of understanding
and why, conversely, regular writing facilitates the development of under-
standing of a topic.
Biggs et al. (1999) point out that second-language writers may be spend-
ing proportionately too much of their time on the mechanics of writing – on
sentence, grammar and word-level features – rather than on generating mean-
ing at a higher level and then organizing it into sentences and finding the
46
Thesis writing in English as a second language
Pre-writing/
planning
Editing
Revising
Getting
feedback
Drafting
Figure 3.1 A simplified model of the writing process
Source: Atkinson and Curtis 1998

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appropriate words. The overarching themes of the writing may then be lost
and unsupported and sections of text become irrelevant even though well
written at a sentence level. They suggest encouraging students to generate
text and revise and edit it later, which may reduce blocking.
Murray (2002) recommends a very useful strategy for encouraging stu-
dents to generate text, particularly in the early stages of the PhD. She
suggests using the following set of prompts to help student write about the
context of their topic. They can be used repeatedly as the student’s focus
develops or alters:
Thesis writing in English as a second language
47
(Redrafting)
Revising
Getting
feedback
Drafting
Editing
Pre-writing/
planning
Figure 3.2 A more realistic model of the writing process
Source: Atkinson and Curtis 1998