Working with second-language
speakers of English
23
Second-language research students
in the era of globalization
The issue of who second-language English-speaking students are is a vexed
one linguistically, educationally and politically. We acknowledge that being
a
speaker of English as a second, third or fourth language is very much a fea-
ture of the globalized reality of the twenty-first century and that, for many,
the dominance of English at the perceived expense of other languages is not
unproblematic.
In 1999, Graddol estimated that the overall number of native speakers of
English as a percentage of the world’s population was declining. Depending on
the criteria used to define non-nativeness, native
English speakers may already
constitute a minority. Moreover, as Swales (2004) points out, the internation-
alization and the concomitant Anglicization of the research world have
encouraged the dominance of English as the international language of
research. The clear divisions of say 20 or 30 years ago, characterized by acade-
mics who were predominantly English first-language
speakers supervising the
research of growing numbers of second-language students, have given way to
today’s more complex picture. Many supervisors would themselves be from a
non-English-speaking background and would be publishing and communicat-
ing in English via conferences, journals and books. Moreover, there are
thousands of second-language graduate students engaged in master’s
and doc-
toral studies in countries such as Hong Kong, Singapore and in other parts of
Asia and indeed in Africa, where English is essential for reading and writing
but not necessarily used in daily communication with supervisors and col-
leagues (Braine 2002). Rather than a dichotomy between first- and
second-language speakers of English, it may be more useful,
Swales suggests,
to think of academic English proficiency as a continuum. At one pole are
broadly English proficient (BEP) scholars and researchers who are either first-
or second-language speakers of English and, if second-language speakers, prac-
tically academically bilingual within their disciplinary field, and, at the other
pole, those scholars who are more narrowly English proficient (NEP). NEP
researchers are second-language speakers who may be commencing advanced
study in an anglophone country and may have
only a reading knowledge of
academic English and weaker oral or written abilities. They are often, but not
always, what Swales refers to as junior researchers: those starting out on their
academic or other careers including PhD candidates, postdoctoral scholars and
new researchers, while senior researchers are academics well established in the
anglophone
world of research, writing and publication.
We have tried to capture these interrelationships in a simple matrix (see
Figure 2.1). It is only the BEP senior researcher who requires little or no assis-
tance with successful research communication. Junior researchers, whether
first- or second-language speakers, can all benefit from more explicit research
communication induction, while the NEP senior researcher may still be
24
Working with second-language speakers of English
struggling with publication and communication in English. The growing
number of journal articles and handbooks on the topic of assisting academics
with writing for publication bear testimony to the notion of academic writ-
ing development as being on a continuum (e.g. Grant and Knowles 2000; Lee
and Boud 2003; Morss and Murray 2001; Murray 2004).
The groups that our book is primarily designed to assist are the junior
researchers who fall into the NEP category and those who are supervising
their dissertation writing. To quote Swales again:
NEP individuals are typically those who are identified as needing further
EAP [English for Academic Purposes] help when they undertake
Anglophone or largely Anglophone advanced degrees [...].
These groups
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