A Guide to Supervising Non-native English Writers of Theses and Dissertations

Book excerpt: Focused on the writing process, A Guide to Supervising Non-native English Writers of Theses and Dissertations presents approaches that can be employed by supervisors to help address the writing issues or difficulties that may emerge during the provisional and confirmation phases of the thesis/dissertation journey. Pre-writing advice and post-writing feedback that can be given to students are explained and illustrated. A growing number of students who are non-native speakers of English are enrolled in Masters and PhD programmes at universities across the world where English is the language of communication. These students often encounter difficulties when writing a thesis or dissertation in English – primarily, understanding the requirements and expectations of the new academic context and the conventions of academic writing. Designed for easy use by supervisors, this concise guide focuses specifically on the relationship between reading for and preparing to write the various part-genres or chapters; the creation of argument; making and evaluating claims, judgements and conclusions; writing coherent and cohesive text; meeting the generic and discipline-specific writing conventions; designing conference abstracts and PowerPoint presentations; and writing journal articles.