English Article Writing of Iranian Doctoral Students

Sakineh Jafari¹, Samaneh Jafari² and Reza Kafipour^3,

¹English Department, Izlamic Azad University, Zanjan, Iran

²Department of Curriculum and Instruction, Southern Illinois Univeristy, Carbondale, United States

³English Department, Shiraz University of Medical Sceinces, Shiraz, Iran

Cite this paper:
Sakineh Jafari, Samaneh Jafari and Reza Kafipour. English Article Writing of Iranian Doctoral Students. American Journal of Educational Research. 2018; 6(9):1251-1256. doi: 10.12691/education-6-9-2

Abstract

This study focused on doctoral students’ English article writing practices and the challenges they have faced in this process. For this purpose, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 Iranian PhD students from different disciplines individually. In addition, drafts of the participants' English articles were collected for data verification. The results revealed that the linguistic elements of writing in English, especially grammar, were regarded as the most problematic aspects, whereas the meta-linguistic and discourse features of the article writing as well as knowledge of technical vocabulary were not identified as problematic areas by these doctoral students. A common need which was felt by almost all of the participants was a comprehensive and explicit instruction on sentence structure and grammar in ESP courses. Although participants of this study pursued some strategies in order to respond to some challenges they faced in writing English articles, they called for greater cooperation with ESP/EAP practitioners in order to ease the process of publishing their work in English.

Keywords:
ESP English article writing explicit instruction grammar linguistic elements

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