The design and implementation of an English for Research Publication Purposes course: A corpus-based genre-analytic pedagogical intervention

Abstract

The pressure on scholars who use English as an Additional Language (EAL) to publish their research in English-medium journals has recently been extended to those postgraduate students who seek to complete their PhD programmes. However, in higher education institutions worldwide, few training courses on English for Research Publication Purposes (ERPP) are being offered in order to provide students with effective rhetorical strategies which could facilitate the integration in their disciplinary communities. In this paper we report on the design and implementation of an ERPP training course for doctoral students in the fields of Arts and Humanities, which is based on the prior compilation of a corpus of research articles selected by the participants, a genre-analysis of the texts and a critical-pragmatic approach to the teaching of the socio-cultural features that underpin the whole process of publishing one’s research. On the basis of the analysis of the responses to a post-course evaluation questionnaire we also aim to examine the participants’ perceptions of the pedagogical intervention. The results indicate that, through their active participation in the course, the students acknowledge having gained a better understanding of the socio-pragmatic context involved in the publishing process, including awareness of the predominant rhetorical structures of research articles and abstracts, the prevalent academic practices in both national and international settings, and of potential variation in communicative strategies in their specific disciplinary areas.