Perceptions of International Multilingual Students on Essayist Literacy: The Case of Malaysian English-Medium Universities

• In Event: How Do Marginalized and Minoritized Students Navigate the Writingworld's Doxa?

Abstract

Over the recent decades, there has been an ever-increasing recognition of feedback provision and academic writing including an interest in how learners negotiate the context within which they learn to write (Bitchener, 2018; Kalan, 2021). Among various feedbacks, teacher-student and peer feedback types gained considerable attention alongside those addressing errors and explicit linguistic inappropriate forms. This paper primarily examines students' perceptions of organic feedback, which includes a broader range of dialogical, casual, and social interactions of multilingual students within the context of academic socialization. A case study method revealed that students have varied perceptions about organic feedback and its impact on their academic writing skills, including the aspects of interpersonal relations, dialogical interactions, and negotiating for meaning within social contexts. The findings suggest that the social context relevant to students’ writing includes but extends beyond the formal feedback provision and it does embrace social spaces/ fields (Bourdieu, 2000) and the relations among the humans in a field are organized by certain doxa, or rules that regulate social fields such as the Writingworld. In such a context the written texts are regarded as an organic outgrowth of complex linguistic and cultural repertoires (Kalan, 2021). Studies on academic writing (Belcher, 1994; Belcher & Hirvela, 2005; Bitchener, Basturkmen & East, 2010; Casanave, 2010; Fujioka, 2008; Hirvela & Yi, 2008; Li & Flowerdew, 2008; Ohashi, Ohashi, & Paltridge, 2008; Paltridge, 2002, Ellis, 2009, Storch & Bitchener 2016) tend to focus more on academic writing processes and advisor-advisee and formal interactions than writing situated in classroom frameworks, which is the center of the current research. Listening, sympathy, dialogic learning, and confirmation are considered communication assets rather than weaknesses in such a rhetorical transaction (Kalan 2021). The present study also aims to add a Canadian perspective to the growing body of research on the efficacy of organic feedback on academic writing. 

Key words: Organic feedback, multilingual writer, academic writing, academic socialization, formal feedback







Selected References

Bitchener, J. (2018). Teacher written feedback. The TESOL encyclopedia of English language teaching, 1-7

Bitchener, J., & Storch, N. (2016). Written corrective feedback for L2 development. In Written Corrective Feedback for L2 Development. Multilingual Matters.

Bourdieu, P. (2000). Pascalian Meditations. Cambridge: Polity. (Originally published 1997)

Canagarajah, A. S. (2013). Literacy as translingual practice: Between communities and classrooms. Routledge.

Ellis, R. (2009). Corrective feedback and teacher development. L2 Journal, 1(1).

Hirvela, A., & Yi, Y. (2008). From expectations to empowerment: How a mentor and dissertation writer negotiated the intricacies of a qualitative results chapter. Learning the literacy practices of graduate school Insiders’ reflections on academic enculturation, 121-133.

Kalan, A. (2021). Sociocultural and power-relational dimensions of multilingual writing: recommendations for deindustrializing writing education. Multilingual Matters.

Kalan, A. (2021). Writing in Times of Crisis: A Theoretical Model for Understanding Genre Formation. In Rhetoric and Sociolinguistics in Times of Global Crisis (pp. 214-234). IGI Global.

Author

• Mohamadreza Jafary, McGill University
  Presenting Author