Abstract:
This study aims to examine the strategies utilized by eleven
postgraduate students in an EFL university context in their
attempts to acquire the textual practices of their discipline.
First- and second-year MA students, one Ph.D. student as well
as individuals who had completed their MA programs in
TEFL took part in interviews in order to elicit the strategies
they used when they endeavored to write their disciplinespecific
writings, such as articles, proposals and theses. The
results revealed that the participants utilized socio-affective,
communication and resourcing strategies more than cognitive
strategies. However, they ignored metacognitive strategies,
which might be due to a lack of conscious awareness of certain
writing genres in the field. Social apprenticeship strategies
were not considered to be of great importance by participants.
Students were highly dependent on their instructors for
feedback, though without bearing any sense of collaboration
with them or their peers. The role of the explicit instruction of
metacognitive genre awareness as well as the provision of an
atmosphere of collaboration among students has been
emphasized.
Machine summary:
"1. 1 Objectives of the study and research question As Ding (2008) states, there are two approaches to initiating novice postgraduate students into their related community of practice: cognitive apprenticeship, by which she means "modeling, scaffolding, coaching, and collaboration to enhance learning in formal settings," and social apprenticeship, which refers to "socialization, interaction, and collaboration with experts, colleagues, and peers in informal settings to acquire disciplinary knowledge and experiences" (p.
As such, this study aims to identify the different types of writing strategies utilized by postgraduate students in an EFL university context to promote their academic and discipline-specific literacy competences and skills and help them become professional members of their particular discipline.
Research on the enculturation of the novice writer into the academic discourse community underscores the need to initiate newcomers to academic cultures and genre conventions, to increase their exposure to disciplinary texts, and to enhance their interaction with experts (Berkenkotter, Huckin, & Ackerman, 1988; Beaufort, 2005; Ding, 2008; Dysthe, 2002; Leki, 2003; Prior, 1998; Riazi, 1997).
In the same line of research, the present study, which follows a socio-cognitive orientation regarding writing as a practice that is constructed in the particular social context or community in which it is used, aims to investigate the specific strategies used by postgraduate students while they are engaged in producing particular discipline-specific compositions in an EFL university context."