fengmei

Analytical Summary of Phillips

Rhetorical elements analysis

In the article, Phillips (2014) found that international writers generally have problem on academic writing, which makes their academic task more difficult. The author aimed to learn “how incoming international multilingual graduate students learn to write for their fields and the resources they use to support their writing development.” Thus the author followed international student Chozin’s academic experience, recorded and analyzed the strategies he developed to improve his writing ability and English proficiency. The author covered several key concepts “strategies to deal with writing” “resourcefulness” “social support” and “exclusion”. To synthesized them together, we can have a brief summary that Chozin developed numerous strategies to deal with writing and improve English proficiency, including acquiring useful writing feedback by searching for social support and developing a network of editor. When he suffered from exclusion in group project because of low English Proficiency, instead of being depressed, he showed impressive resourcefulness to develop a topic with fully formed idea by himself, ultimately won respect from his partners and succeed.

As a result of his project, Phillips pointed out that the success of Chozin mainly depend on his own diligence and resourcefulness, and the ability of quickly developing successful strategies to overcome his writing challenges. This article was relevant to multilingual writers who are struggling on writing by encouraging them with Chozin’s own experience, to professors of international students by suggesting them to provide enough feedback opportunities to students, to researchers by offering another model for understanding the strategies to deal with writing

Key concept analysis

One of the key concepts is “exclusion”. The author didn’t give any explicit definition for “exclusion” because readers who are educated have already known the meaning. However, to explain this concept, the author recorded Chozin’s own experience of group project. Chozin is the only multilingual writer and the only person who knew nothing about the report topic “Cincinnati”, Thus his group members chose to exclude him because they thought he can contribute nothing to to project. From Chozin’s story, readers can have a better understanding of the concept.

The author also cited other research to build meaning into the concept. In the report of Leki (2001), the manifestation of being excluded was described: Ling “was not allowed to bring in her particular expertise; nor was she able to benefit from the expertise of the [Native-English-speaking] group members” and Yang “was constructed as something of a burden or a problem to be fixed”. In another case, Min “did not seem to be part of this network” (Cox, 2010). Through citing the description of these international students’ unpleasant experience of being excluded, the author explicitly showed the readers that how can exclusion be and the feeling of being excluded. These students, Ling, Yang and Min all suffered from different degree of exclusion even they were willing to do their best to contribute to the group. In addition, from citing the research of Leki(2001) and Cox(2010), the author also indicated the fact that exclusion is a general phenomenon rather than individual case among multilingual writers. Furthermore, he compared the participants’ negative reaction (Yang seems to blame herself for her weak English skills, and Min seems unconcerned with her exclusion) in these research with Chozin’s proactive behavior to manifest Chozin’s resourcefulness and leadership.

One of the unique key terms of this concept is “to be excluded from another group project.” The key term is a verb phrase with the PP modifier “from another group project”, According to the context, we can find the author use “another” here because after the bad experience of group project in last term, Chozin was required to have a group project again. Thus Chozin was worried about he might “be excluded from another group project”. To prevent from repeating the last term’s situation, he proactively took advantage of his resourcefulness and his own learning, and finally succeed. From his success, we can find the underlying reason for Chozin’s experience of being excluded: have no “marketability”, in other words, people supposed that he had nothing to contribute to the group. However, Chozin gave us a perfect example to cope with “exclusion” by his excellent performance, which need us to learn from.

Language pattern analysis

Through analyzing the the two sets of key concept in Phillips 2014, we can find that the amount of information and number of modifiers in key terms of one set is different. For the first set, the initial key term the author used to introduce the key concept is quite complex and long: “the strategies that multilingual writers employed when they encountered”, then for the same key concept, the author use “their strategic moves” and “them” which are much shorter to replace the complex one. For the second set, the author introduced her research as “my two-year, IRB-approved study on how incoming international multilingual graduate students learn to write for their fields and the resources they use to support their writing development.” After that, the author worked to simplify the key term to “qualitative approaches like the case study”, then she also used even more simplified terms like “these approaches” “the case study” and “it”.

There is another example for this writing pattern, In P76 where the author talked about “a network of editors”, the author introduced the key terms “NES students who were also studying Bahasa”, then she used shorter terms with fewer modifiers like “his editor-friends” “these editor-friends” and pronoun “they”.

We can reach a conclusion that when introducing readers with a new concept, academic writers always introduce the complexity of a concept through large amount of modifiers in order to clarify the concept clearly for the audiences. After that, in order to prevent the article to be redundant, authors need to simplify the key terms by reducing the number of modifiers and cutting the repetitious parts. In addition, they need to connect variety of key terms with each other by using these/those or using pronouns. What is interesting to me is that it is kind of a logical model for writing, which presents the complexity of a specific concept initially and then move from complex to simple by reducing and connecting key terms. To be an academic writer, it is important for us to use this pattern proficiently.

A connection across the CPP texts

When reading the article of Phillip (2014), there are many points which remind me of the ideas in de Araujo’s (2011). the author used many terms like “support network” “a network of proofreaders” “a carefully developed network of peers” to indicate the importance of having a support network. This reminded me in Araujo’s (2011), one of main adjustment issues of international students was social support and “support network” was one of the key terms used to describe social support. Phillip’s case perfectly justified de Araujo’s idea by providing example and details. The concept has some difference between the two articles, Phillip’s is limited to the support on academic writing provided by editor friends. Whereas de Araujo’s “social support” have more general meaning.

In addition, Phillip mentioned that Chozin asked Native-English-speaking (NES) students in his courses for help to get feedback on writing. (P.76), and he also cooperated with American peers when going for interview. De Araujo found that establishing relationships with Americans was an important adjustment issue. Chozin’s successful experience seemed to justify De Araujo’s point.

Finally, de Araujo (2011) reported that English language proficiency is the main factor for adjustment issues of international students. However, in Phillip’s article, Chozin said that he doesn’t care whether his group members understand his language or not and he was determined to press ahead with his learning. Chozin was impressively brave and have courage to speak out, this benefited him a lot.

Phillip’s research was a case study, thus the article provided us with a lot of details and personal experience, which can further clarify and justify de Araujo’s findings which are comparatively general and theoretical. From the combination of these two articles, we can summarize some recommendations for international students’ adjustment. First of all, it is important to search for social support actively both on daily life and academic experience, developing a study network to get feedback on writing or other assignment. Secondly, establishing network with American peers, especially cooperating with Americans to become to an insider of American life. Thirdly, certainly English proficiency can facilitate the adjustment issues and vice versa, good adjustment can promote English proficiency. But even with a low English proficiency, international students should be brave to express themselves and take first step to initiate a virtuous circle. Furthermore, it is crucial to work hard on academic research and master the knowledge in the discipline which might add one’s “marketability”.  Finally, when confront with exclusion or difficulties, international students need to develop strategies proactively, take advantage of their resourcefulness and actively display their competence.