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.

1. Introduction

Writing is indeed a demanding task. Reference ¹ states "most writers, experienced and inexperienced alike, find writing difficult, demanding, ornery, often frustrating work". Writing has often been recognized as a demanding and troublesome aspect of academic life ². The process of writing can be described as a journey in that it is not a single, homogenous, and linear achievement. It involves taking different steps and stages to accomplish a final written product. In this process, students especially non-native speakers of English encounter many difficulties writing in academic disciplines. Previous research studies have addressed this issue using different methods and focusing on different aspects of the challenges that students face while writing academic research in English.

Early survey studies on academic literacy mainly focused on writing tasks given to graduate students. Based on ³, out of 48 graduate courses, 55 course syllabi were scrutinized and it was stated that seven types of writing tasks (examinations, problems and assignments, projects, papers, case studies, reports, and other types of writing assignments) were common in these courses. Reference ⁴ surveyed 85 graduate faculty chosen from a wide range of fields that focused on writing requirements of students in their first year of doctoral studies. They also surveyed the criteria they used to assess students’ writing and the problems that native and non-native English speaking students had in wring. Faculty members rated that compared to native students, non-native learners had more problems with surface level characters of writing. The writing problems of non-natives were in the areas of correctness of punctuation/spelling, syntax accuracy and appropriateness, as well as lexical choice. However, at the discourse level the discrepancies between writing of non-natives and natives were not so apparent. Jenkins, Reference ⁵ surveyed engineering teachers at six US universities that had a large number of non-native graduate students. The aim of this survey was to distinguish the graduate engineering programs, which were used, along with studying perceptions of engineering faculty members about writing skills needed within the graduate programs and beyond. The results indicated that writing was not an integral part of engineering graduate programs and they expected students to learn proper way of writing on their own.

Unlike above studies that used questionnaire as a means of data collection, Reference ⁶ used interview to investigate how 16 Japanese doctoral students in physics, chemistry, and cell biology managed to compose their first scientific research articles in English. The results showed that most of the students preferred translating from L1 to direct writing in L2. For half of these novice research article writers "revision is generally seen as simple mechanical editing, rather than the opportunity to continue to create meaning" (p. 117).

Reference ⁷ employed a social-cognitive approach to find out how four Iranian doctoral students at a university in Canada acquired academic literacy appropriate to their chosen disciplines. He used interview, questionnaire, written documents, and process logs as sources of data collection. The five-month investigation revealed that (a) participants' perception of the tasks assigned to them resulted in utilizing specific strategies for performing the tasks such as appeal for clarification and search for suitable format, (b) participants reinterpreted and reformulated the assigned tasks based on their character being members of their academic community, (c) participants used a variety of strategies to perform their academic tasks (cognitive strategies, meta-cognitive strategies, social strategies, and search strategies), and (d) participants tacitly gained an understanding of discourse community, second language, topic, and an understanding of form and genre while composing their academic papers.

Early studies on non-native English students’ writing practices have mostly been done in L1 settings. Recent studies have extended the issue to L2 settings. Research conducted in different L2 academic contexts ^{8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15} have addressed various aspects of non-natives' writing practices as well as the challenges they face in publishing research results in English ^{16, 17, 18, 19}. Reference ¹² investigated science journal paper writing of graduate students and faculty members at a university in Korea. Two types of questionnaires and interview were used as the main tools of data collection. The results revealed that the linguistic elements of journal papers were the most difficult area for learners. In comparison, the most dominant features of journal papers were the meta-linguistic elements like the overall structure and paragraph. In addition, faculty members and graduate students did not have an advantage composing and publishing articles in English. Reference ¹³ aimed at finding out the 11 Taiwanese science PhD students' attitudes toward publishing and learning to write for publication in English. The interview results showed that compared to native speakers, all participants, having a poor knowledge of English, experienced disadvantage when writing in English. One of the reasons that discouraged learners to learn to write in English for publications was their perception about English. They assumed that English does not have a major role in scientific research. Furthermore, lack of high self-confidence in English writing as well as their negative attitude toward a balanced power relation with their supervisors are some other influencing factors. Reference ¹⁴ investigated the attitudes and works of 10 Spanish full professors, five from physical sciences and engineering and five from the field of social sciences, regarding the challenges of research publication in English. The findings suggested that all the participants viewed English as having a great influence on their academic life. Although the participants felt at a disadvantage compared to native English speaker counterparts in terms of their limited linguistic knowledge, most of them did not feel that this prevented them from publishing their papers in English. In addition, participants expressed their sense of disadvantage as well as injustice in relation to having a great difficulty and problem in terms of spoken communication at conferences.

To further study the complexity of writing for academic purposes in L2 setting, the present study is undertaken to see how Iranian doctoral students approach writing English articles in their field of study despite receiving any formal education in this area. Exploring and analyzing the complexities and challenges these students face may help to shed more light on this issue, which is the case for many academics in many different contexts especially in Iran.

In Iran, students at the undergraduate level are presented with English for Specific Purpose (ESP) courses. There are no central mandates with respect to ESP instruction in universities. The main aim of these courses is to make students familiar with the texts and vocabularies that are prevalent in their fields of study. Because of limited classroom contact time and low proficiency level of students, students’ first language (Persian) appears to dominate as the language of instruction. In addition, teaching grammar is taken for granted since most of the ESP teachers assume that students have already developed their knowledge of grammar at high school. Due to this kind of text- and reading-centered curriculum, the general English proficiency of majority of Iranian students is low. This lack of English proficiency and no instruction in English writing (especially academic writing) poses many difficulties and challenges to Iranian graduate students who have to compose scientific journal papers in English for international publication. To understand the academic writing challenges in the context of Iran, this study explored experiences of graduate students in journal paper writing. Examination of students' drafts was also undertaken for verification and data triangulation.

2. Methods

The participants in the study were selected through convenience sampling. 15 doctoral students, 8 females and 7 males, from the fields of biotechnology, mechanic engineering, and mathematics (Table 1) studying in university of Zanjan, Iran agreed to take part in this study. As they stated they had written at least two articles in English. The rationale for selecting these students to participate in this study was that they all had the same L1 (Persian) background, all of them had a similar background in L2 education, and none of them had an experience of living in English-speaking countries. In addition, unlike previous studies, participants in this study had received L2 writing instruction neither at school nor university. Their previous English instruction at school focused on reading, vocabulary, and grammar and at university emphasis was mainly on developing technical vocabulary, translation, and reading skill.

As ²⁰ rightly noted, how writers "plan, draft, revise, review, and edit their work are generally hidden from us". In order to explore these processes, the present study has used semi-structured interview as a major source of data collection to find out what was on the participants' mind when they aimed at documenting scientific knowledge in a written form. All the participants were interviewed individually in their native language, Farsi. Each interview lasted 30 to 50 minutes. The interviews were all recorded digitally and all of the subjects were assured of anonymity. The questions of the interview were developed on the basis of relevant research ^{6, 7, 12, 14}. Also, some questions were added regarding the status and the demand of ESP education in Iran. The main aims of these questions were to recognize: (a) how participants write their research articles in English, (b) what are their main problems in writing, and (c) what are their suggestions for improving the ESP education in Iran to meet the future needs of graduate students. For data triangulation, participants' written drafts were also collected to analyze and determine the main source of difficulty in their writing.

The participants were interviewed individually. All of them were informed about the purpose of the research. Interviews, which were lasted 30 to 50 minutes, were digitally recorded and all the participants were assured of anonymity. The interviews then were transcribed and analyzed in order to gather general themes and classifications based on the participants’ statements.

3. Results

Interview results revealed that none of the participants had an experience of participating in academic writing courses or classes. This would be expected given the status of EAP instruction in Iranian universities which mainly focuses on reading and vocabulary. When they were asked how they have learnt to write article, most of them asserted that they learned to write by themselves. They reported that after reading some research articles in their own disciplines, they could surmise how to organize and write different parts of the article. For instance, one of the participants commented that: “After reading various articles in my own discipline, I gained a general understanding of the overall structure and organization of the article. For example, which part comes first and what should be included in it". As one of the students asserted "I was not familiar with the overall structure of article. To tell you the truth, I even didn't know how to write introduction section. Writing an article for the first time was like trial and error for me". She claimed that the first experience of writing her scientific article in English was so demanding that it took a lot of time to produce an initial draft. Reading a handful of research articles in their own discipline and writing their first research article helped the participants of this study to become familiar with the common rhetorical organization of academic research papers and gain general knowledge of what should normally be included in each part of the research article. As a result, their next experience of writing research papers was not as cumbersome as their first writing: "Now I'm somehow familiar with article writing. Also, it becomes easier for me to think in English when writing in English".

The results of a study by ²¹ suggested that too much dependency on L1 may hinder second language writing performance since translation inhibits the ability to obtain meaning directly through L2 writing. Moreover, ²² found that her subjects, in writing English research papers initially relied on translation strategy; however, they abandoned this kind of practice since they all found it demanding and time-consuming. The interview results of this study confirms the findings of [21 and 22]. Most of the participants in this study reported that in their first experience of writing academic English research article they tried to translate their Farsi article into English. However, translation made writing an English version of the article doubly difficult: "Translating my article from Farsi into English was very cumbersome. When I read my translation, I realized that most of the sentences lost their real meanings. It was not what I wanted to say". This undesirable experience led most of them – with one exception – to write directly in English from the beginning. One of the participants described her strategy in this way: "I create the Farsi meaning in my mind, not the Farsi sentence, then I write it in English". In addition, another participant reported that to make English writing easier and simpler, he tried to write short and manageable sentences: "When I read English research articles in my own discipline, I find long and complex sentences difficult to understand. Due to my limited linguistic knowledge, when I myself write I use shorter and simpler sentences. It also makes writing in English easier for me. But if I want to write the same idea in Farsi I may use longer and more complex sentence".

Participants in this study were also asked to describe the various stages that they passed through in creating their first draft. Except two participants who started with writing abstract, all of the participants acclaimed that they start by writing the introduction section. They said that they write abstract of their article at the end, after completing the whole article. Moreover, most of them remarked that writing the result section was the easiest and writing the discussion and then introduction section the most difficult part for them. The following statement exemplifies the interviewees' comments: "In result section, we use some fixed and formulaic sentences. But in discussion section we should write novel sentences and in introduction we should convince our readers of the significance of the study. Writing these sections in English is unduly difficult since it requires finding and writing the right word in a grammatically correct sentence". Similar finding was also reported by ¹⁴. Participants in their study unanimously felt that the introduction section was the most difficult section since, as it was commented by one of the participants, it involves the complex rhetorical work of “selling the research” (p. 24). Additionally, as it was reported by ^{23, 24}, ⁶ informants in their studies used smart expressions and idioms and tried to write with others' words. Lifting useful sentences and expressions from published native speaker research articles was one of the strategies that the majority of non-natives utilized in writing their research articles. This was the case for Iranian doctoral students in this study as well. They tried to use some phrases and patterns from published research articles in their own writing. They also used Google translate, Persian-English dictionary, and technical dictionary of their own field as the main resources when writing English research articles.

As reported by all of the doctoral students in this study, their limited knowledge of grammar and sentence structure presented a serious challenge for them in writing their articles in English. Use of correct voice, especially passive, tenses, articles, prepositions, nouns and adjectives, choice of common verbs as well as general everyday vocabulary created a great problem for them (Table 2 summarizes the responses given by participants). This confirms the results of ¹² in that high percentage (about 74%) of the graduate students experienced difficulty due to language problems. Moreover, participants of this study had no problem in terms of knowledge of technical vocabulary. As they claimed they had already read many original English books and articles related to their own disciplines and had a complete knowledge of these words: "We know most of the words but our problem is that we don't know how to connect them and make a good and correct sentence". Therefore, knowledge of technical vocabulary did not pose a problem for these participants. This is exactly what Pe´rez-Llantada found in their study with Spanish participants ¹⁴.

In addition, the feedback the participants of this study had received from their instructor was mainly based on the scientific content of their article. Some of them provided their students with linguistic feedback as well. To check linguistic accuracy of their articles, participants resorted to language experts, EAP instructors, or language brokers to provide them with the feedback. According to one of the participants: "When I finished writing my article, I gave it to one of the English instructors to edit it for me. His comments on grammar was so useful but in terms of vocabulary not. Some of the words that I used in my article were those that are commonly used in Mechanics, but if they are used in ordinary texts, they may acquire different meanings. He didn't know that and incorrectly commented on them".

To explore the participants' linguistic difficulties more, the written documents collected from the participants were also analyzed in order to determine the structure of their texts and the feedback they had received on them. The analysis of the written drafts of these PhD students supported the findings of the interview. The feedback they had received on their drafts were mainly linguistic features such as incorrect use of tenses, omission of articles, incorrect use of nouns, incorrect preposition, and conjunctions. The analysis indicated that their problem was mainly due to language problems and sentence structure. They did not have any problem in their knowledge of technical vocabulary.

Participants' views and suggestions on ESP/EAP courses

As to the question of what participants learned while writing their research paper in English, various responses emerged from the individual interviews. Almost half of the participants reported that their confidence grew with writing their first research paper in English. They commented that their success in writing their first paper helped them to overcome their fear of writing their next research papers in English. In addition, the experience of writing research article in English aided these doctoral students to develop proficiency in their second language. According to some of the participants, after extensive reading of English articles they mastered new technical vocabulary as well as linguistic structures. Writing in English also helped them to consolidate what they already knew and to modify their incorrect and fossilized linguistic knowledge: "I always thought that it was not common to use 'the' before nouns, but a language broker put 'the' before' the name 'Goldasht' which was my plant of study".

Having had an unhappy experience of translating their L1 article into English, most of the participants indicated that they have learnt that they should not translate Farsi sentence into English. Their suggestion was that: "Think in English and write directly in English". One of them commented that: "After reading the paragraph and getting its overall meaning, I write the meaning in English not the translated sentences". One of the participants also suggested that: “First you yourself write the article in English and then check it over and over. As a final step, give it to a native speaker of English to be edited".

At the end of each individual interview, the participants were asked whether the English/ESP courses they had passed in university helped them in writing their article. The answer given by majority of the participants was "no". The participants commented that the general English course was not useful for them since these courses just focus on reading and translation. In the ESP course again the emphasis was on developing reading skill. However, making students familiar with the technical vocabulary may be beneficial.

When doctoral students were asked about their problems and needs regarding English research article writing, the majority of them responded that their main problem is their limited grammatical knowledge and sentence structure. As most of them commented, they had thorough knowledge of technical vocabularies of their discipline but when it comes to joining them and making a grammatically correct sentence they experience difficulty. One of the participants described the problem in this way: "When I want to write, I know each and every word of my sentence, but the problem is that I can not make a correct sentence. Sometimes I check the accuracy of my sentences with Google translate but as you know it is not so reliable".

As to the question of the needs, respondents (the graduate students) showed quite similar perspectives. According to the participants, their immediate need would be writing courses in which they acquire not only linguistic features but also the discourse features of writing a paper. In addition, participants expressed their need for courses or classes in which they can develop their speaking ability. Regarding spoken communication, participants commented that due to linguistic handicap some of the graduate students could not participate at conferences. They suggested that they would also benefit from speaking and conversation courses and classes hold for this purpose at university.

4. Discussion

Some of the findings of the present study were in contrast with previous studies. For instance, whereas the majority of Japanese informants in ⁶ preferred to use translation as their main strategy in writing research paper, Iranian participants found this practice unduly difficult and abandoned this practice after writing their first research article. Moreover, unlike participants in ¹² who rated only 18% of having difficulty with respect to grammar, here participants found grammar the most difficult and challenging aspect in writing their papers in English.

However, the findings of this study showed quite similar findings to those of previous research carried out in different countries. Like Iranian graduate students, Japanese novice researchers in ⁶ had developed their knowledge of genre conventions and discourse features of the written research article product through extensive reading. They also widened their vocabulary through 'lifting' useful phrases from published native speakers’ research articles. Using different context to learn vocabularies is one of the effective strategies in learning vocabularies ^{25, 26}. But as ⁶ rightly noted "the extent to which NNs [Non-Natives] can ‘borrow’ from published RAs [Research Articles] may be limited to formulaic expressions of generally only a few words, which students know are ‘at least correct’" (p. 118). Korean students in ¹², like Iranian students, had experienced difficulty in journal paper writing due to language problems.

In addition, students discovered that meta-linguistic elements were easier than sentence structure. Although the participants in the study by Pe´rez-Llantada were senior Spanish academics, not students, the findings of their study and the present study share certain similarities ¹⁴. For these participants, technical vocabulary was not a problem. "More problematic was lack of resource in general everyday vocabulary, which was felt to reduce precision and richness of expression" (p. 25). Moreover, the participants considered writing the introduction as well as discussion sections as the most difficult parts of writing the research paper. Fairly frequent use of language brokers was reported by both Iranian and Spanish informants in editing their written product. They also wrote their papers directly in English and did not use translation as a writing strategy since they found it onerous and time-consuming.

The similar findings of various studies conducted on the scientific English article writing practices of non-native researchers in different contexts reveal that graduate students and researchers around the world adopt similar strategies in their academic writing practices. These help EAP/ESP practitioners to be aware of the common practices and challenges graduate students face in writing academic papers. Although participants of this study acquainted themselves with the typical rhetorical organization of scientific research papers through extensive reading, as Pe´rez-Llantada noted "some direct genre-based instruction would help speed the academic acculturation of novice researchers" ¹⁴. As indicated by the participants of this study, their comprehensive knowledge of technical vocabulary did not pose any problem for them. This shows that enough attention has been given by ESP instructors to this aspect in ESP courses. Moreover, students develop their knowledge of technical vocabulary by reading books and articles written in English in their own disciplines. What remains, according to the participants of this study, is the need to focus more on sentence structure and grammar in ESP courses. This focus can be integrated with writing practices in which students learn linguistic elements by using them in extended texts. As one of the participants suggested " Even by writing an abstract and getting feedback on it we will learn a lot about how to join words in a sentence and how to join sentences together".

Although participants of this study pursued some strategies in order to respond to some challenges they faced like participants in Chlo’s study, "the additional time and effort needed to write research results in English and mental pressure from these circumstances surely puts them at a disadvantage" ¹². Thus, the students need more aid from ESP/EAP practitioners in order to ease the process of publishing their work in English.

Competing Interests

The authors have no competing interests.

References