The ‘I’ in identity: Exploring writer identity in student academic writing through the first person pronoun

Tang, Rui; John, Suganthi

doi:10.1016/s0889-4906(99)00009-5

Cited by 310 publications

(315 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…This authority legitimises 'a right to control or command others' and 'knowledge or expertise in a particular field' (Kuhi, 2012;Tang & John, 1999).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Making Sense of Errors Made by Analytical Chemistry Students in Their Writing

Katiya

Mtonjeni

Sefalane-Nkohla

2015

JLTR

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Abstract-This paper investigates the influence of the writing errors made by first year Chemistry students at CPUT. The aim is to determine their pedagogic implications. Effectively, students writing in a second language at university exhibits linguistic errors which when properly defined and corrected can promote epistemological access to and mastery of disciplinary knowledge. Error Analysis provided theoretical and analytical framework for this study. Unlike classical Contrastive Analysis (CA), Error Analysis (EA) analyses all sources of errors (Sanal, 2008). EA suggests that the learners' learning strategies are the main causes of errors. These errors are: 'transfer', 'overgeneralisation', 'simplification', 'avoidance' and 'overproduction' (Zhuang, 2011). This qualitative study examined and analysed a corpus of Chemistry 1 students' essays. It was found that mother tongue interference, syntactic and morphological errors, misapplication of essay construction rules, punctuation and spelling errors compromise the quality, meaning and rhetoricality. Essentially, the results provided feedback to the lecturers regarding the nature of students' writing errors and how have the students progressed toward the acquisition of academic language. Therefore, the study establishes the need for a tailored academic literacy intervention to promote academic language proficiency in the Chemistry discipline.

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“…This authority legitimises 'a right to control or command others' and 'knowledge or expertise in a particular field' (Kuhi, 2012;Tang & John, 1999).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Making Sense of Errors Made by Analytical Chemistry Students in Their Writing

Katiya

Mtonjeni

Sefalane-Nkohla

2015

JLTR

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“…There have been a number of corpus-based studies of academic writing that have focused on the e¤ects personal pronouns help to create (e.g., Bernhardt 1985;Chang and Swales 1999;Harwood 2005aHarwood , 2005bHarwood , 2005cHyland 2001aHyland , 2001bKuo 1999;Tang and John 1999;Vassileva 1998). Pronouns are said to help the writer organize the text and guide the reader through the argument (e.g., First I will discuss x and then y); define terms (In this article I use the term 'x' to mean y); state personal opinions, arguments, and knowledge claims (On the basis of my data I would claim .…”

Section: Personal Pronouns In Academic Writingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…So while some uses of 'I' and 'we' are said to be low-risk instances of textual intervention on the part of the writer, other uses, such as when the writer makes a claim, carry much greater threat to face and are potentially points at which the writer is vulnerable to attack by the audience. Hence researchers who have constructed functional personal pronoun taxonomies (Harwood 2003;Hyland 2002;Ivanič 1998;Tang and John 1999) link pronouns with authorial presence.…”

Section: Personal Pronouns In Academic Writingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Political scientists on the functions of personal pronouns in their writing: An interview-based study of ‘I’ and ‘we’

Harwood¹

2007

Text &Amp; Talk

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In contrast to the numerous corpus-based studies of pronouns in academic writing, this paper uses qualitative interviews in an attempt to account for academic writers' motivations for using the pronouns 'I' and 'we' and to describe the textual e¤ects that each case of 'I' and 'we' helps to create. Five political scientists took part in the research, commenting upon their pronoun use in one of their own journal articles and also in the other informants' texts. Seven textual e¤ects that 'I' and 'we' help to construct are identified and described. 'I' and 'we' are said to help (i) make the readership feel included and involved in the writers' argument; (ii) make the text more accessible; (iii) convey a tentative tone and hedge writers' claims; (iv) explicate the writers' logic or method regarding their arguments or procedures; (v) signal writers' intentions and arguments; (vi) indicate the contribution and newsworthiness of the research; and (vii) allow the writer to inject a personal tenor into the text. The insights and implications of the study are discussed and the paper closes by proposing that similar interview-based studies could be used for pedagogical purposes in English for academic purposes (EAP) contexts.

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“…No son pocos los autores que se han interesado en el estudio de este fenómeno en distintas comunidades disciplinares (Ivanic, 1998(Ivanic, , 2005Ivanic & Camps, 2001;Kuo, 1999;Tang & John, 1999;Gee, 2000Gee, , 2005Gee, , 2006Harwood, 2005aHarwood, , 2005bHyland, 2005). Por ejemplo, desde un planteamiento sociológico, Ivanic (1998Ivanic ( , 2005 plantea que la escritura siempre exige la presencia de una voz que sitúa al escritor en determinados discursos sociales y culturales.…”

Section: Voz E Identidad: Los Roles Del Escritor Académicounclassified

“…Este es un aspecto de gran importancia porque deja en claro el conflicto por el que atraviesan los doctorandos al momento de asumir una identidad frente al lector y frente a la propia comunidad. Es notoria la marcada inclinación de los tesistas por inscribirse como escritores al centrar sus esfuerzos en explicar nociones, posturas atribuidas a los autores citados, organizar el discurso o guiar al lector en la forma como debe acercarse al texto; frente a la preferencia del experto de construirse una imagen de investigador que da cuenta del proceso indagatorio que le permitió llegar a determinadas conclusiones (Tang & John, 1999;Hyland, 2005). El ejemplo (7) muestra al tesista como el escritor que guía al lector en la forma como debe aproximarse al texto; mientras que el ejemplo (8) presenta a un escritor constructor que organiza la información y da forma al texto.…”

Section: Recursos De Inscripción De La Persona Y Atribución Del Conocunclassified

La formación de investigadores en el área de humanidades: Los retos de la construcción de la voz autoral en la escritura de la tesis de doctorado

Azuara

Camargo

2016

Rev. signos

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The ‘I’ in identity: Exploring writer identity in student academic writing through the first person pronoun

Cited by 310 publications

References 8 publications

Making Sense of Errors Made by Analytical Chemistry Students in Their Writing

Making Sense of Errors Made by Analytical Chemistry Students in Their Writing

Political scientists on the functions of personal pronouns in their writing: An interview-based study of ‘I’ and ‘we’

La formación de investigadores en el área de humanidades: Los retos de la construcción de la voz autoral en la escritura de la tesis de doctorado

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