Creating Coherence in Research Articles: Non-Native Researchers as Writers of Scientific English

Abstract

This thesis focused on challenges faced by non-native researchers writing their scientific papers for publication in English. To publish in peer-reviewed international mainstream journals, researchers should be able to write in a genre-specific and persuasive manner. Academic writing requires explicit organization of texts, caution in making claims, signposting connections, and creating coherence and clarity in the text. The research article (RA) is a key genre of scientific publishing with a special communicative and rhetorical structure. The structure and language of the RA partly depend on the disciplinary knowledge-making practices and writing conventions applied in the field of research.

The subjects of this study were doctoral and post-doctoral researchers in Materials Science at Tampere University of Technology (TUT), all of them non-native speakers of English. The objective of the study was twofold: first, to explore the experiences, perceptions, attitudes, challenges, and wishes for further training of the researchers writing in English; second, to examine how they employed certain linguistic devices to present the results of their research. The study applied two methods to answer the research questions: an e-mailed questionnaire and a descriptive analysis of published sample RAs written by the subjects. Swales’ Create-A-Research-Space (CARS) model for RA introductions and Hyland’s model of interactive and interactional metadiscourse were used as investigative tools to study certain rhetorical and textual features.

On the whole, the TUT respondents showed a positive attitude to writing in English. Approximately half of them felt disadvantaged in writing RAs when compared to native speakers. The researchers considered “creating text flow and coherence to make my reasoning easy to understand” and “expressing my interpretation of the results with an appropriate degree of confidence” most challenging. Both skills involve the ability to write reader-friendly and professionally convincing text. Most sample RAs followed the 3-move rhetorical pattern of the CARS model. Most of the metadiscoursal items were interactive, which is characteristic of quantitative RAs in natural sciences and engineering. Overall, the writers employed a rather limited selection of metadiscoursal devices. Since proofreaders often pay attention only to obvious lexico-grammatical mistakes in scientific papers, an interactive system with early-stage consultation between writers and proofreaders can help to create persuasive and genre-specific argumentation. Discipline-based writing instruction and materials on textual and rhetorical organization beyond the sentence level could help writers to construct coherent texts.