Hi Anne,
This is one of the eternal topics in the teaching of writing. Students need answers to it even if we can't provide them in a straight forward way. So don't stop teaching it. It is helpful for students to learn that they can say the same thing by direct and indirect self-reference and that they don't lose their voices it they avoid the I (the "we" is much less suspicious in academic papers, provided that they are written by several authors).
Cultural differences are vast. In a recent study, Madalina Chitez and I have looked into a sample of German and English business theses. We found about 60 mentions of I in the English corpus and only one in the German corpus. Obviously, German doctoral students in this discipline prefer to avoid the I completely, probably because they are insecure about what's right and wrong there. When we looked into the English sample we found, that there were also about 50% of them which did not use the I while the other 50% did. The English world obviously is not as homogeneous as we might think it is.
By the way: passive voice is not the only alternative to using I/ we. There is a linguistic form called "Deagentivierung" in German which changes the active agent in your sentence from, for instance "In my paper, I describe ..." to "My paper describes ...". This is very common in most languages (including English) and no one bothers that it is actually incorrect. Allow your students making use of it. It makes their papers sound more scientific.
What Tamer says: Allow students using the I would certainly the most appropriate strategy but, unfortunately, their thesis supervisors might think differently about that.
Best,
Otto
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: European Association for the Teaching of Academic Writing - discussions [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Im Auftrag von Anne Wegner
Gesendet: Montag, 21. September 2015 15:06
An: [log in to unmask]
Betreff: Use of we/I in academic texts?
Dear colleagues
Two questions for you. I teach academic writing, mainly to PhD students from difference scientific areas at various German universities. One of the things I teach is that it is generally ok to use “we/I” in academic texts, while pointing out that its use does slightly depend on the area in which one is working or the journal for which one is writing. However, my daughter said that during her recent Bachelor studies (Durham University, political sciences), she was mainly writing, and being expected to write, in the passive voice, avoiding we/I. I have two main questions related to this:
1) Am I the only one getting my workshop participants to use we/I in an English academic text? If so, I'd better stop!
2) What do academic texts in other European languages generally contain - we/I or passive voice? In a German academic text, the use of we/I is generally frowned upon.
I would appreciate any comments and am happy to put together a summary of any answers I receive.
Many thanks
Anne Wegner
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