Dear Anne and everyone,
Thankyou so much - this has been a most perfectly timed discussion for me, and now a very useful compilation to have shared, thankyou Anne ;)
I'd love to share snapshots of this with my class of PhD students if all agree ? (anonymous of course, I'm just interested in illustrating the point that language educators do actually discuss these questions all the time, and draw on a range of resources and experiences to inform themselves, and that the more we share openly with one another, the more we all benefit.... this is exactly the sort of practice I am modelling and encouraging in students, so I love that it's being demonstrated live here).... these are students who are just starting at the university, and still tend to think of 'English language learning' as something rule-governed and disconnected from their disciplinary studies.... (the 'ELT industry' has so much to answer for, all the unlearning one then has to do!)
The thesis writers I teach are just currently building their personal corpus of readings for their lit reviews, and learning to search for specific lexico-grammatical patterns, and the use of passives and pronouns and tenses is on their list of things to be looking for.... if readers here are interested, I'll collate anything interesting they find and write reflections on back to this group, but meanwhile I'm very sure they'd be interested to hear and see that language educators do discuss these very things, and don't necessarily draw on the same resources, and there may not be a simple answer... it'd make a lovely discussion point.
What we basically do in our class is work as a small research community - students are (nearly) all using English as a second language, and are coming from a wide range of disciplines (various areas of Engineering, natural sciences, business, education) and do a few basic tasks the same way (like write a lit review, give a 3 minute talk about their research and use corpus tools to investigate the language of their discipline), and they share their results openly on our class wiki.... the corpus work aims to help them notice patterns that tend to be overlooked when they are 'reading for information' and not paying close attention to how the wording works... for this task, they not only use large reference corpora, but also have to create and search their own personal corpus, made from what they are reading for their research project, and they reflect on how this is informing their own writing and helping them develop a more sophisticated style.
So this discussion thread popped up in my inbox literally just as we are exploring such phenomena anyway, so perfectly timed - thanks everyone for contributing... the same old discussion yes, but that's the point I'd like to share with my class - questions about language are never 'solved' - they need to be explored and considered repeatedly, by each writer as they enter into the complex practice of doing academic writing... it's about the learning process, not the 'answer', and the more everyone shares with their research community, the better off we all are...
I never ask my students to do anything I don't actually do myself, so I'd love to show them next week that just as they were working on this kind of stuff, I've actually been in an online discussion myself, with colleagues across the globe, on a couple of the very same questions they're wondering about and investigating.... it'll make it very clear to them that what they are doing is an authentic practice, and that the teacher has a bit of street cred ;)
Emily Purser
Lecturer in Academic Language & Learning Development
Learning, Teaching & Curriculum
University of Wollongong* CRICOS: 00102E
NSW Australia 2522
Office 11.215
T + 61 2 4221 4863
-----Original Message-----
From: European Association for the Teaching of Academic Writing - discussions [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Anne Wegner
Sent: Wednesday, 23 September 2015 5:52 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Summary: Use of we/I in academic texts
Dear Colleagues,
Two days after I set this ball rolling, I have produced the promised summary of the answers so far received. I have tried to put some order into the huge number of contributions to the debate and attached the resulting file. I admit to the order being one that most suits me and to using a lot of copy and paste, but perhaps some of you will find it useful.
The file has been attached in two versions, both identical from their content. I personally consider that the contents are creative commons texts and can be used freely (which is why I have produced a .docx file). If anyone disagrees with this, they should let the listserv know. If anyone needs the file as an open source (.odt), then let me know.
Many, many thanks for all your contributions. I have really enjoyed the discussion, and it has certainly provided much food for thought for future workshops on the topic.
Kind regards
Anne
Zitat von Anne Wegner <[log in to unmask]>:
> 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
>
> [log in to unmask]
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