Data-driven learning for writing for research

Data-driven learning for writing for research publication for students Winnie Cheng 2015 International Conference on English Education (ICEE) Shih Chien University Taipei, Taiwan April 2015

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Aim of the talk To introduce and describe the project Data-driven learning for writing for research publication for student (Hong Kong University Grants Council (UGC) Language-related Collaborative Projects Initiative, 2015-2017): Background and rationale Conceptual frameworks Aims and objectives Initial findings Anticipated impact Quality assurance Sustainability

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Data-driven learning for writing for research publication for students Collaborating universities (Co-leaders): City University of Hong Kong (John Flowerdew, Department of English) The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (Winnie Cheng, Department of English) The Chinese University of Hong Kong Hong Kong Baptist University

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Background and rationale The need to publish: Internationally Characteristics of English as an additional language (EAL) writers The need to publish: Hong Kong Writing for research publication: Challenges for postgraduate research (PhD) students in Hong Kong

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The need to publish: Internationally Academic writing for research publication takes place around the globe, involving, 5.5 million scholars, 2,000 publishers and 17,500 research/higher education institutions (Lillis & Curry, 2010) International publication is becoming more and more often a requirement of doctoral or even master’s degree graduation. 5

The need to publish: Why? Rapid development of university education and research internationally Internationalization of research, facilitated by global communication networks supported by the Internet International league tables comparing universities, with research output being an important metric English, universally accepted as the international language of research, being a widely accepted lingua franca to facilitate this process 6

The international publishing ‘game’ (Casanave, 2002) “the stark disparities and inequities that exist in the world of scholarly publishing” (SalagerMeyer, 2008: 121)

Scholars who have English as their native language are at an advantage as compared to their counterparts who use English as an additional language (EAL). 7

Characteristics of ELA writers The cost of educating EAL writers Require more time and money in the actual act of writing (reading and writing, may pay for editors and proof-readers, negotiating with reviewers and editors) The overlooked emotional burden that having to perform and be evaluated in an additional language May be expected to write in two languages: Writing for publication in English and writing for the local community in their first language 8

Hong Kong Research Grants Committee (RGC)

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Role of Hong Kong Research Grants Committee (RGC) Advises the Hong Kong Government on the needs of Hong Kong's higher education institutions in the field of academic research and for the distribution of funding for academic research projects undertaken by academic staff of those UGC-funded institutions http://www.ugc.edu.hk/eng/rgc/index.htm 10

The need to publish: Hong Kong UGC-funded institutions in Hong Kong are striving to increase the quantity, quality and impact of research publications.

An example: The Hong Kong PhD Research Fellowship programme seeks to attract the very best research students internationally.

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Challenges for postgraduate research students in Hong Kong (1/2) Why do these students find difficulties in publishing in internationally refereed, indexed, high-impact journals? Most Hong Kong PhD students do not have English as their first language. The training support offered by Hong Kong universities tends to be sporadic (Kwan, 2010), although research writing courses of some form or another are offered in one or more departments of UGC-funded universities. 12

Challenges for research students in Hong Kong (2/2) Little training support in (knowledge about) the genre of research articles: Move structure Lexico-grammar specific to moves Little training support in the genre of research articles in respective disciplines Little training support in the requirements of journals in their respective disciplines 13

Conceptual frameworks Corpus-based approach to learning (and teaching) research writing (in English) Indirect and direct approaches to (English) language learning (and teaching) and writing for research publication

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Corpus-based approach to learning research writing (1/3) A corpus is a large data-base of language. General corpora - “language as a whole” vs. specialised corpora - “characteristics of the genre” (Sinclair, 2001: xi) The first corpora were relatively small – the Brown corpus (developed at Brown University, USA in the early 1960s) consisted of one million words 15

Corpus-based approach to learning research writing (2/3) Current corpora, e.g. British National Corpus (BNC), 100 million words Bank of English (COBUILD at Birmingham University, UK), over 500 million words Corpus of American English (COCA), 1990-2012, 450 million words Global Web-based English (GloWbE), 20 countries, 201213, 1.9 billion words Wikipedia Corpus (with virtual corpora), -2014, 1.9 billion words 16

Corpus-based approach to learning research writing (3/3) The potential of corpus techniques for investigating patterns of language for language pedagogy, e.g. the behaviour of words and multi-word phrases grammatical patterns semantic features pragmatic features textual properties 17

Indirect use of English language corpora by students (and teachers) Corpus findings applied to the creation or refinement of: • • • •

English language dictionaries English reference grammars Corpus linguistics reference books Books and other teaching materials for English linguistics • ESP pedagogic materials • English language textbooks 18

English for Specific Purposes An International Research Journal http://www.journals.elsevier.com/english-for-specific-purposes/

Authors are encouraged to submit articles and research/discussion notes on topics relevant to the teaching and learning of discourse for specific communities: academic, occupational, or otherwise specialized. Topics such as the following may be treated from the perspective of English for specific purposes: second language acquisition in specialized contexts, needs assessment, curriculum development and evaluation, materials preparation, discourse analysis, descriptions of specialized varieties of English, teaching and testing techniques, the effectiveness of various approaches to language learning and language teaching, and the training or retraining of teachers for the teaching of ESP. In addition, the journal welcomes articles and discussions that identify aspects of ESP needing development, areas into which the practice of ESP may be expanded, possible means of cooperation between ESP programs and learners' professional or vocational interests, and implications that findings from related disciplines can have for the profession of ESP. 19

Direct approach (Data-driven learning) •

Direct use of corpora of text in (English) language learning by students

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Effective in, e.g. Academic writing for capstone projects and research papers for academic credits • Academic writing for research publication for research students •

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Data-driven learning (direct approach) Learners are seen as “language detectives”, seeking answers to questions that can be found by means of corpus queries.

Learners are required to identify and analyse the recurrent patterns to be found in the corpus output lines and make their own generalizations. 21

Direct use of English language corpora by students: An example

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Successful applications of data-driven learning in advanced academic writing teaching Bianchi & Pazzaglia (2007) created a corpus of experimental articles in psychology for students to write a research article of their own, using the corpus as a resource. Lee and Swales (2006) had a heterogeneous group of graduate students who created their own corpora specific to their particular discipline. These corpora were used as a resource for working on the writing required on their higher degree programmes. 23

More … Boulton (2012): A literature review of 20 empirical studies on applications of specificpurpose corpus-based pedagogy

Davies (2013) describes the potential of the use of the academic component of the Corpus of American English (COCA).

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Data-driven learning for writing for research publication for students Overall aim of project To introduce to Hong Kong language educators and postgraduate research students across all disciplines to the benefits of using a data-driven learning approach to developing PhD students’ skills in research writing for publication and hence research publication output of Hong Kong PhD students in terms of both quality and quantity. 25

Specific objectives of project (1/4) 1.

Create a small team to disseminate the datadriven learning approach to research writing.

2. Investigate to what extent, if any, language educators in Hong Kong are already familiar with the data-driven learning approach to research writing.

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Specific objectives of project (2/4) 3.

Train the project team in the data- driven learning approach to research writing.

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Develop two training packages for datadriven learning for research writing: one for language educators and the other for PhD students.

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Training packages: Main content Principles and practice in data-driven learning Data-driven learning and research writing for publication How to use COCA (1990-2012) effectively, especially the academic component (90 million words) How to create a personalised/discipline-specific corpus How to effectively use a personalised/disciplinespecific corpus Hands-on practice for the participants 28

Specific objectives of project (3/4) 5.

Disseminate the data-driven learning approach in a research writing context to language educators across university English centres and departments.

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Train PhD students across the disciplines in Hong Kong to use the data-driven learning approach. 29

Specific objectives of project (4/4) 7.

Create a community of practice to assist users of the data-driven learning approach.

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Develop and apply procedures to evaluate the effectiveness of the project.

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Training support for postgraduate research students: Collaborating universities

City University of Hong Kong (CityU) The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) (Winnie Cheng, Department of English) The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU) 31

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) English Language Centre (ELC) • ELC5001 Advanced English for Academic Purposes • ELC6001Presentation Skills for Research Students • ELC6002Thesis Writing for Research Students

Department of English (ENGL) • ENGL6002 Communication Strategies in Research Contexts in English • ENGL6004 Advanced Oral Skills for Research Students • ENGL6005 Writing Research Articles • ENGL6006 Functional Text Typology: Register Variation in Institutional Contexts • "Effective English for Postgraduate Research Students (EEPRS)" 32

EEPRS, Department of English, PolyU Since 1998, an advanced academic English programme “Effective English for Postgraduate Research Students (EEPRS)” that provides support, advice and guidance to postgraduate research students with their dissertations and other research-related writing through one-to-one mentoring sessions and workshops 33

EEPRS workshop (12 March 2015)

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EEPRS workshops (31 March & 2 April 2015)

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Specialised corpora Much smaller corpora with as few as 100,000 words or less for specialist applications Examples from Department of English, PolyU …

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Online RCPCE Profession-specific Corpora • Hong Kong Corpus of Spoken English (1 million words, prosodically transcribed) • Hong Kong Corpus of Surveying and Construction Engineering (5.7 million) • Hong Kong Engineering Corpus (9.2 million) • Hong Kong Financial Services Corpus (7.3 million) • Hong Kong Budget Speeches Corpus 1997 – 2010 (176,515) • Hong Kong Policy Address Speeches Corpus 1997 – 2009 (153,198) • Corpus of Research Articles (5.7 million) • Upload and Search Your Own Text or Corpus

ConcGramOnline© , Chris Greaves 38 38

Corpus of Research Articles (CRA) 5.6 million words 39 disciplines (24 are taught at PolyU), “representative of virtually all the major disciplines offered at comprehensive and application-oriented universities worldwide” (Lin & Evans, 2012: 152) 780 full-length articles from 20 leading international journals in each discipline with high impact factors listed in Journal Citation Report in 2007 16 sections http://rcpce.engl.polyu.edu.hk/RACorpus/default.htm 39

39 disciplines in CRA 1 Accounting & Finance 2 Anthropology 3 Applied Biology & Chemical Technology 4 Applied Linguistics 5 Applied Mathematics 6 Applied Physics 7 Applied Social Sciences 8 Archaeology 9 Building & Real Estate 10 Building Services Engineering 11 Civil & Structural Engineering 12 Computing 13 Design 14 Economics 15 Education

16 Electrical Engineering 17 Electronic & Information Engineering 18 Geography 19 Health Technology & Informatics 20 History 21 History of Art 22 Hotel & Tourism Management 23 Industrial & Systems Engineering 24 Land Surveying & Geoinformatics 25 Law 26 Linguistics 27 Literature

28 Logistics 29 Management & Marketing 30 Mechanical Engineering 31 Music 32 Nursing 33 Optometry 34 Philosophy 35 Politics 36 Psychology 37 Rehabilitation Sciences 38 Sociology 39 Textiles & Clothing

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16 sections in CRA 16 sub-corpora

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City University of Hong Kong EN8001 English Department research students’ seminar 1 EN8002 English Department research students’ seminar EN8006 Literature review for research writing EN8007 Managing thesis-writing EN8008 Preparing and making academic presentations EN8009 Publishing internationally during the doctoral career EN8010 Research methodology for research degree studies in English EN8011 Research writing in business administration EN8012 English for academic research and publication EN8013 English for academic research and publication in science and engineering 46

The Chinese University of Hong Kong

ELTU 5501 Postgraduate Presentation Skills

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Hong Kong Baptist University Graduate School ??? Language Centre ??? Department of English Language and Literature ???

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Anticipated impact of project To familiarise language educators and PhD students in Hong Kong with the data-driven learning approach to research writing for publication. English Centres and Departments will be in a position to develop training in this approach in their respective universities. PhD students will have greater success in achieving research publication, both in terms of quality and quantity. A snowball effect which will lead to adoption of the approach more widely in Hong Kong. 49

Quality assurance of project Three visits by an external expert to monitor progress Regular meetings among team members Questionnaire surveys administered to seminar participants Regular progress reports by participating members of the project team Interim report after 1 year Final report after 2 years Reports on the project at local and international conferences and in international journals 50

Sustainability of project Materials developed during the project will be made available to all Hong Kong universities after its completion.

Language educators in the participating institutions will be in a position to further develop the data-driven learning approach in their own centres and departments. 51

Extension of project: A new project The project rationale and methodology can equally be adopted by undergraduate students for their Capstone Projects and master’s students for their research thesis in the same universities and other educational contexts outside Hong Kong

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A further project The Hong Kong Polytechnic University Department of English Departmental Learning and Teaching Committee Application for Funding for DLTC Project (2014-15)

Corpus-based learning and teaching: Creating a Corpus of Research Articles 2014 Winnie Cheng & Stephen Evans 53

Aims and objectives of proposal The overall aim of the project is to introduce students of the Department of English to the benefits of using a data-driven learning approach to developing their skills in research writing.

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To achieve this aim, the following are the specific objectives of the project Create a Corpus of Research Articles, comprising journal articles published in 2014 (CRA 2014), that parallels the existing CRA (to be named CRA 2007) Based on CRA 2014, develop an instructional package for data-driven learning for research writing for students 55

Potential applications of Data-driven learning for writing for research publication for students Corpus-based learning and teaching: Creating a Corpus of Research Articles 2014

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Corpus-based/Direct approach to corpus studies

Discipline-specific corpora Form communities of practice Collaborative learning Complete cycle from needs analysis, project design, implementation, to evaluation

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References Bianchi, F., & Pazzaglia, R. (2007). Student writing of research articles in a foreign language: Metacognition and corpora. In R. Facchinetti (Ed.), Corpus linguistics 25 years on (pp. 259-287). Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi. Boulton, A. (2012). Corpus-informed research and learning in ESP: Issues and applications. In A. Boulton, S. CarterThomas & E. Rowley-Jolivet (Eds.) Corpus consultation for ESP: A review of empirical research. (pp. 261-292). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Casanave, C. P. (2002). Writing games: Multicultural case studies of academic literacy practices in higher education. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Davies, M. (2013). Google Scholar and COCA-Academic: Two very different approaches to examining academic English. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 12(3), 155-165. Kwan, Becky S. C. (2010). An investigation of instruction in research publishing in doctoral programs: The Hong Kong case. Higher Education, 59(1), 55-68. Lee, D. and Swales, J. (2006) A corpus-based EAP course for NNS doctoral students: Moving from available specialized corpora to self-compiled corpora. English for Specific Purposes, 25(1), 56-75. Lillis, T., & Curry, M. J. (2010). Academic writing in a global context: The politics and practices of publishing in English. London & New York: Routledge. Lin, L, & Evans, S. (2012). Structural patterns in empirical research articles: A cross-disciplinary study. English for Specific Purposes, 31, 150-160. Salager-Meyer, F. (2008). Scientific publishing in developing countries: challenges for the future. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 7, 121-132. Sinclair, J. (1991).

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