Writing Critical Literature Review in Geotechnical Engineering Samira Y. Kakh Faculty of Education, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 Johor, Malaysia e-mail:
[email protected]
Ahmad Safuan A. Rashid Faculty of Civil Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 Johor, Malaysia Corresponding Author, e-mail:
[email protected]
Roohollah Kalatehjari Faculty of Civil Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 Johor, Malaysia e-mail:
[email protected]
Nazri Ali Faculty of Civil Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 Johor, Malaysia e-mail:
[email protected]
Wan Fara Adlina Wan Mansor Language Academy, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 Johor, Malaysia e-mail:
[email protected]
Atefeh Rezanejad Allameh Tabataba’i University, Tehran, Iran e-mail:
[email protected]
ABSTRACT The main concern of this research was assisting postgraduate students when they write in the disciplines. Therefore, the efficacy of some ideas for supervising novice writers in Geotechnical Engineering were qualitatively investigated. To meet the research objective, a series of supervisory sessions that were done in Google Docs were observed and the interactions between the supervisor and the supervisee were thoroughly analyzed. This study showed that online tools such as Google Docs could facilitate learning to write in Geotechnical Engineering through comparing good writing samples and supervisor-student discussion. These activities led to discovering genre features and developing better understanding of the revising stage. This study suggests that using Google Docs to facilitate the interactions between supervisors and supervisees could improve the fluency and the content of writing in the disciplines. Such breakthroughs introduced a new dimension in supervising student writers.
KEYWORDS:
Literature Review; Writing, Academic Writing; Writing in the
Disciplines.
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INTRODUCTION Writing in the disciplines is a task that almost all scholars around the globe have to deal with to some extent. Each discipline has several writing genres, and each genre has its own specific characteristics. In academic writing classes language experts emphasize the readability and communicability of writing practice and develop general understandings of the features of academic writing. In addition to such awareness, novice writers in the disciplines need to gain knowledge of the conventional features that disciplines define for each genre. Locating writing practice in specific disciplines and genres, according to Deane and O’Neill (2011), is the responsibility of subject specialists. Subject specialists are assumed to have knowledge of the disciplinary conventions, therefore they can provide proper guidance for novice writers. Writing the literature review in geotechnical engineering is one important, but difficult to handle disciplinary genre. Literature reviews in higher education are expected to be critical (Dovey, 2010). A critical literature review deepens the understanding of the readers of the current state of the art. A quick glance at the research articles published by students of higher education in geological engineering shows that authors provided statements or short summaries of past methodologies and listed several names in front of each statement. Such characteristics have been observed in other disciplines, such as social sciences (Swales and Lindemann, 2002), pharmacy (Jesson and Lacey, 2006), and computer sciences (Webster and Watson, 2002).These attempts to construct the literature review often lack effective evaluation of past research in relation to new research being proposed Holbrook et al. (2004). The manuals and materials on how to do and write a critical literature review provide a number of techniques of what to do, and what not to do (e.g. Paltridge, 1997; Swales and Feak, 2004). These materials prescribe how to sort and organize past research summaries and write up critical reviews. These materials often provide general literature review guidelines. This means that they are not published for specific disciplines; therefore, novice writers cannot develop awareness of the conventional features of the literature review in their disciplines while doing and writing it. This issue has long been the concern of genre scholars such as Paltridge (1994). Writing critical literature reviews is a neglected area of expertise in geotechnical engineering research and supervision. Supervisors need to gain insight into guiding novice scholars in developing a narrative, effective, analytical, and original account information that is available. Novice scholars should be aware that science is meaningful in relation to past research, therefore there is a need to acquire the skills of synthesizing past research to establish another research niche (Hyland, 2009). To guide novice scholars this research proposes a practical way for supervisors and advisors based on Swales’ (1990) genre approach. This approach to genre offers an analytical view to texts such as literature review, through which learners critically examine the linguistic features of a text, its structure, and the moves and steps that authors took to construct that text. This research tested this approach in a series of supervisory sessions. The aim of this research was introducing an approach to guiding novice writers in geotechnical engineering.
METHODOLOGY Although many studies showed that novice postgraduate students have sentence and paragraph level difficulties in writing the literature review (e.g. Holbrook et al., 2004, San Miguel and Nelson, 2007), some studies showed that academic criticism is a much deeper problem in postgraduate writing (Cheng, 2006). Therefore, some researchers proposed ways of developing the skills of criticism in novice writers (Bloch, 2003; Dodson and Feak, 2001). The purpose of
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these studies was helping novice writers to create a research space for themselves. This research adopted Swales (1990) and Swales and Feak (2000, 2004) genre approach to design a series of supervisory sessions. The participants of this study were a supervisor from geotechnical engineering department in a leading university in Malaysia and an applicant of a PhD position in the same university. The supervisee received his master’s from the same university and was writing a scientific article based on his master thesis. In this process the supervisor assisted him to develop a critical literature review for his article. The supervision sessions were done online in Google Docs environment. Google Docs is a cloud based word processor that enables supervisors to provide feedback and guidance and the supervisees to revise their drafts in the same environment. This environment had a research privilege for the current research, because all the interactions between the supervisor and the supervisee could be observed by the researchers. Developing logical arguments in the literature review, according to Turner and Bitchener (2008), is essential to a viable literature review. Turner and Bitchener discuss that a logical argument can be constructed by logically sequencing propositions. To help the supervisee to construct such structures in his literature review, the supervisor shared with him a well-written literature review and guided the supervisee to analyze the rhetorical structure of arguments in a literature review written by an expert in geotechnical engineering. Then the supervisee had to construct his own critical literature review in Google Docs environment. After finishing this task, the supervisor checked with him the rhetorical moves, steps and strategies he used to focus his potential readers’ attention on the ways he presented his own ideas into his literature review about the past research. In this process, the supervisor was asking questions to investigate the awareness of the supervisee of the structural organization of what he had written, use of conjunctions, and authorial voice. The data were collected through virtual participant observation and an analysis of the discussions between the supervisee and the supervisor. The data from the discussions were cross checked with the data from the observations to validate the data. The method of data analysis was qualitative content analysis.
FINDINGS The data analysis showed how the learner could successfully construct a logical argument in his literature review. The process of constructing the argument took two pre-writing actions, two writing actions, and a post-writing action. This section describes these actions with the data from the observational field notes. Then, each section is supported with the data from the discussions between the supervisor and the supervisee. The purpose of literature review is describing the past relevant studies to justify the need for a new research (Bitchener, 2010). In order to fulfil this purpose, the learner had to discover the conventional form for organizing the past findings and criticism in a structured way. To facilitate this discovery the supervisor shared with the learner a good sample of literature review written for geotechnical engineering. Then, he guided the learner to discover the moves and linguistic features of the text. One function of the literature review according to Paltridge and Starfield (2007) is assessing the methods of the past research. The supervisor asked the learner some leading questions to direct the learner’s attention to this function: e.g. what purpose did the writer discuss the method proposed by Baligh and Azzouz (1975)? To answer this question the learner had to critically read
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the paragraph in which the writer discussed the Baligh and Azzouz’s (1975) method. The supervisor was asking these questions to raise the learner’s attention to how the writer evaluated the different methods. When the learner could identify that the writer’s purpose was showing the strengths and weaknesses of the past methods, the supervisor asked questions that needed the learner to critically analyze bigger sections of the sample: e.g. Why did the writer discussed Azzouz, Baligh, and Ladd (1983) firstly, then the method of Chen and Chameau (1983)? These questions aimed at helping the learner to discover the relationship between the paragraphs as well as the techniques to arrange and organize the content of the literature review. It was through these investigations that the learner found the content of a sample literature review written by Kalatehjari and Ali (2013) was basically presented chronologically. He discovered that the writers of the sample also used another method of discussing the variables different methods considered. After these discoveries, the supervisor guided the learner to discover how the writers built relationships between sentences, paragraphs, and sections by asking questions such as: is the link between this paragraph and the following paragraph clear? How did the authors develop a logical discussion in this paragraph? In order to answer such questions, the learner needed to analyze the structure of phrases and sentences as well as the global structure of the whole text. The learner could discover that the major characteristic of the paragraphs was completeness of information in phrases, paragraphs, and the whole text. He also found that having a topic sentence for each and every paragraphs plays a significant role in building a logical relationship between the paragraphs and discussions. Other than these, he could discover that linguistic devices such as conjunctions and repetition of words link the sentences of a paragraph together and build a cohesive discussion. After such discoveries, the supervisor led the learner to commence writing his own literature review, by asking him a though provoking question: What is the first step to write the literature review? Interestingly, the learner gave an analytical answer which later on led to a good conclusion. He said: “I am writing an article based on the findings of my master’s dissertation. I know what the problem was and how I solve the problem. I understood in the literature review I need to show the gap of the literature. So, I need to write a scenario which describes that gap.” This excerpt is extracted from the discussion between the learner and the supervisor in Google Docs environment. It shows the learner could develop awareness of the function of the literature review. He also proposed to write a scenario. When the supervisor asked about how to write a scenario, the learner explained: “I know what the problem is, this is the end of the scenario. I need to list down the events that caused this problem, then explain each event.” When the supervisor asked what he meant by event, the learner said the events were past studies. He elaborated that when he identified the relevant past studies, he needed to draw an outline of them to make them organized. He added that based on the outline he would develop paragraphs of his literature review. After this discussion the learner draw an outline of the past proposed methods relevant to his work. In this process, the supervisor asked questions such as: why did you put this method after that other method. Through this questions the supervisor made the learner to practice logical arrangement of the information. When the outline got ready, the supervisor encouraged the learner to develop topic sentences based on the outline. Developing the topic sentences was the most time consuming task in the whole process of writing the literature
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review. The learner mentioned he had difficulty in constructing topic sentences several times in the conversations he had with the supervisor. Developing topic sentences was the first writing activity that the learner done after the two pre-writing activities: i) sample analysis, and ii) drawing an outline. The process of constructing the topic sentences took a long time. The supervisor suggested the learner to google for instruction on how to write topic sentences or meet a language expert for some advice. The supervisor mentioned that he himself also faced difficulty in constructing topic sentences; and therefore, it was wise for the learner to get accurate guidance on this issue from language expert. The data showed that the supervisee took that advice and met an academic writing mentor. He later on constructed good topic sentences to introduce excavation methods. Interestingly he told the supervisor that he learned how not to start the first sentences of the paragraphs with references. Moreover, he explained his tried to give an overview of the content of the paragraphs in his topic sentences. When the supervisee asked him why? He explained giving an overview of the paragraph in the topic sentence makes readers ready for what they would read in the paragraph. This explanation shows that the learner developed a sense of audience in writing. When the learner finished writing the topic sentence it was time to construct the paragraphs. The observational field notes showed that right after the topic sentences, the learner explained the past methods of excavation. In each paragraph after the explanation of the method, the learner discussed the benefits and limitations of that method. He ended each paragraph with limitations of the methods to create a link to the following paragraph. In other words, each following method tried to solve the limitations of the preceding method. The constructed literature review draft was organized chronologically, while the considerations of each method were also discussed. After drafting the literature review, the supervisor asked the learner about his further plan. When the learner showed lack of awareness toward revising stage, the supervisor asked the learner to google about the importance of revising stage. The learner later reported the importance of revising stage in the process of writing. He mentioned that before this he did not know the difference between editing and revising. The learner told the supervisor that he needed to review his literature review draft and check the transitions between the sentences and the paragraphs as well as the global organization of it. The observational field notes showed that during the revising stage the learner was checking the appropriateness of the conjunctions. His discussion with the supervisor showed that he used translation technique to check whether the conjunctions he used to link clauses and sentences were correct. The other techniques that the learner used to revise his draft was precision, where made long sentences more precise; concision, where he stripped away unnecessary words; and elaboration, where he added more details to support propositions.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION This study tried to developing the awareness of the conventional features of the literature review in geotechnical discipline through analysis of good sample written by an expert of this discipline. The findings showed the subject supervisor could lead the learner to discover the organizational techniques, moves, and linguistic features of the literature review by critically analyzing the sample. The findings showed that developing such awareness is completely feasible in supervisory sessions. This study was done in a wiki environment (Google Docs) where the learner and the supervisor could meet online and have discussions. The study showed that such web-based technologies can facilitate the supervisory sessions. In Google Docs, the supervisor asked a question, and the learner had to do analysis or web search to answer the question. After
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receiving the answer, the supervisor asked another question. This model of supervisory led the learner to go through the process of literature review step by step. This study also showed that supervisors and subject experts should guide novices in writing in the discipline. This finding confirms the suggestion of Wingate (2012) about involving subject lecturers in academic writing training courses. The study also showed that in some cases, there is a need for involvement of language experts. This is because subject experts may not be familiar with all aspects of written language or their knowledge of language is so tacit that it is difficult to transfer it to others. This study provided practical ideas for supervising novice writers who have to write in the discipline. Supervisors may use the idea to create learner-centered supervisory sessions for their supervisees. Since these kinds of practices happen in real life, the learners have enough motivations to learn and practice. Moreover, real life context provide real chances of writing in the discipline, which is expected to lead to life-long learning. Although the benefits of this study are reported, the shortcomings of this research also needed to be acknowledged. Firstly, this study was done with the participation of a newly graduate students who had a high level of English proficiency. This means that he had the experience of writing the literature review before, and generally did not have difficulty in writing in English. This suggests that trying this supervisory method on learners with different writing skills and proficiencies may need different amount of supervisors’ involvement and guidance. Moreover, as this was a case study more research with the involvement of more participants is needed. In addition, as asserted by Palridge (1994) different genres have different characteristics. This study was done on the literature review of scientific articles in geotechnical engineering. More research is needed to investigate the features of other part-genres of articles in geotechnical engineering.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT The work was financially supported by Ministry of Education of Malaysia, MOE under Prototype Research Grant Scheme (R.J130000.7822.4L620) and Universiti Teknologi Malaysia.
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7. Cheng, A. (2006) “Analyzing and Enacting Academic Criticism: The Case of an L2 Graduate Learner of Academic Writing,” Journal of Second Language Writing, 12, 279-306. 8. Deane, M. and P. O'Neill (2011) “Writing in the Disciplines,” Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan. 9. Dodson, B. and C. B. Feak (2001) “A Cognitive Modeling Approach to Teaching Critique Writing to Nonnative Speakers,” In: Belcher, D., and Hirvela, A. eds. Linking Literacies: Perspectives on L2 Reading-writing Connections. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 186-199. 10. Dovey, T. (2010) “Facilitating Writing from Sources: A Focus on Both Process and Product,” Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 9, 45-60. 11. Holbrook, A., Bourke, S. Lovat, T., and K. Dally (2004) “Investigating PhD Thesis Examination Reports,” International Journal of Educational Research. 41, 98-120. 12. Hyland, K. (2009) “Teaching and researching writing,” Pearson Education. 13. Jesson, J. and F. Lacey (2006) “How to do (or not to do) a critical literature review,” Pharmacy Education, 6(2), 139-148. 14. Kalatehjari, R., and N. Ali (2013) “A Review of Three-Dimensional Slope Stability Analyses based on Limit Equilibrium Method,” Electronic Journal of Geotechnical Engineering, 18(A), 119-134. 15. Paltridge, B. (1994) “Genre analysis and the identification of textual Boundaries,” Applied Linguistics, 15(3), 287-299. 16. Paltridge, B. (1997) “Genre, frames and writing in research settings,” 45, John Benjamins Publishing. 17. Paltridge, B. and S. Starfield (2007) “Thesis and Dissertation Writing in a Second Language: A Handbook for Supervisors,” Routledge. 18. San Miguel, C. and C. D. Nelson (2007) “Key writing challenges of practice-based doctorates,” Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 6(1), 71-86. 19. Swales, J. M. (1990) “Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings,” Cambridge, UK, CUP. 20. Swales, J. M. and C. B. Feak (2000) “English in Today’s Research World: A Writing Guide,” Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press. 21. Swales, J. M. and C. B. Feak (2004) “Academic Writing for Graduate Students: Essential Tasks and Skills,” 2nd ed., University of Michigan Press. 22. Swales, J. M. and S. Lindemann (2002) “Teaching the Literature Review to International Graduate Students,” In: Jones, A. M. ed. Genre in the Classroom: Multiple Perspectives. Mahwah, New Jersey, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers, 43-73. 23. Turner, E. and J. Bitchener (2008) “An Approach to Teaching the Writing of Literature Reviews,” Published online by Zeitschrift Schreiben. 24. Webster, J. and R. Watson (2002) “Analyzing the past to prepare for the future: Writing a Literature Review,” MIS Quarterly, 26(2), xiii-xxiii.
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25. Wingate, U. (2012) “Using Academic Literacies and Genre-based Models for Academic Writing Instruction: A Literacy Journey,” Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 11(1), 26-37.
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