Strategic, passionate, but academic am i allowed in my writing (2)

Journal of English for Academic Purposes (2009) 134e146 www.elsevier.com/locate/jeap Strategic, passionate, but academic: Am I allowed in my writing? Phan Le Ha Faculty of Education, Monash University, Australia Abstract This article is about the struggles to sustain identity as writers while accommodating the demands of the university experienced by Arianto and his thesis supervisor, myself It shows how critical EAP was the on-going conversation between us about how to negotiate norms, voice and creativity in our writing and in the negotiations Arianto had to make when writing his own essays and thesis in English and assessing his students’ written works The article also discusses how my positioning as a writer of two languages and having a passion for my own voice and identity in writing has influenced the ways I have analysed and interpreted Arianto’s tensions, contradictions and justifications in his negotiation processes The findings showcase the ways in which power is shared and shifted among EAP teachers, supervisors and students and the tendency to recognise and respect different ways of practising EAP among readers, such as journal reviewers and thesis examiners They also reveal how Arianto’s readiness and confidence to share the ownership of and appropriate English as an international language has been exercised in the negotiation processes involving my support, encouragement as well as critical comments and high expectation of his writing Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved Keywords: Critical EAP; Voice and writer identity; Identity and writing; English; Research writing Introduction This article is about the struggles to sustain identity as writers while accommodating the demands of the university experienced by Arianto and his thesis supervisor, myself It shows how critical EAP was the on-going conversation between us about how to negotiate norms, voice and creativity in our writing and in the negotiations Arianto had to make when writing his own essays and thesis in English and assessing his students’ written works The article also discusses how my positioning as a writer of two languages and having a passion for my own voice and identity in writing has influenced the ways I have analysed and interpreted Arianto’s tensions, contradictions and justifications in his negotiation processes Arianto was an international student from Indonesia and a tutor in an undergraduate program at an Australian university I was Arianto’s thesis supervisor, who gave constant feedback on his writing Seeing me as his writing mentor, Arianto also often asked for my advice when he had to make difficult decisions regarding what he felt was acceptable and what the assessment criteria required him to while marking his students’ work I am Vietnamese lecturing in an Australian university, have been educated in different educational systems and exposed to various ways of writing My own writing values and practice have also been under constant negotiations as a writer and an examiner E-mail address: ha.phan@education.monash.edu.au 1475-1585/$ - see front matter Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved doi:10.1016/j.jeap.2008.09.003 P Le Ha / Journal of English for Academic Purposes (2009) 134e146 135 The article features Arianto’s varied stages of appropriation of English for a writing space that seems most meaningful to his personality, values and identity as a student and teacher simultaneously The findings showcase the ways in which power is shared and shifted among EAP teachers, supervisors and students and the tendency to recognise and respect different ways of practising EAP among readers, such as journal reviewers and thesis examiners They also reveal how Arianto’s readiness and confidence to share the ownership of and appropriate English as an international language (McKay, 2002; Phan Le Ha, 2008) has been exercised in the negotiation processes involving my support, encouragement as well as critical comments and high expectation of his writing English academic essay: What is required and expected? In this section, I present what constitutes an English academic essay at least as required in Australian institutions which Arianto and I have experienced as student writers and as academic examiners I will particularly refer to the work of Farrell (1997a, 1997b), who discusses English academic writing focusing on the following notions:  culturally situated notions of ‘‘literate’’ forms;  culturally situated notions of ‘‘relevance’’;  culturally situated notions of ‘‘politeness’’ 2.1 Culturally situated notions of ‘‘literate’’ forms Farrell (1997b) argues that ‘‘school literacy in most English-speaking countries is a highly specialised discourse’’ and ‘‘it is objective, analytical and sequential’’ (p 142) Thus, in this sense, essays must be ‘‘sequential, or organised’’ in a linear and co-ordinated way that contributes to the reader’s perception of symmetry, order, and logical thinking A well-structured essay, according to Farrell (1997b), is one which the examiner, under considerable pressure of time, can read with ease As Allen (1996) has shown, examiners assume a certain discourse style, their style, and they not easily accept those who use language differently They may feel writers need to be ‘‘people like us [who] use language, think, value, and talk in these ways, with these objects at these times and in these places’’ (Gee, 1992, p 123) As a result, if candidates can perform in such a way that suits the examiner’s taste, their essays are considered effective In academic writing style in Australian universities, candidates are required to show the ability of critical thinking, questioning, discussing or analysing Being ‘‘literate’’ in writing in a language does not mean only the acquisition of the written code including spelling, lexicon, and grammar, but also the acquisition of values embedded in the written code 2.2 Culturally situated notions of ‘‘relevance’’ Relevance, as Farrell (1997a) contends, refers to decisions about both ‘‘whether something is relevant and how it is relevant.’’ Also, relevance is seen as ‘‘central in establishing meaning’’ (p 68) In English, what counts as relevance includes the correct identification of ‘key words’ and the correct interpretation of instructional words For example: ‘‘to what extent you agree or disagree with this statement’ includes in itself key words ‘to what extent’ and instructional words ‘agree or disagree’.’’ Successful writers are those who can encode correctly what the task requires them to do, whether to write a comparison, an evaluation, an instruction, or a recommendation One more aspect of ‘relevance’ in English academic writing is that all ideas, issues and suggestions have to be associated with the topic That explains why most paragraphs include a topic sentence and supporting ideas This feature may allow readers to summarise the main idea of any reading passage and contribute to ‘linearity’ However, Moore (1998) argues that student writers often find writing task topics and requirements ambiguous Their confusion may lead to substituting one genre for another For example, instead of performing an evaluation (how valid/important/relevant is X), they fulfil a recommendation (what can be done about X) or a description (what X is like) The ambiguity of the notion ‘relevance’, explained above, is often ignored by many academics when marking their students’ work because they may simply consider an essay topic and its requirement ‘normal’ This assumption of ‘normalcy’ among many academics indeed gave Arianto and myself as student writers, who come from Indonesia 136 P Le Ha / Journal of English for Academic Purposes (2009) 134e146 and Vietnam respectively, some time of struggles to fight for a meaningful notion of relevance to which we could relate our senses of selves and identities 2.3 Culturally situated notions of ‘‘politeness’’ The notions of ‘politeness’ in English writing, as Farrell (1997a) argues, ‘‘reflect a relatively high value placed on combativeness and individualism, and a relatively low value on community identity and traditional forms of knowledge’’ (p 69) In order to be ‘polite’ in a test, particularly in academic writing performance, candidates are advised to enjoy an equal relationship with the examiner who is reading their essays Nevertheless, they are cautioned not to be ‘aggressive’ or ‘arrogant’ or ‘rude’ in arguing in favour of a point of view or against another point of view Politeness formulation is embedded in the relationship between the candidate and the examiner in the aspects set out below: - relationship between students and teacher (including whether it is considered insulting for a student to contradict a teacher or an examiner); - the extent to which it may be appropriate for students to question or reformulate knowledge they have learnt; - the extent to which explicit, or direct, intellectual dispute is tolerated, even among equals (Adapted from Farrell, 1997b, p.146) The above norms of English academic writing clearly imply that only certain forms of literacy and knowledge count and if writers not acquire these norms, they tend to be judged inadequate This point links to the issue of voice and identity in ESL/EFL writing that I am going to discuss in the subsequent section ESL/EFL Writing, Voice and Identity ESL/EFL writing brings to the fore issues of identity and voice, as it involves processes of negotiation, adaptation, appropriation and resistance that can occur during the acts of conceptualisation, drafting and writing It reflects the writer identity dimensions discussed by Ivanic (2005), namely authorial self, autobiographical self, discoursal self and the relational dimension Likewise, it necessitates self as writer to relocate (Kamler, 2001) and create meaningful space To understand how and why individuals write certain ways and to facilitate ways that they value, Viete and Phan Le Ha (2007) propose that it is necessary to ‘‘pay even more attention to the affective and sociopolitical investments that students have in writing when English is an additional language’’ (p 42) For example, affective and sociopolitical investments may include emotional investment in asserting the validity of personal experience and values, such as experience as writer in more than one language and experience as an international student caught between norms of academic writing that contradict his/her more familiar and valued writing norms Personal experience is not often viewed as valid source of reference in English academic writing, and hence affective investment is important in asking for its recognition Resisting dominant norms both academically and sociopolitically through authenticating/validating certain knowledge and practices is also a form of emotional investment The taken-for-granted view that English academic writing is linear, relevant and logical demonstrating well-articulated arguments, reasoning and critical thinking is evident in the literature (Ballard & Clanchy, 1997; Samuelowicz, 1987) This view implies that academic writing in other languages, specifically Asian languages, is illogical, circular and irrelevant lacking argumentative and analytical ability and critical discussions I have challenged these views, academically, in both the content and appearance of my writing (see Viete & Phan Le Ha, 2007), with full awareness seeing my act as sociopolitical Exploring these investments facilitates the understanding of the multilayeredness of depth, complexities, desires and passion as well as uncertainties and crisis underlying and inherent in students’ writing This article adopts this view ESL/EFL writing also signifies stages of dilemmas and ambivalence that can result in conflicts, which are often made sense of by such notions as intertextuality (Chandrasoma, R., Thompson, P & Pennycook, A 2004), hybridity and ‘‘heteroglossia’’ or multivoicedness (Bakhtin, 1981, 1986); and Third Space (Kramsch, 1993; Pennycook, 2001) Issues of voice and identity and the sorts of negotiations and conflicts embedded in ESL/EFL writing are produced and reproduced within moral and political agendas inherent in and surrounding the nature of writing in more than one P Le Ha / Journal of English for Academic Purposes (2009) 134e146 137 tongue in a postcolonial context These moral and political agendas include the discursive constructions of Self and Other (Pennycook, 1998), and the perceived superiority of the ‘‘native English speaker’’ in all aspects of the teaching and learning of English (Holliday, 2005) These agendas also reflect the deficit-oriented stereotypes and assumptions of international students from Asia who are identified as having problems with writing in English and are accordingly labeled as plagiarists in many cases (Phan Le Ha, 2006) But these agendas, I argue, while on the one hand tend to exercise in favour of the powerful Self, have on the other necessarily enabled meaningful space as the Other writer to be created, nurtured and grow Kubota (2003) contends that ‘‘an author’s voice is conveyed through the surface structures of text in addition to the content’’ and thus ‘‘expression of voice in this sense can be a major issue for second language writers’’ (p 65) The notion of ‘voice’, though ‘‘debatable’’ (McPherron, 2005, p 10) due to ‘‘lacking definition or only defined by the societal context (Ramanathan & Kaplan, 1996) and not an indicator of strong writing (Helms-Park & Stapleton, 2003)’’ (cited in McPherron, 2005, p 10), remains a useful term, especially in understanding ESL/EFL writing This article, while acknowledging the ‘‘debatable’’ nature of ‘voice’, extends the notions of voice as writer identity and self-representation (Ivanic, 2005, p.400) and as a term associated with the values of individualism (Ramanathan & Atkinson, 1999) It aligns itself with the work of Viete and Phan Le Ha (2007), who argue ‘‘the notion of self-representation does not assume a strident voice, nor does it assume a clearly defined persona’’ (p 42) Obtaining a strident voice and/or a clearly defined persona ‘‘is only one of the possibilities’’ (p 42) Rather, what seems more important are ‘‘the ways in which writing is always interdiscursive, and reverberates for both writer and readers with multiple voices’’ (p 42) Moreover, I would like to borrow the words of Blanton (2003) to add to my view of voice: ‘‘For me, voice has a tangible and palpable reality Voice (actually a range of ways of voicing myself) must be felt within me; otherwise I have no way of shaping, even generating of something to say, on paper or elsewhere’’ (p 153) Even when writers desire to have their own voice and identity in writing, their journeys of negotiation are so diverse (Casanave, 2003; Kubota, 2003; Matsuda, 2003) Torn and challenged by the discourse community, its norms and language, like Matsuda (2003) and Kubota (2003), I have had to negotiate and renegotiate my ways of writing I see myself as a ‘rebellious’ writer, most probably because I believe in the dynamics of the reader’s minds and therefore convinced myself to write my way Like Casanave (2003), in the search for a meaningful voice in scholarly writing, I have realized ‘‘I am not a victim of disciplinary discourses, but an active agent in choosing how to represent myself in writing’’ (p 143) This does not suggest that I blindly and stubbornly reject existing norms and practices Instead, I acknowledge and incorporate them in both content and the form of my writing, but in my own voice(s) This very sense of having a voice and identity in writing has given me a sense of wholeness, richness, connectedness and belonging And this is the very belief that I want to pass on to my students Arianto is one of them But I not it by imposing; rather, negotiation, mutual learning and community-building This relates to Benesch’s (2001) argument for rights analysis, which I discuss below Rights analysis and power issue ‘‘Searching for a way to convey how power structures are embedded in education decision-making, I have replaced critical needs analysis with rights analysis.’’ (Benesch, 2001: 44; italics in the original) ‘‘Rights in critical EAP highlight academic life as contested, with various players exercising power for different ends Rights, unlike needs, are political and negotiable They are a way to conceptualize more democratic participation for all members of an academic community.’’ (ibid, p 62; italics in the original) In light of Benesch’s (2001) argument, as it ‘‘incorporates needs and rights analysis to take into account both requirements and resistance’’ (p 3), critical EAP helps unpack the seemingly paradoxical nature of conforming to the norms as a learner and simultaneously playing around the norms as an expert in the academia Critical EAP encourages students to negotiate and question their positioning as ‘not knowing’ and therefore ‘being expected to comply’ With rights analysis, Benesch (2001) reveals political and ethical dimensions that are often ignored or undercovered in the literature Rights analysis in this regard puts an emphasis on power issues and students’ resistance in 138 P Le Ha / Journal of English for Academic Purposes (2009) 134e146 academic contexts I understand that the notion also embraces the why and how students resist and struggle to negotiate power realities These include students’ life experiences, backgrounds, prior knowledge, feelings, desires and expectations When these factors are considered in education decision-making, they enable students to produce works that are meaningful to them Benesch (2001) has shown how rights analysis and critical EAP work effectively with her students in different academic settings Pedagogical practices involving critical EAP are also evident in Canagarajah (2002b), Casanave (2002), and Kramsch (2001) The negotiation process that Arianto and I have gone through, while discussed in light of the above theories, demonstrates that power issues in academic settings enable creativity and meaningful works particularly where resistance is noted and facilitated Critical EAP and Thirdspace pedagogy (addressed below) are powerful notions that would enable educators to act for a better world, the world that joyously dances with Hope (Freire, 1970, cited in Benesch, 2001) Thirdspace Pedagogy Kramsch (2001: 16) stresses how English language teachers can assist students in acquiring their own voices in using English to ‘‘secure a profit of distinction’’ (italics in the original) She contends that language teachers’ responsibility is to help students not only become acceptable and listened to users of English by adopting the culturally sanctioned genres, styles, and rhetorical conventions of the English speaking world, but how to gain a profit of distinction by using English in ways that are unique to their multilingual and multicultural sensibilities (Kramsch 2001:16) This corresponds with Kostogriz’s (2005) Thirdspace pedagogy, which he defines as a ‘‘critical pedagogy of space’’ (p 203, italics in the original), and which he sees as being ‘‘able to take into account both the multiple and contested nature of literacy learning in multicultural classrooms and intercultural innovations in meaning- and identitymaking’’ (p 203) In light of these critical notions, I now present accounts of myself and Arianto obtained through on-going conversations, journal entries and my notes for the period of over a year Myself, Arianto and the contexts in which we communicate and negotiate meanings 6.1 Myself I am Vietnamese and lecture in a university in Australia I received my Master and PhD in Australia Together with my postgraduate studies, my prior education and life experience in Vietnam have given me valid knowledge, values and partly shaped who I am as a writer Completing two Bachelor degrees in Vietnam, one International Relations (International Studies) and the other one Language, I enthusiastically started my postgraduate course in Australia with strong confidence in writing However, the literature in cross-cultural adjustments of Asian students knocked me down I became aware of stereotypes made about Asian students studying in Australia: their writing was described as being ‘circular’, ‘unclear’ and lacking a logical mind, as opposed to the ‘linear’, ‘clear’ and logical English writing Students’ prior knowledge, values, personal creativity and passion for writing did not seem to count or be recognized as legitimate writing elements Fortunately, these stereotypes did not keep me down; they woke me up rather than making me dependent on the English academic writing norms I felt I must something I wanted to disrupt these stereotypes I thus decided to take Vietnamese and English academic writing as the focus of my Masters thesis I used the English language to argue against its imposed dominant norms and argue for a writing space that interweaves joyously my multiple identities, experiences, values and prior knowledge, as my supervisor acknowledged in her words ‘‘She reminded [me] that her studies in international relations inhabit her mind as Vietnam does her heart and writing her fascination’’ (Viete & Phan Le Ha, 2007: 51) Elsewhere I elaborate more on what writing means to me Writing to me is not a new concept or a recent practice It is my childhood friend, my own world of interesting secrets and surprises, my hobby, my love, and above all, my identity My writing is consistently elaborated P Le Ha / Journal of English for Academic Purposes (2009) 134e146 139 and crafted from my grandmother’s lullabies, idiomatic expressions and fairy tales, from my preference in expressing myself with words woven in papers, from what I have been taught at school and from what I have experienced in life My writing in English has also become part of myself, a part that cannot be separated I now communicate in two languages, but am not limited to only two cultures Rather, given the advantages of the international English, I am communicating with the whole world, in the voice of a Vietnamese who also sees herself as an international citizen But I always find English too narrow and not delicate enough for my knowledge, my passion and my identity to blossom and develop This is my Vietnamese part that has filled in this gap My English writing, thus, sometimes constitutes a Vietnamese input under an English appearance and vice versa It may also be presented with both English and Vietnamese in its look and content But most importantly, it has my own creativity that makes a distinctive flavour, and my experiences that assert my authority as a writer (Viete & Phan Le Ha, 2007, p 50) Not all academics submit themselves to defending traditional English academic writing norms; and my Master’s and PhD theses supervisors are among them They valued my ways of writing and together with me nurtured the voice I insisted That was not to say that our journey was smooth and rosy, especially when I was always strongly determined to exercise my writer power and when my supervisors at times were worried that I might run the risk of being depicted by examiners as a non-‘conformer’ of academic writing After all I had experienced in my writing path as a research student, I thought when I became a supervisor I would be as tolerant and understanding as my supervisors I would allow my students possibilities to grow their voices in writing and constantly reflect on my own practice to better ‘dig out’ their creativity and cultivate their meaningful writing I had been certain that all students would welcome this opportunity to reinvent their writer self But when I became Arianto’s thesis supervisor, his hesitation and uncertainty about whether he was ready to take up the position I offered him challenged my belief and led me to question my own romanticising pedagogy that every student had the desire to establish his/her own voice in writing In fact, in the beginning Arianto insisted on strictly following the norms (the literate forms, relevance and politeness notions that I have mentioned in the beginning) that he had been familiar with and introduced to, although he said one reason why he chose me as his supervisor was because he liked my work and the ways I write I now turn to Arianto’s account before discussing how we negotiated along the way and how we resolved his dilemmas as a research student whose writing was subject to being assessed by others and as a tutor marking his students’ writing 6.2 Arianto Arianto was my Master’s research student He has a Chinese background and comes from Indonesia He often says that he is the minority and marginalised wherever he is In Indonesia, he is Chinese or the ‘‘non pribumi’’ (the non preearth/non-native group); in the Chinese community, he is the ‘Other’ Han, not the dominant Han; and in Australia, he is Asian He speaks five languages and has been educated in Indonesia, Singapore and Australia Arianto’ mixed backgrounds and diverse experiences fascinated me right from the beginning When we first worked together, he told me that he always wanted to write in ‘my way’ (his words), as it would help him best express his ideas, emotion, affection and attitudes and engage scholarly and meaningfully with the literature Importantly, it would help him be true to himself However, he was not sure if he would be able to nurture his voice and identity, as he had been so used to conforming to the academic writing norms imposed on him for his entire Bachelor’s course in an Australian university 6.3 Why did Arianto conform to the norms? Arianto explained to me that he had some vague idea about having a voice in writing, but comments from his teachers and tutors at university scared him of ever daring to have such a luxury He had always been unsure of the notion of voice and writer identity and how to obtain it in his writing He said he was under the impression that only expert writers, scholars and academics had the right to assert their writer self; students, especially those from nonEnglish-speaking backgrounds like him, had to learn and follow Since starting his study in Australia, he had been made to believe that English academic writing was the way to write and that being Asian was something he should feel ashamed of as it would spoil his writing in English That very part of him, his identity and past experience, had been demanded to silence Consequently, he had seen being an Asian international student as inferior to white Australian 140 P Le Ha / Journal of English for Academic Purposes (2009) 134e146 students and the cause for underachieving in Australia Being like Australian was his ultimate target and speaking with an Australian accent made him feel great, as he reported He had held this belief until the time he began to work with me in 2006 6.4 The start of the negotiation: ‘The frog climbing to the top of the well to discover the world’ Arianto had been working as a tutor in a Bachelor’s program at an Australian university before commencing his Master’s degree The units he tutored carried many stereotypes about Asian students being the inferior Other in the so-called ‘academic discourse community’ Many of his students were international students and he reported that they had developed an inferiority complex throughout the classes and the readings introduced They all tended to believe that they had problems with writing and performing in English and their backgrounds and prior knowledge were invalid and irrelevant Arianto found himself contributing to the colonisation of his students, who seemed to constantly repeat the message ‘‘I’m sorry I am an international students I can’t write I apologise for being a non-native speaker of English’’ in their essays He said he had been quite comfortable seeing himself as representing the ‘English academic discourse community’ and being looked up to by his students He had made himself believe that he was not one of them e the Asian students e, as he spoke with an Australian accent and could exercise his power as the examiner of his students’ assignments When he talked to me in a later stage, he admitted that this experience hurt him and bothered him, as in reality he had felt weak and lost inside Arianto began to work with me in 2006 while still tutoring He said he was most interested in researching into international students’ performance at Western universities after having read my work and other readings introduced in his MA course I discussed openly with him my expectations and flexibility during the supervision process I also wanted to see his writing and asked him what he thought about writing That was when he shared with me his stories and experiences as a student and a tutor Though he desired being able to bring his world to his writing, he still insisted on complying with the academic writing norms deeply imposed on him over the past years He felt safer that way and I respected his choice However I wanted to give him options that could allow him more democratic participation in the academic community and space for negotiation as a member of this community, as suggested by rights analysis (Benesch, 2001), and let him decide As such, I then explained to him that writing a thesis is different from writing an essay and asked him to read other students’ theses to get some ideas He then said that he liked those theses that were written with passion, not ‘‘dry’’ and ‘‘disengaging’’ He felt those theses were closer to his heart and what he had been imagining about writing, the imagination that he had had to hide and reject as he wanted to be ‘one of them’, the powerful Western ‘them’, not the inferior Asian student not knowing how to write I then talked to him about my writing philosophy and the notion of voice, identity and agency in writing and the struggles I had been through with my writing journey One struggle I had had when writing my Masters thesis was how to present myself as both a member of the so-called English academic discourse community and a Vietnamese writer wanting to shed light on this discourse community about her own community values and ways of doing that deserve more attention and equal recognition I had identified to Arianto the conclusion of my MA thesis as a site of struggle and success in achieving my writing aims The conclusion in an academic essay and the concluding chapter in a thesis in Vietnamese writing are considered very important In the conclusion, the writer is required to summarise or paraphrase the main ideas discussed in the body At the same time, the writer can make his/her personal comments and/or judgements on the issues discussed in the work with the view to generating follow-up studies The writer is advised to make the conclusion as strong, impressive and rich as possible to let the main issues be long remembered (Nguyen & Nguyen, 1998) I had been so used to writing and appreciating conclusions like this A strong voice inside urged me to craft a distinctive, effective and persuasive conclusion for my thesis Also, my knowledge in international relations had taught me about diplomatic letters used by our ancestors as a means of ‘soft negotiation’ to deal with powerful entities in history, such as the Chinese and the French Viewing at that time my positioning as a non-native English speaking writer considered ‘powerless’ and novice, concluding my thesis with a diplomatic letter appeared to be risky, a concern of my supervisor But I was determined to go ahead with my decision and produced a letter that still functioned well within the academic discourse while leaving readers with a strong sense of the research and its significance in a distinctive and lyrical voice Later, for my PhD dissertation, I concluded with a poem I often received applause for the letter and the poem at conferences and seminars P Le Ha / Journal of English for Academic Purposes (2009) 134e146 141 After I shared the story of my concluding chapters with Arianto, he sent me a drawing of a boat and himself on it The boat was almost sinking but it got saved by a person On the drawing was a note saying ‘‘Thank you for re-directing my boat from the inferiority pathway to the self-empowering pathway I’ve just realised how much I’ve changed I feel like a frog being given a rope to climb out from a very deep well which it used to be confined into.’’ From that moment onwards, Arianto started to think positively about himself and introduce new readings to his students, such as those that empower students instead of suppressing their own senses of selves and looking down upon their cultural backgrounds Among these new readings were my work and Casanave’s (2002) work The frog was no longer confined to the well 6.5 A becoming critical and questioning writer Arianto We met on a regular basis to discuss Arianto’s thesis, writing and tutoring I also asked him to keep journals at his convenience and show them to me when he felt comfortable I also took notes of our conversations In one of the journals, Arianto reflected on an incident in his class that provoked his thought On his reflection, he used three metaphors, door, letter, and gift, to express his subtle but powerful resistance: I was taken aback to hear one of my lecturers who commented badly on my classmates written work He said that we should not leave a question in the conclusion of our writing With a frown creasing his forehead and a sarcastic and condescending smile on his face, he said ‘what’s that’? I don’t really understand what is wrong with leaving a question in the conclusion of an essay I think it is very engaging as it gives readers something that they can take away with and think about or what I called ‘food for thought’ Besides, it shows that the writer is thinking about what he or she is writing An essay is not a piece of written work where a writer has to present solutions to the topic given by the lecturer It needs to show one’s thinking, one’s stance, one’s ability to engage the readers, one’s ability to present the complexity of the issue discussed in the essay Leaving a question in the conclusion is good because it shows that one’s essay is not the end of the discussion or the end of your thinking, but acts as a ‘door’ that opens for further discussion, acts as ‘a letter of invitation’ that welcomes responses from the readers, or acts as a ‘gift’ that the readers can take away and think about- who knows one day the readers might come back to the writer’s writing as a starting point for their own writing? (Journal 1) Arianto then said that he felt stronger and passionate as he was writing the journals He felt he was able to argue for his positioning in a persuasive ‘‘academic’’ and ‘‘beautiful’’ manner I see an argumentative writing as ‘war’ between my ideas and other author’s ideas that I disagree with Therefore, the way I write is quite strategic I don’t always start with my ideas as the topic sentence Normally I put other people’s opinion first as a topic sentence and let them voice out their opinions And at the end or towards the end of the paragraph, that’s where my rebuttal voice comes in, which I use as a cohesive device or a link to the next paragraph (Journal 2) I also think that the genre of my essay is a combination of an ‘informational’ and ‘argumentative’ By informational, I don’t mean that I am presenting facts in the essay But I am presenting the claims that people make with a purpose of making readers aware in advance of what other people opinions are These opinions, are then, criticised or contested which is where my argumentative voice comes in (Journal 2) As he was writing the journals, Arianto began to uncover his writer self, writing journey and what writing meant to him To respond to some of my guided questions, such as ‘‘What are important elements in your writing?’’, ‘‘How did you write an essay in Indonesian?’’, and ‘‘How you want your writing in English to look like?’’, Arianto wrote: In Indonesia, I was not even taught how to write an essay When my teacher asked us (me and my classmates) to write an essay, what we had in mind was a long piece of writing containing our ideas, feelings, attitudes towards the given topic I was not even taught how to write and structure my ideas in the essay I had to find a way to write it I finally realised that a good essay to almost all my teachers was one that conveyed our feelings and attitudes towards topic and had ‘a moral message’ at the end of the essay So, this in some way has affected the way I write in English In English academic writing, I was expected to present my ‘arguments’ in an objective way Despite that, sometimes I still feel ‘uncomfortable’ to hide my 142 P Le Ha / Journal of English for Academic Purposes (2009) 134e146 emotion and attitude in my writing Of course, it needs to be presented in a professional language, but I still can’t hide my attitudes and feelings (Journal 4) Arianto said that no one had ever asked him these questions He had used to think that his feelings, attitudes and prior knowledge were not important to anyone, even himself, as everyone seemed to talk about conforming to the norms, writing like native speakers, and having arguments and being objective But as he was expressing his writer self to me, he realised how much affect he had been investing in every word he used and every sentence he composed He suddenly felt that he could exercise his power as a writer; indeed he felt liberated and more committed about writing, as he reported He started to write his Master’s thesis in this spirit, and even went very far from the norms that he had once been slaved to For example, he concluded his MA thesis with a poem (see the Appendix) He said his decision was encouraged and assured by my own work and my confidence in his creativity and voice 6.6 Negotiating with a too deeply obsessed with his writer self Arianto I felt responsible for nurturing Arianto’s voice and at the same time facilitating his journey to become an aware writer But I was also his supervisor and could always feel his entire trust on my judgement of his writing Arianto said that he felt assured and confident once I approved what he had produced Because of this felt responsibility, I was sometimes harsh on his writing particularly when I felt that it tended to sound rather aggressive and overgeneralising and lacking necessarily scholarly engagement with the materials Arianto cited Put differently, Arianto seemed to be obsessed with his writer self, tried to show it too much and his writing looked like an engagement with himself, his attitude, feelings and rather impulsive evaluation of other authors’ viewpoints Below are examples of how I worked with Arianto on these issues Before I gave him my comments, I would ask Arianto to read his writing again and tell me what he thought I also asked him to explain to me his opinions about the materials he had used in the writing As he was talking to me, I could see a revised version of what he had written, at least not so much of himself there but how and to what extent he communicated with others’ ideas I then suggested that he reposition his voice with regard to what he had written and what he had just expressed in the conversation with me I even played devil’s advocate to challenge his rather onesided arguments At times I showed Arianto pieces of my writing with which I was dissatisfied and asked him to give me suggestions For example, I gave him an article I had written for a journal with a reviewer’s comment that I was ‘‘being opinionated’’ I asked Arianto to identify where it seemed opinionated to him and how I could improve the article I then gave him the revised version in which I had responded to that reviewer’s comment, showing how I had balanced scholarly dialogue and opinion Arianto learnt very fast and could gradually find a voice and writer identity that represented him best while enabling him to enjoy an effective dialogue with the literature This reminded me of my own struggle to establish a meaningful voice and that of Kubota (2003) and Matsuda (2003) in their writing for scholarly publications Arianto was awarded a very high score for his Master’s thesis and I was confident that the way he wove it with his life ingredients and materials had played a role 6.7 Arianto and dilemmas Arianto became very aware of exercising his own voice and identity in writing and enjoyed having freedom and legitimising his rights in crafting his work; however, as a tutor, Arianto on many occasions found himself contradicting the ways he expected students to perform academically On the one hand, he sometimes felt he needed to represent the institution and safeguard its academic norms, as his position would automatically necessitate this authoritarian role Arianto reported that being a tutor was a vulnerable position and so guiding his students to strictly follow the norms could be the safest way to avoid potential trouble from the institution and also to show his students that he was the expert knower of writing On the other hand, he had a desire to nurture his students’ creativity and voice in their writing too Calling upon my own experiences to assist Arianto with his dilemma, I asked him to identify what was important when assessing his students’ writing He wrote: When I am assessing my students’ work, I normally expect to see their ability to engage me intellectually, to show me their attitudes and feelings in response to their topics But not to feel bad about themselves, to look P Le Ha / Journal of English for Academic Purposes (2009) 134e146 143 down on themselves, or to show their feeling of inferiority This is the kind of writing that I normally give low marks for and I strongly discourage them to (Journal 5) But when his students asked him if they could write with a voice and identity in other subjects and if other teachers would accept their writing, Arianto felt he could not take the responsibility: Honestly, I’m not sure what to tell my students I’d hate seeing them falling into the trap of submitting themselves to English academic writing norms believing that they are enlightened I want them to value their prior experiences and knowledge, but they are sceptical about their own ability Maybe the norms are so powerful and the students have been soaked in these norms the moment they learnt writing in English What should I do? (Journal 6) I could understand this as academic writing tends to be presented to students as being associated with rigid and dry norms When they are given options, they tend to be doubtful I introduced the works of Benesch (2001) and Canagarajah (2002b) to Arianto and reminded him of the relationships between rights and needs and that writing and power are contextualised (Benesch, 2001) and individualised According to these authors, it is possible to assist students in making them aware of possibilities in having a voice and writer identity However, it is also necessary to respect students’ own choice, as any act of writing involves becoming, whichever directions it could take (Prior, 2001) and thus it is important for students to at least take control of their becoming path The paradoxical and complementary nature of power Arianto’s writing journey has indicated that power relations in academia are paradoxical and simultaneously complementary The powerful Self e Other dichotomy (Holliday, 2005; Pennycook, 1998) is manifested in his perception of himself as writer in various contexts in an English-speaking West Arianto went through the stages of being colonized to self-colonisation (when he looked up to the norms as the only route to enlightenment in the beginning), decolonization e self-obsession (when he became so obsessed with his writer self, voice and identity that his writing was rather impulsive and opinionated), and then appropriation (when he was able to find a voice that best represented him, his values, personality and knowledge in a language that best depicted him academically and individually) More examples of his thesis writing are in the Appendix At each stage, he was affected differently by power relations, necessitating resistance, appropriation (Canagarajah, 2002a) and power shift In each stage, Arianto tended to have options but the point was how he came to know that he was allowed certain power and to what extent he could appropriate and exercise the power The negotiations Arianto and I had during his candidature, including showing him my own writing drafts and sharing with him my own writing struggles are examples of critical EAP and Thirdspace pedagogy They all worked together to strengthen Arianto’s path to achieving his voice, agency and writer identity in his writing Respectful critical EAP and Thirdspace pedagogy Every participant in critical EAP/Thirdspace pedagogy writing processes can be respected by working ‘‘from the principles that change in discourse is generative and that in all supervisor-student interactions, students’ sense of self needs to be taken account of’’ (Viete & Phan Le Ha, 2007: 54) With Arianto for example, I saw his rich linguistic and cultural backgrounds as asset and his obsession with his own writer self as a stage in his writing journey Though Arianto underwent conflicts, uncertainty, nervousness and on-going negotiations, we both felt that my role as his writing mentor and as someone who had also experienced many of the stages that Arianto had been facing was one of the key factors in igniting his suppressed dream of what academic writing ought to look like Our on-going conversations, his journals and my notes acted as helpful companions to both of us, allowing us to be self-reflexive and grow Moreover, showing Arianto my writing drafts and asking him to comment on them had a powerful effect on his increasing awareness of how dynamic and fluid rights could be and that rights could be shared and negotiated on a respectful basis We both learnt to claim the rights we felt entitled to Importantly, we did it with due respect 144 P Le Ha / Journal of English for Academic Purposes (2009) 134e146 Appendix Arianto’s thesis writing Extracts from Arianto’s thesis My decision and inspiration to embark on this study has been largely influenced by my prior experience as an undergraduate NESB international student from Asia in Australia and my on-going experience as a tertiary practitioner in a university there Throughout my undergraduate study, I noticed that talking in class was rather challenging When the tutor asked the whole class to report back what had been discussed, I tended to avoid sharing my opinions first because I was worried about digressing Sometimes I did not even know and understand the tutor’s questions So, I always listened to my other classmates’ opinions first, noticed any limitations they might have in their opinions, and then shared my opinions Sadly, I rarely had a chance to share my opinions because when my Australian classmates talked, they could not stop As a result, I often forgot what I wanted to say, which frustrated me I even received a comment from one of my tutors who might have noticed me participate infrequently in tutorials: ‘‘I know you are not from Australia, so you need to talk more in class This is the culture you need to learn And by talking, your English can improve Just say something’’ I was very disturbed by this comment because I was fully aware that the culture I grew up in had nothing to with me not talking in class When I was a student in Indonesia, my teacher always asked me to explain orally what had been learned in previous lessons In addition, I also felt that my English was adequate to participate in tutorials Since the tutor was a native English speaker and held a certain power of authority which I, as a student, did not have, I eventually internalised his comment and blamed my silence on my poor linguistic proficiency and partly on my culture (p 10e11, from the Introduction Chapter) However, from my own experience of working as a university tutor, there are still many university lecturers and tutors complaining about NESB ISAs’ reluctance to participate in tutorials or their passivity despite the extensive research studies that show these students’ willingness to participate actively in tutorials In fact, the literature that focuses on culture and poor linguistic proficiency to explain NESB ISAs’ reluctance to participate in class is indeed problematic, as discussed in the next section (p 25, from the Literature Review Chapter) The poem from the Conclusion and Recommendation Chapter, pp 81e82: I want to talk, but I decided not to My dear lecturers and tutors I choose your class and love it genuinely So, please stop, look, and listen carefully I love talking, As much as you love teaching I love planning and thinking about my talk, As much as you love planning and thinking about your talk I love sharing my knowledge with my seniors, As much as you love sharing yours with your juniors My dear lecturers and tutors I choose your class and love it genuinely So, please stop, look, and listen attentively I read a paper on NESB ISAs with burning flame, but the arguments become so lame and tame Cos my culture is the blame, and my language is a shame But you don’t seem to see that, many locals are almost the same P Le Ha / Journal of English for Academic Purposes (2009) 134e146 145 My dear lecturers and tutors I choose your class and love it genuinely So, please stop, look, and listen attentively I know my language is a shame, but it does not mean I am lame I want to talk, but I can’t When I raise my hand, I am shunned, but locals get the chance My dear lecturers and tutors I choose your class and love it genuinely So, please stop, look, and listen attentively When I talk, you don’t nod When I talk, your face looks odd Topics you give, don’t make any sense Knowledge and experience I save, don’t get a chance When I want to become somebody You make me nobody So, my dear lecturers and tutors, Please stop, look, listen, reflect critically, and believe in me References Allen, K (1996) We look for the positives.’ A study of how four teachers assess the written texts of second language learners Thesis for the degree of Master of Educational Studies Faculty of Education, Monash University Bakhtin, M M (1981) Discourse in the Novel In M Holquist (Ed.), The 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language Oxford: Oxford University Press McPherron, P (2005) Assumptions in assessment: the role of the teacher in evaluating ESL students CATESOL Journal, 17, 1e17 Moore, T (1998) Contrasting rhetorics: academic writing and the IELTS Paper presented to the ACTA/VATME Conference (unpublished) Nguyen, M T., & Nguyen, V H (1998) Tieng Viet thuc hanh Hanoi: NXB Dai Hoc Quoc Gia Ha Noi Pennycook, A (1998) English and the discourses of colonialism London: Routledge Pennycook, A (2001) Critical applied linguistics: a critical introduction New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Phan Le Ha (2006) Readers respond Plagiarism and overseas students: stereotypes again? ELT Journal, 60(1), 76e78 Phan Le Ha (2008) Teaching English as an international language: identity, resistance and negotiation Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters Prior, P (2001) Voices in text, mind, and society: sociohistoric accounts of discourse acquisition and use Journal of Second Language Writing, 10, 55e81 Ramanathan, V., & Atkinson, D (1999) Individualism, academic writing and ESL writers Journal of Second Language Writing, 8(1), 45e75 Ramanathan, V., & Kaplan, R B (1996) Audience and voice in current freshman writing textbooks: some implications for ESL student writers Journal of Second Language Writing, 5(1), 21e34 Samuelowicz, K (1987) Learning problems of overseas students: Two sides of a story Higher Education Research and Development, 6(2), 121e132 Viete, R., & Phan Le Ha (2007) The growth of voice: expanding possibilities for representing self in research writing English teaching: Practice and Critique, 6(2), 39e57 Dr Phan Le Ha is a lecturer in the Faculty of Education, Monash University Australia and holds honorary lecturer positions at universities in Vietnam Her teaching and research areas include English as an international language, teacher identity, the relationships of language, culture, society and identity, theory and practice of TESOL, culture and pedagogy, writing across cultures, and internationalisation of education Phan Le Ha has published in international refereed journals and books Her recent book with Multilingual Matters (UK) entitled ‘‘Teaching English as an International Language: Identity, Resistance and Negotiation’’ examines how EIL teachers see themselves as professionals and individuals in relation to their work practices, and reveals the tensions, compromises, negotiations and resistance in their enactment of different roles and selves, especially when they are exposed to values often associated with the English-speaking West Phan Le Ha has also been invited to speak and be part of symposia at international conferences in different countries  ... conclusion of my MA thesis as a site of struggle and success in achieving my writing aims The conclusion in an academic essay and the concluding chapter in a thesis in Vietnamese writing are considered... writing style in Australian universities, candidates are required to show the ability of critical thinking, questioning, discussing or analysing Being ‘‘literate’’ in writing in a language does not... challenged my belief and led me to question my own romanticising pedagogy that every student had the desire to establish his/her own voice in writing In fact, in the beginning Arianto insisted on strictly