How to Write an Effective MA Literature Review: the Pedagogic Website
Writing academically in English is expanding internationally both in research and practice areas nowadays (Swales 1990, Hood, 2004). At a postgraduate level, it is understood that EAP acquisition is “more than the ability to read and write effectively” (Braine, 2002:60). Often within educational, applied linguistic and higher education research articles we hear stories of unhappy and dissatisfied students (Conrad & Phillips, 1996; Symons, 2001; Higher Education Series Report No. 37, 2001 and Novera, 2004). Many of the complaints from the students are related to language and communication, as argued by Swales (1990), advanced academic literacy skills related to studying, writing and publishing research is more demanding than achieving what is known as “expert” speaker/writer ability. The difficulties of academic writing are not simply learning genre and register in target language but how to construct the meaning within context. A number of studies, Liu (2001), Cadman (2000), Lea (2004), among others argue that the language needs of international students studying in an English instruction university in a non-English speaking context is a multifaceted construct. However, as pointed out by Braine (2002) and most recent existing studies, e.g. Wilson (2003) and Kim (2005) tend to focus on a specific aspect of English language, rather than adopting a holistic view of language as an integrated skill when exploring the students’ academic needs. Most of the existing EAP studies (e.g. Evans and Green, 2007; Hyland, 1997; Littlewood and Liu, 1996) target undergraduate students, while studies exploring research students’ EAP needs in Asian English Medium of Instruction (EMI) tertiary institution are scant, if any.