Learning discipline-specific academic writing : A case study of a finnish graduate student in the United States

Research in several areas has addressed the existence of conventions in the verbal practice of discourse communities and has focused on how these conventions are learned. Applied linguists have identified linguistic and rhetorical features of academic writing in a variety of disciplines such as biology, physics, and economics. Researchers in composition and rhetoric, on the other hand, have examined the processes of initiation and socialization that students entering academic disciplines experience. In the case of second-language writers, a critical question is the effect of a student's native culture and language on second language (L2) acquisition, specifically those aspects of the culture reflected in rhetorical conventions. The converse of this question concerns the degree to which competence in L2 is socially constructed in an L2 milieu such as a specific academic environment. The present case study addresses these questions. It explores a Finnish graduate student's initiation into a midwestern U.S. university's Ph.D. program in agricultural economics. The semester-long case study examined how the student constructed the task of a term paper writing, focusing on negotiations with the professor, use of local resources (i.e., professor and fellow students), and all written products related to the paper. The results show that the student negociated an acceptable topic and conducted the overall task in an acceptable manner, although somewhat disappointing to his professor. The student used local resources, i.e., his fellow native English-speaking students, primarily as editors rather than benefiting from their expertise in content and discourse-level presentation. Finally, the student's first language background affected both his written products, as exemplified by typical Finnish English-as-a-second-language errors, and the manner in which he conducted his negotiations of the task. The study offers directions for future research as well as discusses implications