Journal of English for Academic Purposes

1 (2002) 13–28
www.elsevier.com/locate/jeap

Literacy and disciplinary practices: opening and

closing perspectives
Ann M. Johns*, John M. Swales
Department of Rhetonic and Writing, San Diego State University, San Diego, California, USA

Abstract
There are widespread (and correct) beliefs that the writing tasks that students are asked to
undertake as they move through their undergraduate and graduate years show a broadly
upward progression in terms of length, complexity of resources utilized, and sophistication
expected. Even so, we also suggest that a number of uncertainties persist: whether these
writings are ‘‘real’’ or ‘‘school’’ products; whether there is a coherent audience, and if so, how
best can it be identified; and what role there might be for a personal voice. To support this
argument, we present two explorations of EAP practice. The first looks at the situation of
dissertation writers, explores their rhetorical and other difficulties, and suggests some ways of
mitigating them. The second deals with students at the opposite end of the spectrum of stu-
dent experience; that of entering undergraduates taking their first class in anthropology and
assisted by a linked course designed to initiate them into disciplinary literary practices.
Despite the huge differences between these two sets of circumstance, we conclude that the
writers’ problems are surprisingly similar, as are the strategies for rendering them assistance.
# 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

It seems to us that the EAP researchers who view disciplinary practices in terms of
their published products, and who concomitantly interview the producers and targeted
receivers of such discourses, have a relatively straightforward research life. These
texts, such as research articles, are already valorized and ratified by the very fact of
being published; they have typically undergone an arduous and laborious review
process; and they are easily available, indeed increasingly available for corpus-and-
concordance analysis (e.g. Hyland, 2000). Although Paul et al. (2001) have recently

* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: johns@mail.sdsu.edu (A.M Johns).

1475-1585/02/$ - see front matter # 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S1475-1585(02)00003-6
14 A.M. Johns, J.M. Swales / Journal of English for Academic Purposes 1 (2002) 13–28

questioned whether this type of valorization is really sufficient, there is no doubt

that, vanity products aside, publication offers a reasonable level of quality assur-
ance. Further, the literature suggests that published disciplinary specialists have
much to say in response to such questions as ‘‘What counts as a solid contribution in
your field?’’, ‘‘What changes in publications are occurring and why?’’, and ‘‘How is
expertise realized in texts and other practices?’’.
Once, however, we enter the world of student texts, matters are not so simple.
Indeed, we argue that surprisingly similar complexities emerge across all levels of
student expertise. At the beginning of a university career (the ‘‘opening perspective’’
of the title), US undergraduates, especially those from so-called ‘‘disadvantaged’’
backgrounds, may need EAP-type help as they begin to enter disciplinary terrain. A
decade of university experience later, a select few of those entrants will be attempt-
ing to close out their student lives by completing doctoral dissertations (the ‘‘closing
perspective’’ of the title), and again, at least for some, benefit may derive from the
kind of instructional assistance that EAP support services are increasingly able to
provide. Despite the palpable differences between these two situations, some com-
munalities remain. In both, the issue of the relation between ‘‘school genres’’ and
‘‘real genres’’ (Johns, 1997) persists. In both questions of audience and hence of
recipient design continue to perplex many participants and protagonists. And in
both, an appropriate role for the authorial persona—as personified by the use/non-
use of ‘‘I’’—requires reflection and negotiation.
As it happens, the opening perspective represents Johns’ major area of educational
endeavor (Johns, 1997, 2001, 2002), while the closing perspective that of Swales’
primary teaching interests, at least in recent years (Swales & Feak, 2000). In this
paper, therefore, we present profiles of our current thinking in these two contexts,
and then pick out some similarities and differences between them. We begin with
a shorter reprise of the situation of the senior international graduate student,
which is then followed by a more extensive discussion of that of the entering
undergraduate.

2. The doctoral dissertation and the international dissertation writer

Although Dudley-Evans (1999) can still claim that the doctoral dissertation or
thesis1 remains a ‘‘neglected’’ genre, the amount of discoursal attention directed at
this genre has markedly increased in recent years. There have been studies of its
structure (e.g. Dong, 1998; Ridley, 2000; Thompson, 1999; Paltridge, 2001); on the
important role of metadiscourse in such long texts (Bunton, 1998); on citational
patterns (Thompson, 1998); and on disciplinary variation (Parry, 1998). Case study
research into the struggles of individual dissertation writers, beginning with James
(1984), now includes Belcher (1994), Dong (1996) and Sung (2000). Pedagogical
implications and applications have been taken up by Shaw (1996) and Paltridge

1
Terminology is conflicted here; basically, dissertation is the US term with thesis tending to be used
elsewhere.
 A.M. Johns, J.M. Swales / Journal of English for Academic Purposes 1 (2002) 13–28 15

(1997), among others. Since this body of work as a whole has investigated British,
Scandinavian and Australian ‘‘traditions’’ in dissertation work in addition to those
prevalent in the US, one useful early conclusion from surveying this literature would
be that the dissertation (very much unlike its oral defense) shows rather little in the
way of distinct national characteristics. Instead, cross-nationally, disciplinary field
or subfield emerges as the strongest determinant of structure and rhetorical shape.
In fact, the structure of the dissertation genre appears from this research to be
quite variable, but to basically fall into three patterns. Although there is a wide
perception that there is standard or traditional format for the dissertation (Dudley-
Evans, 1999) consisting essentially of a ‘‘blown up’’ version of the IMRD structure
of research articles (plus a separate Literature Review chapter following the intro-
duction), only about 15% of the recent exemplars analysed actually adopt this for-
mat. A second variant is the anthology-type ‘‘article compilation’’ format with each
of the main chapters itself following IMRD. Of the 100 dissertations cumulatively
discussed in the recent literature, 44 adopt this model, this pattern being favored in
‘‘hard’’ fields. However, there is considerable area-internal variation: for example,
Ridley (1999) found that while 13 out of 19 ‘‘pure science’’ dissertations were
article-compilations, only five of her 13 engineering texts had this structure—
indeed another five were ‘‘traditional’’. The third pattern is most often called
‘‘topic-based’’ and is thus more reminiscent of the chapter features found in aca-
demic books; these chapter-length analysis-discussions may variously deal with
texts, computer models, or various kinds of empirical research including that based
on fieldwork.2
Paltridge (2002), among others, warns us that there is no simple correlation
between discipline and dissertation structure; further, Thompson (1998) shows clear
differences in structure between two contiguous departments within the same school
of agriculture. It looks as though even the basic outline of the dissertation is a
complex issue to be negotiated among advisors and candidates, wherein sub-field
selected or choice of methodology or choice of theory may emerge as strong deter-
mining factors.
As we have seen from the available evidence, the article-compilation format is
marginally the most popular. Dong summarizes the rationale for this option as
follows:

The article-compilation format gives graduate students on-the-job training,

preparing them for what they will be expected to do in their fields after they
receive the PhD degree. In addition, the article format reduces the time for
publication if dissertation chapters can be submitted directly for journal pub-
lication, without requiring extensive pruning and reformatting; therefore, it
meets the need for timely knowledge dissemination and it starts to accumulate
credits for the students professional career. (Dong, 1998:p.371).

2
Ridley divides this type of dissertation into three patterns, but the patterns seem basically the same
even though the content is different. We have therefore consolidated these three into one.
16 A.M. Johns, J.M. Swales / Journal of English for Academic Purposes 1 (2002) 13–28

She further notes, based on her survey results, that graduate students felt the
audience for the traditional format was the advisor, the committee and close student
colleagues, while in the new format this perception broadened to include a wider
disciplinary community. Secondly, and not unexpectedly, she found that in the
anthology format, advisors tended to be more fussy (by requiring more drafts) and
more involved (by doing more of the writing themselves).
However, this account somewhat disguises the difficult rhetorical problems that
the new format engenders. These include:

(a) A bibliography consolidated at the end, at each chapter’s close, or even both?
(b) Metadiscoursal references to chapters or to papers?
(c) Using ‘‘I’’, or recognizing co-authorship by using ‘‘we’’?

A random survey (Swales, in preparation) of post-1992 dissertations from three

science departments at the University of Michigan reveals considerable hybridity
and considerable variation in response to the underlying issue as to whether a dis-
sertation should be a monograph or a loose anthology. Of the eight Physics dis-
sertations examined, five had a consolidated bibliography, one had the references at
the end of each chapter, while the remaining two had both! The author of the one
with no closing bibliography opted for the article terminology and had no difficulty
in pluralizing the authorship; for example, she opens her fourth chapter with, ‘‘In
this paper we study. . .’’. However, in the other texts, there were general preferences
for the label chapter and the singular pronoun I. Similar uncertainties were also
apparent in the biology dissertations. A 1994 text by an international student has the
references only at the end of each paper, but recognizes that in their current states
and formats they are still chapters, even though they exist or will exist in another
genre. Here are three of the chapter openings:

Chapter 3: ‘‘This chapter has been published as. . .’’

Chapter 4: ‘‘Parts of this chapter will be published. . .’’
Chapter 5: ‘‘This chapter will be published as. . .’’.

Given the pressures on doctoral students in nearly all programs in the US (and
often elsewhere) to establish publication profiles before graduation, the rhetorical
complexities imposed by hybridization are only likely to spread and deepen.
An equally intractable but more fundamental issue that underlies the format
question is whether the dissertation is au fond that ‘‘original contribution to knowl-
edge’’ which university authorities worldwide always claim it to be, or is it merely
the final examination in a long student career. Of course, it can be immediately
objected—and rightly—that such an either/or dichotomy will turn out to be unsus-
tainable; as Woolgar (1989: xix) notes, there is ‘‘the play between thesis-as-argument
and thesis-as-an-occasioned academic product’’. However, this kind of observation
is of no comfort or consolidation to the poor dissertation writers as they struggle to
conceptualize and then complete their long and exhausting texts, often under severe
deadline pressures. In an early but important paper, Shaw (1991) concluded, based
 A.M. Johns, J.M. Swales / Journal of English for Academic Purposes 1 (2002) 13–28 17

on interviews conducted with science doctoral students at the University of New-

castle, that the dissertation represented something of a ‘‘pseudo communicative’’
task. He explains: ‘‘They were often required to do something rather unnatural like
pretending that they were writing to inform sophisticated nonspecialists, while being
uneasily aware that really the aim is to persuade an expert that they were worthy to
join a community of scholars’’ (ibid.: p.194). Just like all students, both under-
graduate and graduate, they were still caught between ‘‘knowledge-display and
information-transmission’’ (ibid.: p.193).
Today, it has become something of a truism to say that all genres are embedded in
their socio-historical contexts. Whether this is as generally true as its many advo-
cates claim is somewhat doubtful, but it is certainly true of the US doctoral dis-
sertation. There are several layers of shaping context that impinge on the
construction and creation of a particular instance of the genre.
The outermost, as it were, of these layers is that created by the scholarly expecta-
tions of the university as a whole, and as ratified by its official forms and procedures
for approval. Next, we find the constraints and opportunities provided by the
established expectations of a department or a discipline and what that collectivity
considers to be appropriate topics and appropriate claims for novelty and innova-
tion. A third set of factors that influences our attempts to repurpose the genre
(Askehave & Swales, 2001) resides in the subfield chosen, in the methodologies and
approaches used, and in the rhetorical options to be explored. There is today much
‘‘in the air’’ here including more personal or narratological treatments (see Chang &
Swales, 1999, for the discomfort caused by these trends for non-native speakers of
English). Last but by no means least, there are situated localities of advisor-advisee
relationships (as ably discussed by Belcher, 1994, Prior, 1998, and others), the need
to take into account different expectations among committee members, the existence
(or otherwise) of support groups, workshops or dissertation writing classes, the
availability and type of financial support, and so on.
The larger point to be made is that these four types of influence are unstable in the
force of their effects, having variable impact from one individual case to another.
Sometimes, institutional effects prevail as when a student just wants ‘‘the piece of
paper’’ and then get on with his or her life. In such cases, the dissertation does
indeed turn out to be little more than an ultimate exercise in slogging drudgery
designed to placate the examiners. At the other extreme, there is the dedicated and
successful researcher, with a string of publications to her name, with a good aca-
demic or research job lined up, and for whom putting the dissertation together is as
much a distraction as anything else. For another group of doctoral candidates, the
dissertation will present itself to them as a draft of a subsequent scholarly book that
will itself form the basis of an academic career.3 Finally, there are those doctoral
students who love the social and intellectual life of being doctoral students in a
culturally-attractive city and for whom completing the dissertation will most likely
be nothing but a ticket out of paradise. And of course for many, several of these

3
Unlike in northern Europe, it is uncommon for US dissertations to be actually published, rather than
being made available through Proquest Co (the latest name for the old UMI).
18 A.M. Johns, J.M. Swales / Journal of English for Academic Purposes 1 (2002) 13–28

attitudinal stances combine in order to add psychological confusion to an already

demanding intellectual and rhetorical task.
It turns out then, as we might have expected, that there is no simple or no one
answer to the initial question of whether the dissertation and its associated defense
are ‘‘school genres’’. Dissertations are sometimes more and sometimes less ‘‘occa-
sioned academic products’’; sometimes more and sometimes less ‘‘significant con-
tributions’’ to their specialisms; sometimes more and sometimes less collaborative
co-authored enterprises; and sometimes more and sometimes less waystages in aca-
demic careers.
Given all these complexities and uncertainties, it would seem obvious that more
might be done to help doctoral students, especially those from other cultures and
with some remaining limitations in their English-language proficiency, to better
understand their situations so as to realize their dissertational objectives with greater
dispatch and lesser angst. A few outline suggestions follow, which are premised on
the expectation that appropriate dissertation classes will not (yet) be available:

(a) Reduce isolation by persuading students to seek and utilize social support,
such as organizing themselves into writing groups. In so doing, as Connor
and Mayberry (1996: p.249) pertinently note: ‘‘It is important then to teach
students strategies to use respondents and other social responses well’’.
(b) Raise rhetorical consciousness by helping students conduct their own dis-
coursal analyses of texts germane to their own, including previous disserta-
tions from their departments.
(c) Suggest ways of how to make best use of any one-on-one writing con-
sultancies available.
(d) Give advice on the strengths and weaknesses of the various manuals and
guides available. Ask them to contribute to this database by soliciting cri-
tiques.
(e) Offer workshops on using corpora and concordances, particularly as a sup-
port for (b) above. Thompson and Tribble (2001) have excellent advice on
how to use these for checking out citational forms and patterns in the chosen
discipline.

3. Initiating the undergraduate

Those of us who work from the bottom-up (as it were), with novice undergraduate
students, are faced initially with a broader question, about how we should approach
the teaching and learning of disciplinary practices—even before we begin to consider
how these practices begin to influence the uninitiated. This teaching and learning
question is especially daunting in the United States where post-secondary students
are required to take classes for breadth (‘‘general education’’) before they begin their
major concentrations, often delayed until their third year of university. As a result,
there is considerable discussion in the literature about what we should teach in our
first year literacy classes, such as whether integrating our writing classes with
 A.M. Johns, J.M. Swales / Journal of English for Academic Purposes 1 (2002) 13–28 19

disciplines without critique of the textual hegemony of the university is advisable

(see, e.g. Spack, 1988; Benesch, 2001).
However, from a pragmatic perspective, exposure to a discipline and analysis of
its texts and practices would seem essential to university success everywhere in the
world; and with students like those at San Diego State, whose university drop-out
rates can reach 60%, learning about and negotiating university cultures and class-
rooms is particularly important for their continuation and motivation. So this sec-
ond story is about attempts to assist in this domain—and how the students interpret
emergent pedagogies and disciplinary practices.
Elsewhere Johns (1997, 2001, 2002) has described in some depth the integrated
curriculum (Freshman Success) program that she helped to establish in the mid-80s
and has been teaching in ever since, so a brief overview here will suffice. In this
program, first year post-secondary students (17 and 18-year-olds) enroll in a four-
class cluster which includes a breath-class (biology, sociology, psychology, etc.), a
study group for that class, an academic writing class, and a university orientation
course. During the past four years, Johns has been teaching the ‘‘remedial/ESL’’
writing class integrated with the cultural anthropology cluster in this program. The
students are all from the first generation in their families to attend university, and
about two-thirds are relatively new immigrants. All of the students, except the
African –Americans, come from bilingual families.4 Because these students have
come from underserved secondary schools with student-counselor ratios of over
1:200, and because their parents know very little about higher education, most of the
students are ‘‘clueless’’ about university and have not chosen a major concentration.
The standard answer to ‘‘What is your major?’’ is ‘‘Business,’’ because they have
been told that business majors make money5
Teaching cultural anthropology to these students – and teaching the writing class
that explores disciplinary literacies through anthropology—requires a number of
important decisions about course focus and assignments. Although there is some
consensus among faculty in the local Anthropology Department about topics in this
breadth course (e.g. kinship systems), there seems to be little agreement about con-
cepts and tasks that should be introduced at this level. In addition to this lack of
consensus on campus, there are major, open methodological and values quarrels in
the field. Anyone who has read Marcus and Fischer (1986) about the crisis in
approach and methodology in cultural anthropology, or has followed the ‘‘adven-
tures’’ of Napoleon Chagnon and the Yamamano (1968) knows that there is open
warfare among the various academic clans in anthropology.
Fortunately for these novice students, the anthropology instructor took a fairly
conservative approach. She selected a standard textbook, in its twelfth edition, and
she and this paper’s first author co-constructed the major literacy tasks that would

4
She also teaches a university orientation class for another group of students, also in the cluster.
5
Some business majors make money, but the SDSU career center observes that in terms of being
employed, students might be better off to select a major that requires a considerable amount of writing,
e.g. history or English.
20 A.M. Johns, J.M. Swales / Journal of English for Academic Purposes 1 (2002) 13–28

lead, eventually, to an IMRD (Introduction, Methodology, Results, Discussion)

paper, incorporating research on human migration and cultural persistence from
student and family interviews, the WEB, and print texts. They chose the IMRD
believing that it represents a general, and generative, framework for many of the
sciences and social sciences, one which students might be able to apply, with revi-
sions, to other courses.6 This text structure also provided opportunities to ‘‘scaffold’’
(see Vygotsky, 1986) the writing process by addressing the various sections of the
paper individually, thus, for example, assisting students to separate methods from
results, and results from discussion. Decisions were also made about the literacy and
disciplinary foci:

 Because methodology (and its critique) is central to anthropology and all the
social sciences, and the ‘‘hard’’ sciences, as well, this became basic to the
discussions of the values of the discipline and its literacies. Reading about the
traditional methods of cultural anthropology (see e.g. Scheper-Hughes, 2000)
and analyzing and describing methods for the final IMRD paper became
central to student success.
 One method with which students were familiar was the interview. Thus, they
were asked to investigate their family histories through interviews in an initial
paper whose basic information was integrated into the final IMRD piece,
both of which centered around a ‘‘Human Migration and Cultural Persis-
tence’’ topic. Constructing this first interview paper about their families was
for many of the students the most interesting and enjoyable task for their
highly intertextual final paper
 Another element of the assigned papers was citation. We discussed why cita-
tion is used, how to effectively draw from sources, what language signals a
citation, and, because the students had had so little practice, how to write
internal citations and produce a references page. Because most of the uni-
versity uses the APA style sheet, we insisted that they learn this style, despite
the fact that the MLA is much preferred in the secondary schools. [See
Hyland (2000), from which some ideas for this part of the instruction were
drawn.]
 In addition to introducing the IMRD paper in stages, an experience that
students found puzzling and difficult after the five-paragraph essay of their
secondary school years (see Johns, 2002), we attempted to teach other general
features of academic writing, described by Geertz (1988) in his discussion of
‘‘author-evacuated’’ prose. By asking students to read and analyze the lan-
guage of research studies in anthropology, we also hoped to encourage a
sophisticated understanding of the rules of and reasons for ‘‘hedging’’
described by Hyland (1998).

6
At this level, and perhaps at any level, this was an attempt to balance what Berkenkotter and Huckin
(1995), after Bakhtin (1981) refer to as the centripetal forces that contribute to text prototypicality and the
centrifugal forces in a rhetorical situation that require revision and variation.
 A.M. Johns, J.M. Swales / Journal of English for Academic Purposes 1 (2002) 13–28 21

Lea and Street note, quite appropriately, that in academic classrooms:

. . .students are seldom given support in conceptualizing the epistemo-

logical frameworks within which [disciplinary genres] are constructed
or in recognising that they consist of contestable knowledge claims
rather than given truths. (1999, p. 64)

Overall, these pedagogical choices were attempts to make potential textual fra-
meworks and their purposes more explicit and to encourage students to use a lan-
guage that demonstrated their recognition that all research findings are contestable.
In this way, it was hoped that the students would also learn to ask the right questions
of their future instructors about their academic subjects and tasks (e.g. Johns, 1997).
Much of this curriculum was overwhelmingly new to the students (‘‘and hard!’’)
who came to university with no conception of faculty disciplinary orientations, no
idea that faculty have ‘‘implicit conceptions of what constitutes writing’’ (Lea &
Street, 1999, p. 63) or that these conceptions vary across and among disciplines, no
understanding of the differences between pedagogical genres (e.g. an assigned’’
research paper’’) and disciplinary genres, and very little understanding of academic
language and values. However, they did have remarkable life experiences and per-
sonal insights, and in many cases, these experiences plus their high motivation to
prove themselves in university succeeded in compensating for any lack of informa-
tion about those foreign tribes and clans to which we in university belong (Becher,
1989).

3.1. Findings

So what did the students make of all this? At the end of the term, what did they
now believe about the values and practices of cultural anthropologists? What did
they understand about the various methods used by researchers to triangulate their
qualitative studies? How did they perceive of textual practices and registers of cul-
tural anthropology? And finally, what topics did they find to be of most interest for
their own research?
What follows is a selection of some of the most insightful student reflections made
during the Fall Semester, 2001, to shed the best light on essentially non-general-
izable results. (Corrected for sentence-level errors.)
First, students were asked: ‘‘What is an anthropologist? Define this term to a
friend.’’ Though most of the students responded with something they had memor-
ized for the examinations in anthropology, a few were much more analytical. Here
are their comments:

For a cultural anthropologist, studying the way a culture affects its people is
important. (Stevan)

Stevan has identified the heart and soul of the discipline: the basic foundations
of its research. No matter what their particular emphasis (symbolic, linguistic,
22 A.M. Johns, J.M. Swales / Journal of English for Academic Purposes 1 (2002) 13–28

archeological), anthropologists focus upon the relationships between a culture and

the behavior and beliefs of people within that culture.

Anthropologists study cultures’ world views and try to understand why people in a
culture do what they do. They are interested in studying the meanings of what
people do, the motives in each culture. (Vicky)

Vicky’s answer leans toward the work of the symbolic anthropologist. But it also
identifies the kinds of syntheses that all anthropologists must complete in order to
explore the meanings of certain beliefs or rituals within a culture.

They look at things that we would not necessarily look at or write about. They
have a more complex way of putting things and analyzing people’s actions. They
analyze things like language and marriage rituals. (Jennifer)

Jennifer singles out some of the subject matter of anthropology (language and
marriage customs) as unusual; that, in addition to the ‘‘complex way of putting
things’’ sets anthropologists apart from ‘‘what we would write about.’’ She does not
believe that she has been initiated and still sees herself as a student, outside of the
expert culture.

Anthropologists’ work is important because it’s important to understand the simi-

larities and differences among people so that we can understand the ways they adapt.
With the understanding of other cultures, ethnocentrism will diminish. (Marysol)

Decreasing ethnocentrism among the students is a major goal of this course, per-
haps the most important of all the goals. Marysol has identified it and spoken of its
importance.
A second reflection question related to the purported stance of the professional
anthropologist both in his/her research and writing. I asked ‘‘What do the methods
that anthropologists use, and their ways of writing, tell you about the rules for being
an effective researcher and writer in this discipline?’’ Here are some of the best
responses:

You have to be able to analyze the data in a holistic perspective, making sure not
to have your biases or feelings interfere. (Phi Ha)
They tend to put their own beliefs and morals into play when living with a culture,
but they can’t do that. They have to do everything the people do, whether they like
it or not. (Sherisee)
They must leave personal opinions out and morals behind when they write about a
certain culture. Unlike other writers, anthropologists actually must undertake
participant observation. This allows them to make much stronger conclusions
about what a culture is like. (David)
Assimilation, like culture, is an extremely subjective word. What may seem like
assimilated behavior to one person may be perceived as traditional to another. (Alfred)
 A.M. Johns, J.M. Swales / Journal of English for Academic Purposes 1 (2002) 13–28 23

As these reflections show, the students understood several of the anthropologist’s

major dilemmas: researchers cannot escape who they are, both personally and culturally,
but they must try to be ‘‘objective’’ as they conduct their research. Even the basic con-
cepts such as ‘‘assimilation’’ are subject to interpretation. But David, who is una-
ware of the methodological crisis in anthropology, argues that methodology may be
a saving factor: participant observation enables anthropologists to make strong
conclusions.
Another question was fruitful in terms of response, principally because the stu-
dents had not only read about the problems in conducting research but had experi-
enced these problems when attempting to interview their relatives and the students
in the secondary schools for their IMRD papers. The question was: ‘‘What are some
of the problems that researchers, including you, face when attempting to get infor-
mation from consultants? What are some of the measures that you took to over-
come these problems?’’

The difficulties that anthropologists encounter are lack of information. A con-

sultant (the person from the culture being interviewed) may refuse to cooperate
with me. He could also be unfocused on the purpose of the research and not take the
questions seriously. Another difficulty could be that a family would be unwilling for me
change to attend their festivities and rituals of their daily lives. (Carolina)
Time is also a problem—and difficulty with language. (Annette)

For these novice students, problems that researchers face had become a reality.
Throughout the semester, they complained about how difficult it is to obtain inter-
esting data.
How did students approach their interviews for their IMRD papers with a group
of secondary students, whom they hardly knew? Here, they were past masters—
experts in discovering and organizing the small bits of information that the young
students (most were 14 years old) gave them. The answers to this question appear in
the students’ methodology sections of the IMRD paper:

Before I got to the school, I went over the questions and I made sub-questions so
that I could get as much as possible. (Jennifer)
I couldn’t just ask the questions for my paper. I had to kind of make con-
versation and then give a question. I tried to show the students that we had
something in common so I went into detail about where I grew up and my
school. (Steven)
To take notes, I divided my paper in half because I had two students and I wanted
to make sure that I recorded their answers right. (Phi Ha)

A very important question for their understanding of the ways in which dis-
ciplinary texts relate to practices was the following: ‘‘How do anthropologists write?
What do their research papers look like? Why?’’ We know from the dissertation
discussions outlined in this paper that the answers to these questions are remarkably
complex. Here are some sample responses:
24 A.M. Johns, J.M. Swales / Journal of English for Academic Purposes 1 (2002) 13–28

In anthropology, you write in a different style, very detailed and analytical. Most
(of our) papers are about what you think, but anthropologists try to prove or
investigate something. Then they express their feelings (in the discussion).
(David)
You have to be open-minded. Careful, meaning do not just write what people do
but explain why they do them and what event caused them to think the way they
do. (Marysol)
Anthropologists take themselves out of the paper completely. They write every-
thing down in steps and use a lot of detail. Mostly facts are used, and when they
write their thoughts, it is separated from the facts in writing. In English classes,
the writer is usually included in the paper. Most of their thoughts and beliefs
reflect a point of view. (Shannon)
Anthropologists write in a different format/style. I wasn’t familiar with the IMRD
format until I enrolled in this class. I also found it interesting that the writer
should not let her own feelings get the best of them when writing in scientific style.
They pretty much just write what they did, how they did it, and what they found
out. As for me, I have always written in the five paragraph style and let my feeling
take the best of me when I write because I thought this helped me get my point
across. (Phi Ha)

This last group of comments represents an important beginning, an attempt by the

students to distinguish between the ubiquitous, personal five-paragraph essay of
their secondary school English classes (see Johns, 2002) and the ‘‘rules’’ of the aca-
demic textual game. Particularly interesting perhaps, is Phi, who was impressed by
the fact that different sections of texts serve different functions. This last feature
became increasingly prominent as the class sessions attempted to convince the stu-
dents that they needed to divide their methods from results and results from dis-
cussion, divisions that they thought odd, to say the least.
Hyland (1999: p.115) notes that ‘‘. . .researchers typically conceal their rhetorical
identities behind a cloak of objectivity, masking their involvement with an array of
linguistic detachment..’’ Although the students could not express this argument in
quite the same way (yet), they certainly managed to gain some inkling of Hyland’s
‘‘cloak of objectivity.’’ What they failed to understand, of course, is that all texts are
constructed, and that this involvement (as well as personal identity and committed
argument) can persist even when couched or cloaked in what outsiders will perceive
as staid, dry, voiceless academic language.
In the final writing examination, the students were asked to discuss what they
would like to pursue in anthropological research if they had the time. What emerged
is quite similar to what might be found among more experienced researchers, such as
dissertation candidates: that their research interests mirrored their own human
interests at this stage of their development. So Marysol, an apostolic Christian,
wanted to pursue her student consultant’s religious conversion from Catholicism:
‘‘How has Cindy’s apostolic views changed her family’s attitudes toward traditional
Mexican culture?’’ Thai, whose family speaks Vietnamese exclusively in her home,
was very interested in investigating the code-switching that her Somali secondary
 A.M. Johns, J.M. Swales / Journal of English for Academic Purposes 1 (2002) 13–28 25

student consultant had mentioned: ‘‘What are the differences between the languages
he uses at home [where his father dominates the discourse] and the language he uses
with friends at school?’’ Carolina wanted to investigate meaning: ‘‘When I asked the
girl about rituals, I would need to know what they mean.’’ Shannon focused on the
influence of migration on the cultural mix, the hybridization of cultures: ’’ I would
have to figure out what parts of the culture were borrowed from other cultures as
the people migrated.’’

3.2. Pedagogical implications

So what do the students’ comments tell us about what we should be teaching from
the very beginning of a post-secondary education and perhaps earlier? These student
comments suggest that:

 Faculty in all classes need to encourage student awareness of the texts, lan-
guage, research questions, and methodologies of the discipline that the class
represents. If possible, the pedagogical genres of these classes should be more
disciplinary than school-based (see Dudley-Evans, 2002).
 Students should be assigned to research texts, practices, language, and other
aspects of academic disciplines. They should learn to observe, analyze, ask
questions, and if possible, negotiate their tasks to enhance their success.
 Within literacy classes, students should be assigned a variety of writing tasks,
requiring a number of intertextual and formal textual experiences. Students
should be encouraged to write in different genres and under different conditions.
 We should encourage student meta-awareness of the social nature of genres.
Periodically, students should be asked to reflect upon their literacy experi-
ences and to compare these experiences with those in other classes or other
schools.

3.3. Final considerations

In this paper we have explored two backgrounds to contemporary EAP practice in

US universities. These two backgrounds could not, of course, be more different since
one is grounded in the first two years of a decade-long university student experience
and the other deals with its final two years. There is, in consequence, a huge
‘‘excluded middle’’ wherein a majority of students reside, especially when we recog-
nize the increasing role of Masters degrees in post-secondary education.
Despite the huge differences between the two populations, in age and maturity, in
specialization and sophistication, and in writing and reading experience, their edu-
cational experiences and educational needs turn out to be different in degree rather
than in kind. Both groups are encouraged to undertake ‘‘real’’ research and to write
it up with a professional stance, but for both, more obviously for the junior under-
graduates and more insidiously for the senior graduates, the role of school genres
and its examinable trappings intrudes. Both groups, at their different levels, are
engaged in ‘‘pseudocommunicative tasks’’ because of confusion as to whom precisely
26 A.M. Johns, J.M. Swales / Journal of English for Academic Purposes 1 (2002) 13–28

they are writing for. While, on one level, the answer may be obvious (for an
instructor and for a dissertation committee), this does not itself clarify what those
instructors and those committees are actually looking for—especially as all too
many academics remain rather ‘‘cagey’’ about their expectations.
For both groups, isolation (within a class or within a graduate program) and
subsequent failure to ask the right questions or get the right kind of help can be (for
all but the most exceptional) a major threat to academic progress and success. Sung
(2000) investigated the experiences of over a hundred Taiwanese doctoral students at
a major research university, and found very different levels of what she calls ‘‘roun-
ded academic success’’. Here is an interview extract from a third year doctoral stu-
dent in Industrial Health who was not doing well, and indeed still taking classes:

Typically, I eat, sleep, spend time with my wife, and study. I don’t socialize with
Americans. . .I went out of class after class is dismissed. . .. We attend Chinese
church. . .This is the primary social activity I have. I don’t attend departmental
activities. I don’t have a sense of belonging because of my English and stutter. . .

The dividing line between isolation and alienation can be disturbingly thin. More
generally, one of Sung’s major conclusions is that her cohort (with some exceptions)
seek primary help from their co-nationals when their spoken English proficiency is
limited, and only approach their advisors when their English competence and self-
confidence is higher. There is a clear role for EAP mediation services of various
kinds when we are confronted with these uncomfortable findings.
Finally, Spack (1988) is right, of course. We cannot prepare students for all
eventualities in academic classrooms or in other situations (such as proposal defen-
ses), nor do we understand other disciplines or other pedagogical practices well
enough to give our students templates for success. What we can do, across the
board, is raise students’ awareness, give them a variety of experiences and exposures,
encourage their analyses and critique of texts and contexts, and motivate them to see
the university, like all institutions, as human and constructed, rigid, fluid, hegemo-
nous and negotiable—all at the same time.

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