Apprentice scholarly writing in a community of practice: An intraview of an NNES graduate student writing a research article

Abstract

Little is known about what an apprentice scholar in a non-Anglophone context undergoes when writing a research article for publication in English-medium journals. This study highlights "a rich notion of agency" by examining a nonnative-English-speaking graduate student's engagement with his community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998) as he wrote the first draft of an article in chemistry. The primary data were the student's process logs, his developing text, and his Bulletin Board System message exchanges and post-hoc interviews. The study illustrates the apprentice scholar's engagement with the local research community, the laboratory data, his own experience/practice of writing research articles (RAs), and the global specialist research community. His engagement with the global specialist research community includes a critical orientation. The article also points out the value of providing EAP pedagogical support for the critical perspectives that students like Yuan adopt, and it calls for the training of EAP-qualified professionals in non-Anglophone contexts.