Yongyan & Flowerdew (2007): Reviewed by Y. Watanabe

Yongyan, L., & Flowerdew, J. (2007). Shaping Chinese
novice scientists' manuscripts for publication. Journal of Second
Language Writing, 16, 100-117.

Error correction in writing does not just happen in language classrooms but also outside the language classroom, for example, when attempting to publish research article in international journals. According to Li (2005, as cited in Yongyan & Flowerdew, 2007), many Chinese doctoral students in science programs are under pressure to publish papers in journals indexed by Science Citation Index, which are international journals predominantly published in English.

When publishing a research article, various stakeholders interact in shaping the manuscript, thus the written product in the journal is often considered as co-constructed artifact. Yongyan and Flowerdew (2007) uncover the roles of the supervisors, peers, and language professionals in 12 Chinese (English as additional language) doctoral science students’ experience submitting and publishing research articles in English. Interviews, emails, and weblogs were utilized to collect doctoral students’ perceptions of feedback from their supervisors, peers, and language professionals, as well as the supervisors’ view on the type of feedback they provide. The researchers found that although doctoral students prefer native English speakers’ feedback, due to economical and accessibility reasons, local experienced English as additional language scientists are the predominant shapers of doctoral students’ manuscripts. The study suggests that there is a need for partnership between English as academic purpose professionals and Chinese-native scientists who have experience publishing in international journals, in order to facilitate the local scholarly community.

I chose this article since my colleagues and I recently submitted manuscripts to international journals, and was curious how other junior scholars perceive, incorporate, and/or reject feedback from peers and other senior scholars. Since submitting a manuscript to a journal is a high-stake task, I am particularly interested in how junior scholars negotiate their writing with the local reviewers (supervisors, peers, etc.) and the gate keepers of the journal (the editors and the manuscript reviewers) and how they gradually acculturate into the community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991) of their discipline.

To my view, Yongyan and Flowerdew did not fully summarize and present the data in a convincing manner. Their interview questions in the Appendix had much more than what they have summarized and concluded. For this reason, I would not recommend this article to review in class, but there are few studies they have mentioned in their study that include more in-depth data. By quickly reviewing the reference list and reviewing the abstract of the cited articles, the following articles may be of interest to some of you who are looking at how novice writers gain access to (and enter) academic disciplinary literacy practices.

Li, Y. –Y (2007). Apprentice scholarly writing in a community of practice: An “intraview” of an NNES graduate student writing a research article. TESOL Quarterly, 41, 55-79.

Li, Y. –Y (2006). Netotiating knowledge contribution to multiple discourse communities: A doctoral student of computer science writing for publication. Journal of Second Language Writing, 15, 159-178.