（外国语言学及应用语言学专业论文）博士生科技英语论文在线写作辅导中心的构建研究.pdf

华 中 科 技 大 学 硕 士 学 位 论 文 iii 摘 要 科技英语论文写作是非英语专业博士生在对外学术交流中必不可少的一项能力 要求，借助这一手段才能将研究成果发表在国际性学术期刊，达到与国外学者交流 的目的，同时论文在国际权威期刊的发表质量和数量也是研究者研究机构乃至整 个国家的学术水平和成果的一个衡量标准。尽管大多数高校都有专为博士生定制的 科技英语论文写作指导课程，科技英语论文写作中仍然存在很多问题，如母语的影 响，篇章结构的不合理，论文格式不符合规范等。博士生英语论文课的部分指导者 已经考虑将过程写作法引入教学。这一方法的核心理念与国外（尤其是美国）实施 已久的写作中心有相通之处。鉴于国内已有大学英语写作教学引入写作中心作为教 辅手段，本文将探讨以辅导非英语专业博士生科技英语论文写作为宗旨的在线写作 中心的网络构建。 本文的研究对象为华中科技大学机械科学与工程学院的在读博士生，对他们的 英语论文写作现状和接受指导现状进行了调查，并且了解了他们对科技英语写作中 心拟定提供的各项服务的需求情况，总结了非英语专业博士生在科技英语写作中突 出存在的几个问题，解决问题的方式，并掌握了他们接受科技英语写作指导的大致 情况，最后整理得出所调查的博士生对写作中心的预期。 研究数据表明，国内非英语专业博士生认为科技英语论文写作的最大难点表现 在语言表达方面。在处理这一问题时，大多数被调查对象选择的是大量阅读相关文 献。与此同时，尽管大多数调查对象接受过科技英语写作指导，真正有过发表经历 的却只占少数。这一结果充分表明在科技英语写作课程之外设立相关写作中心的必 要性，写作中心的设立也可促进过程写作法的实施。另外，应调查对象的要求，写 作中心可通过提供辅导的成功案例来帮助有写作意愿和计划的博士生缓解焦虑感。 在网站的内容设置中，则可依照建构主义的学习理论，在信息和资源设置中充分展 现个性化，情景化及合作性等原则。 关键词: 科技英语写作 在线写作中心 非英语专业博士生 过程写作法 建构主 义理论 华 中 科 技 大 学 硕 士 学 位 论 文 i abstract english for science and technology (est) writing is an essential demand for non- english doctoral students in their international academic communication. this is an indispensable utensil by which researchers academic achievement can be published by international academic journals, so as to fulfill the goal of communicating with scholars abroad. meanwhile, the quality as well as the quantity of the publications in international authoritative journals is also a criterion to view the academic level and achievement of individuals, institutes, and even the whole country. despite the est writing course designed especially for non- english doctoral students in most universities, problems still arise one after another in est papers, such as the interference of the native language, weak structure of the whole article, and improper thesis format. some est course instructors, therefore, have introduced a different approach process- oriented approach into their teaching, the core theory of which resembles that of the writing center program long in existence abroad (especially in the united states). now that some college english writing course researchers have already introduced writing center as a complementary tutorial section into instruction of college english writing, this paper mainly focuses on the website construction of online writing center targeted at non- english doctoral students est writing. the subjects of this study are the doctoral students from the institute of mechanical science and engineering, hust (huazhong university of science and technology). the survey is designed to find out information about their est writing experience, the instruction they have so far received, and their acceptance of prospective services provided by online writing center. the author summarizes the prevalent problems in their est writing, the means adopted by them to solve these problems, the instructions they have received, and moves on to analyze the non- english doctoral students expectation of the online writing center. according to the statistics obtained from this survey, the most difficult factor held by students still lies with the appropriateness in language, and in dealing with this problem, 华 中 科 技 大 学 硕 士 学 位 论 文 ii most of the subjects choose to read relevant reference materials in quantities. at the same time, although most of those under survey have had previous est writing instruction, there are only a small proportion of them who have had their est paper published. this result shows that it is necessary to set up a writing center as a complementary tutoring facility, which may help with the practice of process- oriented approach. what s more, in response to the needs analysis, writing center can provide successful tutoring cases (if permitted by the tutees involved in these cases) so as to help relieve the sense of anxiety of the doctoral students with writing intention or writing project. as for the construction of the website, conceived according to principles of constructivism, the layout of information and the configuration of sources can be so devised that the principles such as individualization, contextualization and cooperation can be well reflected. key words: est writing online writing center non- english doctoral students process- oriented approach constructivism 独创性声明 本人声明所呈交的学位论文是我个人在导师指导下进行的研究工作及取得的研 究成果。尽我所知，除文中已经标明引用的内容外，本论文不包含任何其他个人或 集体已经发表或撰写过的研究成果。对本文的研究做出贡献的个人和集体，均已在 文中以明确方式标明。本人完全意识到，本声明的法律结果由本人承担。 学位论文作者签名： 日期： 年 月 日 学位论文版权使用授权书 本学位论文作者完全了解学校有关保留、使用学位论文的规定，即：学校有权 保留并向国家有关部门或机构送交论文的复印件和电子版，允许论文被查阅和借阅。 本人授权华中科技大学可以将本学位论文的全部或部分内容编入有关数据库进行检 索，可以采用影印、缩印或扫描等复制手段保存和汇编本学位论文。 保密 ，在_ _年解密后适用本授权书。 不保密。 （请在以上方框内打“” ） 学位论文作者签名： 指导教师签名： 日期： 年 月 日 日期： 年 月 本论文属于 华 中 科 技 大 学 硕 士 学 位 论 文 1 introduction research background among the four basic skills as listening, speaking, reading and writing in chinese students english practice, writing has always been considered as the most difficult one to grasp. it is also the same with non- english doctoral students, especially when it comes to their english for science and technology (est) writing. est writing is virtually a must for non- english doctoral students to communicate their academic achievement with scholars abroad, to make their original idea known by their counterparts in other regions of the world. and in a larger sense, the quantity as well as the quality of those est papers published by international academic journals is an essential criterion to view the academic level of a scholar, an institute, or even the whole country. according to the statistics from institute of scientific and technical information of china, among all those 7980 papers cited by science citation index (sci) in 1995, 99.5% were composed in english, while those written in chinese and other languages merely accounted for 0.5%. thus, est writing is a useful utensil to gain access to the international academic frontiers. despite the fact that most universities have their own est writing course especially designed for non- english doctoral students, there are still problems in est papers, which may result from the interference of native language, the poor organization of the article, the improper thesis f ormat, etc. the frequently encountered problems, in view of the language itself, are as follows: the chinese mentality of thinking, the misunderstanding caused by improper choice of lexical terms, and the badly- constructed sentence structure (ding xiya, 2006: 2- 11). considering these problems in existence, some researchers, especially those instructors responsible for doctoral est writing courses, have introduced a different teaching approach to enhance non- english doctoral students competence in est writing. process- oriented writing, for instance, has won support from many researchers in contrast 华 中 科 技 大 学 硕 士 学 位 论 文 2 to the traditional product approach. take zhang guiping s research project (2006) for example, her methodology draws on est workshop as well as interactive e- mail writing seminar, which help to shift the emphasis from the content (“ what is to be learned” ) to the process (“ how is it to be learned” ). the findings of this research are rather inspiring that the non- english doctoral participants benefit a lot from various aspects, including the improvement in est reading and writing as well as the build- up of self- confidence (zhang, 2006). in fact, the application of workshop and seminar has already long been used as tutorial services in writing center program in the united states. writing centers, generally speaking, provide a “ complementary tutorial support to student writers and the implemented writing programs” and the individualized tutoring “ has been proven more successful in nurturing better and more confident writers” (tan bee hoon, lisa emerson, 2002). this opinion, undoubtedly, coincides with the findings of zhang guiping s research. not coincidentally, however, more and more college english writing instructors in our country have gradually come to realize the important role played by writing center and are in the process of designing writing center for better effect of college english writing course. many researchers have put forward their valuable ideas concerning this topic, such as the introduction to resources like online writing labs so as to draw teachers attention to better application of them (owls) (gu jixin and ding yu, 2002), the suggestion of using university- based on- line writing lab to help improve college english writing instruction (jin ying, 2006). this intention of using writing center as complementary support for college english writing course may well be replicated, to assist non- english doctoral students with their est writing process. considering that there is little research available in this sense, the construction of online est writing will be the focus of this paper, since online writing center is less restricted by time and location and therefore can provide a more flexible tutorial. research questions as is stated in the research background section, universities abroad (especially those 华 中 科 技 大 学 硕 士 学 位 论 文 3 in the united states) usually set up a writing center to supply their students with writing resources, instructional materials, etc. although some domestic researchers have already discussed this sort of tutoring facility, they mainly view undergraduate students as their target and use this as a method to be integrated into college english teaching. this paper, however, emphasizes the need of non- english doctoral students, and follows the needs analysis up with some suggestions concerning the construction of on- line est writing center on the basis of those data obtained from first- hand survey. in this way, an effective platform can be made available for the prospective tutees. in short, this author intends to analyze the main problems non- english doctoral students are actually confronted with in their est writing, and as a result, to discuss how to arrange the online information accordingly in the procedure of the website construction. the following questions, therefore, need to be solved in this thesis paper: 1) what are the major difficult problems for non- english doctoral students in their est writing process? 2) what kind of information should be covered by the online est writing center to meet the requirements reflected in the first research question? an overview of the thesis this article is divided into five parts: introduction, literature review, methodology, results and discussion, and conclusion. part one provides an introduction to the present study. it describes the general research background of this study, and explains the reason why this research is needed. the overview of the whole thesis is also presented here. part two summarizes previous researches related to this topic. here the problems of est writing are discussed, together with those researches about the introduction of process- oriented approach into est writing instruction, which make instructors resort to some writing center tutorial support for better effect. then the current situation of writing center and online writing center is to be analyzed as well as the domestic and abroad studies on this sort of tutoring resources. what s more, principles of constructivism are discussed so as to provide a sound foundation for the website construction. part three deals with the method in analyzing non- english doctoral students major 华 中 科 技 大 学 硕 士 学 位 论 文 4 problems in composing est papers and having them published. the source of data has been obtained by sending out copies of the questionnaire to some doctoral students at the institute of mechanic science the other is the online tutoring mode that has been realized with the widespread application of internet. the face- to- face tutoring mode usually encourages students to make appointment with tutors in advance, so that different tutor will be designated in view of the content to be discussed. the tutoring site is generally a classroom in the library, in order to ensure the tranquil atmosphere, of course. at the same time, those turning to writing center for 华 中 科 技 大 学 硕 士 学 位 论 文 13 assistance can have access to the necessary resources such as writing handbook, dictionaries. these reference materials are classified as “ external storage” in the cognitive model (j. r. hayes, l. s. flower, 1986), the content of which can help to relieve the burden on working memory and simultaneously help students to stick to their consistence in logic. the online writing center can be compared to a follow- up of the face- to- face tutoring mode. this kind of trend dates back to early 1990s “ when writing centers expanded into cyber space and evolved to include online writing labs” (tan bee hoon and lisa emerson, 2002). in contrast to the traditional mode, this online instruction is less restricted by time and location. the one that took the initiative in constructing their on- line writing lab is purdue university in the united states. this writing lab, sponsored by its school of art, english department and academic fund association, aims to enhance students writing capacity via long- distance tutoring service by providing them with different varieties of online services and online reference materials, and it also introduces to students how to search for the information they need through the internet. aside from what has been mentioned above, their owl decides to follow up long- distance tutoring with renovations, such as the introduction of multi- media real- time interaction. 1.4.2 previous contributions about writing center researches have already been carried out concerning the application of writing center designed to assist students with the improvement of their english writing capacity. now there will be an analysis of the characteristics of such researches. the subjects under discussion in domestic researches are usually non- english undergraduates. the online writing center constructed by gu jixin and ding yu (2002) is designed mainly for non- english freshmen and sophomores as an extra- curricular autonomous study environment. wang wei (2005) discusses the combination of teaching plan design with internet assistance in college english writing course. another researcher, xu dongdong (2004), presents a new mode of web- assisted teaching of practical english course in vocational and technical schools on the basis of the web teaching resources available. and jin ying (2006) also suggests in her research paper about the establishment 华 中 科 技 大 学 硕 士 学 位 论 文 14 of a university- based online writing lab in view of constructivism. all of these researches, however, lay their emphasis on practical english writing instead of est writing, not to speak of the needs of non- english doctoral students with the intention to have their est papers published by oversea journals. the evaluation given by zeng hui (2004) on the online writing labs at oklahoma state university is followed up with the development trends and improvement suggestions of owls in a pragmatic perspective. considering at the same time the research papers mentioned above, it is not hard to notice that, with the development of computer technology as well as the widespread use of the internet, scholars, more frequently than not, focus their attention of research on online writing center rather than the counterpart in entity (the so- called walk- in labs). as for the est writing of doctoral students, there is almost no research available about how to construct online writing center so as to meet their needs of est writing. hence the necessity to compose such a thesis paper at full length. 1.4.3 efficacy of writing center since the application of writing center as a tutorial support is a relatively novel idea in writing instruction in domestic research frontiers, more attention can be diverted to the empirical researches abroad for a better insight into the effect of writing center. in fact, researchers have come to realize the similarity in native language writing and second language writing. zamel (1982) is the first to put forward this idea that the strategies employed by second language users resemble those of the native speakers in the attempt to convey his message. that is to say, the approach employed in native language writing instruction can also be constructive for second language writing. those researches carried out by scholars abroad have provided encouraging results about the practice of writing center in its face- to- face version as well as that of the online writing center. according to elisabeth m. alford (1996), the programs provided by their writing center in the form of individual consultations, group discussions and team sessions are advantageous in encouraging engineering students “ to reflect on their experiences” and, at 华 中 科 技 大 学 硕 士 学 位 论 文 15 the same time, are advantageous in helping them develop “ appropriate linguistic structures to communicate their findings” . this kind of integration of face- to- face writing center into universities writing course can also be found in other researchers project. barbara m. olds (1998) comes to the conclusion that their intensive writing courses, strongly supported by this tutoring facility of writing center, really help engineering students to obtain the writing skills they need. deanna ramey and jerry hudgins (1999), likewise, integrate writing center as a resource to elevate in- class writing instruction and find it “ a manifestation of this commitment to training engineering students to write and speak professionally” . apart from the above- mentioned studies