Gearing your writing towards academia

Dear all,

Please remember that in academic writing, there are different genres (journal, essay, letter, etc.) and some of them can be more impersonal. When you write about a research project, even though you can use "I" sometimes through the text, passive voice and reference by nominalization are more common.

e.g.

There are a number of issues with immigration worldwide. Chile has received (has been host to) a great number of migrants. OR A great number of migrants has arrived in Chile in the past few years...

Remember it is important to include more formal discourse markers, for example

Furthermore, in addition, moreover

In contrast, in spite of, although

whereas, while, etc.

To conclude

Today the idea is to copy the text you wrote on wed August 9^th about piece of research you would like to carry out and edit it. How to do that? As follows:

First of all, you could present the background info. Context

Secondly, the actual problem you want to investigate

Try to include other authors who have addressed this topic or something similar elsewhere

What type of research would you carry out? How?

Remember to try to incorporate discourse markers. Write a minimum of 210 words. Then post it on your blog for today’s task.

Here is a sample text 

A number of theories have arisen regarding the learning of a second language. However, most studies in this area have been carried out in context of English as a second language (Norton, 2000, Bernstein, 1993) (e.g. Puerto Rico) and not as a foreign language (e.g.Chile) .

 Interestingly, Chile has had an important influx of immigrants, among them, some coming from countries in which Spanish is not spoken and whose first language is Creole (a mix between French and African language) and some whose first language is Arabic, which does not only sound very different but is written differently. Additionally, many of these people have arrived with their whole family. Today, there are more than 50,000 foreign people under 18 years old.

This study seeks to explore the perception foreign children coming from considerably different backgrounds feel about learning English in a country where English is not spoken.

What evidence is there of how these children are “invested” (Norton, 2000) in learning the English language? How is their identity affected learning a foreign language?

This research will use mixed methods and will have participant observation over 10 sessions (10 weeks). Data will be collected via semi-structured interviews to the children, teacher and one of the parents, and surveys that will be administered after classes on the premises of the school.