Apprentice Scholarly Writing in a

Community Of Practice: An Intraview of

an NNES Graduate Student Writing a
Research Article
YONGYAN LI
Nanjing University
Nanjing, People’s Republic of China

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 com-
munity 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.

D uring the past two decades, research on writing in academic disci-

plines has flourished. Riazi (1997) for example, summarized 20
studies related to writing and academic disciplines conducted between
1984 and 1994. During the decade-odd time since then, interest in the
topic has continued among researchers in academic literacy. In particu-
lar, there has been a growing interest in the writing at the graduate-
school level (e.g., Belcher & Braine, 1995; Berkenkotter, Huckin & Ack-
erman, 1988, 1991; Casanave, 2002; Hyland, 2004; Prior, 1998; Ventola &
Mauranen, 1996), involving both native-English-speaking (NES) and
nonnnative-English-speaking (NNES) students.
However, in spite of the large number of studies, underexplored areas
remain. First, most of the studies were concerned with students in the
humanities and social sciences, although a few published studies have
featured NNES science graduate (research) students (Blakeslee, 1997;

TESOL QUARTERLY Vol. 41, No. 1, March 2007 55

Dong, 1996; Gosden, 1996; Shaw, 1991). Second, whether working with
NES or NNES students, these studies were almost unanimously con-
ducted in North American universities; there is still a lack of parallel
research with NNES students in non-Anglophone settings, such as Asian
universities (Braine, 2002). Third, the studies tended to be housed in the
context of a disciplinary curriculum, that is, examining how individual
students represent and fulfill coursework writing tasks. For science
graduate students, however, the essential writing task tends to consist of
writing for publication in specialist journals rather than fulfilling course-
work. For graduate students (particularly at the doctoral level) in science
disciplines at many universities in China (Li, 2005) and Japan (Christine
Pearson Casanave, personal communication, June 10, 2005; Gosden,
1995) for example, publication in English-language journals is even set
as a graduation requirement. Developing knowledge of these students’
scholarly writing scenarios has important implications for consolidating
the long-standing commitment of TESOL professionals to the instruc-
tion of advanced academic literacy. To quote Matsuda (2003), “For sec-
ond language writing instruction to be most effective in various disci-
plinary and institutional contexts, it needs to reflect the findings of
studies conducted in a wide variety of instructional contexts as well as
disciplinary perspectives” (p. 28).
Efforts in this direction can be effectively supported by case studies,
because case studies conducted in varied settings allow for varied re-
search angles and methodologies providing researchers with opportuni-
ties for both comparison and theory-building (Casanave, 2003a;
Flowerdew, 2002). Another important advantage of case studies not thor-
oughly exploited previously is their potential for highlighting the stu-
dent writers’ own perspective. Process logs, or more generically, diaries
(Johnson & Johnson, 1998), seem to be an ideal tool for tapping into the
writer’s own perspective, that is, obtaining an intraview (Walker, 1985) of
their writing process. “While the interview is based on the assumption
that it takes two to tell the truth,” Walker points out, “the intraview
hinges for its effect on the power of introspection.” (pp. 149–150). The
current study taps into this “power of introspection” from a process
log-based intraview of an NNES graduate student engaged in writing the
initial draft of an English RA aimed at international publication.

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
Graduate students are socialized into their target disciplinary community
by participating in disciplinary activities, of which producing scholarly
writing acceptable to the community is a central undertaking (e.g.,
Berkenkotter et al., 1988, 1991; Casanave, 1995; Prior, 1998). The social-
ization-through-writing process is in line with the spirit of situated learning

56 TESOL QUARTERLY
(Brown, Collins & Duguid, 1989), a theoretical concept which empha-
sizes that knowledge is socially embedded, that is, a learner best acquires
the needed expertise by participating in the learning activities that use
that expertise. Lave and Wenger (1991) expanded the theoretical con-
tent of situated learning with the notion of legitimate peripheral participa-
tion, in terms of which learning is an “evolving form of membership” (p.
53), where a dedicated learner is a centripetal apprentice aiming for full
participation in a community of practice (though such “full participation”
definitely does not imply anything like occupying the center of the com-
munity because such a “center” is only mythical). And according to Lave
and Wenger (1991), learners’ peripherality underscores “a rich notion of
agency” (p. 53), in that apprentices commit themselves to an engage-
ment with a given community of practice “in its unfolding, multidimen-
sional complexity” (Wenger, 1998, p. 95), characterized by mutual en-
gagement, joint enterprise, and shared repertoire.
Previous studies involving scholarly writing in a particular discipline that
adopted Lave and Wenger’s theoretical tenets have explicated aspects of
agency by focusing on apprentice scholars’ engagement with the expert
members and disciplinary texts in their communities of practice (Belcher,
1994; Dong, 1996; Flowerdew, 2000; Li, 2005) or bilingual academics’
balancing act in juggling between conflicting expectations posed by En-
glish versus native-language academic communities (Casanave, 1998).
These studies have highlighted individual apprentice scholars’ efforts to
conform to norms or reconcile sets of norms. However, agency may not
only be concerned with coming to grips with the norms of one’s com-
munity of practice. Other aspects of agency may be less accommodating
to the accepted norms. In negotiating the challenges of constructing an
academic text or participating in academic communities, individuals may
display both accommodation and resistance to the expected norms by
adopting various strategies (e.g., Canagarajah, 1993, 2003a & b; Kramsch
& Lam, 1999; Morita, 2004). Underlying the resistant aspects of agency
is a critical edge, whereby individuals take a different orientation to the
norms of a community, or in extreme cases, even manifest a cynical
attitude toward the norms (e.g., Canagarajah, 1993, 2002b, 2003b).
Documenting an apprentice scholar’s process of writing the first draft
of an RA in English for publication in the current study, I illustrate “a
rich notion of agency” (Lave & Wenger, 1991, p. 53) by presenting the
writer’s multidimensional engagement with his community of practice,
while addressing the critical edge to his engagement. I will distinguish
four categories of the engagement, which involve respectively, (a) the
local research community, (b) the laboratory data, (c) his own experi-
ence and practice of RA writing, and (d) the global specialist research
community. In the terminology of Wenger (1998), these dimensions of
engagement imply the apprentice scholar’s “mutual engagement” with

APPRENTICE SCHOLARLY WRITING IN A COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE 57

other members of his community of practice (at the local as well as the
“global” levels), participation in the “joint enterprise” (of conducting
research and negotiating knowledge through publication), and his ex-
ploitation of the shared repertoire (the genre of RAs). And, as I point
out, in his engagement with the global specialist research community in
particular, the apprentice scholar also takes a critical orientation toward
some of the expected norms.

PROCESS LOGS AS RESEARCH TOOLS

The primary source of data in this study are the process logs that a
Chinese doctoral student of chemistry kept while writing up the first
draft of an English RA aimed at international publication.
Using process logs as part of their research methodology, previous
studies have examined how student writers represent and fulfill writing
tasks (Faigley, Cherry, Jolliffe, & Skinner, 1985; Nelson, 1993; Walvoord
& McCarthy, 1990), acquire disciplinary academic literacy, and adapt to
the requirements of discipline-specific written discourse over time (An-
gelova & Riazantseva, 1999; Freedman, 1987; Haas, 1994; Riazi, 1997).
These North American-based studies all featured undergraduate NES
students with the exceptions of Riazi and Angelova and Riazantseva, who
studied NNES graduate students (of education and of language educa-
tion, respectively). There is still a lack of research on NNES graduate
students in science disciplines writing in non-Anglophone contexts, with
process logs as the primary source of data.
Notably, the thriving of the Internet, and concomitantly the popular-
ity of weblogs (or blogs) among Internet users, has opened up a new vista
for employing process logs for research (as well as pedagogical) purposes
in TESOL. Matsuda (2001), for example, has drawn from personal web
diaries to study voice in Japanese electronic discourse. The current study
takes advantage of the potentiality of blog-based process logs to study the
writing process of a Chinese doctoral student of chemistry in the process
of writing up the first draft of an English RA. It is believed that the
process logs, supplemented by other sources of data (i.e., bulletin board
system, or BBS, messages and interviews, as well as the featured student’s
developing draft), can provide valuable and useful data for the study.

THE STUDY
Participant
Yuan (a pseudonym) was a 3rd-year doctoral student of chemistry at a
major university in mainland China. In this university, the publication of

58 TESOL QUARTERLY
articles in English-medium journals is a graduation requirement for doc-
toral students in some basic research science disciplines such as chem-
istry, physics, and astronomy. At the time of the study, Yuan was expected
to graduate from the doctoral program in about 10 months, in the
summer of 2005. When I approached him and some of his fellow stu-
dents at the university’s chemistry building in August 2004, Yuan had just
finished some laboratory research and was about to start writing an
article. At my request and after an explanation of my research purposes,
Yuan gladly agreed to participate in the research. This study tracks his
process as he writes the first draft of his third first-authored article.
Yuan’s experience of learning English was typical for a student in
China who is not majoring in English. He started to learn English in the
first year of junior high. As he recalled, “I usually took English as a
course, just like physics and chemistry. I found it interesting to learn
grammar because grammar has more rules to follow” (Interview, June 1,
2005). Since starting college, Yuan had not had a smooth time taking
various English tests. In his undergraduate years (at a university in North-
west China), he passed College English Test (CET)-4 on his second try
(scoring 60 out of 100).1 On graduation, he took the entrance exami-
nation for the master’s program at his university, but he did not win
admission because he failed the English test (scoring 33 out of 100),
although he did well in the tests of specialist subjects. Yuan described
himself as having spent “more than half” of his study time preparing for
the English test prior to the entrance examination, by memorizing vo-
cabulary and doing practice tests. On reflection, he said, “Maybe my
method was not right, or I was too nervous. The result was the opposite—
perhaps worse than if I had not prepared at all” (Interview, June 1,
2005). His second bid for the master’s program was successful, with 56 in
the English test (the required minimum was 55). After passing CET-4, he
took CET-6 five times, passing it eventually in the first year of the mas-
ter’s program, with a mark of 62. Writing was always part of these English
tests, typically in the form of a 150- to 250-word expositional composi-
tion. Yuan recalled topics like “Smoking” and “Pollution,” and how he
wrote such compositions by “following templates”:

Self-help books teach you what to write first, what to write next, and what
words you should say. You give a statement, then the next sentence,
“However, . . . .” Build up the framework, and 200 words are easily
achieved. So it does not really show your actual level [in writing English].
(Interview, June 1, 2005)

1
In China, passing national College English Test (CET)-4 and CET-6 are prerequisites for
non-English major students to get their Bachelor’s degree and Master’s degree respec-
tively.

APPRENTICE SCHOLARLY WRITING IN A COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE 59

Later Yuan received 69 on the English test (with no composition) in the
entrance examination to the doctoral program of his current university.
Before he wrote his first article in English, he had not taken any aca-
demic writing course (as is typically the case with students like him in
China). For Yuan, reading and emulating the specialist journal articles
was the primary means of learning to write articles in English.

Data Sources

Process Logs

The process logs were this study’s main source of data. Yuan wrote
them in Chinese as blogs, and he kept them posted in the “Friends’
Zone” of his university’s BBS. Yuan decided to post the log on BBS for
several reasons: (a) Yuan had always been using the blog area, in par-
ticular, its Friends’ Zone to share interesting news with his friends and to
record his feelings; (b) I (as the researcher) could access the blog area
any time and make comments on his log entries; and (c) all his other
friends (whom he set as “good friends” in the BBS) could also access his
blog and make comments.
After Yuan had completed his laboratory research and just before he
began writing, I sent Yuan a process log guide sheet (see Appendix).
However, I clarified to Yuan that he did not have to follow the guide
sheet strictly; the questions posed in the guide sheet could be a useful
reference to help him reflect on his experience, but he could go beyond
them because I was most interested to know what he felt most strongly
about during the writing process. Yuan’s initial entries in the log showed
that he recorded the aspects of his experience that he felt most strongly
about with an expressive style.
To each of his blog entries, which he titled collectively “A Blog of a
Complete Writing Process,” I responded (in English) directly in the
Friends’ Zone.2 My friendly encouraging responses served two purposes:
to show my appreciation of the content and sometimes to follow up with
questions. At the same time, I took care not to interfere with Yuan’s
documentation of his experience and feelings. On the whole, using the
online blog area for keeping process logs has been very conducive to the

2
I responded in English rather than in Chinese (my and my students’ native tongue)
because I try to provide a role model and motivation for students to communicate in
English. Over the years, I have usually corresponded with my students (for teaching or
research purposes) via emails and online exchanges in English rather than Chinese. I had
the same awareness of my professional role in the present study. English was especially
appropriate in this instance because I communicated with Yuan mainly in the Friends’
Zone of his blog area, which was open to his other friends as well.

60 TESOL QUARTERLY
present research, facilitating Yuan’s free expression and my communi-
cation with him.

BBS Messages

I also communicated with Yuan through messages sent between our

personal mailboxes (Yuan’s and mine) at the university’s BBS, rather
than in the open Friends’ Zone. I initiated most of these messages when
I needed to send Yuan more follow-up questions.

Interviews

For logistical reasons, I interviewed Yuan on several separate occasions

after he had finished the first draft of his article. The interviews, which
were rather unstructured, lasted about 60 minutes each and served as an
opportunity for clarification of specific points as well as participant veri-
fication (Sharpe, 1997) of my ongoing interpretation of the data.

The Developing Text

In addition, the developing draft, which Yuan uploaded into his blog
from time to time (for me to download), enabled me to connect his
growing process logs to his developing text. Yuan wrote all his process log
entries and responded to my questions in Chinese, and I later inter-
viewed him in Chinese, so all Yuan’s comments quoted in this article
were originally in Chinese and I translated them into English.
During data collection I took special care to reciprocate Yuan’s gen-
erosity in cooperating with the study. Although I was careful not to
interfere with Yuan’s writing process, at one point during his struggle
with the Results and Discussion section of his article, I sent Yuan a BBS
message that cited Thompson (1993) and Bazerman (1992) on the rhe-
torical moves (Swales, 1990) of Results and Discussion. Yuan found my
notes “enlightening” (Blog, September 23, 2004).3 In addition, I tried
not to impose my requests on him. For example, in a BBS message,
following a few questions posed to Yuan, I said, “Please only answer
briefly—don’t let responding to my answers/comments take too much of
your time” (BBS message, September 12, 2004). Yuan responded, “This
has not taken too much of my time. It is a kind of rest for me” (BBS
message, September 12, 2004). Indeed, Yuan was writing his process logs
not just for the sake of cooperating with me on my research (or for

3
It should be noted that Yuan’s reflection on the rhetorical aspects of Results and Discus-
sion that I report later in this article was his own, rather than an incorporation of my notes.

APPRENTICE SCHOLARLY WRITING IN A COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE 61

communicating with his friends), but he was writing for his own sake as
well. He indicated this in the very first sentence of his first blog entry:
“This is to be the case of Ms. Li, as well as to see for myself how I will go
through it all—hope I will not give up half-way. Persist, persist!” (Blog,
August 30, 2004). It should be mentioned that Yuan felt keeping the
process logs has itself been a fruitful experience. His own comment is
worth quoting at length:
Writing the log regularly is like having my thoughts (messed up by my
simultaneous concern over language, the literature, selecting/processing
data etc.) reorganized by someone, who pulls out problems, showing me
that those are the difficulties I’m facing. The log also helps me to sum-
marize my experience from time to time, i.e. to highlight what I’ve found
over time (in terms of writing and the research). Without doing this log,
I don’t know how many more papers I’d have to write before I can have
so much gain. . . . Sometimes I think I’m a smart person—I know a seem-
ingly hard job is often beneficial to myself—that I gladly agreed to do this
log was partly motivated by this thought. It has been proved that being the
“case” is very worthwhile. :) (BBS message, November 16, 2004)
In this sense this study has had a “reality-altering impact”; that is, it
achieved a catalytic validity (Lather, 1991, p. 68).

Data Analysis
The analytical process basically follows the procedure that Bailey
(2001) describes for analyzing diary-type data:
Analyzing journal entries, fieldnotes or other non-quantified data is often
a recursive process of noticing trends or patterns and then looking more
closely at the data to see how stable, frequent or striking those patterns
are. (p. 11)
The “recursive process” of data analysis resulted in a preliminary set of
themes summarizing Yuan’s multidimensional engagement with his
community of practice. The set of themes were revised, clarified, and
verified in further data collection. The taxonomy of themes is laid out in
Figure 1.

FINDINGS
Interacting With the Local Research Community
Yuan began with a set of data resulting from laboratory research.
Although he believed his research had quite a few points of novelty, he
still needed to decide on a focus for the article:

62 TESOL QUARTERLY
 FIGURE 1
Yuan’s Multidimensional Engagement With His Community Of Practice

1. Interacting with the local research community

2. Negotiating with the laboratory data
3. Drawing on his own experience and practice of RA writing
3.1. Taking lessons from his previous experience of RA writing
3.2. Using L1 to sharpen meaning
4. Interacting with the global specialist research community
4.1. Seeking Textual Mentorship
4.1.1. Studying the literature to see rhetorical argumentation
4.1.2. Borrowing from the literature
4.2. Impressing the referees
4.3. Considering the expectations of the target journal and its readership

The experiments have been settled by this week. Last week I already put
together the charts with data that I made during the experiments, plus
some of my own analysis, which I will show to the boss [supervisor].4
Honestly I think the “bright points” of my experiments are many (hehe,
there are not many people doing the topic; and using ABC to study XYZ
is nobody).5 However, I’m not sure what I should focus on. Including
everything obviously won’t do. (Blog, August 30, 2004)

Yuan went to consult with his labmates, who were researching some-
what different areas and whose specialist knowledge complemented his
own:
Days ago I already discussed my data with Ms. Huang and Mr. Fan, and
later with Mr. Gao. In fact, my knowledge of XYZ has been obtained
mostly from these two sources. But I also found Mr. Gao and the other
two have different opinions sometimes. Mr. Gao insists that I should focus
on enhancing separation efficiency, otherwise it’s not impressive; while
Ms. Huang and Mr. Fan believe my earlier thoughts on the relationship
between several factors are very important. I also have my own ten-
dency—I think my most important “bright point” is I can use ABC to
efficiently optimize positioning (of course I have other bright points too).
Fortunately our divergence is only a matter of emphasis. What I should do
next is to take Mr. Gao’s advice and make a chart demonstrating the high
efficiency of my method. I won’t have any loss. (Blog, August 30, 2004)

Then Yuan’s supervisor gathered the whole research group (including

Yuan’s labmates and another staff member) to brainstorm for the article
that Yuan was about to write. The intention of the supervisor, as Yuan

4
In the quotations from Yuan, the square brackets contain my glossing, and the round
brackets contain Yuan’s own remarks.
5
“ABC” and “XYZ” are used in place of two key technical terms to preserve Yuan’s ano-
nymity. Other technical words are replaced with dots when appropriate for the same
purpose.

APPRENTICE SCHOLARLY WRITING IN A COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE 63

explained, was also to bring together their complementary expertise
(Interview, November 10, 2004). From the group discussion Yuan was
hoping to get ideas on the focus and tone of the article:
This morning, discussion began at last. Six people (quite a scene; the boss
wants to submit high)—four doing XYZ, one ABC (me), one omniscient
(the boss). Introduced the basic laboratory results, quite easy; they
quickly got the picture. The heated discussion was on setting the right
key-note for the article, i.e. write from what angle? I think it is studying
the regularities of XYZ . . . test, so whatever the results are, they should be
put in as long as some regular pattern is displayed. The boss said the
precise positioning role of ABC should be emphasized and suggested I
supplement by doing some further experiments. Mr. Gao insisted that the
emphasis should be on the best results under the best condition, and said
the imaging under high-pressure should be included. Ms. Xia had a good
suggestion: which journal do I want to submit? Different ranks of journals
require different levels of depth. But, easier said than done!!! (Blog,
September 2, 2004)
The group meeting did not clarify the focus and tone of the article for
Yuan. But Yuan decided to begin writing:
Found a few more XYZ articles in the afternoon; got some inspiration
after reading one. The writer is a big hand [authoritative figure], but
none of the examples he named are the same as mine. Went to discuss
with Mr. Liu, busy, but still gave the advice: put down everything in
mind—I have to accept the fate! (Blog, September 2, 2004)
And Yuan figured “it would be easier to cut later than to add” (Blog,
October 11, 2004).

Negotiating With the Laboratory Data

Yuan developed an understanding over time of the strengths and

inadequacies of his data:
In terms of quantity, my data are a lot: I have what others (e.g. Smith)
have, and what others do not have (e.g. the ABC-scanned pictures). But
I also have aspects not as good as others’—my system is not as stable, the
data got from some measurements were not as regular. These I did not
quite realize until I now start to write about them. So I was like a leader
at the beginning—planning the world’s order sitting at home and think-
ing that things should be like that; now starting hands-on work, meeting
the difficulties, I saw the realities—and that some parts of the earlier plan
were not reasonable. However, I still must write. (Blog, October 11, 2004)
Yuan realized that earlier he might have taken some thoughts for granted.
How to deal with the inadequacies of the data then? He reflected:

64 TESOL QUARTERLY
 Inadequacy of data has to do with the whole system of design. Even
supplementation of data with further experiments may not work. The key
is, is it necessary to present all these data? Some regularities or the rela-
tionship between some factors can be omitted; the Smith article only
reported one or two items of their regularities—this indicates how com-
plex regularities can be. So I try to let myself first of all thoroughly
understand my laboratory results to decide which can be omitted—the
key is I should again “clearly think it through.” (Blog, October 11, 2004)

He decided to set his claims on the basis of the data he had:

I changed what I planned to write [the heading of a sub-section in Results
and Discussion] from “ . . . ” to “ . . . ” [the latter having a narrower scope
than the former]. For two reasons: that some of my data are not very
good; and that I think if my experiments can illustrate only one factor
in . . . , it’ll be good enough—my data can’t explain all factors (though
that would be great), but it’s really not very meaningful to try to be
all-around. I decide to compromise, and focus on . . . only. (Blog, Octo-
ber 13, 2004)

This reflective process manifested Yuan’s negotiation with his labora-

tory data as he wrote. In this negotiation he developed a deeper under-
standing of his data, discovered their inadequate aspects, and decided
which data to focus on and how to make his claims accordingly.

Drawing on His Own Experience and Practice of Writing a

Research Article

Taking Lessons From His Previous Experience of RA Writing

Yuan recalled that his very first English language article had been
severely criticized by his supervisor in the master’s program:
My very first English paper, written in the master’s program, was criticized
by my boss at the time sentence by sentence, for almost two hours, at a
group meeting. The criticism pointed to the confused meaning, empty
talk, and overuse of verbs in my paper (with more than two verbs in a
clause). So now I’m very attentive to making my meaning clear by being
generous in using short sentences and being sparing in using “it;” I’m also
careful about the accuracy of citations. Indeed, I wrote very poorly in
English at the time; it was my boss at the time who had trained me into
acquiring the basic English writing skills, with his Japanese-style scolding.
(BBS message, November 6, 2004)

He also felt strongly about the lessons derived from writing the first
two English language articles after entering the doctoral program:

APPRENTICE SCHOLARLY WRITING IN A COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE 65

 With the first paper I wrote in the doctoral program, I was only focusing
on finding the most novel angle to approach the content. Since I had no
training in terms of organization and structuring (i.e. not having been
scolded :) ), I thought I was OK in that. But repeated rejections and
referees’ comments made me realize the importance of organization and
structuring. In the meantime I was confirmed that highlighting the
“bright points” with the right angle is indeed crucial; and this was con-
firmed in my second article. (BBS message, November 6, 2004)

These lessons on the importance of “making his meaning clear,” and

being attentive to “organization and structuring,” “bright points,” and
“the right angle” became salient reminders to Yuan in his new writing
task.

Using His L1 to Sharpen Meaning

Before writing a section, Yuan always wrote in Chinese a few lines of

the procedural elements (or what he called an “outline”) to be covered
in the section. Yuan explained that he wrote the “outline” in Chinese
rather than English for the sake of being “clearer” and “more powerful
and impressive” to himself, so that he would not run off track easily (BBS
message, September 13, 2004; Interview, November 9, 2004). Comment-
ing on his use of Chinese rather than English, he said,

On the whole I think in English while generating the text; English is the
carrier of thinking and I put down my thoughts directly in English with-
out the step of translation. When I use Chinese it is when I get stuck in
English—if a sentence does not come out after some effort of organizing
it in mind, I will test in Chinese what exactly I want to say and whether I
can express the meaning completely in one Chinese sentence. (BBS mes-
sage, September 12, 2004)

Rymer’s (1988) NES scientists also made rudimentary lists of key

words before or during the writing of a section. However, by using L1 to
list a chain of key words as a brief outline for his sections and switching
to L1 to help him clarify ideas when he got stuck in English, Yuan was
more comparable to St. John’s (1987) Spanish scientists and Gosden’s
(1996) Japanese doctoral students, who used L1 strategically in writing
English articles. However, it seems Yuan relied on L1 much less than the
Japanese students, most of whom either translated a full article from L1
to English or translated an outline of “main flow of ideas” from L1 into
English (Gosden, 1996, p. 115); Yuan’s “thinking mostly in English” is
similar to the case of Shaw’s (1991) NNES research students engaged in
dissertation writing in a British university.

66 TESOL QUARTERLY
Interacting With the Global Specialist Research Community

Yuan’s interaction with the global specialist research community can

be seen in his learning from the literature (i.e., seeking textual mentor-
ship), and writing with an awareness of the expectations of the referees,
the target journal, and its readership.

Seeking Textual Mentorship

Studying the literature to see rhetorical argumentation. Yuan had not re-
ceived explicit instruction on the “Create a Research Space” model that
summarizes the rhetorical moves in the Introduction of RAs (Swales,
1990). But by reading and analyzing the literature, he saw the rhetorical
purpose of the Introduction:
I came up with this thought these days: the purpose of the Introduction
is to justify the relevance of the present research. Introducing the back-
ground and the development, and talking about the merits and demerits
of previous methods and my method, all were saying that the present
research is meaningful—this achieved, the Introduction is successful. A
brief capturing of the content of the research is only a “decoration.”
(Blog, September 7, 2004)
And after further deliberation Yuan confirmed the knowledge he had
gained:
Discovered an article—it has studied a bit of something similar to my
research! Unhappy for hours, studying that article over and over, found
out at last the differences between us, and also understood the similar
part. The part that others have not studied is my novelty; the part others
have studied is a proof that indeed such phenomenon exists and that
research in this direction is very important. So it fits with my “theory” that
“the Introduction is to justify the relevance of the research.”:) (Blog,
September 12, 2004)
In Yuan’s subspecialty, Results and Discussion are one section in jour-
nal articles. This section seemed to be the most challenging part for
Yuan. Again he found important inspirations in the literature, in par-
ticular, the articles written by “big hands”:
I went to see how big hands organize their Results and Discussion. I
browsed the two articles of Smith’s. Maybe I suddenly had an inspiration?
I discovered that the so-called big hands actually have very simple logic in
writing. That is, before they start to describe results, they add a few
sentences commenting on the significance of studying this factor and
analyse the relationship between this factor and other factors. Indeed
such justification for the research is important, and should be placed at
the beginning, with citations! (Blog, September 29, 2004)

APPRENTICE SCHOLARLY WRITING IN A COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE 67

 Yuan discovered that the “big hands” tend to precede their descrip-
tion of results with some kind of justification—indeed this is an idea
pointed out by Thompson (1993) in her study of the Results sections of
RAs in biochemistry: Scientists do not just report experimental results in
the Results section but also make various rhetorical efforts to argue for
the validity of the results.
Overall, Yuan felt particularly enlightened, coming to see that the
process of writing an article is a continuous process of “argumentation”:

In addition, there’s also much skill in writing about the relationship

between different factors—some of the regularities which I intended to
illustrate with experiments in fact can be arrived at through theoretical
analysis. Write these out first—this both shows the author has a solid
foundation of knowledge in this area, and saves the trouble of summa-
rizing regularities one by one from experimental phenomena. In fact the
experimental results won’t be dimmed by the foregoing theory at all. In
essence, this is in line with my earlier thought about the Introduction
being a “justification for the relevance of the research.” Thus, writing a
article is a process of continuously arguing for its relevance → the appro-
priateness of the methods adopted → the validity of the results → and the
soundness of the conclusions that are drawn. (Blog, September 29, 2004)

Discovering the rhetorical secrets of the crucial sections by studying the

articles of “big hands” has been an important part of Yuan’s writing
process.
Borrowing from the literature. Borrowing expressions from the literature
has been documented in studies on science writers (Rymer, 1988; St.
John, 1987). Yuan described how he borrowed specialist terms from the
literature in writing the Abstract:

Starting the Abstract, I wanted to avoid “borrowing sentences” [Yuan’s

own insertion of the two English words in the blog entry] but planned to
follow my own train of thoughts. But when I came to “ ”
[literally “to image the diffusion circumstances”], I got unsure—should I
really write a word for “ ” [literally “circumstances”]—is it idiomatic
to do so? Luckily I’ve long saved literature on studying diffusion by
ABC. Checked a few and chose “molecular diffusion.” Then continued—
“ ”—unsure of the term for “ ” (separation
high-voltage), then checked XYZ literature and unexpectedly found there
is a better “ ... ” in English. Although “ ” (sep-
aration high-voltage) was what had occurred to me earlier, “ ”
(separation high-voltage electric field) fits my purpose better. What a
gain! (Blog, September 7, 2004)

Yuan went on to describe how he borrowed stretches longer than tech-

nical terms:

68 TESOL QUARTERLY
 Then the influence of . . . on . . . Since I had referred to an article while
I was doing the experiments, naturally I took it out and borrowed a
sentence. And then I described the results, and borrowed from the article
again because of some similarity. (Blog, September 7, 2004)
The following two pairs of excerpts illustrate the borrowing Yuan was
talking about in the blog entry just cited. (For anonymity, only the cor-
responding parts between the source sentences and Yuan’s are shown in
bold type; the other words are taken out, with the number of the words
indicated in square brackets.):
1a. The sentence in the literature:
The influences of separation [+ one word], [+ three words], [+ one
word + one three-word compound] distance on the observed hydro-
dynamic voltammetry of dopamine [+ two words] were studied [+ 10
words].
1b. Yuan’s sentence:
The influences of separation [+ four words] distance on the observed
hydrodynamic voltammetry of dopamine were [+ one word] studied.
2a. The sentence in the literature:
It was found that an increased [+ seven words + one three-word
compound + one word] resulted in a positive shift of the observed
halfwave potentials for [+ four words].
2b. Yuan’s sentence
It was found that, [+ four words], an increased [+ one word] resulted
in a positive shift of the observed half-wave [sic] potentials for [+
one word]; [+one word], [+ eight words].
Though the excerpts just cited show that Yuan did not “borrow” whole
sentences, at another point, he did “take over” a whole sentence (of 14
words) from the literature—specifically, from a published article of a
fellow student in his group—to serve as the “Safety Consideration” state-
ment in his article.
At today’s group meeting the boss said they had a conference, on the
topic of ethics in the academic circle—it’s said there’s 30k stuff online on
academic corruption, which indicates academic ethics is now a big thing.
The boss said we should avoid identical wording in our own papers, and
from others’ papers do not copy even a single sentence. I was reminded
of the “Safety Consideration” sentence I took over from Ms. Huang’s
article—but that should be fine; what the boss said may not be entirely
correct. (Blog, 23 September, 2004)
To Yuan, taking over a sentence or two in the Experimental part from a
previous article of the home group was fine because it was all one’s “own”
work (Blog, September 15, 2004; Interview, June 1, 2005).

APPRENTICE SCHOLARLY WRITING IN A COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE 69

Impressing the Referees
Yuan tried to “attract the eye-balls of the referees” by highlighting the
“bright points” of his work and citing the home group’s work. He knew
the importance of boosting the “bright points” when he set out writing:
This morning, I looked at the abstract, feeling it’s too plain. How can I
submit this to [the target journal]? Add: “precisely positioned,” “finding
the optimized distance,” “ABC is a powerful tool.” These should be my
bright points that attract the eye-balls [literal translation from Chinese] of
the referees most. (Blog, September 7, 2004)
Citing one’s own or the home group’s previous research is a common
and perhaps necessary course of action among science writers (e.g.,
Rymer, 1988). But Yuan was not just citing; he was also trying to promote
his group’s work to impress the referees:
Microchip Fabrication [in the section of the “Experimental”]: this step
belongs to the XYZ part of the experiment. Ms. Huang’s article has a long
paragraph. But it’s too detailed; not necessary for me. I’ll simplify it. So I
wrote “A typical . . . of . . . was fabricated follow [sic] the process described
previously,” citing Ms. Huang’s article. Hehe, citing our own work once,
so that others know our group has also produced something—we’re no
nuts. (Blog, Sept 15, 04)
In a later interview, Yuan remarked that referees were probably “snob-
bish;” thus an indication that his research group had published some-
thing in the area might encourage the referees to view the article in a
favorable light (Interview, November 10, 2004).
Considering the Expectations of the Target Journal and
Its Readership
By shaping his text in a way that would facilitate its comprehension,
Yuan was also addressing a broader readership:
I started to write my ABC part since two days ago. Although I’m familiar
with it, I feel this part may not be familiar to the referees and the readers
who specialize in XYZ—many people in XYZ probably have never heard
of ABC. So I hope to lay out the basics of ABC with some plain word-
ing. . . . The crucial thing now is not English, but logical relationships.
I’ve adjusted several times the order of sentences, hoping to make the
meaning clear sentence by sentence. (Blog, September 12, 2004)
In addition, he was carefully keeping in line with the expectation of his
target journal:
Safety Consideration: this is required by the journal—dangerous experi-
mental procedures must be specified. Foreigners are quite humanistic. So
I simply took over a sentence from Ms. Huang’s paper: “ . . . .” [14 words]
(Blog, September 15, 2004)

70 TESOL QUARTERLY
 Yuan’s awareness of his readership contrasts with the awareness of
Gosden’s (1996) Japanese doctoral students, who reported (in inter-
views) no consideration of the readership in their writing for publication
in English. It also contrasts with Shaw’s (1991) NNES research students
in a British university, who had a considerable amount of confusion
regarding the readership because of the “pseudocommunicative nature”
(p. 194) of their dissertation task.
It took Yuan about a month and a half to finish the first draft of his
article:
Out of the oven, with hardship—today I turned in the draft to the boss
[supervisor]. Maybe he’ll start to look at it early next week. In expecta-
tion . . . (Blog, October 17, 2004)

DISCUSSION

Characterizing scientific writing (vis-à-vis writing in the humanities

and social sciences), Becher (1987) has commented that “a scientific
writer, having the rules of the game already established, knows the com-
ponents and structure of his argument before he embarks on commit-
ting it to paper, and can thus afford to assemble it (from the bottom up),
piece by piece” (pp. 269–270). Although this observation is enlightening,
it glosses over the challenge involved in an apprentice scientist’s schol-
arly writing. We have seen through the case of Yuan that “the compo-
nents and structure of his argument” were not settled for him before he
embarked on writing; instead, he negotiated a way toward them through
a learning process of multidimensional engagement with his community
of practice, which involved four categories of resources: the laboratory
data, his own experience and practice of writing RAs, the local research
community, and the more global specialist research community. This
process of multidimensional engagement highlights the agency of an
apprentice scientist.
Yuan’s negotiations with his laboratory data included developing a
deeper understanding of the data during the writing process, discover-
ing their inadequate aspects, deciding what data to focus on and how to
make his claims accordingly. These negotiations reflected the idea of
scientific writing as a rhetorical enterprise, as has been richly explored in
previous research on mature scientists (e.g., Bazerman, 1984, 1999; Gil-
bert & Mulkay, 1984; Rymer, 1988). However, compared with senior
scientists, Yuan perhaps underwent more frustrations in sorting out his
data and claims. In drawing on his own experience of writing, Yuan
incorporated what he learned from previous experiences writing RAs—
the importance of “organization and structuring” and of highlighting

APPRENTICE SCHOLARLY WRITING IN A COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE 71

“bright points” and taking “the right angle.” Yuan’s use of L1 to help with
organizing his thoughts provided evidence to verify previous research,
which reported NNES writers’ recourse to mother tongue in construct-
ing meaning and organizing ideas in school essay writing (e.g., Fried-
lander, 1990), as well as scientific writing (Gosden, 1996; Shaw, 1991; St.
John, 1987).
Yuan’s dual engagement with both the local research community and
the global specialist research community illustrated the social nature of
the apprentice scholarly writing. Previous studies that investigated gradu-
ate disciplinary writing have tended to focus on how the local curriculum
setting impinges on the students’ writing process to explicate the social
nature of graduate writing (Casanave, 1995; Prior, 1998; Riazi, 1997). Yet
it has also been shown that as a graduate student writer transforms from
“newcomer” to “embryonic researcher” and then to one who “is more
comfortably able to speak in the discourse of his [or her] subspecialty”
(Berkenkotter et al., 1991, p. 211), the student increasingly addresses the
more global context of the research community rather than the local
disciplinary community. Yuan’s case has illustrated this observation. In
this sense, the social process of Yuan’s scholarly writing is also compa-
rable to that of mature scientists, where scientific journal articles are
socially constructed through a process of both local interaction (e.g.,
Graves, 1995; Law & Williams, 1982) and of addressing a global reader-
ship of a specialist scientific community, including the gatekeepers of a
journal (e.g., Bazerman, 1988; Berkenkotter & Huckin, 1995; Myers,
1985).
Yuan’s engagement with the global specialist research community also
sometimes showed a critical orientation. This orientation shows in his
rather cynical view of the need to impress the referees (who were, in his
words, probably “snobbish”) by boosting his work, that is, highlighting its
“bright points” and citing a previous publication of his home group
(“Hehe, citing our own work once, so that others know our group has
also produced something—we’re no nuts”). It also shows in his framing
of the need to meet the expectations of the target journal (e.g., supply-
ing a statement for “Safety Consideration” because “Foreigners are quite
humanistic”). His orientation is also seen in his interaction with journal
articles, where he had a critical eye in reading the texts of “big hands” to
figure out the secrets of rhetorical argumentation in the genre of RAs (in
particular, “I discovered the so-called big hands actually have very simple
logic in writing”). In addition, although Yuan’s “borrowing” from the
literature, apart from the specialist terms, may be understood as plagia-
rism in the academic community, to Yuan himself it was all normal and
fine (he mentions that the supervisor’s reminder of “from others’ papers
do not copy even a single sentence” . . . “may not be entirely correct”).
Considering the arguments in the literature that the issue of plagiarism

72 TESOL QUARTERLY
should be treated with reference to particular cultural, disciplinary, and
rhetorical contexts (e.g., Canagarajah, 2002a; Hu, 2001; Pennycook,
1996; Scollon, 1995), perhaps Yuan’s conception about what constitutes
acceptable borrowing from other texts should not be dismissed outright
but deserves some further exploration (Flowerdew & Li, in press).

CONCLUSION

For Yuan, publication in English was a graduation requirement. Such

a requirement can easily be interpreted as Anglocentric, in view of the
controversies and concerns over English being the dominant language of
publication in international academia (e.g., Swales, 1998; Wood, 2001).
Yet, tied up in this, considering that scholarly publication in English is
now of intimate concern for NNES scholars, and that participation in
international academia also empowers these scholars, pedagogical sup-
port to assist them in the effort is justified. Indeed, Yuan himself has
expressed a strong hope for receiving help. After my research, he said to
me, “You are such a dedicated social science worker. I believe you will
make achievements and help more ‘English writing puzzlers’ like me”
(BBS message, November 20, 2004). Yuan completed the first draft of his
article through a process of multidimensional engagement with his com-
munity of practice, imbued with a form of agency bearing a critical
dimension. How can TESOL professionals facilitate NNES apprentice
scholars’ engagement while helping them to develop the critical dimen-
sion of the agency, for the benefit of successful writing for publication?
Yuan sought textual mentorship, that is, studying journal articles
(Casanave & Vandrick, 2003), to assist his own text production. Although
it was effective in his case, Yuan did not reach his current level of aware-
ness about his target genre of RAs until he had worked on his third
English article in the doctoral program and with the aid of process logs.
My notes to Yuan about the generic aspects of the Results and Discussion
section of RAs during his struggle with it might have been “enlightening”
to him (as he put it), but EAP practitioners like myself can certainly
provide assistance more systematically, earlier in the student’s graduate
program, to reduce the time when students like Yuan are left in the dark,
and to help them to make the transition from test-oriented English
learning and short-composition writing to processing and producing
longer research articles in English for international publication. An im-
portant task of such pedagogical support would be to develop in these
students a critical awareness for the linguistic and rhetorical aspects of
research writing by utilizing various resources of learning.
Such resources could include applied linguistics literature (e.g.,

APPRENTICE SCHOLARLY WRITING IN A COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE 73

Chang & Swales, 1999; Hyland, 1996; Pennycook, 1996; see also
Casanave, 2003b, who has reported effectively using applied linguistics
literature in a multidisciplinary graduate EAP class in Japan), and the
literature that explicates the sociorhetorical nature of scientific research
reporting and publication (e.g., Gilbert & Mulkay, 1984; Knorr-Cetina,
1981; Myers, 1985, 1988; Swales, 1987).
In addition, as this study has shown, keeping a record of one’s own
writing process, or engaging in an intraview (in Yuan’s case, through
blogs), is a useful learning tool in facilitating a critical awareness in the
RA genre that one has to grasp (Johns, 2002).
Apart from the above pragmatic pedagogical measures aimed at ex-
pediting students’ learning of norms, there is a justification for cultivat-
ing in them a “critical edge” such as that found in Yuan’s interaction with
the “global” discourse community, or rather, the Anglo-American domi-
nated scientific discourse community. Through critical lens, apprentice
scholars develop an understanding of the sociopolitical nature of writing
for publication—with the various power disparities embedded in the
undertaking; the apprentices also come to see that discursive norms
sanctioned in the Anglo-American publication world, by being socially
constructed, are open to contestation by the members (NES and NNES
members alike) of the scientific community, and they themselves as the
future generations of scientists will be responsible for the future of the
norms.
The remaining issue is, are there enough TESOL practitioners in
non-Anglophone contexts who are equipped with the needed EAP ex-
pertise to provide support to students like Yuan? At the present stage,
many non-Anglophone countries and regions (such as mainland China;
see Li, 2004) still lack EAP-qualified professionals. To address the prob-
lem in the long run, opportunities for EAP professional development
should be created in both the degree programs for preservice TESOL
trainees and for in-service practitioners. Undoubtedly, this enterprise
will be supported by EAP-related research conducted in non-
Anglophone contexts, which could generate theoretical and pedagogical
implications to add to the literature for EAP professionals, or more
broadly, for TESOL professionals. In this sense, it is hoped that the study
reported in this article has been a useful contribution.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I gratefully acknowledge the cooperation of Yuan and thank two anonymous review-
ers, Suresh Canagarajah, and John Flowerdew for their insightful comments on the
earlier versions of this article. I have also benefited from useful discussions with my
fellow scholars at the Centre of Asian Studies of the University of Hong Kong, as well
support from as the Centre’s research resources. I also thank Richard W. Forest for
help with stylistic aspects of this article.

74 TESOL QUARTERLY
THE AUTHOR
Yongyan Li recently completed a doctorate at the City University of Hong Kong,
Hong Kong SAR, China. Now teaching at the Nanjing University, Nanjing, People’s
Republic of China, and a visiting scholar at the Centre of Asian Studies of the
University of Hong Kong, she has published in Asian Journal of English Language
Teaching, English for Specific Purposes, and Journal of Second Language Writing.

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APPENDIX
A Guide for Keeping Process Logs
(partly based on Penrose & Sitcoe, 1993)
I’m interested in finding out how you go about writing up the first draft of an English research
paper in your field. Please keep a record of the work you do on the draft (as thoroughly as
possible). Don’t think that any part of this process is irrelevant; just jot down a log entry every
day (or several times a day, as you prefer), on what you have pondered, read, written, or
discussed with anyone on your paper that day.
Once you begin thinking seriously about your paper, please start making regular entries in your
logs. Don’t worry if you have to report “no work” many times; we all understand everyone works
at their own pace. These questions might serve to guide your writing of the logs:
1. What progress, if any, have you made on your article today?
2. What difficulties (in terms of language and/or content) are you having now?

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3. How are you trying to overcome the difficulties?
4. Any journal article(s) you find particularly useful to you in the writing? How?
5. Have you talked with anyone (e.g., supervisor and/or fellow students) that may have given
you any insights?
6. How do you feel about your article now?
Please be assured that in the future when I write up my research quoting anything from you, you
will remain anonymous. While by keeping process logs on your article writing, you are assisting
me in my research, I would hope you shall find this reflective process useful to yourself too.
Thank you very much for your cooperation.

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