The ability to communicate in English is now essential to academic success for many students and researchers. Not only has the language established a fairly firm grip in higher education, particularly in the lives of postgraduate students, but also in academic research, where careers are increasingly tied to an ability to publish in international…

For academics, foreign language academic literacy is essential in order to read and analyze academic sources in the foreign language effectively as well as to produce and present their own work in that language. In spite of various studies and trainings on English for academic purposes, it is still questioned why academics and graduate students…

In preparation for the academic rigor of higher-education institutions and the high standards of international businesses across the English-speaking globe, students must learn "to use language in more sophisticated ways: arguing, evaluating evidence, analyzing complex texts, and engaging in academic discussions." In order to give…

Writing a Master of Arts (MA) thesis is a challenging task for postgraduate students. This complexity is of great significance when one is writing in his/her second language. From this perspective, genrecentered approaches help non-natives enhance their understanding of academic and scientific texts. This study is intended to comparatively…

This article presents a review of 20 tests designed for assessing the academic English listening skill of second or foreign language learners. The available test information has been systematically condensed in purpose, listening construct, task characteristics, and validity evidence. It was found that most of the tests were developed for…

Writing is one of the four abilities in English Learning. Many students need to write their theses and dissertations in English in order to achieve their academic degrees. English writing is in fact an access of international and intercultural communication with native-speakers and non-native speakers, in academic fields. After reading abundant…

Academic English is an essential literacy skill area for success in post-secondary education and in many work environments. Despite its importance, academic English is understudied with deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) students. Nascent research in this area suggests that academic English, alongside American Sign Language (ASL) fluency, may play an…

With the increasingly growing technological advances and their consequences for societies, the public has the right to be engaged in the outcomes of science. On the one hand, the public are interested in acquiring information about the results of scientists' experiments. On the other hand, the scientists are willing to share their feelings about…

Often, at universities, it is assumed that students will automatically find their 'voice' after a period of exposure to the academic field. What is not understood fully are the struggles that students with different levels of preparedness have in finding and asserting their academic voice, particularly in the academic writing genres necessary for…

This action research project empirically evaluated the efficacy of reading strategy instruction to help advance adult English as an additional language (EAL) students' development of academic reading skills and strategy use. The study involved 16 adult participants attending English for Academic Purposes (EAP) programs in British Columbia. These…

This paper explores a process-genre approach to teaching academic writing skills to advanced English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) students. The 'reading-to-writing' tasks and procedures were designed to examine the feasibility of the approach for a doctoral English-for-academic-purposes (EAP) program in the 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 academic years.…

Many nations now enrol large numbers of tertiary students with English as an additional language, raising concerns over academic literacy standards. As a result, calls for whole-institution approaches to enhance language proficiency have grown. This paper describes the issues faced by one university that attempted such an approach. We first…

English-medium universities have generally adopted centralized models of in-sessional English language provision, where expertise resides and is often delivered within language development units or as part of larger cognate departments, typically TESOL or Applied Linguistics departments. This arrangement might be seen as reflecting a…

Using autoethnographic and narrative inquiry, this dissertation investigates the identity and literacy development of an international graduate student in the US. The research questions explored in this study are 1) What kind of identity work does becoming an international graduate student entail? 2) What are the academic literacy practices of an…

Since Carolyn Miller's Genre as Social Action, North American Rhetorical Genre Studies (RGS) has facilitated analysis of how typified rhetorical actions constitute the contexts and communities in which writers write. In first-year writing (FYW) specifically, RGS approaches have focused on macro-level textual constructs, like the audience and…