Advisor- advisee Pairs

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In the excerpts, both professors noted that students simply summarized what they read without critically examining how it was related to their studies. What was

unmentioned by students was, the problems were not synopsizing previous studies and reviewing the literature with critical angles. In particular, Professor A attributed students’

inabilities to criticize previous studies to culture factors. “The problem may relate to our tradition of education, like in the tests of art fields, you have to memorize the contents of tests and write them down during the tests,” she said. In other words, students were used to showing their knowledge by following others’ ideas for they had been trained to do so.

4.1.1.3 Advisor- advisee Pairs

When it comes to the consistence of the views among the advisor-advisee pairs, only Helen and Sherry, the advisees of professor C, had the same ideas with their advisor.

However, no correlation between advisor and advisees was found in the other two pairs.

Helen said she had difficulty in reviewing the literature logically to show the gap and professor C also thought it may be hard for students to organize the literature to convince the readers the rationality of conducting specific study. As to Sherry, she conveyed her trouble in ensuring the coherence among the concepts in Literature Review. Likewise, professor C indicated that how to present the literature fluently and logically could be an obstacle for students. As for the other two pairs, there is no consensus between the advisors and advisees because the advisors only remembered the problems most students have, not focusing on the students in the present study.

4.1.1.4 Coping Strategies 4.1.1.4. 1 Students’ Perspectives

Since students faced linguistic and discourse difficulties while composing Literature

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Review, they came up with self-regulated strategies to overcome these difficulties. In the present study, the self-regulated strategies contained assistance from (a) their advisors, (b) peers and (c) self. All the students benefited from the aid provided by their advisors.

Regardless of the linguistic or discursive problems, advisors were the most common sources of assistance for students. Lynn, Clair, Fiona, Ken, and Sherry accepted their advisors’ suggestions about the arrangements and contents of Literature Review. Ken recalled that his advisor asked him to read specific articles and added the ideas of these articles to his draft. Not accepting the advisor’s suggestions passively, Helen and Sherry were more involved in discussing the advisor’s feedback before accepting it. Helen discussed with her advisor when there were problems in her draft. Before revising the draft, she would check whether she really understood what her advisor said. Until her ideas reached the advisor’s agreement, she would begin to revise the draft again. Sherry said she could not revise her draft directly based on the advisor’s feedback for her advisor did not give her any concrete feedback. Instead, she had to think further about the hint given by her advisor before she started to revise.

The ETMA students not only relied on the feedback provided by their advisors, but also sought peers’ help to deal with the difficulties at the discourse level. Unlike the students who coped with difficulties mainly by consulting advisors, some students also attained useful information from their peers. As illustrated by Sherry, “ I will go to the peers who are willing to share their ideas or conduct similar studies as mine and ask them the suitable organization and contents to be contained in Literature Review.” By

discussing with peers, she attained ideas about how to improve this section.

Aside from seeking help from others, students also tried hard to solve the problems on their own. The students attained the information useful for dealing with their

difficulties by (a) reading the Literature Review section of other theses; (b) reading books about how to compose Literature Review section of a thesis; and (c) reading more

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literature to attain more inspiration of writing.

Claire: Basically, the solution was to examine how the researcher who conducted a similar study like mine made the choice about the concepts to be included in Literature Review. (S1IN-Claire-P11)

Lynn: My first way was to read the predecessors’ papers and then wrote every paragraph, the outline of literature review, observed how he arranged his

presentation of topics. Then the second way was, I searched for the books about how to write literature review. The third way was that I used the tool I said

before, …Endnote to electronically arrange the things I collected, and then arranged it to be an outline I think I can present. Bearing with general organization, I started to write. (S1IN-Lynn-P6))

According to the excerpts, Claire mentioned she had difficulties not finding enough literature relevant to her study so she coped with this problem by seeing how other researchers selected the concepts to be discussed in Literature Review. Lynn provided more detailed information about how she dealt with the difficulty encountered in composing Literature Review. The evidence showed there was a sequence of the strategies she may adopt. At first, she would refer to the Literature Review sections of previous studies and tried to infer the rules of composing this section from these works.

After reading some examples, she read books to get knowledge about conventions of thesis writing directly. When she knew how to compose Literature Review, she utilized particular instrument to facilitate her edition.

The third way of acquiring the required information was reading more literature.

Sherry and Helen were the two students adopted such a strategy to cope with the trouble at the discourse level. By doing so, Sherry thought she would attain more knowledge

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about the ideas to be written and then she was capable to compose the literature her own study. For Helen, reading more literature would be helpful for solving the problem in writing Literature Review. Every time when she read the literature related to her research, she could expand or synthesize her Literature Review section right away.

4.1.1.4.2 Teachers’ Perspectives

Like their students, the teacher participants also considered the strategies could be self-regulated. The strategies regulated by self could be physical kind of mediation to solve the discourse difficulties, namely, material resources as articles, theses and books.

For example, all the professors thought students should read more papers to familiarize the conventions in how to organize Literature Review, which in turn may facilitate their writing of this section. As Professor B expressed, “Students have to pay attention to how others compose their Literature Review when they read papers. Then students would know the writing rules gradually and they were able to write their own theses.

“Furthermore, reading more texts could enrich students’ academic knowledge. For instance, professor B considered if students equipped with more knowledge about the concepts or theories of their studies, the chance to be blocked in deciding the organization or contents of Literature Review would decrease. He noted: “I will list some books and ask students to read these books and add the ideas in these books to their drafts and then they can come to me again.” Therefore, he would recommend some books relevant to students’ research when he found the students did not really know what specific idea was required to be included in the section.

Other self-regulated strategies were provided by advisors and peers as well. All the teacher participants felt that most students still needed their feedback for synthesizing and criticizing the literature gathered and deciding the concepts to be subsumed in this section.

They thought that these problems originated from the negative influence of the Chinese

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education that students got used to presenting knowledge in exams. As Professor A noted,

“Students usually don’t evaluate previous studies when they hand in the drafts to me. I have to remind them so they will know what is the right way to compose the second chapter.”

Aside from solving the problems from advisors’ help, Professor A also believed that peers could be the providers of assistance. As she expressed:

I also encourage students to discuss with each other; for example, Claire finished her Literature Review, and she did it well; then, to the present advisee, I would say: “you can also discuss with Claire when you are free.” It means you use peers as

scaffolding; the three advisees I am advising at the same time can discuss with each other. (A1IN-Prof.A-P20)

From the excerpts, professor A considered peers should also be the source of knowledge.

Therefore, she encouraged her advisees to form a community with peers and the doubts and troubles would be eliminated and more ideas would be attained from discussion.