English for Research Writing

Abstract

English is widely used as a major language for research writing (Grabe & Kaplan, 1997; Hyland, 2012; Kaplan & Baldauf, 2005). However, not all researchers (particularly non-native English and novice researchers) can use English efficiently for this purpose (Cho, 2004; Flowerdew, 1999). When competing with experienced native English researchers for publication, the non-native English and novice researchers are at a distinct disadvantage (Burrough-Boenisch, 2003). They sometimes feel marginalized from the international academic community. Reasons for non-native English researcher’s feelings of marginalization could be due to: i) writing the research article is linguistically, culturally, and disciplinary specific (Swales, 2004) and / or ii) some researchers might not be familiar with the lexical, grammatical, syntactical, semantic, and pragmatic conventions regarding a research article (Kaplan & Baldauf, 2005).