Non-native student and supervisor expectations during the process of completing a graduation thesis: A case study

Abstract

The article reports on a case study that investigates challenges related to writing a graduation thesis as reported by non-native students of English in one Bachelor of Arts (BA) and one Master’s (MA) programme in Estonia, comparing the needs outlined by the students to the perception of those described by their non-native supervisors. The study highlights a number of important academic writing process challenges that need to be considered in an inter-disciplinary context. It also echoes the significance of the interpersonal relationship between the student and the supervisor, voiced in respective research literature worldwide. On the institutional level, a need for discussion emerged among graduation paper supervisors for a more unified understanding of the requirements set for graduation papers. The information obtained allows a more informed approach to the process of supervision on the one hand and academic writing instruction on the other hand.

Keywords

• text linguistics
• thesis supervision
• supervisor role
• feed- back
• feedforward
• academic writing in the humanities