Writing for publication in English among doctoral students in an EFL context: challenges and practices

Abstract

With the increasing expansion of the role of English as the pre-eminent language of academic publication, publishing in internationally reputable journals has become a necessity for researchers in order to disseminate their research discoveries among the international scientific community, gain tenure, and help increase their universities’ ranking. However, researchers from non-native English-speaking countries find themselves linguistically disadvantaged compared to their native English-speaking counterparts. In Morocco, the challenge of writing in English seems to be significant given the weak status of English within the language policy of the country, since, barring a few exceptions, French and Arabic are the media of instruction in public education. This study explores the challenges encountered by Moroccan doctoral students in their pursuit to author and publish articles in international journals, as well as the practices adopted to overcome these challenges. Data were collected using a questionnaire addressed to doctoral students and a focus group interview. The results show that the majority of students felt linguistically disadvantaged and needed support to overcome the different hurdles encountered in writing in English. The study highlights the strategies deployed by students to enter their discourse communities and offers recommendations that will enable aspiring scholars in EFL contexts to succeed with scholarly publication in English. Keywords. Discourse communities, non-native English-speaking writers, English scholarly publication, North African scholars, doctoral students