Waring2001
| Waring2001 | |
|---|---|
| BibType | ARTICLE |
| Key | Waring2001 |
| Author(s) | Hansun Zhang Waring |
| Title | Balancing the competing interests in seminar discussion: Peer referencing and asserting vulnerability |
| Editor(s) | |
| Tag(s) | EMCA, Graduate seminar, English for Academic Purposes |
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| Year | 2001 |
| Language | English |
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| Journal | Issues in Applied Linguistics |
| Volume | 12 |
| Number | 1 |
| Pages | 29-50 |
| URL | Link |
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Abstract
As Jacoby and McNamara (1999) have convincingly demonstrated, English for Specific Purposes (ESP) assessment tools with primarily a linguistic focus can fail to locate the competence actually needed in real-world professional settings. In a similar vein, English for Academic Purposes (EAP) pedagogical activities rooted in an unsituated notion of academic English can also be inadequate or misleading. Through a sequential analysis of actual interactions, this study describes the real-world discourse activities performed by competent native and normative speakers to handle complex academic tasks. Using data from a graduate seminar, I detail two interactional resources ( "peer referencing " and "asserting vulnerability") exercised by the seminar participants in the doing of disagreement and critique. I show that these resources are invoked to accomplish the double-duty of acknowledging another's viewpoint while performing a potentially disagreeing action, to make an otherwise independently advanced critique into a co-constructed one, or to back down from forcefully articulated positions. Finally, I hypothesize that the particular use of peer referencing and asserting vulnerability characterizes the members' transitional stage between undergraduate novicehood and doctoral level junior expertise.
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