Writing is a journey: a study of post-graduate students\' perceptions of academic writing in English

• Autor(a) principal: Pavesi, Gabriella Sieiro
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Biblioteca Digital de Teses e Dissertações da USP
• Texto Completo: https://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/8/8147/tde-05082020-182517/
• topic: Academic literacy; Academic writing; Análise de metáforas; Conceptualizations; Escrita acadêmica; Letramento acadêmico; Metáfora; Metaphor; Metaphor analysis; Percepções; Perceptions

With the increasing recognition of English as the dominating (ALTBACH, 2013) language in academic publications and the internationalization processes that Brazilian Universities have been going through, higher education students in Brazil are under growing pressure to publish in English. Nevertheless, initiatives to promote academic literacy in English, such as through writing centers, are still limited (CRISTOVAO; VIEIRA, 2016), and questions remain on the best approaches to fulfill this growing student need (FERREIRA; LOUSADA, 2006). Considering that studies (WHITE; BRUNING, 2004; SANDERS-REIO et al, 2014) demonstrate a connection between students\' beliefs about writing and their actual performance, the use of metaphor analysis to investigate students\' perception of academic writing has gained popularity (e.g. PAULSON; ARMSTRONG, 2011; ARMSTRONG, 2007; WAN, 2014; HART, 2009). Therefore, this study aimed at investigating the conceptualizations that graduate students at Universidade de São Paulo (USP) have regarding academic writing in English, through a comparative analysis of metaphors for academic writing in both English and Portuguese. Two distinct data-collection methodologies were used in this study, in order to collect both spontaneously generated metaphors (through interviews), and elicited metaphors (through a prompt- completion task). Overall, the results demonstrated a plethora of conceptualizations and novel metaphors regarding academic writing. It was also possible to identify similar metaphors for academic writing in English and Portuguese in students\' individual results, which can indicate patterns in the way these students understand academic literacy learning. Knowing students\' conceptualizations and beliefs of academic writing, and how these beliefs influence their learning process, may help towards the development of more efficient pedagogical practices in higher education.