‘I am not what you think I am’: EFL Undergraduates’ Experience of Academic Writing, Facing Discourses of Formulaic Writing

Abstract

Based on Ivanic’s views, I assume that academic exchanges can be enriched through equal participation of every writer ‘novice’ or ‘expert’. However, much of EFL novice writers’ participation has been limited, due to widespread use of generic styles supported by ideologies and cultural values of native-speakerism and promoted by pragmatic approaches that claim to help students learn how to write in an ‘acceptable’ way. In practice, more boundaries are created for novice writers. On the one hand, discourses of native-speakerism construe an image of the Other as ‘deficient’ and ‘inferior’ (Holliday 2005). On the other hand, the imposed limits and the power imbalance between novice EFL writers and their ‘native-speaker’ teachers constrain their choices in writing. As a result, their texts are mainly a representation of what is expected of them rather than their real self. The ideological roots of these orientations have been challenged (see Pennycook 1998; Canagarajah 2002; Holliday 2011, 2013); however given the social, cultural and political variety in the field of EFL it is necessary to investigate the effects of these practices comprehensively. It is equally important to understand learners’ experiences from themselves and thus problema-tise the ‘neo-racist’, denigrating ideologies of native-speakerism.

All our writing is influenced by our life histories. Each word we write represents an encounter, possibly a struggle, between our multiple past experience and the demands of a new context. Writing is not some neutral activity which we just learn like a physical skill, but it implicates every fibre of the writer’s multifaceted being.

(Ivanic 1998: 181)