Oluwatosin Mariam Junaid
Written feedback is one of the primary forms of instruction supervisors give their supervisees, enabling them to understand their academic discourse community. As partial criteria for degree completion, postgraduate students in some countries must publish in international journals whose lingua franca is the English language. Brazil has recently begun to include these requirements in some disciplines, particularly for doctoral students. Writing for publication can be daunting, particularly in a second language. Therefore, guidance is needed to navigate through the writing process. Due to insufficient writing support and resources, postgraduate students rely on their supervisors for guidance, which they provide through feedback. Supervisors’ direct influence on texts through written feedback reflects their literacy brokering roles. However, there is little research on the literacy brokering roles of L2 supervisors concerning articles written for publications in the English language. In response to this gap, this qualitative study which consisted of ten participants was conducted. The analysis of 21 text histories showed that supervisors gave feedback based on aspects of students’ texts they believed would improve the quality of manuscripts. The supervisors’ focus on feedback included content/content organization, sentence-level changes (e.g., grammar, spellings and prepositions), technical words, vocabulary, coherence, cohesion diagrams and formatting. However, supervisors stated the absence of formal pedagogical training that effectively prepares L2 supervisors to supervise writing for publications. To ensure supervisors provide effective feedback, EAP professionals can provide discipline-specific pedagogic strategies through specialized training for supervisors to assist them in the writing process supervision. Additionally, institutions can offer writing initiatives and resources to help both the supervisors and the postgraduate students.
