WRITING ARTIFACT

An academic writing example from my EAP 507 

Analytical Summary of Strayhorn (2012)

      Strayhorn (2012) focused on the correlations among graduate students socialization, sense of belonging and academic success. At the begging, Strayhorn thought the current research is more about undergraduate students’ academic histories, motivations and experience instead of graduate students.(p.90)   T. L. Strayhorn’s (2012) article is a research paper and the author analyze the data from current studies which is focuses on socialization and sense of belonging of graduate students. The author explained and demonstrated the relationship of these two concept, in order to identify implications and recommend strategies to promote a sense of belonging. According the survey research and interview research, he found that socialization and sense of belonging can lead graduate students to their success of academic study and make students to be an “insider”.  He suggested the importance of socializing experiences as ways of introducing students to the norms of a particular department or profession. Students can establish a meaningful, supportive relationships which are formed among students, their peers and faculty members.

Focused Analysis of Sense of Belonging

 Sense of belonging is one of the key concept in this article. It’s an important factor that lead graduate students’ academic success. The author states that sense of belonging is “feelings of membership, community, relatedness”, “a sense of belonging among others in the graduate department or professional field”. The audience will be “feeling safe, respected, and comfortable when interacting with their peers, staff, and faculty members” (p.99) . For example, the article used “graduate syudents to limit the population of sense of belonging. Therefore, “one’s sense of belonging” in the middle of the article wouldn’t confused readers because they would know “one’s” was graduate students’. Also sense of belonging can be defined to valued “insiders”, which are “bona fide members of a group or society to which they belong”. These key terms suggested that sense of belonging was important to graduate students to be more insider.  Their sense of belonging came from establishing better relationship with peers, professors and department staffs.

”. For example, there are several elements contribute to individuals’ sense of belonging such as graduates could successfully socialized to a department or a professional field or a particular discipline, connections with the individuals who study in the same discipline and valued and respected by others as a competent member. (p.93) The author Point out several terms to explain this key concept. In addition, the author said “all of which contribute to sense of belonging” which is a language clue shows obviously that the author is explaining the key terms.  From illustrating “sense of belonging”, Strayhorn try to show that one who want to be an insider must be socialize which means making connections with others who are in the same field or involve in more particular discipline. Then one could make academic success.

Language Patterns Analysis of In-text Citations

In this article, the pattern of forwarded information has 3 direct quotes and 18 paraphrase, I will focus on the difference of direct quotes and paraphrases in this article. It is obvious that   the author prefers to use the paraphrases more. That’s probably because that direct quotes commonly state the whole example or telling evidences, but if the writer use paraphrase more often, which means the author want to emphasize some important points. Furthermore, by using paraphrase will help reader to understand the writer’s own purpose more specific and clear. For example, “Well-socialized students understand the values, beliefs, and more of the professional fled to which they belong (Bragg, 1976)” (p.93) The author paraphrase the citation for that he could summarize the key information which he wanted to emphasize. Furthermore, the author indicated to express his own opinion and understanding while they use paraphrase to cite.

Connections t previous reading

Compare with De Araujo (2011) and Philips (2014), Strayhorn’s article focuses on the relationship between graduates’s socialization and sense of belonging. However, they all talked about the “academic success of international students” the author by using Cynthia, Frank, Joyce, Derek, and Josep’s example to show that how academic success was predicated upon their sense of belonging (p.100). In Phillips (2014), “Chozin managed to overcome the low expectations of his advisor to become a highly successful graduate student in his interdisciplinary program and a much-improved writer (p.69).” The author tried to help international students to find strategies to get academic success from a successful case study. By investigating Chozin’s strategies to show how students found success against the tough situation and gives us a better understanding of some of the strategies multilingual writers use to improve students writing in their field. While, in de Araujo (2014), the author suggest that this research could help student to gain a better understanding about which programs need to be created or prioritized to help them adjust to the American university system and help international students fits the local life and achieve academic success as well. In addition, all these three articles reverent to international students. In order to support them to get academic success and involve in the life in America better.