Writing scientific English: overcoming intercultural problems

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF APPLIED LINGUISTICS, VOL. 2, NO. 2,1992 191

Writing scientific English: overcoming intercultural problems

EIJA VENTOLA University of Helsinki

“Publish in English or perish!” has become a slogan frequently heard in non-English-speaking academic contexts all over the world. For many nations, proficiency in spoken and written English has become a must. But achieving such proficiency involves problems and hard work. This paper discusses some of the intercultural problems of writing academic English in a non-English context, namely in Finland. A further issue addressed in this paper is the training of language teachers to teach writing courses in academic English in such a context. It is argued that before such courses are designed for academic non-native writers and for teachers of such writers, it is essential to conduct textlinguistic research into the cultural and linguistic differences in writing practices which exist between the source and target languages. As will be shown, such textlinguistic research gives us vital information on cohesion and coherence problems that non-native writers of English have in areas such as thematic patternings, reference and connectors. The results show that for linguists, as well as for teachers and writers, textlinguistics offers con- venient tools for analysing, understanding, and correcting intercultural linguistic problems in writing. Furthermore, the results of the analyses feed directly into the design of academic writing courses in English for non-native writers and into the training of teachers for such courses.

Introduction

Academic life has become extremely competitive, and today academics all over the world know that the language that guarantees the widest circulation for their ideas and results of their research is Enghsh. Speaking and writing in English is generally considered a ‘must’ for the majority of scholars of various nations, i n spite of the fact that the population of the nation might be quite large (e.g. China, Japan, Germany). Linguists have paid a considerable amount of attention to the dominance of English in the scientific community. Some

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studies have reflected upon the changing role of the national languages as publishing languages in comparison to English (see, e.g., Kalverkamper & Weinrich 1986; Skudlik 1990). Other studies have focussed on the cultural differences and their linguistic reflections in the writing patterns of students and scholars of various nationalities (see, e.g., Kaplan 1966, 1987; Clyne 1987a, 1987b, 1991; Clyne, Hoeks & Kreutz 1991; Eggington 1987; Sachtleber 1990; plus other articles in volumes edited by Connor & Kaplan 1987; Purves 1988; Kroll1990; Nash 1990; Schroder 1991).

In Finland, a small Scandinavian country with a population of under five million inhabitants, most researchers know they must write their articles in English. Finnish academics are expected to compete in the harsh international research market with articles written in English, even though during their studies they actually received little, if any, training in writing academic English. Many succeed, even without any specific training in writing, but for the majority, writing in a foreign language still continues to be an exhausting process of putting one’s nose to the grindstone.

The aim of this article is to initiate a change in the Finnish scholar’s lonesome struggle of writing an article in English. The article first discusses how language, culture, and teaching are perceived and practised in academic and non-academic contexts in Finland. Then it reports the major findings of a textlinguistic research project carried out in Helsinki, the purpose of which was to find out how Finnish academics write in English and what happens to their texts when they are revised by native revisers whose textlinguistic training for the task is in no way systematically organized in Finland. Next, it explains how the major results obtained from the textlinguistic research gave an impetus to constructing an experimental writing course in English for Finnish researchers. Finally, the paper suggests various ways in which Finnish scholars might be given help in writing scientific papers in English: writing courses in English ought to be organized systematically at various levels of tertiary education, and teachers ought to be given the possibility to specialize in teaching academic writing courses in English by means of further education courses.

Language, culture, and teaching writing in English at secondary school and undergraduate level in Finland

For Finnish writers the process of writing in English is complicated by at least three factors: the language, the cultural patterns of communication, and the present organization of teaching academic writing in English in Finland. Each of these factors will be discussed below.

Firstly, Finnish is a Finno-Ugric language, which means that it is not related to the Indo-European language group to which English belongs. Consequently, many k i n d s of interference may make Finnish writers’ texts

WRITING SCIENTIFIC ENGLISH: OVERCOMING INTERCULTURAL PROBLEMS 193

‘erroneous’, and language teaching is forever struggling to eradicate such interference.

Secondly, cultural factors also contribute to the unidiomatic feel of some Finnish writers’ texts. I t has been suggested that Finnish culture follows Eastern models of communication (e.g. Widen 1985, 1988). Finns are often seen as quiet, distant, expressionless, and enigmatic in their communication: as communicators, they are said to leave their messages implicit, so that others have to work out the ulterior messages from the little they say. For example, Finns are perceived by English-speaking diplomats as follows: Finns speak English relatively well and know their grammar, but their pronunciation needs improving; they use limited lexis and make wrong word choices, and they lack argumentative skills (Ylirenko 1989). Naturally such characterizations are great oversimplifications and only offer good anecdotal material. To take the suggestion seriously that for some reason Finns have developed less capacity for argumentation seems absurd. Surely they know how to carry on a n argument, but the patterns of argumentation may naturally be realized differently in Finnish and English (cf. Clyne’s (1987) work on English and German and Eggington’s (1987) work on Korean and English). Various cultural rhetorical differences often complicate Finnish writers’ attempts to construct effective texts, and these difficulties can easily be mocked and laughed at. To explain to the writer what has gone wrong in the language realization requires linguistic training, and thus linguists and linguistically trained language teachers are in a key position to offer their help to the writers.

Lastly, although Finland in general can take pride in its efficiently organized language training a t all levels of schooling, the situation is not wholly satisfactory when one considers the teaching of writing skills in foreign languages. Composition writing in English is practised in high schools, and students’ skills in writing an essay in English are tested in the matriculation exam. However, a t the tertiary level the training in writing in English almost ceases, surprisingly enough. Students do not get much practice even in writing in their native languages (Finnish and Swedish), since compared to the students in British and American universities, Finnish students have to write relatively few essays and reports. At Finnish universities there are no writing courses systematically organized for undergraduates in which they can practise constructing cohesive and coherent texts in English.

In the 1970s, the teaching of foreign languages was extended to all students enrolled for a Master’s degree. In order to graduate from a Finnish university, a student must have completed proficiency requirements in reading comprehension, listening comprehension and oral skills, a t least in one foreign language, but in some faculties in two. By far the most popular language is English. The other choices are: German, French, Russian, Spanish, and Italian. In order to organize and run courses in reading comprehension and listening comprehension & oral skills, language centres were established a t all Finnish universities, and a National Language Centre for Finnish Universities (located a t

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the University of Jyviiskyla) was established to serve the needs,of the indivic language centres as a research and material production centre. But systematic course in academic writing in English is built in as a compulr course for students at the language centres. Yet, more and more students writing their theses in English, and at the postgraduav level (i.e. Licenciate Ph.D. degrees) an ability to write in English is taken for granted. there ir need to demonstrate one’s writing skills in a foreign language for undergraduate or a postgraduate degree, one might suspect that most Fin] university graduates enter the labour market with a relatively poor abiliq produce good English texts in their own fields of training.

Writing in English in non-academic and academic spheres

The skius needed to produce good English texts can, of course, be acquirec work. Knowledge of the relevant text types needed for a job is most certa learnt in the work situation. And, naturally, one assumes that the more one to write, the better one gets at it. But the fact that many companies in Finl have employed language editors to check Finnish employees’ English tl seems to suggest that the employees are not getting better merely by wri more. Their English texts do not seem to fulfil the expectations of na readers in the field and thus need considerable improvement. This at leas implied by Example 1, a job advertisement for a language editor, publishec the major Finnish national paper Helsingin Sanomat.

1) Can you penetrate the Language Curtain? Finland has a lot to offer, but the worldis not getting the message. Rai than moan about it, we should recognize the real reason: we are not gooc communicating. We live in a global information society. Limp, incoherently structu messages have little chance of being noticed in the crowded internatic marketplace. It takes slick presentation to penetrate the din. The worl too busy for waffle. Do you think you have what it takes to produce brisk, interesting tc Have you the grit to edit out nonsense, the patience and diligence research the subject thoroughly and add your own creative touch? You need good Finnish and plenty of insight into what makes Finland b You must be highly articulate in your mother tongue, English. It is enough to be a superb translator, you have to be a pretty accomplis editor as well. You need imagination, and above all stamina. We want you to write articles, bulletins, advertising copy. You will havl conduct interviews, go deep into complex matters and present the giit of story in terms that anybody can understand. We’ll keep you on your i and expect you to give it all. But we won’t ask you to do it for peanuts.

WRITING’SCIENTIFIC ENGLISH: OVERCOMING INTERCULTURAL PROBLEMS 1%

If you want to give it a t ry , tell us what you think you can do for us. Reply to Helsingin Sanomat, ‘Language Curtain’. (Helsingin Sanomat, 1988, the date unfortunately not recorded.)

The text is full of insinuations of various kinds. It makes reference to the Language Curtain, thus invoking an association with the Iron Curtain countries (before the great changes in the political scene in Europe), to which Finland, however, never belonged - yet, the image of Finland as being somehow strange, inaccessible, enigmatic emerges. Example 1 appeals to the cultural stereotypes of Finns as non-effective communicators. In addition, it suggests that the ability “to produce brisk, interesting texts” is somehow an inborn quality in some human beings, not in others - the Finns belonging to the latter group. Moreover, i t implies that if one is a native speaker of English, one automatically has the ability to edit and improve any kind of text, although being bilingual and having worked as a translator will help one to detect Finns’ errors more easily. All these innuendoes in Example 1 are in fact important when we consider the total picture of ‘teaching academic writing in Enghsh’ in a non-Enghsh context, and we shall return to them later.

Above i t was illustrated how, at least in big companies, Finnish employees’ texts generally seem to go through a language check-up. What about the academic world as a working community? What kind of support does it give to its researchers and other members of its academic staff whose daily task i t is to report the results of their research. How does the academic world guarantee that the messages, the research results produced, “have a chance of being noticed” and that they will not be considered as mere “waffle” when sold at international research market places?

Generally speaking, the academic world fares less well than industry. At the postgraduate level, there is no training either offered or required in academic writing in Enghsh. For academic staff, some universities offer occasional in- training courses in academic Eng&h, but no consistent and overall syllabus has been created for such courses; rather, the content depends on individual teachers and thus varies from course to course. The only university that at the moment is fortunate enough to offer language-checking help to its academic staff which is similar to that in some of the Finnish companies is the University of Helsinki. There teachers and researchers send their papers to the Language Revision Service, which operates under the auspices of the Language Centre of the University of Helsinki. The papers are forwarded to part-time language revisers (usually full-time teachers at the Language Centre or Department of English) who check the English in the writers’ articles. After revision, the papers are returned to the writers. If the writers so wish, they may consult the reviser for one hour after the revision work has been completed. No other university in FinIand has a similar service; researchers may apply for grants either from the Finnish Academy, from their universities, or from private foundations for language checking, but they have to find the revisers themselves.

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Writing academic English - a textlingpistic research project

This rather lengthy exploration of the current situation in which academic writing in English finds itself in Finland has been necessary so that the reader can understand the background for the implications that will be presented later in this paper concerning the organization of academic writing courses in situations similar to that existing in Finland. It is also this current situation that originally raised many questions concerning academic writing and the revision process, and consequently led to a textlinguistic research project carried out in 1988-1991 at the University of Helsinki (directed by the author with Anna Mauranen, previously of the University of Helsinki, now of the University of Jyvaskyla, as a feliow researcher).

When the project began in 1988, the relationship between writing and revision had, to my knowledge, received little textlinguistic attention in Finland and elsewhere. The project was designed to answer questions such as: How does native and non-native academic writing in the same field differ? Are different communication patterns operating when Finns are writing in their native language, and are these patterns transferred to their English writing? What kinds of things do native English speakers pay attention to when revising non-native researchers’ papers? What is changed by revisers? Do these changes correspond to writers’ expectations of the revision process? Are the changes sufficient from the publishers’ point of view? What kind of training/skills idare needed for the editing work? What kind of training do Finnish researchers need in academic writing in English?

The initial research into the writing and revision process involved 31 academic journal articles submitted for language revision and the native- speaker revisions to these articles. In addition, some corresponding texts dealing with the same subject matter written by native English speakers were used as comparisons, as well as some articles which the Finnish writers who submitted papers for revision had produced in Finnish on the same or a very similar topic and of the same text type. Some of the writers who hail submitted articles for revision were interviewed, and these interviews were also used as research material. A systemic-functional theoretical framework was used for analysing some textlinguistic aspects in the articles and the language revision corrections (see, e.g., Halliday 1985). The primary foci were the generic aspects of texts (the macrostructural components of texts; see Ventola 1987), conjunctions and other connectors, theme-rheme patterns, and referential patterns and their use as creators of text cohesion. The results have been reported in detail in Ventola & Mauranen (1990) and summarized in English in Ventola & Mauranen (1991) (for an English review of Ventola & Mauranen (1990), see Enkvist 1992).

The work of the project was completed in 1991. The emphasis in the latter phase of the project was both on the theoretical and practical aspects of academic writing in English by Finnish writers. More contrastive material


produced by native and Finnish writers was collected and analysed. One of the important foci of the study has been the differences in rhetorical patterns in the texts; this work was specifically developed further by Anna Mauranen (1992). Further research aspects have been reported in Mauranen (1991, on text references; 1992) and in Ventola (1992a, on participant references in texts; 199233, on interaction between reference and theme in texts). The practical aspects have been developed in experimental courses run both for writers and revisers and will be discussed in more detail below (see also Ventola & Mauranen 1992).

The major implication of the textlinguistic research we have so far carried out is that both writers and revisers need soine textliilguistic help in their work. T o give a justification for this statement and for the demand of incorporating textlinguistic aspects into writing courses when they are offered, the next section will cursorily illustrate and summarize some of the major textlinguistic problems with which both writers and revisers seem to be strugghng (but for extensive analyses, see the literature mentioned above).

Some of the Finnish writers’ and native revisers’ textlinguistic problems: a summary

Finnish writers’ problems Thematic problems In this context i t is not necessary to go into details concerning the methodology and analyses of the Finnish writers’ texts produced in English and the contrastive texts produced by the native writers studied. But some of the problems that the Finnish writers had with theme-rheme patterns, with consistent tracking of participants with reference items, and with the use of various connectors will be summarized below.

The analytical approach used for analysing theme-rlieme in the Finnish writers’ texts and contrastive English texts was a basic Hallidayan (1985:38) definition of theme as “the point of departure for the message” and rheme as “the par t in which the theme is developed”. (The theme-rheme distinction was initially developed by the Prague School linguists, but their definition of theme and rheme differs slightly from the Hallidayan notion.). Thus for every clause (whether hypotactic or paratactic), a thematic structure of ‘theme followed by rheme’ was recognized. Also following Hallidayan principles, the thematic element was analysed up to the first topical theme, thus giving recognition also to the textual themes (e.g. structural conjunctions, etc.) and interpersonal themes (e.g. modality items, such as probably, etc.; see Halliday 1985). When themes coincided with the subject element of the clause, the themes were classified as unmarked and in other cases as marked. Similar ‘theme-followed- by-rheme’ structures for clauses have been recognized also for Finnish; see,

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e.g., Hakulinen & Karlsson (1979:298). Consequently, no remarkable differences between Finnish writers and native English writers were expected.

In addition to the basic analyses of theme-rheme structures of clauses, the development of thematic progression patterns were examined in the texts. Dane; (1974) has suggested that theme-rheme choices in texts realize the following patterns: ‘constant theme’ (theme remains the same from one clause to another), ‘linear theme’ (the rheme of the preceding clause becomes the theme of the subsequent clause), ‘hypertheme’ (the first theme is a comprehensive theme and, for example, the parts of the first theme will be discussed in the subsequent themes, cf. a machine and its parts), and ‘split theme’ (the theme subdivides into two themes which are then in turn taken as themes). These thematic progression patterns are used by native English writers for the sake of argumentative effectiveness and textual cohesion. There seems to be no reason to assume that Finnish writers would not use similar linguistic tools for building up textual effectiveness and cohesion, especially since, as has been said above, they apparently make the same basic distinction between the theme and rheme elements in clauses in Finnish.

A third aspect that has also been looked at in some detail in the collected contrastive material is the method of development. This notion has been developed by Fries (1981). The themes of a text will be analysed in order to discover whether the writer has taken any specific semantic field in the themes of the text as hidher method of development. Clear thematic development naturally improves the readability of a text and portrays clear orgunkation of text content (Fries 1981:&7). Again, it can be assumed that this principle of the method of development is equally as available to Finnish writers as it is to native English writers.

Differences in using these thematic ‘tools’ in writing did occur between the native English writers and the Finnish writers’ English texts. Firstly, in structuring themes and rhemes, the Finnish writers tended to use very heavy nominalized themes. A typical example is given in (2).

2) Logging in Finland

Due to t he hieh level of salaries and cost of social security. strict eco nomic standards. SD - ecific loerrinp conditions. medominance of private ownership, Bnd strow influence of environmental and conservation am- , the Nordic countries have been forced to develop completely new logging technology to meet their own specific requirement. . . .

The clause is the first clause in an abstract of an article. The information structure of the clause appears somewhat unbalanced to the English reader. The text begins with a highly complex nominal group functioning as a marked theme. Usually the theme coincides with the ‘given’ or ‘known’ information and the rheme with the ‘new’ information (for a discussion, see Halliday 1985). In


this text, the reader must in the first clause begin decoding new information which is mapped onto an element that normally would carry contextually/ textually ‘given/known’ information. The text beginning might have been more efficient had the writer started it, for example, with This article introduces a new logging technology developed in Nordic countries.

It was also found that English writers typically used all of the progression patterns recognized by Dane; (1974) in. their texts when organizing their texts thematically, whereas Finnish writers tended to use linear o r constant patterns when writing in Enghsh; when writing in Finnish, they also used the different thematic patterns intermittently. Sometimes Finnish writers seem to master the development of thematic patterning only superficially, as in (3):

3) Electronic Images

(1) This report is the state-of-the-art study of electronic images and image database systems.

(2) I t is based on the international literature. (3) First of all, the basic concepts of electronic images are given. ...

The text begins with This report as the theme, which is also the theme of the subsequent clause. But by saying something that in fact is obvious, i.e. that the report is based on international literature, the writer is cornered, as f a r as the progression of thematic pattern is concerned. Clause 2 does not offer material for linear development where the rheme could be taken as the theme of the following clause. The previous constant theme, ‘the report’, seems to have used up its potential as a theme. The writer is forced to jump back to the rheme of the first clause in the text, and the reader must naturally also make this cumbersome jump when reading the text. Adopting the linear pattern from the beginning and omitting the second clause might have been a more successful way of constructing this text o r similar texts (see also Ventola 1992b).

In method of development, too, differences seem to exist between native writers and Finnish writers. Finnish writers do not derive the utmost potential from this pattern. Very often a textlinguistically observant reader must ask himherself when reading Finns’ texts: what is the method of development in this texdsection? Example (4) is taken from a text which deals with the characteristics of four groups of girls studied. Each of the four consecutive paragraphs deals with one group (Groups A, B, C, and D). The thematic element is underlined and the head of the thematic nominal group is marked in small capitals. All of the themes are unmarked (theme-subject).

4) Group A. The GIRLS in this proup hoped more often than others did to obtain a’job which had a high social status ...

Group B. This GROUP. the most numerous one (26% of the pirls in the total sample), obtained an extreme mean value on one variable only ...

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Group c. The REASON Piven for smokinp by Arls in this P ~ O U Q was usually

GroupD. The PARENTS of girls in Prom D had on average a lower ‘‘social”. . . socioeconomic status than those of the other girls ...

As can be seen, the writer has always included the relevant group of girls within the thematic element, but in the third and the fourth paragraphs, ‘the group’ is no longer the head of the thematic nominal group, but rather reason and parents. Through these somewhat unfortunate thematic construction choices, the writer breaks up the method of development that he has successfully initiated when discussing Groups A and B.

Reference problems In addition to the thematic problems, Finnish writers relatively frequently have reference problems when writing English. When analysing the material, reference was conceptualized as a cohesive function both as a reference system of tracking dawn text participants (references to text-internal or external entities) as well as text reference (references to the text itself or its parts). Both kinds of references are realized in texts by such lexicogrammatical items as pronouns, proper names, articles, etc. (see, e.g., Halliday & Hasan 1976; Martin 1983; Ventola 1987). The tracking of text participants with reference items seems particularly problematic. In English texts, generally speaking, once a participant has beeri introduced into a text by ‘presenting reference items’ (a, an, some, etc.), the writer is expected to keip track, of the introduced participant for the benefit of the reader with ‘presuming reference items’ (the, they, etc.). Cohesive reference chains are thus created in texts, and through such chains readers come to understand the roles these text participants play in the texts and come to treat the texts as coherent units. As Finnish has, for example, no article system, and Finns’ use of articles frequently tends to be erroneous, it was interesting to examine how the Finnish writers managed to create referential cohesion for participants in English texts. A typical example of the kind of errors made is presented in (5) (from the same text as Example 4).

5) GROUP c. (1) The reason given for smoking by GIRLS M THIS GROUP was usually “social” (“myltheir friends smoke”); the reason for drinking mostly being “relaxation, to have fun”. (2) THE GIRLS also valued sexual experiences more than other eirla did (3 ) (though THEY on average were less ‘‘experienced” than the girls in group’ 0). (4) When characterizing ideal ways of life, THEY mentioned conventional matters and “respectability” less often than t h others did, (5 ) In T ~ I R self-images, leadership & initiative, emotionality and impulsiveness were emphasized more than in those of pther +rk, (6) THEY were comparatively optimistic in respect of the future. (7) THEY valued intimate and secure friendship, and possibilities to meet new and interesting people, more than THEY believed that adults do. (8)


(However, THEIR own values did not differ from those THEY believed to be characteristic of adults in respect of e.g., health, use of alcohol, or family life.) (9) THIS GROUP d l be further discussed below.

The items in small capitals refer to the girls in Group C and the italics to the girls in other groups (A, B, and D). The referentially problematic groups are underlined. In all of them confusion arises as to which girls are being referred to - the specific ones discussed earlier or some non-specific others. In other words, the writer has not marked the groups with a specific reference item theltheseletc. The writer rather haphazardly presents presumed, known participants as if previously unknown to the reader. I t appears that articles are not perceived by this writer as realizational items of a reference system used for creating cohesive ties in texts.

Connector problems Conjunctions and other connective adverbials, prepositional phrases, and clauses are those linguistic devices in texts which explicitly inform the reader of the ways in which propositions ant1 parts of a text are logically connected and linked together to form the global & local orgaizizatwn in the text. The writer can greatly facilitate the reader’s task of decoding the organization by marking logical relations explicitly with connectors. In the analysis of native writers’ and Finnish writers’ Enghsh texts, we have largely followed the functional classification of Halliday & Hasan (1976) into additives, adversatives, causals, and temporals and utilized their distinction of ‘external vs. internal conjunctions’ (i.e. marking logical relations between propositions vs. marking the speech-act sequencing of messages, which facilitates the reader’s task of grasping the overall organization of argumentation).

The comparison of the Finnish writers’ use of connectors in English with native use indicated that the Finns used connectors less frequently than the native writers. They also employed a relatively limited set of connectors, favouring some connectors excessively at the expense of variety (for examples, see Ventola & Mauranen 1990, 1991). This naturally means that the possibilities of making finer distinctions within each meaning category were not maximized by the Finnish writers, at least not from the English reader’s point of view. The Finnish writers also used fewer explicit connectors, especially in the internal function, to signal the global organization of their texts and to relate parts of the texts to other parts. Thus, the global structure of their texts was not always effectively realized through the appropriate use of connectors. In short, the use of connectors by Finnish writers seems to be infrequent, fairly locally motivated, and somewhat haphazard and monotonous. Consequently, an English reader has to work somewhat harder than usual to understand the global organization of parts of the text in Finnish writers’ texts and to unravel the intended logical meanings between propositions.

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Native English revkers’problemJ It is not infrequent that researchers get letters similar to the one the author of this article recently received from an editor for conference proceedings. In this context it is worthwhile to quote some lines from this letter.

6) I must also ask all non-native speakers of English to have their articles carefully checked by a (stylistically competent) native speaker before sending the articles to me ... articles written in stylistically poor English will not be accebtable to a good publisher.

As explained earlier in this paper, the language revisiodchecking system operating at the University of Helsinki was set up to help writers polish their articles for eventual publication; in other words, to do just what the editor here seems to be demanding. But the description that the editor has added in parenthesis - the native speaker having to be “stylistically competent” - is of some significance to us here. So far we do not actually know what native speakers’ stylistic competence means as far as language revision of academic papers is concerned.

Having looked at some of the textlinguistic problems that non-native writers seem to have in their texts, we might justifiably assume that most editors would want stylistically competent revisers to make changes along the lines of those suggested above. Our research, however, indicates that language revision done by most native revisers on Finnish writers’ texts mostly seems to operate not on the textlinguistic level, but more on the lexicogrammatical one. What the revisers frequently changed in the papers analysed in Ventola & Mauranen (1990) (see also Ventola & Mauranen 1991) were incorrect uses of articles (14% of all corrections), lexical choices (13%), syntactid structure (12%)- the use of prepositions (ll%), punctuation (8%), and orthography (6%). These corrections made up 64% of all the corrections. It must further be noted that very few revisions involved changes that crossed sentence or paragraph boundaries, or even the reorganization of information distribution within a sentence (e.g. theme-rheme changes). It appears that most revisers view the revision task in terms of grammar and lexis of sentences, and less focus is given to the global textlinguistic organization of texts. In this context, a short summary of the revisions in terms of the previously discussed writers’ problems is appropriate.

Thematic problems Earlier it was noted that Finnish writers tend to have problems with theme- rheme structure; they tend to make the theme part carry ‘the information weight’, instead of the rheme part. These heavy themes were usually not simplified in revisions, nor was the themehew information codation changed to a more appropriate ‘end-weight’ structure of English (rhemehew). Thus, for instance, Example 2 was published in a Finnish publication as it stands,


beginning with the very heavy theme. Nor did revisers make many changes which would have helped the writer to construct thematic progression patterns. Furthermore, Example 3 was published as it stands in a Finnish publication, in spite of its relatively cumbersome thematic progression. Similarly, in Example 4 the writer’s somewhat unsuccessful method of development was not changed by a reviser. Sometimes writers’ attempts to build up some thematic patterns in their texts were actually, in fact, lost by the reviser’s textually insensitive changes (for examples, see Ventola & Mauranen 1990, 1991).

Reference problems It was stated above that revisers frequently corrected grammatical articles. But it seems that revisers process texts sentence by sentence and pay less attention to referential consistencies in terms of participant tracking. Thus, for instance, the text in (5) appeared as (7) after the revision. The reviser’s additions are given in small capitals, the -omissions in sinall capitals within brackets, and the referentially problematic groups are underlined.

7) GROUP C. (1) The reason given for smoking by girls in this yroup was usually “social” (“myhheir friends smoke”); the reason for drinking WAS mostly [BEING] “relaxation, to have fun”. (2) The Brls also valued sexual experiences more than other drk did ( 3 ) (though [THEY], on average, THEY were less “experienced” than the girls in group 0). (4) When characterizing ideal ways of life, they mentioned conventional matters and “respectability” less often than the others did. ( 5 ) In their self-images, leadership & initiative, emotionality and impulsiveness were emphasized more than in those of other &irk. (6) They were comparatively optimistic [IN RESPECT OF] ABOUT the future. (7) They valued intimate and secure friendship, and [POSSIBILITIES] THE OPPORTUNITY to meet new and interesting people, more than they believed that adultLdo. (8) (However, their own values did not differ from those they believed to be characteristic of adults in respect of e.g., health, use of alcohol, or family life.) (9) This group w d be [FURTHER] discussed FURTHER below.

As can be seen, the problematic reference groups in Example 5 remained unchanged in Example 7. Naturally, one could say that “errare humanum est” and that these non-changes were accidental, but when more of these kinds of unchanged references begin to occur in a revised text, questions about the actual mental process of revision arise - how are texts read during the revision process? (Unfortunately, there is no space here to elaborate on this topic.)

Connector problems When making changes to connectors, the revisers frequently offered al- ternatives to connectors overused by the writers, changed their form (second -> secondly), or changed the syntactic position of the connector. Sometimes,

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however, changing the connector position also altered the function of the connector. The writer’s original internal meaning realization became a realization of an external meaning (for details, see Ventola & Mauranen 1990, 1991). If the\writers underused connectors, the reviser did not usually add connectors into the texts, even though at places an addition of an internal connector would have clarified the organization of the global structure of the text. Most of the revisers’ connector changes appear to be motivated locally without consideration of how the argumentation of the text proceeds.

Implications of the textlinguistic research

It is obvious from the research described above that Finnish writers face many textlinguistic difficulties when writing academic texts in English and urgently need training in writing academic English. The writers, when interviewed, also acknowledged these difficulties in writing in a foreign language and therefore have fairly high expectations of the revision process. They want their articles to be revised “stylistically competently” and also hope to gain further training in academic writing in English through revision and teaching. In short, the writers expect native-speaker revisers to help them to improve the quality of their writing beyond the correction of the most obvious lexicogrammatical errors. They want their messages to get through, to quote the advertisement cited earlier, but they also seek help from such language experts as revisers or language teachers.

The revisers’ work is, however, not easy. Usually revisers, at least within the system that has been reported here, work on a part-time basis and frequently under severe time pressures. For most of the revisers, the work is extra work on top of teaching duties. This naturally means that time and motivation factors come into play in the revision work as well. Furthermore, no clear job description exists, and no special training is ,organized for revisers. Different opinions are commonly expressed as to what ik means to be a reviser. No one really knows what the above-mentioned editor meant by a “stylistically competent” editor. Some revisers seem to jldopt very efficient working methods - the obvious lexicogrammatical errors are corrected. Many revisers feel that more extensive revisions not only take more time (and effect the pay-per-page ratio), but might also change the content, especially when the reviser is fairly unfamiliar with the field discussed in the paper. Thus, the responsibility for the content and for effective communication is frequently left with the writer. Some revisers make more extensive changes and suggestions to writers, but a closer linguistic analysis shows that the changes made affect the textuality of the revised articles fairly minimally - the writers’ textual organization still remains problematic even after the revision.

There seems to be a certain mismatch between the writers’ expectations of the revision process and the practice of revision. The lexicogrammatical

W R I T I N G SCIENTIFIC ENGLISH: OVERCOMING INTERCULTURAL PROBLEMS 205

‘polish’ that is now mostly given to the articles sent for revision works well for good, competent writers, bu t the less competent - those who a re struggling both with the writing process itself and with the foreign language - are, i n fact, not getting the help they need. It seems that both the writers and the revisers would benefit from a textlinguistic approach to their work.

The next section will describe writinghevision courses which Anna Mauranen and the author have run in Finland on a n experimental basis for the purpose of raising both the writers’ and revisers’ consciousness of what is going on textlinguistically in the writing and revision processes. The final section will then envisage how writing, revision, and teacher training could generally be organized in the Finnish context.

Experiments with textlingpistically oriented academic writing seminars organized for Finnish writers and native revisers

In addition to the research that has been carried out into Finns’ academic writing in English and the revision process practised by native speakers, experimental textlinguistically oriented courses were also organized for writers and revisers during the Helsinki project described above. The need for such courses seems to be particularly great. When the first experimental course was advertised, it attracted the attention of 89 researchers and 26 revisers - naturally not all of them could be accepted to participate in the course. Five experimental courses at various tertiary institutions and research centres have been held so far. Sometimes the courses have been organized for writers and revisers, sometimes only for writers. The writer participants have ranged from postgraduates to professors and the reviser participants from language teacherlrevisers to full-time editors. The courses were taught by Anna Mauranen and the author, bu t sometimes also a native speaker worked with US.

It has been very inspiring to run experimental courses on academic writing in English with such a varied group of expert writers. What we have tried to teach the writers is not so much ‘language as such’, bu t the realization of meanings in a cohesive manner. We have taaght them ‘textlinguistic tools’, trying, however, to avoid textlinguistic terminology (although at points it has been hard to avoid terminology completely). For revisers, we have tried to present an elaborated view of textlinguistics, especially the workings of cohesion in Enghsh texts. With both groups, we have tried to build up the participants’ awareness of what is common and different in the source and target cultures, subject fields, and the writing practices within them.

One of our foci has been genre factors, especially elaborating on global structure conventions in academic genres. Furthermore, as the course progresses we raise questions concerning rhetorical differences in English and in Finnish at various stages of text construction and discuss the interaction of these differences with generic factors (Mauraiwn 1992). In order to deal with

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difficulties in starting the actual process of writing, we have introduced principles of process writing into our courses (see, e.g., Bjork et al. 1988) as well as the principles that underlie the construction of main idem (following Rita Tessman, who gave a workshop in Finland in 1990 on ways of using main ideas for generating texts). We have usually started with writing drafts, first for an abstract, then for an’introduction, and so bn. The drafts have been redrafted several times after peer comments, the instructors’ comments, and further textlinguistic input. A heavy focus has been on the contrastive perspective which we feel is important in the teaching of writing and the actual writing process. The writer has to become conscious of hidher writing process in English. Writing for an English-speaking audience is simply not the same thing as writing for a Finnish audience. The whole text construction method has to be changed, and we have tried to provide writers with textlinguistic tools to do this.

The actual form of the writing seminars has mostly been twoday seminar sessions with a writing interval in between. Both writers and revisers are professional people who normally find it very hard to get away from their work. But in-service days seem to have suited most of them best. (Specifically, when the course has been organized away from their work place, they have been able to attend all the time; when organized close to their work place, meetings plus other work duties have tended to cause absences from some of the sessions.) The goal for each writer has been to write a full academic article (or a part of hidher thesis) during the courGe and for the reviser to learn new working methods by revising one to two texts textlinguistically and getting comments on hidher work.

There is no space here to elaborate on the actual contents of the course (there is a publication in preparation explicating the course in detail, Ventola & Mauranen in prep.). But the course usually begins with an orientation to Finnish-English cultural differences in general and their effects on writing academic texts. The procedures and practices of process writing are made clear to the Participants. The notion of genre is explored, and various generic structures in the texts that the participants themselves submit 8,s course data are analysed and discussed. The participants usually work from very early on with the global structure of their own article. The participants begin by constructing abstracts, then continue by writing introductions and other glbbal elements of their articles. Argumentative patterns - for example, problem- solution patterns, etc. (see, e.g., Hoe9 1983) - are analysed, and their construction is practised for larger text elements. Also; Swales’ (1981, 1990) and Dudley-Evans’ (1986, 1987) ‘move’ analysis is used for writing practice. Specific attention is given to practising the use of thematic patterns, reference, and connectors and other metalanguage in constructing cohesive texts.

During the course the participants also explore the use of modality and variation in its interpersonal meaning realization (from high degree to low degree, see Halliday 1985:334-41). Furthermore, we also concentrate on trying to make the writers conscious of how to ‘pack and unpack‘ information in


English nominal phrases. As is well documented in the literature, scientific language is traditionally characterized by heavy nominalizations, i.e. grammatical metaphors (for a discussion, see Halliday 1985, 1988; Ravelli 1988). When Finnish writers create texts, they tend to attempt such highly complex nominalizations that in fact they get structurally lost, and the result is, in fact, incomprehensible. Thus, they need tools to unravel these complex structures - they need to be conscious of moving from one end of the metaphorical coding to the other extreme and to have the skills to do this effortlessly. Finally, some grammatical points which typically are difficult for Finnish learners are also taken up during the courses: non-finite clauses, use of prepositions, English punctuation, etc.

In addition to input lectures, peer group work and individual work have been the main modes of working. Whenever revisers have also participated in the courses, revisers and writers have been organized to discuss aspects of their respective work in order to try to establish good future working relations. Sometimes it has not been possible to organize enough co-operation between individual writers and revisers, although this is very much needed. But, i t must be noted here, and it will be discussed in the next section, the intention is not to train every reviser to function as a writing teacher as well. The point merely is that each of these professional working groups should know aspects of one another’s work in order to cooperate fruitfully.

The principles used to divide participants into groups has been somewhat crude. The basic groups used have been formed in terms of the writers’ subject areas - arts and social sciences vs. natural sciences. The most homogenous group that we have taught so far has been researchers in technical fields, and i t was probably also the most successful because peer-group assignments worked best when the participants shared cbmmon interests. Groups concerned with the same field can be organized best when individual departments take on the responsibility of providing training for their postgraduates and academic staff. In fact, as will be suggested in the next section, departments could order such writers’ training courses from the language centres, but ideally they should cooperate with the language centres in the planning and possibly also the teaching (using consultant teachers) of such advanced writers’ courses.

Teaching academic writing in English - who needs what kind of course?

As was mentioned at the beginning of this paper, the present situation for writing courses in academic English in Finland is that there are no writing courses offered systematically and on a regular basis a t tertiary institutions throughout Finland. Occasional, voluntary courses are offered, but they do not follow any consistent syllabus (i.e., individual teachers largely determine the syllabus). Neither do we in Finland have any trained teachers who could run

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textlinguistically oriented writing courses for students and researchers from various academic fields. Linguage revisers and teachers we have, but they have been given no special training either for revision work or for teaching academic writing to non-native writers, some of whom are highly qualified specialists in their own fields. Since many of the revisers and teachers have no experience in academic writing themselves, they cannot suddenly be expected to take on the load of teaching writing to students and academic specialists without any training for it.

Consequently, it seems that we have at least three trainee groups that have to be kept in mind:

1) Finnish writers (both undergraduate and postgraduate level plus staff members)

2) nutwe English-speaker revisers (who have had very little or no experience in writing themselves and have had little or no training in revision work or textlinguistics)

3) teachers of writing and revision courses (who have had training in teaching English as a foreign language, but lack training in teaching writing and revision).

Naturally many questions arise concerning each of the groups. Some of the shared questions are: How should the courses be organized? What exactly would the contents for courses for each target group be? Who should be attending the courses and at what stage in their personal development? Who wil l teach the courses and who will teach the teachers to teach the courses?

Although the natural starting point for a comprehensive training programme would be Group 3 - training teachers to teach non-native writers and future revisers - the reality within our research project carried out in Helsinki has, as was.already mentioned, been somewhat different. The demand by researchers for writing courses was great, and thus we started by organizing experimental writinglrevising courses for writerdrevisers. But the major purpose of these initial courses was to test what writers and revisers find usefuYuseless in the textlinguistic tools we offered them. The insights obtained have naturally reshaped our course considerably, and they also allow me to review the whole situation for teaching academic writing in the Finnish tertiary context and to outline some general views on writinglrevision courses for the above-mentioned target groups in terms of who the courses should be organized for, who should teach them, and what the content should be.

Courses for writers- The general aim of the English vriting courses within the Finnish academic context, in my view, should be to build up a continuum from essay writing as praktised at high school level for the matriculation exam to that at the highest levels of tertiary education and professional academic life. At the moment, as


far as practising academic writing in English is concerned, there is an enormous gap between, on the one hand, a student entering the tertiary education system and on the other, say, a full-time member of the academic staff. Since the gap is so great, there are naturally various subtarget groups that can be recognized, each with their individual needs.

Undergraduate writers First come the writing needs and training of the undergraduate students in their first years. As mentioned before, today most undergraduates in Finland get training in the comprehension of English texts (mainly from their own study fields), taught by Finnish teachers of English, and training in listening comprehension and oral skills in English, taught by native English speakers. (It is possible to get exemption from the courses, if one demonstrates good knowledge of the language and the above-mentioned skills in the initial placement tests for the courses.) Students are recommended to take the former in their first o r second year and the latter in their last years of studies (in preparation for working life and its demands for spoken skills in English). Often, however, students take the latter immediately after the reading comprehension course. Thus, they have completed their language requirements well before their final year.

In spite of the emphasis of these courses on reading, listening, and speaking, some writing does naturally take place in these classrooms as well, e.g. note taking, writing summaries of articles that have been read (although mostly written in the student's native language), preparing outlines for presentations in oral skills classes, etc. But certainly more writing could be incorporated within these courses, either by organizing separate courses where further writing skills can be developed or by completely reorganizing the present language courses so that they would actually be integrated in content, and thus writing in English would be a natural pa r t of the basic programme. The writing that could be incorporated would involve writing for different generic and functional purposes, i.e. small seminar papers, reports on experiments, different types of essays (argumentative, descriptive, etc.), commentaries for newspapers, etc.

The more advanced students have slightly different writing demands. More and more students from various fields will in the future write their theses in English in Finland. By the time they start writing their theses, the best students have probably mastered the skill of short report writing i n English relatively well, but writing a thesis is seen as such an enormous task that it feels almost impossible and consequently gets put off for as long as possible. Undergraduate writing workshops which meet regularly might offer students, especially the weaker ones, enormous help a t the difficult stage of starting their theses. At the same time, these undergraduates might well benefit from the opportunity of sharing their research results with the teachers and coparticipants in the workshops. In such workshops, theses could be developed from embryonic

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stages into coherent texts. Today, professors, who largely supervise theses, are under great time pressures, making them impatient with students’ “waffle”, even in draft versions of theses. Having help in the actual process of writing in a foreign language would allow students to concentrate more on the content matter. For many students, writing has become such a hurdle that in some cases it not only prolongs the completion of one’s undergrqduate studies to seven or eight years, but also in some cases it becomes an insurmountable barrier which prevents the completion of studies, and years of academic study end with no formal qualifications. This is not only wasteful in terms of human life, but it is also a burden on public spending, since it is the Finnish state and its citizens that largely pay the expenses of students’ education.

A further aspect of teaching advanced undergraduates is related to the present ‘internationalization’ process in Finland and to the general unification process in Europe. Finnish universities are opening their doors more and more to Europe and the rest of the world, and student exchanges are being encouraged. At the moment the Finnish Ministry of Education hopes to send 4000-5000 students to study abro.ad, and at the same time Finland is welcoming more foreign students. The Finnish &dents entering foreign universities need special pre-study intensive language training, an important part of which must be the development of their writing skills. This is particularly important if a student intends to study at a British or American university, where the pace of writing essays would for most Finnish students be simply deadly (as is well known, a rate of 3-4 essays a week is not unusual).

Courses for undergraduates in academic writing in English could easily be incorporated into the present undergraduate programmes brganized by language centres, and the courses could be taught by the staff of the language centres. At the moment, teaching academic writing in a foreign language is not part of the teaching programme, and including such a component would mean some reorganization of the syllabus as well as aome in-service training in academic writing and textlinguistics for the teachers. The courses for undergraduate students could be incorporated into the present reading comprehensibn courses and listening comprehension & oral skills courses, if this somewhat artificial separation of skills needs to be maintained.

More useful, in my opinion, however, would be a complete reshuffling of the present language-centre courses. Since it is rather difficult to isolate basic language behaviour in real coininunicative situations into skills in comprehension, writing, listening, and speaking, it would be beneficial to students to construct a basic communicative package involving all skills. At the same time, this would mean that we could do away with another rather artificial division that exists in language centres in Finland - the division of staff into teachers who teach reading comprehension (native Finnish teachers qualified to teach English) and teachers who teach listening comprehension & oral skius (qualified native English teachers). The teachers, working in teams of two or three, could be jointly responsible for constructing and carrying out a


particular course. This procedure would be beneficial for the students as well as the teachers. The students would be given integrated courses designed to develop all the skills, and they would also get the benefit of hearing more than one person’s English. In addition, evaluation would be more objective as it would be the responsibility of more than one person. The teachers would benefit from sharing the teaching load of one student group and would have a freer hand in constructing courses that matched the needs of students without having to think of the artificial boundaries of the various skills.

In addition to the basic integrated courses, which would meet regularly and be offered at the initial stages of students’ studies, more specialized modular courses (e.g. subject-specific terminology courses, courses developing specific writing skills, etc.) should also be offered either as courses with regular schedules or as intensive courses. The basic course and a certain number of these alternative modular courses would then comprise the language requirement in English for a Master’s degree. In addition, the language centre could, of course, offer further voluntary courses, as it in fact presently does. The basic integrated course, modular courses, and voluntary courses would be spread over the total study period (generally 4-5 years), ensuring that students can keep their language skills ‘fresh’ throughout their studies, instead of the present system where students may have long intervals between the reading comprehension and listening comprehension & oral skills courses, or where they may complete all the requirements within a short period of time and then have no language practice for a long time. This would mean that students’ abilities to meet the communicative language demands of working life (either within or outside the university), including the basic skills of writing clear and coherent texts in English, could be met more easily.

Postgraduates, researchers, and other ncnclemic stclff The group that most urgently needs writing courses in academic English at the moment is postgraduates, our future researchers. In Finland, postgraduate studies are conducted at two stages: a licenciate degree and a Ph.D. degree, both stages involving a written thesis. In many fields, Ph.D. candidates frequently publish their theses in English. In addition, the public defence of the thesis may often be in English, as is usually the case when the opponent is a foreign expert. Yet few of these postgraduates have actually received any training in writing in English. Thus thesis-writing is the most immediate writing need for this group.

Many postgraduates write their theses as members of various research groups. In these situations they are fortunate to have other senior members of the research group and the directors of such groups to rely on to gain some help with the content of their writing. It is rare, however, for senior members of a research group to be able to give young researchers the foreign language support they seek. More often than not, both young researchers and senior researchers and academic staff would like to have more support in developing their own writing skills in English. The need to write in English also increases

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at an evergrowing pace as more and more Finnish scholars take part in joint research ventures within Europe (CERN, ERASMUS, etc.) and around the world. Such cooperation involves various kinds of writing and speaking activities: research applications, curriculum vitaes, interviews, corres- pondence, plans, financial applications and reports, progress reports, project management skills, academic reports and articles, writing and presenting conference papers, lecturing, consulting work, etc. At one time Finnish businessmen were known for not answering letters coming from abroad, These times are past now, and everyone interested in ‘selling’ Finnish research abroad acknowledges the needs for language training mentioned above.

Organizing this kind of training for postgraduate and academic staff sets high demands on language centres throughout Finland. What I find particularly demanding in this area is that we must not approach the teaching of writing skills at this level as ‘teaching of language skills’, i.e. we must not treat language as something separate from its communicative aspects in the real world (neither should undergraduate teaching involve such notions of language teaching). Teaching academic writing at this level must be made ‘authentic’ to the writers; in other words, at the end of the courses, they must have a product they can utilize in their professional advancement. Developing such courses within the Finnish universities demands close cooperation between the field specialists and the Finnish and native English teachers in the language centres. In-service training will be necessary for the language teachers, as most of the teachers have little experience in writing theses at licenuate or Ph.D. levels, in writing academic articles, conducting research projects, etc. It should be emphasized that the purpose is not that the teachers learn to write-such products. But they must be able to analyse what such products are made of linguistically, what distinguishes a good product from a less successful product, and how to improve the latter.

As far as the course organization is concerned, probably a modular approach would be best for organizing these advanced writing courses plus other courses involving the practice of the skills mentioned above. At the postgraduate level, certain modular courses could be required as a part of postgraduate studies. For the research and academic staff, the modular courses would naturally be voluntary. The modules could take various forms: some could be fairly intensive (especially if there is a certain immediate goal to be achieved, like organizing a congress and dealing with the language demands there, or some other such equivalent); others could be organized on the basis of regular meetings, while still others could have some practice intervals in between. Also, establishing what I call ‘writers’ clinics’ should be considered for the benefit of researchers and staff. Writers could simply come to these clinics during the process of writing in order to get help with acute text- production difficulties. Sometimes writers are too close to the actual text to see why it does not progress logically, why it does not hang together. In such cases, a reviser at the clinic may offer some help which enables the writer to proceed


with the work. The kind of courses envisaged above could and should be planned and operated by the language centres, the departments, and in-service training units of universities.

Courses for revisers As has been mentioned, no special training has so far been required for the revising task, no special job description has been provided, nor has any t r a i ~ n g been offered for the work. Only some revisers have more extensive experience through editorial work for various journals, and only some revisers are academic writers themselves. Most revisers are native speakers with language teaching qualifications, with at least a B.A. or M.A. They have usually had extensive teacher training and experience, but less experience in academic research work and academic writing in their native tongue, Enghsh. Since throughout their studies they have been sensitized to language, it will not be hard to sensitize them to the kind of textlinguistic perspective which has been suggested above, provided they are willing to incorporate this in their revision process. Some of the revisers maintain that it is not their duty as a reviser to go beyond lexicogrammatical factors; the responsibility for textual cohesion is that of the writer, not of the reviser. The fact that revision is not generally well paid also causes anxiety. Many believe that the kind of textlinguistic revision that has been proposed here will take more time per page and thus reduce the pay rate per page which one is able to earn by revision. It is my claim that textlinguistically oriented revision does not take any more of the reviser’s time than the lexicogrammatical ‘polish’, if s/he has had proper training in it. Without training one is naturally not quite sure what one is expected to do. What I shall propose is that, through pre-service and in-service training, revision work will be reorganized to correspond closely to editorial work carried out by editors of journals, and that the job description and also the pay will in the future correspond more closely to a languuge editor’s work. These changes would entice more native speakers to take on the editor’s job as a full occupation with increased professional interest and pride.

What, then, will the future editors be taught, by whom, and how? It is obvious that I would like to incorporate in the editors’ training programmes the kind of textlinguistic analysis skills illustrated in the earlier part of this paper. The in- service training of editors can, as we have done in our courses, be organized together with the writers’ training, where editors can benefit from having writers there. But the problem is that the revisers’ training needs to be at a different level. This problem can be overcome in part by scheduling the writers and revisers to work together sometimes and separately at other times. But particularly for those revisers who have been doing this work for longer periods, developing self-training models might be the best method of training revisers to textlinguistically oriented editing modes. What this entails will be explained below.

It is frequently reported that teachers often feel resistance towards models and training courses presented to them by expert outsiders. For example, a t a

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teacher education conference organized in Hong Kong in 1991, Susan Spencer recounted her experiences as a British Council trainer involved in teacher training in Indonesia in a paper called ‘Teachers training teachers: a model for staff development’ (see Ventola 1991). According to Spencer, an invited expert outsider is often considered a threat, an evaluator of teachers, professional skills and qualities, and thus any negative evaluations of badly managed courses, teacher-centredness in courses, incapability of using materials well, etc., will be mistakenly taken by teachers as personal criticism, and the whole in-service training situation leads to stagnation. A model course designed by an expert does not really improve the situation, since teachers, more or less, expect such courses to simply give them new ready-made materials to be taken into the elassroom. No real development in thinking about teaching or of new approaches to teaching takes place. The situation described above is also familiar in Finland.

Spencer reported that she was able to bring about a change when the teachers themselves were given responsibility for the organizing and running of training sessions. The expert functioned merely as a resource person and as consultant in helping the teachers to develop the sessions. Teachers would organize the in-service training sessions on a voluntary basis and prepare the materials for them collectively. They would also involve learners in the planning of the sessions (Spencer 1991; Ventola 1991).

Self-organized in-service training might well be the most suitable approach in Finland for encouraging those revisers who have long been doing revision work to take up a new role as editors (some self-organized in-service training for teachers has in fact already been outlined for Finland; see Kurki-Suonio et al. 1991). The revisers would simply work out their own programme for training themselves to use the textlinguistic approach to revision suggested here and other skills needed in editing work. This self-training could take the form of, for example, brainstorming, organizing workshops, seminars, minitasks, minicourses, miniconferences, panel discussions, etc. During retraining, the revisers would use linguists and other specialists in particular fields, as well as experienced editors, a8 thkir resource persons who would provide help and even content input for self-organized training when needed. They could also help the participants to evaluate the results of their efforts.

For those revisers who have never done revision work before, pre-service training could be an appropriate form. Such pre-service training could be organized in various translation departments operating in many Finnish universities. Translators in Finland graduate with M.A. degrees and naturally have to complete an M.A. thesis on a particular topic in the field of translation studies. For those editorslrevisers who are just entering the field, similar tertiary education leading towards an M.A. degree could be planned and linked up with the translation departments in Finland. There is enough expertise to be found in general and contrastive linguistics, interference problems,’ESP-texts, and so on, in the translation departments for such a programme to be implemented. This would establish ‘language editors’ as a new professional


group in the Finnish workforce - a group whose qualifications and skills would very closely correspond to the advertisement presented in Example 1 in this paper. One can also envisage fruitful co-operation between future translators and future editordrevisers as a result of this kind of training.

There is also another way in which newcomers to the field of language revision can receive training. This is a very old method of ‘master and ap- prentice’. In those universities where a revisionlediting section already exists, newcomers to the field could simply be trained by a senior colleague who also functions as the manager of the revisioilfediting section.

Various ways of training editors have been suggested above, but ways of improving the work circumstances can also be developed beyond the present, fairly solitary working pattern of the reviser and the writer. At the University of Helsinki the writer and the reviser are allowed one consultation together, if the writer feels this is necessary. Many writers, and revisers as well, feel that this is not enough in order to gain long-term benefits from revision. Thus various co-operation schemes should be developed. One scheme would be to develop a more personal relationship with one’s editor, occasionally meeting up with hindher and going through the most obvious textlinguistic and lexicogrammatical problems. What is also a possibility is that writers who use the same editor would jointly ‘hire’ this editor to give them a training course in writing. This, together with establishing the above-mentioned ‘writing clinics’ to which writers could come with their problems, would enable reviserdeditors to function as teachers of writing as well. Thus, writers would benefit more widely from the expertise that revisers/etlitors have. T o make editing itself a less lonesome affair for the editor, a principle of double-checking, i.e. the second editor checking the first‘s editing, plus consultations with one another, might be advisable and fairly easily executed, although somewhat more expensive. This procedure would also help to make revisions more objective.

Courses for teachers in academic writing As has already been mentioned, the biggest problem in organizing the teaching of academic writing in Enghsh in the Finnish context is that that there are no specially trained teachers to teach the undergraduate, postgraduate, and staff writing courses. At the moment, the language centre teachers are divided into non-native (Finnish) and native English teachers. Neither group’s duties include teaching academic writing; instead, reading comprehension is taught by the former group, and listening comprehension and oral skills courses by the latter. This division seems somewhat artificial in the present multimedia society; Finnish reading comprehension teachers could just as well teach some of the conversational skills, for example by taking a contrastive view, and, vice versa, the listening comprehensiodoral skills teachers could teach some aspects of the Enghsh reading comprehension. Reorganization of foreign languages into integrated skills courses seems an appropriate goal in the Finnish context. When such a change is carried through, it is relatively easy at the same time to

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integrate the teaching of writing in foreign languages into the present undergraduate coupes. An integrated system would benefit the teachers by giving them more flexibility in coordinating the courses with other teachers as well as in organizing the content of the study modules intended for the students.

Some in-service training will be necessary for training teachers to function as instructors in writing in English in these integrated courses for undergraduates. Many of the teachers have relatively little or no experience in writing, or in teaching writing, and in ways of using textlinguistics as a tool in developing writhig skills. The in-service training for this level of teaching can be organized by the teachers themselves by using experts as resource persons along similar lines to those outlined previously for the self-training of revisers.

More specialized training is required for those teachers who want to become teachers of academic writers at postgraduate and staff level. The teacher training at this level can be organized by the language centres and the language specialists, but close cooperation with various faculties and departments is also essential. Some experts from specific academic fields must be incorporated into the teaching of these courses, not as permanent teachers, but as part-time consultants who can train the teachers in terms of the type of writing that is expected in that field. Other experts can also be used in teacher training (as well as in the training of writers), e.g. computer specialists, established editors of journals, etc. This would guarantee that the knowledge of the experts filters through to teacher trsining and further to writers’ training at various levels.

To summarize then, teacher training for undergraduate level courses would involve in-service and self-organized training of native and non-native teachers of English to take over the responsibility of teaching academic writing in integrated courses. Teacher training at more advanced levels, for postgraduate and staff-level courses, would involve in-service and self-organized training of native and non-native teachers of English with close cooperation from language and subject experts as resource persons, consultants, and teachers. Editor training can be organized either as self-organized or pre-service training in which language experts as well as subject experts would again play an important role. In writers’ courses at advanced levels, language experts and subject experts could also be engaged in teaching as consultants. The subject experts are less likely to participate in teaching the writers as they have their own careers to think of (although professorial specialists are in a certain way responsible for teaching writing to their supervisees). Consequently, the major responsibilities for the administration and teaching of courses for writers, editors, and teachers of writing would remain with the language centres and language experts. But at least the subject experts should play an important role in planning and carrying out the training of teachers for academic writing courses.

Some suggestions have already been made about the forms this teacher training would take for groups involved in these three areas. Finland can in many respects consider itself lucky, since it has an existing infrastructure in which the retraining of English and Finnish language teachers could be largely


realized in the ways I have suggested above. For five years, a Programme for In-Service Training for Language Centres (PILC) operated in Finland. The course was organized by the National Language Centre for Finnish Universities (Jyvaskyla) in close cooperation with the Finnish Ministry of Education, the British Council, and the University of Birmingham. The course was a one-year course, consisting of an orientation day (in September) and three weeks of training (in January, May, and August) with intermediate individual study periods. Various aspects of language teaching were covered during the training course: teaching methods and materials, discourse analysis, and testing. In 1991, academic writing was also focussed upon in the course for the first time (taught by Anna Mauranen and the author). The course was not a credit- bearing course as such, but, for example, the English Department at the University of Birmingham gave some credit to those teachers who later decided to pursue a further qualification in Birininghain (the so-called ‘sandwich’ M.A. degree, involving study, periods in Birmingham and at home).

In Finland, a new training course (SILC) for language centre teachers is currently planned by the National Language Centre for Finnish Universities (see Kurki-Suonio et al. 1991). This new course will have a more modular structure than PILC. It consists of short general as well as specialized courses and is planned to enable teachers to accuinulate credit points towards a further qualification. I t would be fairly effortless to incorporate various forms of in- service and self-organized training sessions in academic writing for teachers of English as well as for language editors into this new training programme.

Conclusion

This paper has discussed and illustrated some of the results of textlinguistic research carried out on academic writing in English by non-native writers. The research project was carried out at the Language Centre of the University of Helsinki. This textlinguistic study has several general implications concerning the organization of teaching academic writing in English in Finland:

1) the training of teachers of writing courses needs to be organized 2 ) academic writing courses in English need to be organized for

undergraduate and postgraduate writers as well as for academic research staff

3) retraining of the language revisers who have been checking Finnish writers’ texts is necessary, and a new role - a more demanding one of language editor - should be developed

4) in all the above-mentioned points, a tertliiiguistic perspective on the teaching of academic writing and the improvement of language revision and editing is absolutely necessary.

218 EIJA VENTOLA

The aim of writing as well as that of revisindediting is a good end product - a coherent text comprehensible to its audience. This means that in writing and in revisiodediting, as well as in teaching these skills, we must look beyond the sentence level. The focus must be on text construction, generic qualities of texts, rhetorical structures, and on cohesion and coherence operating in texts.

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[Received 21/7/92] Dept. of English University of Helsinki Hallituskatu 11-13 00100 Helsinki Finland

Writing scientific English: overcoming intercultural problems

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