Linguistic challenges facing Egyptian researchers in writing english research articles for international publication / Ahmed Mohamed Alaa Eldin Mohamed Salem ; Supervised Norice William Methias

Thesis (Ph.D.) - Cairo University - Faculty of Arts - Department of English

There is a need to provide guidelines and specified educational programs for Egyptian researchers to help overcome the challenges they face while writing research in English. The unedited first drafts of 20 Scientific, Technical, and Medical (STM) research articles (RAs), selected based on a set of criteria, were thus analyzed according to 3 dimensions: rhetorical structure, using Swales' Create A Research Space (CARS) model (1990; 2012), Peacock's model (2011), and Kanoksilapatham's model (2007); writing proficiency, using Skehan's (1998) complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF) framework; and communication strategies, using Hyland's (2005) metadiscourse framework. The analysis revealed that 90% of the analyzed RAs had rhetorical structure issues. Concerning writing proficiency, the language used was simple both grammatically and lexically.The accuracy score showed a number of errors to consider. The fluency score showed a bit lengthy T-units. Regarding metadiscourse, 77.5% of the markers used were interactive, the highest of which were transitions and evidentials, while 22.5% were interactional, the highest of which were hedges and self mentions, which reflects the researchers' higher interest in textual relations than in interpersonal relations.These findings, thus, highlight the linguistic areas of difficulty to Egyptian researchers and hence set the foundation for tailored programs to avoid them, a step towards improving the status of Egypt's scientific research

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