Language feedback responses, voices and identity (re)construction: Experiences of Chinese international doctoral students

ABSTRACT

We draw on Bakhtin’s dialogic construct of ‘double-voicedness’ to explore Chinese international doctoral students’ responses to their non-Chinese supervisors’ language feedback and their reasoning of the responses. Results show that the students respond to supervisors’ language feedback in four ways: no revision, faithful revision, extended revision and self-initiated revision. Through negotiations with culturally differentiated voices, the students accomplish a dual process of responding to supervisors’ language feedback and (re)constructing their scholarly identity. These voices are across time (e.g. past, present and future) and space (e.g. China and New Zealand), constructing who they are and who they want to be. We suggest developing a more culturally-responsive and empowering intercultural pedagogy to facilitate international doctoral students’ (re)construction of scholarly identity in feedback practice and academic writing, as well as in the wider context of intercultural doctoral supervision.

KEYWORDS:

• Language feedback responses
• voices
• identities
• intercultural supervision
• academic writing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The researcher in this section refers to the first researcher who collected and analysed the data.

2. The total number of the feedback comments did not include two positive comments that require no revision.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Humanities and Social Science Fund of Chinese Ministry of Education [Grant No.: 17YJC740023].

Notes on contributors

Linlin Xu

Linlin Xu is an associate professor at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China and a researcher at the University of Auckland. She researches academic writing, feedback and intercultural supervision.

Jiehui Hu

Jiehui Hu is a professor at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China. He researches academic writing, and second language acquisition.