Journal of Second Language Writing 43 (2019) 72–79

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Second Language Writing

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jslw

Academic writing support through individual consultations: EAL

T
doctoral student experiences and evaluation
Lai Ping Florence Ma
Department of International Studies, Macquarie University, Australia

AR TI CLE I NF O AB S T R A CT

Keywords: Thesis and dissertation writing often presents significant challenges for many PhD candidates and
English academic writing it can be even more demanding for multilingual doctoral students who use English as an addi-
Second language writing tional language (EAL). Second language writers who are unprepared to engage in disciplinary
Individual consultations academic writing require institutional language support services. Among these services, in-
One-on-one consultations
dividual (or one-on-one) consultations with learning advisers, who identify students’ specific
Doctoral language support
EAL doctoral students
writing issues and provide personalised advice, are resource-intensive but may have significant
impacts on thesis and dissertation writing. This paper aims to evaluate the effectiveness of in-
dividual consultations through student learning experiences. It analyses the reasons for service
use, evaluates students’ perceived impacts of consultations on thesis and dissertation writing, and
explores their views on service improvement. Data were collected from semi-structured inter-
views with 13 EAL doctoral students enrolled in an Australian university. Results show that
individual consultations were operated in four different formats and participants accessed con-
sultation services because their learning needs were not met in group settings or they had
identified writing issues. Participants reported pedagogical and psychological impacts, and
provided practical suggestions for service improvement in terms of timing and adviser avail-
ability. This study provides important insights into the role of individual consultations on thesis
and dissertation writing in a second language.

1. Introduction

Thesis and dissertation writing1 often entails significant challenges for many PhD candidates. It can be even more demanding for
multilingual doctoral students who use English as an additional language (EAL). Generic discursive skills such as argumentation and
coherence are reported to be particularly challenging for these writers in academic writing (Curry & Lillis, 2004). Previous studies
have also shown that they need more time and effort in presenting research findings in English (Flowerdew, 1999; Kwan, 2013), and
some experience anxiety when writing in their second language (Langum & Sullivan, 2017; Wellington, 2010). Many doctoral stu-
dents entering a doctoral program are unprepared to engage in disciplinary academic writing (Maher, Feldon, Timmerman, & Chao,

E-mail address: florence.lai.ma@mq.edu.au.

1
The terms ‘thesis’ and ‘dissertation’ have different meanings in different parts of the world. In Australia and the UK, the term ‘thesis’ refers to the written document
submitted for the completion of a PhD degree. However, in the US, the term ‘dissertation’ is used instead and ‘thesis’ is used for the document at the master’s level.
Since the research context of this study was in Australia, the term ‘thesis’ is used throughout this paper to mean ‘thesis and dissertation’.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2017.11.006
Received 25 July 2017; Received in revised form 21 November 2017; Accepted 23 November 2017
Available online 29 November 2017
1060-3743/ © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
L.P.F. Ma Journal of Second Language Writing 43 (2019) 72–79

2014) and require institutional language support services such as credit-bearing writing courses, workshops, and writing groups,
which are delivered in group settings, or one-on-one advice through individual consultations (ICs) with Learning Skills Advisers.
In Australia, ICs are available for undergraduate students in many universities. Almost all the universities in the Group of Eight
(Go8),2 provide ICs through academic skills units or learning centres, based on the information in their websites. ICs may be in the
form of drop-in sessions, which typically last for 10–15 min, or longer booked appointments from 25 to 50 min. Learning advisers
may be subject-trained or with applied linguistics qualifications, and they are expected to provide feedback to students on how to
improve writing skills, usually based on their drafts. Advice is given in various aspects of writing such as grammar, coherence,
cohesion, referencing, and argumentation techniques. Students can also ask questions during the consultation, negotiate meaning
with advisers, and seek for specific feedback on their writing drafts.
While many group-based support services are well documented in the literature, empirical studies that investigate ICs are rather
limited, especially at the doctoral level. Woodward-Kron (2007) called for more research into ICs in different contexts and at various
stages of thesis writing to explore more effective support. The dearth of literature has inspired the present study which aims to
examine doctoral students’ experiences and evaluation of ICs, in particular how ICs are operated, factors for accessing services,
perceived impacts on writing, and recommendations for service improvement. This study makes a contribution by identifying student
learning needs and has practical implications for academic writing support programs for EAL doctoral students. This paper first
reviews the relevant literature and discusses the difficulties in IC evaluation. It then presents the research method, reports and
discusses the findings, and draws conclusions from the findings.
ICs have an important place in doctoral education because they provide personalised and tailor-made support to assist doctoral
students at critical stages of thesis writing (Woodward-Kron, 2007). They recognise the uniqueness of each student (Garner, 1996)
and provide sufficient individual attention to students to cater to individual learning needs (O’Mahony, Verezub, Dalrymple, &
Bertone, 2013; Stevenson and Kokkinn, 2009; Wang and Li, 2008; Wilson, Li, Collins, & Couchman, 2011), which is not always
possible in group-learning settings. Besides students, learning advisors also benefit from conducting ICs because they can better
understand learners’ writing difficulties through close examinations of written work (Huijser, Kimmins, & Galligan, 2008). These
interactions with students provide insights that can be incorporated into academic writing course development (Chanock, 2007;
Huijser et al., 2008) and build partnerships with students and supervisors (O’Mahony et al., 2013).
Although an IC provides a mutual learning experience for both students and learning advisers, it is often considered uneconomical
because it is costly and resource- intensive (Wilson et al., 2011; Woodward-Kron, 2007). Some supervisors associate ICs only with
proofreading or editing (Huijser et al., 2008; Woodward-Kron, 2007) and may not fully understand the long-term goal of ICs – to
provide systematic feedback on writing so that students can further develop their writing skills and become confident and in-
dependent writers who can self-edit their work. Evaluating ICs is difficult and complex because the availability and operation of ICs
vary across different institutions (Gao & Reid, 2015). ICs also lie outside the mainstream teaching evaluation processes and a sys-
tematic approach to evaluation poses a great challenge for learning advisers. Additionally, it is very difficult to measure the actual
effects of ICs on student learning (Chanock, 2007).

2. Framework for evaluating ICs

Stevenson and Kokkinn (2009), important work in the IC literature, proposed a systematic four-perspective framework to evaluate
ICs, examining the ‘purpose’, ‘focus’, ‘participants’ and ‘method’ of evaluations. They also outlined a process for ‘framing’ evaluation
planning with guided questions for each perspective. Regarding the ‘purpose’ of evaluation, they suggested three purposes for
evaluation: accountability, development and knowledge. The efficiency and outcomes of a program can be assessed through how
students’ needs are met and how a program is operated. For the ‘focus’ of evaluation, it should include both the teaching and learning
process because the teacher is not the sole ‘actor’. Apart from assessing the teacher’s subject matter expertise and delivery skills,
evaluation should include learner engagement with learning and their ability to apply skills beyond the learning context. In fact,
previous studies focused mainly on learning adviser perspectives (e.g., Carter, 2010; Gao and Reid, 2015; Malthus, 2013) and adviser-
student pedagogical discourse (e.g., Wilson et al., 2011; Woodward-Kron, 2007) to analyse the nature and types of meanings ne-
gotiated during consultation interactions. However, only one participant was involved in Wilson et al. (2011) and Woodward-Kron’s
(2007) studies and this limits the generalisation of findings.
Regarding the ‘participant’ of evaluation, the three main actors of ICs are students, learning advisers and the university, and it is
beneficial to include inputs from various actors. Although student feedback on teaching is a vital aspect of evaluation and students are
important stakeholders of IC services, their feedback on ICs has not been thoroughly examined and a significant gap exists in the
literature (Stevenson & Kokkinn, 2009). O’Mahony et al. (2013) is one of the few studies that investigated student perspectives
through focus group interviews with 8 research students and their supervisors. In the same study, the Strengths, Weaknesses, Op-
portunities, and Threats of ICs were analysed through a SWOT analysis.
In terms of research ‘methods’, Stevenson and Kokkinn (2009) proposed a range of research methods from questionnaires (see for
example, Carter, 2010; Chanock, 2002) and focus group interviews (e.g., O’Mahony et al., 2013; Stevenson and Kokkinn, 2009) to advisers’

2
The Group of Eight comprises Australia’s leading research universities, including the University of Adelaide, Australian National University, University of New
South Wales, University of Melbourne, Monash University, University of Queensland, University of Sydney, and University of Western Australia. An Academic skills
unit, also known as learning centre or learning skills unit in some institutions, usually consists of a team of academic skills advisers (or learning advisers) who provide
academic literacy support to students through services such as workshops, learning resources, and individual consultations.

73
L.P.F. Ma Journal of Second Language Writing 43 (2019) 72–79

self-reflection (e.g., Malthus, 2013; Pinder, 2005). More recent studies have adopted mixed methods research. For example, Berry et al.
(2012) evaluated IC services through a combination of adviser self-reflections, peer observations, and student questionnaires. Using a
similar research method, Gao and Reid (2015) analysed the 3-stage process (i.e., establishing focus, discussing and wrapping up) and key
features of ICs, but the findings of student questionnaires were not reported in their paper and how students evaluated ICs is unclear. It is
noteworthy that previous studies have not adopted student interviews as a research method and most studies were conducted at un-
dergraduate level rather than doctoral level, except for O’Mahony et al. (2013), Pinder (2005), and Woodward-Kron (2007). Therefore,
there is a gap in understanding how doctoral students evaluate the effectiveness and impacts of ICs on learning.
The present study is part of a larger project that examines EAL doctoral students’ evaluation of various types of language support,
including writing courses, workshops and writing groups, contextualised in an Australian university. With reference to Stevenson and
Kokkinn’s (2009) four perspectives, the purpose of the current study is to explore student learning experiences and to identify their
learning needs for service improvement. The focus of evaluation is to understand how IC services operate, why students use this
language support service, and the perceived impacts of ICs on thesis writing. The participants were all EAL students, based on the
assumption that they need more IC support than their counterparts. Finally, the method adopted was individual semi-structured
interviews. Research questions that guide this study are as follows:

• How are ICs operated?

• Why do students use or not use IC services?
• What are the perceived impacts of ICs on thesis and dissertation writing?
• How can IC services be further improved?
3. Methods

Participants were recruited through email invitations sent to the Higher Degree Research managers at five Faculties in an
Australian University. At the university, ICs were provided by the central Higher Degree Research Learning Skills Unit, which
consisted of one co-ordinator and three learning advisers. They worked as a team together but they were located in their affiliated
faculties. One adviser served for the Faculty of Human Sciences and the Faculty of Business and Economics. Another adviser served
for the Faculty of Arts, and the other one worked for the Faculty of Sciences and the Faculty of Medical Sciences. They all obtained a
doctoral degree with relevant disciplinary expertise in one of the faculties they served and one of them had EAL teacher training.
Students could book ICs via email and were advised to send their writing draft before the appointment. Individual advisers were
responsible to keep records of consultations. Apart from IC services, advisers delivered two series of Faculty-specific workshops that
lasted for 6–8 weeks each year, assisted workshop participants to form writing groups, offered up to two writing retreats per year, and
taught a credit-bearing writing course for master of research students.
Twenty-seven EAL students participated in the whole project but only 13 participants (3 males and 10 females) had experience
with or opinions about ICs and they formed the cohort of participants in this study. As Stevenson and Kokkinn (2009) suggested,
participants of IC evaluation could be service users and non-users because it is worthwhile to investigate the reasons for not using ICs.
Participants’ age ranged from 20 to 50 and they spoke 11 home languages in total. Participants were at various stages of PhD
candidature, including first year to recent graduates (with one master of research student) as their learning needs and expectations
may be different (O’Mahony et al., 2013). Participants were from various disciplines (5 from Science, 5 from Human Sciences, 2 from
Arts, and 1 from Business and Economics). About half of the participants planned to complete their thesis by publication rather than a
traditional thesis and they had to include several publishable journal articles as thesis chapters, apart from the introduction and
conclusion sections. Nine participants had experience in scholarly publication. See Appendix A for the participants’ profile.
With ethics approval, a 30-min semi-structured interview was conducted individually with participants to capture the richness
and uniqueness of their learning experience with ICs (see Appendix B for interview questions). The interviews were fully transcribed
and common themes were identified to develop a coding frame. Sample transcripts (3 interviews) were coded independently by the
researcher and a research assistant, and the inter-coder agreement reached 92%.

4. Findings and discussion

4.1. Different formats of ICs

The data show that ICs were offered in four different ways. Apart from the common practise of making a one-hour appointment with a
learning adviser to discuss writing drafts and to seek advice on writing skills improvement, ICs were offered as part of a 3-day writing
retreat in which students could book a 30-min session to discuss their writing drafts with an adviser (S2 = Student 2 interview, Mandarin,
Physics). S2 participated in one of the writing retreats offered either annually or bi-annually by the Higher Degree Research Learning Skills
Unit. The data also show that ICs were offered at departmental level in a department in the Faculty of Science and Engineering. A retired
lecturer was available for consultation in a laboratory where students and departmental researchers were located (S4 interview, Urdu,
Engineering). Students could ask questions, email thesis chapters or send hard copies for advice on language but not on content.3 The last

3
This department-based consultant was not an expert in the participant’s research area. The participant reported that he would seek advice on content from his
supervisor, but not this lecturer.

74
L.P.F. Ma Journal of Second Language Writing 43 (2019) 72–79

format was reported by S9 (Japanese, Linguistics), a full-time academic, who could not use support services because of time clashes with
teaching and meetings. She, therefore, employed a private consultant for advice and feedback on her draft thesis chapters and had four
consultations in her last year of candidature. Among these four formats, the booked appointment was the most common type of ICs as
shown in the data.
Based on the researcher’s experience, embedding ICs in a writing retreat and making the consultant available in the laboratory are
the two more accessible formats because the embedded format enables ICs to be available at the right timing as students may have
questions when they are writing. Additionally, a laboratory is a workspace for students, thus making ICs more easily accessible.
Employing a private consultant for an extended period of time is expensive for students (S9). From the researcher’s experience in
providing ICs, it is not unusual for students to book appointments but did not attend them then. It is noteworthy that only ICs that are
offered in the format of booked appointments with a learning adviser have been examined and well documented in the literature.

4.2. Reasons for using or not using IC services

4.2.1. Learning needs not met in group settings

S1, a student from Taiwan studying linguistics, looked for IC services because she found that the 8-week workshop series that she
had attended was too ‘basic and generic’. The workshops were delivered by a Learning Adviser from the Higher Degree Research
Learning Skills Unit and were attended by about 20 students from different faculties across the university.4 The student was asked to
write up her results as weekly assignments for the workshops but she did not have any results to report at that time. Also, she did not
find the advice from the workshop facilitator useful. As she explained, the facilitator was unfamiliar with her adopted research
method, ethnography, which was a new genre she really needed to learn for her thesis. She did some interviews in Mandarin and
translated the data into English. She cited both versions of the data in her writing because that was what she observed other
researchers did in ethnography. In addition, she wanted to “keep the voice of people” in the Mandarin data. But when she showed her
writing draft to the workshop facilitator, the facilitator just queried who would read them. At that moment, the participant realised
that she could not learn how to write ethnography from these workshops.
Her view was shared by S7 who described his credit-bearing writing course as ‘useless’ because the tutor lacked disciplinary
knowledge in his field (computer science) and he reported that ‘certain suggestions are not going to be good for my thesis’. Another
participant (S10) also thought that ICs could enable her to get some hints about things that she missed out in group workshops. S8
reported that:
That particular workshop should be useful just for small writing … So that workshop doesn’t work for me anymore. Now I need
somebody to look (at) my paper, er maybe pages by pages, and saying (telling) me that ok it’s better to revise these sentences … or
it’s not academic, something like that. (S8, Persian, Environmental Science)5
S8 found that workshops did not work for her anymore a year after she had started her doctoral study. In future, she needed an
adviser to look at her writing closely and tell her how to improve her academic writing skills and style.

4.2.2. Needing a critical reader

Many students reported that they needed a critical reader to tell them if their writing makes sense or not and to point out their
mistakes. For example, S4 said:
I need to have a reader to tell me that whether (my writing) makes sense or not. For content, of course, I trust my supervisor (…)
But for the language, for the expressions, I needed someone who has the competence to tell me whether it does make sense to
them or not, or whether they are good sentences or not. (S4, Urdu, Engineering)
S4 preferred to have a language expert to read his drafts and give him feedback. S20 also reported that she brought along her
sample writing and sought for specific feedback from an adviser. Two other students (S1 & S7) said that they needed a learning
adviser to point out mistakes and proofread drafts before sending them to supervisors so that supervisors could focus on providing
feedback on content rather than language. As S7 mentioned,
Supervisor can help me to a point where he just … ‘I can’t do it any more. I’m busy ….’ I can understand that it’s my responsibility
to get that right. (…) I would expect that he would give (tell) me ‘this is incorrect, this is not right. Your idea is incorrect.’ That’s
the thing I expect to get from supervisor. (S7, Thai, Computer Science)
Similarly, S8 expressed that she needed the learning advisers to check if her writing is academic, as previously mentioned. Besides
looking for guidance on her writing drafts, S25 reported that she needed the advisers’ assistance in checking the accuracy of her
English translation of interview transcripts and expressions in qualitative written analysis through negotiation of meaning during ICs.
She conducted interviews in Bengali but encountered difficulties in translating emotional terms from Bengali into English without
losing their ‘essence’ and ‘beauty’. She preferred to have a weekly appointment with an adviser so as to obtain advice for how to
express some of the ideas she needed to translate from Bengali into English. During the consultation, she could have the opportunity
to explain what she wanted to express:

4
The student attended the workshops in 2012 and at that time Faculty-specific workshops were not yet offered.
5
All extracts are unedited interview transcripts and may contain grammatical errors.

75
L.P.F. Ma Journal of Second Language Writing 43 (2019) 72–79

I’m writing a sentence in a different meaning but actually I don’t want to express this sentence in that way … Like if I talk to her,
then I can make her or him understand that I want to actually express in this way. (S25, Bengali, Geography and Planning)

4.2.3. Addressing an identified issue with writing

Some students attended ICs because they had a specific question or problem in mind. For example, S22 sought assistance through
ICs because of her supervisor’s comments that her writing was ‘too journalistic’. She felt anxious but did not know how to improve her
writing. Consequently she took a pro-active approach and initiated an IC session to seek feedback from an adviser on her writing
sample. To her great surprise, the adviser commented that her writing was ‘too academic’, which caused her to feel even more
confused. At the time when the data were collected, she still did not know how to resolve this conflict.

4.2.4. Supervisor’s recommendations

Some students attended ICs because of supervisors’ recommendations. For example, S9 hired a private consultant to read her draft
chapters and seek advice on academic writing, based on her supervisor’s suggestion and referral.
What he (supervisor) advised me is to find an editor or proofreader to check my draft. … That person, that mentor was introduced
by him. (S9, Japanese, Linguistics)
S9 did not use the IC services provided by the HDR Learning Advisers but sought advice by hiring a ‘mentor’ as her consultant
because she worked as a full-time academic and ‘missed all the opportunities for language support services’ due to time clashes with
teaching and meetings.

4.2.5. Reasons for not using IC services

While the above-mentioned participants reported the reasons for attending ICs, S10 and S13 explained that they did not attend
any ICs because they did not have any specific questions or see any urgent need to improve their writing. It could be because both
were at an early stage of their candidature. S7 found that it was pointless to attend any IC because it would be provided by the same
tutor he met in a previous writing course, the one who he found lacked disciplinary knowledge in his field.
To sum up, students used IC services either through self-referral because they worried about their writing or by supervisors’
referral, similar to what was reported in Pinder’s (2005) study. Participants do not think that supervisors are responsible for cor-
recting grammatical mistakes and addressing language issues for them. In fact, supervisors can pay a very important role in iden-
tifying students’ writing issues as the audience or reader of students’ research proposal and thesis drafts. Supervisors’ accurate
diagnosis of problems can facilitate an early intervention through ICs. Generic workshops seem to work well at the beginning of the
candidature to help students gain the basic knowledge of academic writing style and thesis writing, and assist them in building social
networks with other students. However, some students require more personalised feedback through ICs when they start writing their
thesis chapters. The data of this study clearly show that ICs have their own value and benefits. They provide more individual
attention that learning in group settings such as workshops and writing courses cannot offer. For example, the experience of S1, who
looked for assistance with writing ethnography, shows that students’ learning needs of discipline-specific writing skills may not be
met by generic workshops. The limitation of workshops is that their purpose and format do not enable students to obtain individual
advice that other participants did not need. To compensate for the limitations of workshops, the adviser could have recommended
some writing guidebooks about ethnographic research to this student for self-learning.
Students’ expectations of having a critical reader of their work and their preference for having a second opinion on their writing
support the findings in O’Mahony et al. (2013). Their response also shows that these EAL students were not confident with their
writing. The experience of conflicting opinions given by an adviser and a supervisor, as reported by S22, was similar to that reported
in O’Mahony et al. (2013) in which students showed concerns about the differences in the writing style between advisers and
supervisors. The present study also found that some participants would not use IC services unless they identified specific problems in
writing or particular writing skills or genres to learn. This reinforces Stevenson and Kokkinn’s (2009) comment that students wanted
good value for the time they spent, and Pinder’s (2005) suggestion that effective support should be delivered at the point of need.

4.3. Perceived impacts on thesis writing

4.3.1. Identifying areas for improvement

Attending ICs enabled students to identify areas for improvement. For example, S2 read his manuscript together with an adviser
during an embedded IC in a three-day writing retreat. The adviser’s diagnosis of his writing issues, such as logical linkage of ideas,
accuracy in grammar and choice of vocabulary, enabled him to finish drafting his manuscript for a chapter in his thesis by publication
within three days. S9 did not realise that she had issues with cohesion until her consultant commented that she ordered information
very differently from English users. S9 learned from her consultant that this issue is attributed to the differences in writing between
English and Japanese, her home language:
English speakers always put older …older… old information first then new information, then the next sentence old information
which was mentioned in the previous sentence, then add new sentence into the previous sentence. But I put new information at
first then old. So the reader has to go back in their thought … (S9, Japanese, Linguistics)
S4 reported that he learned more about punctuation and active voice from ICs. Attending ICs made his paper look ‘professional’

76
L.P.F. Ma Journal of Second Language Writing 43 (2019) 72–79

because it was not full of mistakes. However, he said he could get feedback to ‘improve the drafts’ but not learn anything to ‘improve
skills’ because he sought advice from a consultant who was a department-based lecturer rather than a language expert from the
Higher Degree Research Learning Skills Unit.
S20 emphasised that she needed learning advisers to show her what she needed to improve, which could not be achieved solely by herself:
Honestly, at that time, it impacted a lot. …. If I practise myself, I don’t know what I need to improve. So practise with someone like
them to show me, yea this is no good, this is good already. This one you need some guideline(s), some expert(s) in that. Something
you can self-learning, some not. This is particularly not. (S20, Vietnamese, Marketing and Management)
During the consultation, her adviser also suggested some useful books and websites for independent learning.

4.3.2. Improvement in English

S9 reported that her supervisor commented that her English had improved because of the consultation sessions. In the past, her
supervisor often commented that she had problems with English in her previous annual progress reports, but this comment dis-
appeared after attending consultations. She said:
In the annual progress report, supervisor needs to tick what is the problem. In the first few years, he ticked ‘English’, ‘English’,
‘English’. But towards the end, he didn’t tick ‘English’. (S9, Japanese, Linguistics)

4.3.3. Psychological benefits

Apart from pedagogical benefits mentioned above, it was reported that ICs had positive psychological effects. For example, S9
who experienced anxiety and lack of confidence in finishing a doctoral degree reported:
Psychology … psychology… it had some positive effect. I …how to explain. I had a bit of anxiety issue, not confident enough in
doing this degree. … I can’t do it … I can’t do it. That kind of mentality. But … since I got mentoring sessions and learned how to
improve my writing, I started to feel my confidence and reduce my anxiety. (S9, Japanese, Linguistics)
These findings support O’Mahony et al.’s (2013) study in which participants reported that they learned cohesion, improved
writing drafts, and gained confidence in writing; and that supervisors noticed improvement in student writing skills. The additional
resources provided to students enable them to become independent learners, which is the long-term goal of ICs (Berry et al., 2012).

4.4. Suggestions for IC service improvement

Participants made several recommendations for service improvement. First, they preferred continuous and regular support such as
weekly appointments (S12, S25). S25 thought that she could write about four or five pages per week and if she could seek advice from an
adviser for one or two hours weekly, it would be very helpful and beneficial. As S1 suggested, ‘if you constantly have someone there for
you to consult with, I think it will help a lot’. However, the data reveal that students do not need ICs at an early stage of their candidature
until they start writing or identify some writing issues. Second, some students preferred online support so that they can submit their drafts
for feedback at any time. Third, one student recommended that ICs be available both centrally and at departmental level so that students
can select where to access services that best suit their learning needs and from whom to seek assistance. S2 and S7 preferred to have
consultants located within their department. S12 suggested having a Chinese-English bilingual adviser. Finally, the availability of more
than one adviser was preferred so that students can turn to another adviser if one does not match well. Student 20 commented that having
only one adviser from each Faculty available for consultation was not enough. When students find a suitable adviser that works well with
them, they prefer to seek advice from the same adviser and establish a long-term relationship in order to avoid having to explain their
research project repeatedly or receiving conflicting advice. As Pinder (2005) suggests, it is important to establish good relationships
between students and advisers, which was a key feature of ICs (Gao & Reid, 2015).

5. Conclusion

The findings show that there are different formats of ICs. Apart from the typical format of appointments with learning advisers,
the other three formats have not been well documented in previous studies. This study also analysed various reasons for using and not
using ICs, demonstrating the unique contribution of ICs in addressing individual learning needs that are not catered for in group
settings. While generic workshops enable students to learn basic academic writing skills such as argumentation, hedging, and thesis
structure, these basic skills may be appropriate for some students but not others. Another limitation of generic workshops is that they
are not discipline-specific. In contrast, ICs are useful for identifying individual learning needs in order to provide more tailor-made
support. However, many participants in the larger study of this project were not aware of the IC services and therefore it is necessary
to better promote the service to students. The fact that the service was not widely advertised may be attributable to the small team of
advisers at this university, which has about 2000 research students.
Additionally, it identified perceived positive pedagogical and psychological impacts of ICs on learning and recommended specific
strategies for service improvement. Building on O’Mahony et al.’s (2013) suggestion that gaining confidence was the primary reason for
attending ICs, the present study made significant contributions by analysing various factors for service use in greater detail. Having the
opportunity to receive expert advice and personalised feedback from an adviser on writing drafts may enable students to become more
confident about grammatical accuracy and academic writing style. It is noteworthy that seeking advice from a department-based

77
L.P.F. Ma Journal of Second Language Writing 43 (2019) 72–79

consultant, who was not a language expert, was considered by S4 in this study to be helpful for improving drafts but not writing skills.
Learning advisers, who are usually language experts, are able to help students develop writing skills, which they need for their future
career as academics. It is crucial that advisers can identify students’ learning needs based on the analysis of writing drafts and interactions
with students. However, a limitation is that they may lack content knowledge or familiarity with the academic writing conventions in
particular disciplines. Therefore, it is important to place learning advisers with relevant disciplinary backgrounds in certain faculties.
Although they may not initially have expertise in every discipline, they can become more familiar with the writing practices of a range of
disciplines through their professional practice, experiences gained from conducting ICs, and the cultures of enquiry.
Providing individual consultations is costly and the number of learning advisers available for ICs is sometimes limited. Would
receiving peer support from senior PhD colleagues be a possible way of gaining mutual benefits of being economical for the university
and serving as a training ground for senior students to become reviewers in the future? Although senior students may not provide the
same level of professional expertise as learning advisers, they may act as a critical friend in the same discipline who can check for
clarity in meaning and logical flow of ideas. They can provide consultation services in addition to those of learner advisers.
The conflicting feedback on writing received from supervisors and learning advisers suggests the need for more communication
and collaboration between the two parties. For future study, it is worth investigating the reasons for conflicts. It is also worth
examining whether there are conflicts between generic advice offered in workshops and discipline-specific advice offered in ICs, and
if so, the causes for conflicts. Future study can also explore what generic workshops, Faculty-specific workshops and discipline-
specific workshops can offer for students’ learning and their limitations.
This study examines the perceptions of doctoral students at one university and its limitation lies in the generalisation of results to other
contexts. Future research should recruit participants from different universities to accommodate for the complexity of IC evaluation.
Additionally, the selection of participant is limited to EAL students and future study should include native English speakers. It is also
important to explore the amount of time that students need for consultations. Some students may need only one consultation while others
may need a series of appointments if they have more complex writing issues. How can advisers decide on the amount of consultation time
that students need? Providing ICs is a relatively expensive investment by universities but if students can improve their writing skills
through ICs, it is more likely that they can complete their thesis in a timely manner. Australian universities receive government funding
through the Research Training Program, which is based on thesis completions. If students do not complete the degree successfully, it is a
great cost to the university. Studying a PhD degree is also a costly investment for students. The tuition fees for international students
ranged from AU$31,000 to AU$40,000 at the university where this study was conducted. If students are scholarship holders, they do not
have to pay tuition fees. However, if scholarship holders cannot complete their thesis on time, they have to re-enrol and start paying the
fees. Therefore, timely completion and submission of thesis, one of the long-term benefits of ICs suggested by O’Mahony et al. (2013), is
important to these students. It is beneficial for both universities and students to gain benefits from ICs in terms of development of academic
writing skills, improvement in thesis quality, and timely thesis completion.

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank the participants for taking part in this research project and the two anonymous reviewers for their time and
insightful comments on earlier versions of this article. I would also like to thank Professor Brian Paltridge for his editorial suggestions.
All errors are, of course, my own.

Appendix A. Participants’ profile

No. Age Candidature Home EMI in EMI in Department No. of publications in

(month) Language UG* PG** English

1 30–39 Graduated Mandarin No No Linguistics 2

2 20–29 7.5 Mandarin No No Physics 3–5
4 20–29 6 Urdu Yes Yes Engineering 10
7 40–49 10 Thai Yes Yes Computer Science 1
8 20–29 12 Persian No No Environmental Science 2
9 Over Graduated Japanese No Yes Linguistics 10
50
10 40–49 1 Cantonese Yes Yes Linguistics 0
12 20–29 7 Mandarin No No Education 0
13 30–39 4 Russian No Yes Education 0
15 20–29 18 Portuguese No No Physics 3
20 30–39 PG research Vietnamese No Yes Marketing and 0
Management
22 20–29 12 Assyrian Yes Yes Sociology 0
25 30–39 18 Bengali No Yes Geography and Planning 5

*EMI = English as the medium of instructions. UG = undergraduate. **PG = postgraduate.

78
L.P.F. Ma Journal of Second Language Writing 43 (2019) 72–79

Appendix B. Semi-structured interview questions

1. Have you attended any individual consultations (ICs) before?

• If yes, why did you attend ICs?

• If not, why not?
2. How many hours of ICs did you attend?
3. Who facilitated the consultation session(s)?
4. What did you do during those sessions?
5. What did you expect to learn from ICs?
6. How effective are ICs in enhancing your thesis writing skills?
7. Do you have any suggestions for how IC services can be improved in the future?

References

Berry, L., Collins, G., Copeman, P., Harper, R., Li, L., & Prentice, S. (2012). Individual consultations: Towards a 360-degree evaluation process. Journal of Academic
Language and Learning, 6(3), A16–A35.
Carter, S. (2010). The shifting sands of tertiary individual consultation. In V. van der Ham, L. Sevillano, & L. George (Eds.). Shifting sands, firm foundations. Proceedings
of the 2009 annual international conference of the association of tertiary learning advisors of Aotearoa/New Zealand (ATLAANZ) (pp. 72–83). Auckland: ATLAANZ.
Chanock, K. (2002). Problems and possibilities in evaluating one-to-one language and academic skills teaching. In J. Webb, & P. Mclean (Eds.). Academic skills advising:
Evaluation for program improvement and accountability (pp. 199–221). Melbourne: Victorian Language and Learning Network.
Chanock, K. (2007). Valuing individual consultations as input into other modes of teaching. Journal of Academic Language and Learning, 1(1), A1–A9.
Curry, M. J., & Lillis, T. (2004). Multilingual scholars and the imperative to publish in English: Negotiating interests, demands, and rewards. TESOL Quarterly, 38(4),
663–688.
Flowerdew, J. (1999). Problems in writing for scholarly publication in English: The case of Hong Kong. Journal of Second Language Writing, 8(3), 243–264.
Gao, X., & Reid, K. (2015). What we do in the shadows: Evaluating the one-on-one tertiary learning advice consultation. ATLLANZ Journal, 1, 34–53.
Garner, M. (1996). A slipper for Cinderella: Rediscovering personalised teaching. In K. Chanock, V. Burley, & S. Davis (Eds.). What do we learn from teaching one-on-one
that informs our work with larger numbers? Proceedings of the conference held at La Trobe University (pp. 100–105).
Huijser, H., Kimmins, L., & Galligan, L. (2008). Evaluating individual teaching on the road to embedding academic skills. Journal of Academic Language and Learning,
2(1), A23–A38.
Kwan, B. S. C. (2013). Facilitating novice researchers in project publishing during the doctoral years and beyond: A Hong Kong-based study. Studies in Higher Education,
38(2), 207–225.
Langum, V., & Sullivan, K. P. H. (2017). Writing academic English as a doctoral student in Sweden: Narrative perspectives. Journal of Second Language Writing, 35,
20–25.
Maher, M. A., Feldon, D. F., Timmerman, B. E., & Chao, J. (2014). Faculty perceptions of common challenges encountered by novice doctoral writers. Higher Education
Research & Development, 33(4), 699–711.
Malthus, C. (2013). Reflecting on one-on-one teaching – what strategies might shed light on our practice? In C. Gera (Ed.). Working together: Planting the seed.
Proceedings of the 2012 annual international conference of the association of tertiary learning advisors of Aotearoa/New Zealand (ATLAANZ) (pp. 61–70). Hamilton,
New Zealand: ATLAANZ.
O’Mahony, B., Verezub, E., Dalrymple, J., & Bertone, S. (2013). An evaluation of research students’ writing support intervention. Journal of International Education in
Business, 6(1), 23–34.
Pinder, J. (2005). Effective language support for international/NESB post-graduate research students: Reflections on a case study. TESOL in Context, 15(2), 24–28.
Stevenson, M. D., & Kokkinn, B. A. (2009). Evaluating one-to-one sessions of academic language and learning. Journal of Academic Language and Learning, 3(2),
A36–A50.
Wang, T., & Li, L. Y. (2008). Understanding international postgraduate research students’ challenges and pedagogical needs in thesis writing. International Journal of
Pedagogies and Learning, 4(3), 88–96.
Wellington, J. (2010). More than a matter of cognition: An exploration of affective writing problems of post-graduate students and their possible solutions. Teaching in
Higher Education, 15(2), 135–150.
Wilson, K., Li, L. Y., Collins, G., & Couchman, J. (2011). Co-constructing academic literacy: Examining teacher-student discourse in a one-on-one consultation. Journal
of Academic Language and Learning, 5(1), A139–A153.
Woodward-Kron, R. (2007). Negotiating meanings and scaffolding learning: Writing support for non-English speaking background postgraduate students. Higher
Education Research & Development, 26(3), 253–268.

Dr Lai Ping Florence Ma is a lecturer in English as a Foreign Language at Macquarie University. She has had extensive experience in teaching EFL and ESL at various
levels in Hong Kong and Australia. Her research interests include NNEST studies, use of L1, language teacher education, and academic literacy.

79