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When there is no perfect text: Approaches to the EAP practitioner's dilemma

Article in Journal of English for Academic Purposes · March 2009

DOI: 10.1016/j.jeap.2008.11.003

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 Journal of English for Academic Purposes 8 (2009) 5e13
www.elsevier.com/locate/jeap

When there is no perfect text: Approaches to the EAP

practitioner’s dilemma
John M. Swales
University of Michigan, USA

Abstract

This practitioner-oriented paper opens with an account of the difficulties EAP materials providers encounter in finding ‘‘perfect
texts’’ for pedagogical purposes. It then discusses two alternative options. In the first, the materials writer creates a collection of
source texts for class integration and summary work; in the second, the materials writer creates an imaginary student’s responses to
found or adapted source material. This second case is extensively illustrated, so that it becomes available as ‘freeware’. It is
therefore argued that there is merit in the occasional use of instructor-written materials in selected EAP contexts. In closing, the
paper places the elaborated case study in the wider context of more needing to be known about learner and instructor roles in
advanced writing courses and workshops.
Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: EAP materials; creativity; literature review; academic writing

1. Introduction

Most EAP practitioners, when preparing materials for classes or workshops, are probably familiar with that
increasingly desperate feeling of ‘‘I can’t find the perfect text for what I want to do in class.’’ Hours, perhaps, of leafing
through textbooks, manuals, journal articles or websites have failed to produce a solution to the materials writer’s
problem. One text may have the looked-for rhetorical structure and linguistic exemplification, but the content is too
obscure and too unmanageable; another has attractive and utilizable content, but the structure is wrong or the
treatment is too journalistic (Myers, 1990); and a third looks promising but it is too cluttered with intertextual links,
asides and references to be useable ‘‘as is’’. In addition, there is the question of whether the target audience will find
the sample material sufficiently interesting to enable their attention to become appropriately focused on it, an issue
that arises with texts that are more than a paragraph or so in length. Editing is, of course, always an option, as is
a certain amount of ‘‘skeletonization’’, whereby ellipsis or some other ‘place-holder’ device is used to eliminate dense
content chunks so that students can properly concentrate on rhetoric and language. Hence, the EAP practitioner’s
dilemma: to keep on looking; to start editing; or to go somewhere else? (Indeed, this dilemma may be even more
pressing for those responsible for developing reading or listening comprehension tests, especially when these are
‘highstakes’ (e.g. Norton Pierce, 1992.))

E-mail address: jmswales@umich.edu

1475-1585/$ - see front matter Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jeap.2008.11.003
6 J.M. Swales / Journal of English for Academic Purposes 8 (2009) 5e13

The dilemma raised in the previous paragraph is rarely brought out into the open in the major ESP/EAP textbooks
and resource books. It is not mentioned in Jordan (1997), even though this standard EAP work is subtitled ‘‘A guide
and resource book for teachers’’, nor is it discussed in Hyland’s recent ‘‘advanced resource book’’ on the topic
(Hyland, 2006). In contrast, some broader issues concerning the role and type of ESP teaching materials are well
developed in Dudley-Evans and St John (1998). They begin by noting the pressures involved in producing specialized
ESL materials:
Not surprisingly, producing one hour of good learning material gobbles up hours of preparation time. Each
stage of finding suitable carrier content, matching real content to learning and real world activities, composing
clear rubrics, planning an effective layout, is time-consuming. Estimates vary but 15:1 can be considered
a minimum (1998: 172)
Although Dudley-Evans and Johns do go on to discuss and exemplify appropriate selection and modification of
material, they do not directly address the ‘‘no perfect text’’ problem, focusing rather on ways of exploiting available
textual material.
The first purpose of this paper then is to open a debate about the criteria for and the problematics of identifying
‘perfect texts’. With this as a basis, the paper then identifies circumstances in which EAP materials writers may be
forced to conclude that the better solution is for them to construct their own texts. Because such circumstances may be
somewhat unusual, the contexts and the resultant texts are illustrated in some detail. In the final section, I attempt to
place textual creativity in its EAP context.

2. The search for ‘perfect texts’

A candidate for a perfect text was the introduction to the Almosino article originally discussed in Genre Analysis,
and which begins ‘‘The increasing interest in high-angle-of-attack aerodynamics has heightened the need for
computational tools suitable to predict the flowfield and the aerodynamic coefficients in this regime’’ (Swales, 1990:
143). One of several pedagogically attractive features of this text consisted of the elaborate and nicely-developed five-
sentence depiction of ‘the research gap’ that the Almosino paper would attempt to fill. In consequence, the intro-
duction was used in the first edition of Academic Writing for Graduate Students (Swales & Feak, 1994). However, it
was dropped from the second edition, largely at the insistence of the second author, who argued that her students
‘‘couldn’t get their heads around’’ the obscure content, which in fact dealt with modeling the aerodynamics of fast-
rising fighter jets. Additionally, by the time the second edition came around, the article was already 20 years old.
Another, even older candidate was this one:
Metering Pumps
Metering pumps are positive displacement pumps, driven by constant speed electric motors. They are used
where a constant rate of supply of liquid is required, irrespective of the pressure. The motor, therefore, should
be of such a power that it is not appreciably retarded as the load increases. The delivery is varied by an
adjustment on the pump itself. The metering pump is usually a plunger type pump (Fig. 5.22), incorporating
one or more plungers and the delivery is varied by an adjustment of the length of the stroke. In some cases, the
plungers are replaced by a flexible diaphragm (Fig. 5.5), whose movement can be regulated.
If anybody wants a general-specific text, starting with a definition, then I would suggest that Metering Pumps is, for
intermediate-level EAP purposes, about as perfect as a paragraph can get. The opening specific definition (defining
a type of pump, rather than pumps in general), is followed by two generalizations, one about purpose, the other about
requirementsdand notice how stylish is the third sentence, ‘‘The motor, therefore, should be of such a power that it is
not appreciably retarded as the load increases’’. Then in S4 we have a first qualification signaled by ‘‘usually’’, which
is then followed by the further narrowing to ‘‘In some cases’’. Even though this text may be uninteresting to many, it is
sufficiently brief for this shortcoming not to matter very much. If compensation is needed, Metering Pumps is an
extremely elegant descriptive garment hung from its definitional peg. The paragraph was written at least twenty years
ago, and I no longer have the source, although it can be reasonably presumed to have come from some engineering
textbook. It is one of the few perfect texts that I have ever found in an EAP practitioner working life that spans several
decades. Thus, its rarity underlines the arguments made in this opening section.
 J.M. Swales / Journal of English for Academic Purposes 8 (2009) 5e13 7

3. The dilemma compounded and a possible option

The materials writer’s dilemma is compounded when several texts are required for a particular task or set of tasks.
These exemplars might be used for a summarizing activity of some kind, or for a critical review, or as a discussion
topic designed to illustrate disciplinary differences within a single genre. As the number of texts needed increases, the
time and effort needed to search the available literatures also increases, while the chances of serendipitous encounters
diminish.
In Swales and Lindemann (2002), we described a literature review exercise that required participants to first
develop a schematic architecture for organizing nine short abstracts all dealing with engineering education, and then to
write up a literature review of the material. Here is a sample abstract:
8. Sullivan. P. (1991). Problems in Communication Skills Courses. Journal of Technical Education, 24:
23e40.
A survey of undergraduate technical communication programs in the US (n ¼ 77) suggests that the accept-
ability of the program to both students and faculty does not depend on the quality of the program (as measured
by staff profiles, curriculum analysis, and level of integration with engineering courses) rather, the prime
determinant is engineering faculty support (or otherwise) for the program. The study suggests that the way
forward lies more in canvassing for faculty support than in internal improvements.
The 2002 paper provides an exhaustive description of the setting for the activity, the architectures produced, and the
written responses of 13 participants, along with some follow-up exercises. Further, these pedagogical details have
been situated within a literature survey which suggested that there was something of a ‘‘missing middle’’ between the
macro advice about how to go about the whole enterprise in general (e.g. Michaelson, 1986) and micro advice about
such matters about the placement and form of citations (e.g. Day, 1998), or particularistic accounts of disciplinary
preferences for reporting verbs (Thompson & Ye, 1991; Hyland, 2004) and the like. However, there was little
discussion about where the nine abstracts had actually come from or how they had come into being. In fact, all that was
offered is this coy footnote:
1
In case readers are curious, the nine abstracts were specially constructed for this activity. Nearly all
participants, however, believed that they were authentic. (2000: 111)
What the co-authored paper did not reveal was that I had spent a long time prior to the emergence of the actual
material searching for a set of ‘‘authentic abstracts’’. The requirements for the search had included the following:

 The texts should be sufficiently short and sufficiently comprehensible so that these features per se would not
impede the grouping and ordering of the material and its subsequent write-up in a one-page mini literature
review.
 The texts should deal with post-secondary education in some way, preferably with science and engineering
education, because a majority of the class participants typically came from these areas.
 The texts should describe post-secondary educational activities in a variety of countries so that they would
appeal to the international nature of the class.

This search was unsuccessful, and in the end a decision was made to construct a set of abstracts that would
meet the requirements. In so doing, I was able to adapt and abridge a few of the abstracts that had been found, but
the majority emerged as originals in response to the exigencies that had been set up. Perhaps a solution had been
found to ‘‘The EAP practitioner’s dilemma.’’ Now, of course, it can be argued that such a solution is laborious and
time-consuming, but then, of course so, are extensive searches of published material or texts available on the Web.
While it is also undoubtedly true that quite a lot of thought is required, as well as much drafting and editing, there
were some small compensations. The materials writer (in this newer, more direct sense) can obtain, for instance,
some lighter relief by playing around with the names of the fictitious authors. A number of the authors chosen
were those of previous doctoral students or visiting scholars I had worked with and, for the engineering professor
who was severely critical of ESP-type communication courses for engineering students, I chose the name
‘‘McWrath’’!
8 J.M. Swales / Journal of English for Academic Purposes 8 (2009) 5e13

4. Another approach: the case of ‘‘Joyce’’

A similar dilemma arose when it came to finding material for class and workshop use that would function well to
demonstrate how literature review (LR) texts tended to undergo several drafts before they emerged in anything like
their final shape (c.f. Kwan, 2006; San Miguel & Nelson, 2007) . I reviewed all the print-outs and photocopies of
successive draft LRs and Chris Feak and I had obtained through our teaching of dissertation and writing for publi-
cation classes. Nothing doing; we wanted at least three versions in order to show the changes made and the whys and
wherefores thereof, but, for many of the reasons outlined in the introduction, nothing appeared to be anywhere near
‘‘the perfect texts’’ we had hoped for. It was time to try and exercise my ingenuity and come up with a product that
might serve our purposes; that product turned out to be the story of part of a literature review ostensibly written by
‘‘Joyce’’. In this second case illustration, unlike the one recounted in the previous section, the source material (see
below) was genuine; on the other hand, the story of ‘‘Joyce’’, her dissertation topic, and the three drafts of a section of
her literature review have all been constructed. Here is how the story starts (adapted from Feak & Swales, 2009):
In this section we introduce a case study of Joyce, who is a doctoral candidate in the post-secondary division of
a well-known school of education. She is writing her dissertation on the role and function of the dissertation in
U.S. education. She is still trying to come up with a title.
She has been busy on her literature review. So far, she has drafts of sections on the history of the dissertation in
the United States, the role of graduate schools as ‘‘moderators’’, and how and why U.S. practices and
perceptions may be somewhat different from those elsewhere. Being a diligent scholar, she has now dis-
covereddto her great surprisedthat a number of applied linguists have in recent years been examining the
structures of dissertations (or PhD theses), typically for the purposes of helping students (especially inter-
national students) with this onerous task. Joyce has therefore decided to add a section covering this aspect of
the literature. Her notes of what she has found are given in Task Twenty-Five.
Joyce learned from her reading that there are three types of dissertation: The traditional format, the article-
compilation or ‘‘anthology’’ format, and a topic-based format.
[In the original material, these formats are shown in diagrammatic form, but these are not shown here. Suffice it to
say that the traditional thesis or dissertation looks pretty like a large IMRD paper; the compilation type draws together
a number of related published or to-be-published papers, flanked by introductory and concluding chapters; and the
topic type is fairly traditional, except that the results are broken down into separate ‘topics’. For example, a social
science thesis might examine, in separate chapters, the political, social and economic impacts of some particular
development.]
Now read Joyce’s summaries of her reading and consider these questions.

1. Are all of the studies relevant?

2. How might you group them?
3. Which study (or studies) would you begin with?

A. Dissertation Handbook, Rackham School of Graduate Studies (2005): The University of Michigan
‘‘You may submit as your dissertation a collection of closely-related manuscripts based on research that you have
conducted at the University of Michigan. The body of the dissertation may be composed of published and/or publication
ready manuscripts, and the collection will have a coherent topic or theme . Each manuscript may serve as a chapter and
you may include a bibliography with each chapter or provide only one at the end of the dissertation’’ (p. 20).

B. Dong (1998)
She surveyed graduate students and faculty at U of Georgia and Georgia Institute of Technology in the science
and engineering departments in the mid-1990s. Overall 38 percent of the students were using the article
compilation format as opposed to the traditional IMRD one. The use of the article compilation format was
significantly higher among native speakers than non-native speakers. Graduate students felt that the audience for
the traditional dissertation was the advisor, committee, and colleagues working in the same lab; in the new
 J.M. Swales / Journal of English for Academic Purposes 8 (2009) 5e13 9

anthology format, the audience broadened to a more general scientific community. Also advisors did more of the
actual writing in the anthology format.

C. Stålhammer (1998)
She examined dissertations in social science departments at Gothenberg University in Sweden completed between
1984 and 1993 and found that the anthology format was more common in psychology than in other fields.

D. Bunton (1998)
Bunton analyzed 21 texts, 13 recent PhD theses and 8 M.Phil. theses at the University of Hong Kong. Ten were
from science and technology and 11 from humanities and social sciences. Only 3 of the texts followed the
traditional pattern. Nine were basically article compilation, while the remaining 9 were ‘‘topic-based’’. These last
were all from the social sciences and humanities; all used qualitative approaches and ‘‘report and discuss their
analyses in multiple chapters (ranging from three to seven) with topic-specific titles’’ (p. 110).

E. Thompson (1999)
He examined 14 theses from the school of agriculture at University of Reading, United Kingdom. Only one was
‘‘traditional’’, 7 were article compilations with each of the chapters in IMRD format, while 6 were topic-based.
The agricultural botanists preferred the anthology format, while the agricultural economists largely opted for the
topic-based ‘‘componential format, applying the theoretical models they had developed to a series of case studies.

F. Paltridge (2002)
He examined 15 dissertations from a broad range of fields completed at an Australian university. His data are hard to
interpret, but it looks as though 6 dissertations were traditional and 5 were article compilations and 4 were topic-
based. Since he had only 1 or 2 examples form each field, it is probably risky to draw any disciplinary conclusions.

G. Swales (2004)
Swales surveyed recent dissertations from Mathematics, Physics, and Biology at the University of Michigan. All
of the math ones were traditional, but the others were mostly article compilations. However, there were
considerable internal variations. Of the 8 Physics dissertations, 5 had a consolidated bibliography at the end, one
included references at the end of each chapter, while two did both! In a few cases, the article nature was apparent
from such phrases as ‘‘in this paper, we study .’’, but most writers opted for formulations such as ‘‘in this
chapter, I discuss.’’ These latter he described as ‘‘hybrids’’.

After you have discussed the three questions in pairs or groups, now read Joyce’s first draft:

4.1. First draft

1
It seems that six pieces of research have examined the structure of PhD theses or dissertations. 2Dong (1998)
surveyed graduate students and faculty in science and engineering departments at two universities in the southeast of
the United States, and found on average that 38 percent of the students were using the article compilation or
‘‘anthology’’ format. 3In another study, Stålhammer (1998) found that the compilation format was common in the
psychology department of a Swedish University. 4Other research has been conducted in Hong Kong, Britain, and
Australia. 5Bunton (1998) in Hong Kong reports that nine of the 21 theses he examined were of the article compilation
type, while only three used the traditional format. 6The remaining three were ‘‘topic based’’ in that they contained
several chapters, each dealing with a specific aspect or ‘‘topic’’ of the results. 7This type was particularly common in
qualitative studies in the humanities and social sciences. 8Thompson (1999) focused on the structure of dissertations in
a school of agriculture in southern England and reported similar findings. 9Only one was traditional; seven were article
compilation, while six were topic-based. Paltridge (2002) conducted a similar study in Australia, but with only one or
two texts from each field; he found that the traditional dissertation was more common than in Thompson’s data.
10
Finally, Swales (2004) examined dissertations at a research university in the United States; the mathematics
dissertations were all traditional, while those in physics and biology were mostly article compilations. 11It is worth
noting that the latter option is accepted in the official dissertation handbook of this university.
10 J.M. Swales / Journal of English for Academic Purposes 8 (2009) 5e13

[Although both Joyce and her situation are figments of the materials writer’s imagination, the actual data that she
has ostensibly summarized is drawn from the recent applied linguistics/ESP literature on the structure of the PhD
thesis or dissertation (c.f. Swales, 2004), as many readers will have recognized. Then, participants answer a number of
‘‘rhetorical-consciousness’’ questions in pairs or trios, a selection of which are given below.]

1. How is the literature in this first draft organized?

2. How does Joyce introduce the literature? Does she use integral (part of the sentence) or non-integral (paren-
thetical) citations? What effect does this have on the flow of ideas?
3. What verbs does Joyce use to introduce the different studies? Is there enough variety?
4. In sentence 1 Joyce begins with ‘‘It seems that .’’ Do you think this was a good choice for the opening
sentence? What does the word seem suggest to readers?
5. Joyce uses quite a few quotation marks or scare quotes. Why? What does this tell the readers?
6. Has Joyce included any evaluation of the previous literature? In other words, do we have a sense of what she
thinks about the quality and value of the work?

Finally, the advisor told Joyce that this section of her literature was ‘‘flat and boring’’. In response to this comment,
Joyce produced draft two. What would you expect to find in this second draft?

4.2. Second draft

1
There is, in fact, a small, growing and fascinating collection of recent studies that have examined the structure of
the dissertation. 2Given their limited number, their geographical distribution is amazingly wide. 3There are two studies
from the United States (Dong 1998; Swales 2004) and single studies from Sweden (Stålhammer 1998), Hong Kong
(Bunton 1998), the United Kingdom (Thompson 1999), and Australia (Paltridge 2002). 4We thus have a global
snapshot of what has been going on in recent years in terms of dissertation structure. 5Overall, the findings indicate
that the alternative anthology format is alive and well, especially in science, technology, and engineering. 6According
to Dong (1998), students like this new structure because it is closer to research reality, especially in terms of the fact
that their audience is broadened from their examining committee to the research community at large. 7Clearly, it is
time for the traditional PhD dissertation to be given a decent burial.
Here are some of the advisor’s reactions to this draft. Mark those that you think are reasonable (R) and those that are
unreasonable (U).

___ 1. OK, Joyce, don’t you think this is a bit overly enthusiastic? Do you really think the previous work is
fascinating? And what’s this about a global snapshot? Can you tone it down a bit?
___ 2. I don’t think it’s your place to decide whether the traditional dissertation should be abandoned. I think you
may be losing sight of your purpose.
___ 3. Do you think it really matters for your research work whether students like the new structure? You need to
just focus on the different formats, but not provide such extraneous evaluation.
___4. You haven’t discussed any of the studies. You’ve grouped them together according to country, but is that the
most meaningful way to approach these studies?
___ 5. Try again.

Joyce then retreated to her computer, determined to demonstrate to her advisor that she could do much better.

4.3. Third draft

1
The previous section has shown that there is growing debate about the role and value of the doctoral dissertation as
a ‘‘capstone’’ educational achievement. 2This in turn has led to a growing acceptance of alternatives to the traditional
expanded IMRD format for the dissertation by many university authorities (such as Dissertation Handbook,
University of Michigan, p. 20). 3Perhaps because of these developments, a small, but widely distributed, body of
research has recently emerged that attempts to investigate the actual structure of dissertations in a number of contexts.
 J.M. Swales / Journal of English for Academic Purposes 8 (2009) 5e13 11

4
According to these studies, the main departure from the ‘‘traditional’’ structure would seem to be that of an ‘‘article
compilation’’, sometimes known as an ‘‘anthology’’ type (such as Dong 1998). 5Dong (1998) and Swales (2004)
investigated the situation in the United States, the former finding that in the mid 1990s, 38 percent of the doctoral
dissertations in science and engineering at two institutions had used this alternative format. 6Swales’ survey results
from the University of Michigan suggest that eat least in this institutiondarticle compilations were common in
physics and biology, but not at all used in mathematics. 7He also noted what he called ‘‘hybrids’’ in which articles
prepared for publication took on the appearance of chapters in the dissertation itself.
8
Research elsewhere also points to innovative formats. Stålhammer (1998) investigated social science dissertations
in Sweden and found that the anthology type was common in psychology, but less so in other departments. 9However,
recent studies from other countries (Bunton 1998 in Hong Kong; Thompson 1999 in the United Kingdom; and
Paltridge 2002 in Australia) somewhat complicate the emerging picture. 10One reason for this is that these three
authors add a third category of dissertation, which is usually called ‘‘topic-based’’; in this type, the results are broken
up into several chapters, each with a topic-specific title. 11In Hong Kong this last arrangement was especially preferred
in the social sciences and the humanities; 12in fact, only 3 of Bunton’s 21 dissertations were traditional. 13Thompson’s
(1999) research was more narrowly focused on a single school of agriculture in the United Kingdom, but even there he
found that the agricultural botanists tended to opt for the anthology dissertation, while the agricultural economists
selected a topic-based arrangement. 14Finally, Paltridge (2002) examined 15 dissertations from several fields at an
Australian university, identifying six as traditional, five as article compilations, and four topic-based. 15Caution should
be exercised when attempting to generalize from this data along with that of the other researchers, however, given the
rather small sample number of dissertation examined. 16While the overall data is indicative of possible trends and
disciplinary differences, further work on this topic is necessary.
17
Finally, it is worth noting that these studies have been conducted by discourse analysts and applied linguists,
which perhaps has led to the primary focus on the structure of the texts themselves as opposed to the possible
motivation for adopting one format or another. 18Only Dong (1998) seriously considers the questions of how these
alternative dissertation formats have emerged and what might be the possible effects of choosing one format over
another, for both the advisor and the student. 19It is this latter question, in particular that will be taken up in the next
section, as I turn to the extensive literature on the mentoring relationships in doctoral programs.

1. How does this third draft strike you in terms of Joyce’s positioning as a doctoral student/junior researcher? What
do you think was the reaction of her advisor?
2. How is the information organized in this third draft? Does this make sense to you?
3. Has Joyce succeeded in striking a balance between description and evaluation? Are there any sections that are
particularly well done?
4. How much do the comments at the end of the second paragraph and in the third contribute to Joyce’s ability to
conclude this section of her literature review?
5. Do you think sentences 1 and 19 are useful? Why or why not?
6. Finally, what devices does Joyce use to maintain an overall good flow of ideas?

As it has turned out, The Story of Joyce has so far proved markedly successful, and Chris Feak and I have used it
(either jointly or individually) to considerable effect and approval in workshops and seminars at Michigan, elsewhere
in the U.S., and in several countries overseas, including Cyprus, Turkey, Spain and Malaysia. It works best with
audiences drawn from a range of disciplines, and with those who are either senior graduate students or who are already
academics or researchers. In particular, it comfortably rides over whatever remaining differences there may be between
those who have English as a first language and those who have it as an additional language. Although occasionally
members of the audience have observed that the Joyce material is not intrinsically very interesting, they readily accept
our argument that we had chosen the ‘carrier’ content because it would likely prove relevant and accessible to many,
if only very interesting to few. Finally, in oral settings, we offer ‘‘more racy’’ versions of the advisor’s comments:
Draft 1: ‘‘Joyce this is really ploddingdploddploddplod’’.
Draft 2: ‘‘Joyce, I suspect you had consumed some stimulants when you wrote this.’’
Draft 3: ‘‘Joyce, why don’t we consider co-authoring a paper on this topic?’’
12 J.M. Swales / Journal of English for Academic Purposes 8 (2009) 5e13

5. Textual creativity in reconsidered context

In one respect, this paper has been a (belated) response to the advocacy in Dudley-Evans and Johns (1988) for
creativity on the part of EAP materials providers. The Story of Joyce has been designed in such a way that EAP
practitionersdor at least those who work with graduate studentsdcan approach and handle the content with a fair
degree of confidence and insight. The Story of Joyce is also not without interest in other ways. For example, it is
reasonable to suppose that we could have obtained texts of roughly comparable competence to Draft One from
suitable participants in classes or workshops. Indeed, our experience has been that Draft One, at the stage of its initial
unveiling, in fact often receives a fair amount of guarded approval from those who have just read it. At an early stage in
the evolution of the activity, we did experiment with the alternative of getting students to write up themselves the eight
items dealing with the structure of dissertations. However, after further reflection on our educational experiences with
this activity, we concluded that requiring a writing task at this juncture so slowed down the activity that the comparison
of the three drafts was getting lost in the delayed process. However, other people’s experiences might well be different
if they are interested in building upon reading and writing connections (Hirvela, 2004), or are concerned about
plagiarism/patch-writing (Pecorari, 2006; Flowerdew & Li, 2007), or if they are working in a disciplinary area (such as
higher education studies) where the content would have a more direct relevance.
If Draft One could have been fairly easily engendered from class activity, this would be not the case with Draft Two.
There would have been little hope of finding a contrasting text like that (with all of its journalistic zing), or of
participants producing texts that would work effectively for contrastive purposes. As for the meticulous and inte-
grative Draft Three, again it is probably easier and quicker for the EAP materials provider to construct it himself or
herself, rather than hoping for participants to come up with such a model text, or attempting a complicated collation of
the best elements from many people’s drafts. (Although it took me several drafts to come up with Joyce’s third version,
reactions to it have often had something of ‘‘awe and shock’’ about them and, by this time, whatever lingering thoughts
might remain about the virtues of Draft One have been largely abandoned.)
In this paper, I have advocated occasional invocation of the EAP practitioners’ creative powers to fill gaps in
materials production and curricular design when no amount of searching and sleuthing is likely to produce ‘‘the
perfect text’’, or, even more rarely, a connected series of ‘‘perfect texts.’’ Only in the aside about the abstract authors in
Swales and Lindemann (2000), have I alluded lightly to the sense of enjoyment and self-satisfaction that the creative
academic writing of the kind discussed here can produce. So now I need to admit that the present author takes not
a little pride in putting together the The Story of Joyce and hopes others will use it as and when appropriate in their own
classes, and, more generally, use its example as a springboard for their own EAP creative endeavors.
This last observation raises some broader issues about the relative lack of attention in the ESP literature to
instructor roles and concerns (Watson Todd, 2003) and to learner/participant uptake (Cheng, e.g. 2006). On the former
investigative area, I believe that this piece that this piece is well placed; on the latter, much less so. As Cheng notes,
how learners would actually respond as writers to, say, The Story of Joyce ‘‘is still a less-developed area of research’’
(2006: 76). Although participant responses on evaluation forms may be positive, indeed highly positive, we still know
little about how they might incorporate any insights gained into their own subsequent writing, and, further, why or why
not they might do so. In effect, short-term enthusiasm may not translate into longer-term improvements. An ultimate
reason, therefore, for offering the Joyce materials in their full ‘freeware’ form lies in the hope that it might engender
collaborative research in various venues around the world that will begin to address the lacuna that Cheng (2006) has
so pertinently and clearly identified.

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John M. Swales is Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the University of Michigan, where he was Director of the English Language Institute from
1985 to 2001. In 2009, the University of Michigan Press will publish ‘‘Incidents in an educational life: A memoir (of sorts).’’

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