Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Tezleri
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Browsing Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Tezleri by Subject "Academic writing -- Problems, exercises, etc."
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Item Academic writing and the experiences of graduate students and supervisors/advisors :|the case of educational studies(Thesis (Ph.D.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2022., 2022.) Toprak, Ziya.; Caner, Ayşe.; Gök, Fatma.This study questions quality and experiences of graduate writing in the field of educational studies. A typical graduate work has three basic components; the writer, the advisor and the text. By using two-phase research, the present study investigates all three components. The first phase of the research examines the quality of graduate theses written in the field of education studies. The quality examination is done by using a plagiarism detection software with respect to two parameters; similarity and plagiarism. 600 theses and dissertations written in the field of educational studies are analyzed. Findings show that the mean similarity index of the sample is 28.58%, which is significantly higher than the mean threshold. The rate of theses and dissertation having high-level plagiarism is 34.5%. The second phase of the study deals with the experiences and perceptions of academic writing among graduate students, and advisors’ perceptions of academic writing and their advising practices by conducting in-depth interviews. 12 advisors and 24 graduate students are included as participants. MAQXDA, a qualitative data analysis program, is used for the content analysis of interviews. Findings show that advisors and students have a difficulty in grasping requirements of academic writing. Participants regularize and understand from academic writing an epidemic conception of writing, which repeats itself across different cases while making limited contribution. It has been suggested that the genre qualities of academic writing in the field of educational studies can explain the theses and dissertations plagiarized and having originality issues.Item Hedging in academic writing: the use of “can” in university students’ argumentative essays at an English Medium University in Turkey(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2013., 2013.) Tıkaç, Saadet.; Bayyurt, Yasemin.This study aims to shed light on the ways of using hedging devices in academic writing by a group of first year university students studying in the department of English language education at a Turkish state university. The main objective of this study is to explore the nature of hedges and modal auxiliaries with a specific focus on the use of “can” as a hedging device in students’ argumentative essays. The secondary focus of the study is to investigate how student writers build their authorial stance in regard to the argument they develop in their texts. The first data set of the study comprises 22 argumentative essays. The data are collected in the English Composition class. The second data set comprises interviews with the aforementioned student writers who participated in the study. The first data set was analyzed both manually and with the “Simple Concordancing Program”. The second data set was transcribed and analyzed with the qualitative research analysis software, “NVivo”. The results of the study revealed that Turkish students had a tendency to hide their authorial stance with regard to the argument they developed in their essays through use of various hedging devices. When the functions of the modal verb “can” were analyzed, it was observed that the frequency of use of “can” as an ability marker was higher than the use of “can” as a possibility marker. In addition, in the interviews, the students stated that they did not receive explicit instruction on different functions of “can” except its use as an ability marker in their earlier English language learning experience.