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Journal of English Language Teaching Vol. 9, 1999, pp. 99?103 © 1999 CUHK English Language Teaching Unit INTERVIEW TESOL
Quarterly and Non-native Speaker-Writers: John Flowerdew The following is an edited version of an interview which was conducted by John Flowerdew (JF) with Sandra McKay (SM), editor of TESOL Quarterly from 1994-1999. The interview focuses particularly on contributions by non-native-English-speakers (NNSs) to the journal. The interview was conducted as part of a research project being carried out by John Flowerdew into the writing and publishing processes of NNS Hong Kong academics, especially in the fields of TESOL and applied linguistics. The interview is being published as it is felt that it might be of interest to readers of AJELT who are themselves interested in publishing internationally and for the general insights that it provides from an experienced editor dealing with contributions from both NSs and NNSs. |
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| JF: | What percentage of submissions would you say were from NNSs to your journal? |
| SM: | I would imagine it's like 15 or 20%. It's very, very low. |
| JF: | How about China and Hong Kong? |
| SM: | Yes, out of groups there is a fair amount there. I would say that there would be more from there than places like Thailand and Korea. Hardly any from Africa. The Middle East-a handful over the four years I worked on it. |
| JF: | And those contributions that were NNSs, what sort of acceptance rate do you recall for those? |
| SM: | Very low unfortunately. |
| JF: | Why is that, do you think? |
| SM: | I think a lot of it has to do with the politics of knowledge, just the procedural access for many. Just having library access, having, funds to have good word processing, just creates terrific barriers. A lot of it has to do with the availability of the current research; it's just not available in the library. |
| JF: | Would you see that as more problematic than the language? |
| SM: | Well, I see very little in terms of structural problems. That can easily be done in the editing stage. But familiarity with the discourse. I am thinking of Swales' idea that you really need to create a niche for yourself and you need to show how what you are doing is significant in a larger sense. Often people outside of the US don't build that niche, whereas they have done very good work in their local context. They localize rather than globalize it, and that creates problems. Then it's just this little study rather than this study as an example of a larger issue. |
| JF: | Chinese discourse style is typically more deferential, so do you think that there may be a cultural reason there? |
| SM: | That's hard to say because I would hesitate to say it's cultural. I see that same deferential voice in the NSs in the US who are trying to take their dissertation and now get it published as an article; and they haven't yet made that transition from being a doctoral candidate to a published author. So I think the same kind of thing goes on. Maybe it's to a greater extent. I'm not sure. |
| JF: | Do you handle submissions you get from NNSs in the same way as other submissions? |
| SM: | Yes, in general, except that if they are of a calibre that they warrant review, then I try to get reviewers who have had quite a bit of experience in the EFL context. So people who recognize that there may be different discourse strategies and are more sympathetic and may want to have more of a voice from outside. |
| JF: | So would you say these contributions normally take longer? Perhaps they need more revision? They go back and forth between the editor and contributor? |
| SM: | Yes, although we have a policy on the board, which generally I have upheld, in that there is an initial review, a revision, and perhaps one more revision after that, but not more after that. Part of that is because the board feels the mentoring that is required in such cases is a very taxing thing. Although they see that mentoring should occur, they are not willing to take on that task. It's a large task. |
| JF: | So there is an awareness of the particular problems of NNSs? |
| SM: | Yes, we know that. I guess the idea is that the mentoring should come from the local support system. But then you get the problem in these countries there often aren't the colleagues or resources available in the local context. |
| JF: | One solution is for NSs and NNSs to collaborate. Do you find that? |
| SM: | Yes, there has been some of that, but where I see it is in the context of where it's a doctoral thesis candidate who has done research in their own country and they come and they get their advisor to be first or second author rather than a truly equal collaboration. |
| JF: | Can you think of one or two particular cases where you went through the process maybe one successful and one unsuccessful? |
| SM: | I do remember a NNS Hong Kong submission. It was a quantitative study. There was a very thorough sympathetic review and the revisions came back in less than a month-very superficial revisions. It was sent out to the same reviewer, which is generally the policy we follow. They felt that the review had not been taken to heart. On the other hand, there was almost the opposite, of someone taking a great deal of time going carefully over the revisions and meeting everything, and being successful. So I think it's so important for an individual to take the reviews seriously. I don't mean you have to do everything a reviewer says, but you have to weigh it and decide "should I or shouldn't I," and make an argument as to why they haven't done it. In the case of the first one, if they didn't do what the reviewer asked, they needed to give their reasons for not doing it. |
| JF: | So they should say in the covering letter why they hadn't addressed certain things? |
| SM: | Absolutely, I think the strongest possibility for getting accepted is someone who has taken it point by point and says: "I have addressed this on page 4 paragraph 3. 1 didn't address this because I felt it didn't need to be." Going point by point. |
| JF: | So you think that sometimes there might be some problem when the writer receives the review and it says: "This, this and this needs fixing up. It's not publishable in its current form." Do you think that sometimes people are rather demoralized by that? |
| SM: | Yes, and I think that first sting is going to happen to everybody, no matter how widely they are published. But I keep telling would-be authors: "Put it aside for a while and try to come back to it and try to look at it as objectively as you can and say: 'Yes, this is a warranted suggestion and this one isn't and these are the reasons.'" I don't think that you can come back to it in the initial heat of: "How could you say this about my work?" |
| JF: | Are your reviewers aware of the particular situation of the NNSs or do you sometimes find problems from the reviewers? |
| SM: | No, I think that I have an excellent review board and [some of them] are presently outside of the US or have done a tremendous amount of their work outside the US. So I think they are sensitive to that and very sympathetic. I think as a board we feel strongly that we want to get more voices from outside the US, UK and Canada. I mean, if we are truly an international journal we have just got to broaden that. |
| JF: | Do you have NNSs on your editorial board |
| SM: | We have bilinguals but not NNSs. |
| JF: | Of course the whole idea of NNSs and bilinguals are not categories that people would necessarily accept. |
| SM: | Exactly right. I would really like to get away from NS and NNS. I like the idea of language expertise. What we should do is instead of saying: "You are a NNS," we should say: "What is your area of expertise in the English language?" Because there are some so-called NNSs who are far more knowledgeable--and I don't just mean grammatical knowledge--I mean awareness of crosscultural pragmatics and all kinds of others things that NSs are just not aware of. |
| JF: | Can you think of any other particular positive attributes that NNS writers have? |
| SM: | Well, in terms of the periphery and the centre, the periphery serves an important function because it's there as a questioning mechanism. You know, everyone may jump on the communicative teaching language bandwagon, or everybody will buy tile monitor hypothesis. What the periphery can do is say: "Well, it works there. Let's see if it works here." You know, they provide a healthy questioning and challenging of things that in the so-called centre are assumed to be the right way to do things. I think that is a really healthy thing that they can provide. |
| Q | So you think these writers can take a more critical style? |
| SM: | Absolutely. |
| JF: | What advice would you give to the young Hong Kong applied linguist about getting published? |
| SM: | I think to really see the revision process as part of the process of publication. That they really should see that even the most widely published author isn't going to get published the first time they submit an article. And the other thing is to become part of tile discourse community. That means to do the reading. So look widely at the possible journals you could publish in. Read widely. The reading is essential because then you become part of the discourse community. Then to carefully select the audience that would be most appropriate. |
John Flowerdew's research was supported by Hong Kong University Research Council Competitive Earmarked grant #9040131. John Flowerdew is a professor in the English Department, City University of Hong Kong, where he is currently coordinator of the research degrees programme. He has published widely in most of the leading TESOL and Applied Linguistics journals. For the last several years he has been investigating the writing processes of Hong Kong Cantonese Ll academics writing for publication in English. Sandra Mckay is a professor in the English Department at San Francisco State University and former editor of the TESOL Quarterly. She has published widely in such journal as the Harvard Educational Review, the Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, and Modern Language Journal. Her research interests include language minority education, the teaching of writing and language planning. |
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