Yongyan Li

• PhD
• The University of Hong Kong

This paper presents a thematic review of the anti-plagiarism instruction of content specialists as reported in a range of articles published in the decade of 2014–2023. A total of 28 articles were identified through systematic searching and a ChatGPT-assisted selection process based on a set of inclusion criteria. Specifically, we aimed to include...

外界往往把当代中国社会存在的抄袭现象与“中国文化”联系起来，认为抄袭是传统上在一定程度上被接受的一种文化现象。然而事实上，在中国历史上对抄袭、剽窃行为的谴责和鞭挞可以追溯至上古。文章认为，在当今学术规范建设的事业中，有必要从传统典籍中汲取营养。文章报告的研究之目的在于对抄袭、剽窃在中国历史上一以贯之地受到批判这一事实提供系统而明确的历史语言学证据。文章以《中国基本古籍库》里的相关检索行为语料，结合传统训诂学方法和现代语义学方法，分析了“抄袭”、“剿(勦) chāo袭”及“剽窃”这三个词项从上古到晚近的义项，归纳出各自上下文语境义的类别。结果发现，这三个词项在《古籍库》中，共有2725例(即总和147例“抄袭”、988例“剿(勦) chāo袭”与1590例“剽窃”)表达“窃取他人的语言文字成果...

Despite growing interest in exploring the application of chatbots in language education, studies on the process of chatbot-assisted language learning are scant. This qualitative study uses activity theory to understand how English as a foreign language students engage with a chatbot, Argumate, when composing argumentative essays. Five Chinese under...

Feedback processes are crucial in doctoral supervision but require adaptation to meet the changing nature of the doctorate, and increasing impetus to publish during the candidature. This study builds on concepts of authentic feedback and feedback literacy to chart possibilities for the development of feedback socialization in doctoral education. Se...

Teachers in Anglophone universities have often attributed Chinese ESL students’ plagiarism to “cultural difference”, the implication being that what is considered plagiarism in the English-speaking world may not be seen as plagiarism in China. We believe this assumption needs to be questioned on the basis of systematic evidence gathered from the lo...

In L1 writing instruction, imitation pedagogy is potentially practiced in different parts of the world, yet there has been very little communication among practitioners and researchers on this topic. In the study to be reported in this paper, we aimed to answer the question “How is imitation recommended as a writing pedagogy in a sample of books on...

It has been assumed sometimes that plagiarism is traditionally accepted in Confucian-heritage cultures such as China. In this paper we provide evidence to counter such a view. Focusing on a corpus of editorial statements on plagiarism cases published in Chinese journals in the decade of the early 1950s-the early 1960s, we present an integrated genr...

A considerable body of studies on neoliberalism in higher education has conducted macro-level philosophical analyses regarding the effects of assessment regimes on university management. This article expands the literature by providing an important set of empirical findings pertaining to Hong Kong universities’ coping strategies in preparing their...

Collective academic supervision (CAS) is a collective model for students' academic supervision to reduce their isolation and as a measure to establish a congenial culture and to develop networks with their peers. Most studies focus on the benefits of online CAS, leaving the pedagogical process and students' learning experiences understudied. This r...

The impact of neoliberalism in higher education has been widely discussed and debated, yet most analyses have viewed the changes on university governance and academic work in different countries as slavishly bound by more global neoliberal factors without paying sufficient attention to the local contextual factors. This empirical study foregrounds...

Partnership with content teachers is sought after by EAP practitioners working in many contexts. However, such a partnership has not been a common phenomenon in EAP practice. In the Chinese context, the traditional institutional structure which maintained compartmentalization of disciplines did not encourage language-content dialogue. A review of t...

Existing studies on writing for publication have focused on doctoral students and junior scholars, leaving those non-native English-speaking (NNES) Master's students understudied. This article presents a case study of the challenges and coping strategies shared by the six purposively selected NNES Master's students, who have each successfully publi...

Academics and research students around the world have increasingly come under pressure to publish in high-ranking English-medium international journals. At the same time, it has been widely recognised that English for Research Publication Purposes (ERPP) pedagogical support can be crucial to the publication success of those scholars and students wh...

Purpose Learning to do research has been understudied in the context of professional development in postgraduate programs. This exploratory study investigated the agency and experiences of five Chinese students who learned to design their research project in a Master of Education program at an English-medium university in Hong Kong SAR. Design/App...

In China, it has been widely recognized that graduate students urgently need to develop capabilities in engaging in academic communication at the international level, above all through writing and publishing their research in English. This educational need has stimulated the growth of EAP and the teaching of English academic writing (EAW) to gradua...

This paper reports a case study of the manifestation of the teaching-research nexus in a research-active professor’s classroom teaching of a research methods course targeting a cohort of Master of Education (MEd) students in early childhood education (ECE). The study was conducted at a research-intensive English-medium university in Hong Kong where...

With the continuous development of the "Double World-class" project for China’s higher education, there is an increasing demand for English for Ｒesearch Publication Purposes ( ERPP) courses in Chinese universities. This paper reviews the international English-medium research on EＲPP instruction, and elaborates on three major approaches to ERPP inst...

Interdisciplinary collaboration, in the sense of partnership between English language teachers and content teachers, is significant for enhancing university students’ English-medium academic success. It has long been advocated, but it has not become a common phenomenon in higher education institutions. The present article aims to synthesize what ha...

Genre-oriented graduate-level research writing instruction is increasingly being implemented in universities around the world, to cater for the widely-felt demand to provide graduate writing support to student populations of immensely diverse compositions. In China, where research writing instruction for graduate students across disciplines is urge...

Interdisciplinary collaboration, i.e., collaboration between language professionals and content specialists, has long been called for as a valuable mechanism for supporting students' academic literacy development. Nevertheless, such partnership, in particular in the form of classroom team-teaching, has been rarely found; and the role of content spe...

Dr Patrick O’Connor is a scientist based in Adelaide, Australia [...]

Mentoring junior scientists for research publication is a time-honored practice in academia. This chapter aims to take stock of pertinent literature to shed light on such mentorship. A broad scope of relevant literature will first be outlined; findings from a series of qualitative case studies, carried out in the tradition of EAP/writing research,...

Within ESP/EAP, compared with the large volume of corpus-informed discourse analytic research, there is only limited literature featuring the actual classroom discourse, or more specifically, the ESP/EAP practitioners' teaching itself. Such classroom-based research, however, can significantly inform the preparation of ESP/EAP teachers. In this pape...

A transnational vision for writing education has highlighted the problem of valuable non-English publications being occluded to the wider readership, and the urgency of addressing the situation. This chapter presents an overview of a body of Chinese-medium literature on the teaching of English academic writing to non-English major graduate students...

As a response to intensified globalization, international research collaboration has become common in the social sciences. This paper reports a study that examined what Chinese management academics and their overseas counterparts perceived to be the benefits and challenges arising from research collaboration with each other. Data collected with two...

Teachers’ instructional practices surrounding written assignments have been little researched, despite writing remaining the primary means of assessment in higher education, including postgraduate professional development programmes. In this paper, we report a study that explored what a sample of lecturers in a Master of Education programme at an E...

In Hong Kong schools, source-based writing has risen in prominence in recent years with the incorporation of inquiry project-based learning (PjBL) into the curricula. Understanding how school students write from sources in this context will constitute a crucial step toward identifying potential problems and targeting educational strategies. In this...

In this paper we report a study which was aimed to find out how overseas-trained Chinese management academics (CMAs) compare with their home-trained counterparts in English-medium scholarly experience. Our data were drawn from a web-based questionnaire distributed following the conclusion of the biennial conference of the International Association...

Little research has been conducted on writing-related issues in Master's level postgraduate professional development (PPD) programs. In such contexts lecturers' responses to student writing make a particularly worthwhile subject of research, as they reveal assumptions about valid knowledge surrounding the relationship between academia and the profe...

The value of including a research component in medical students’ training programs has been widely recognized. Nevertheless, examples of how this may be done are rarely found in the literature. The case study reported in this short paper aimed to address this gap in the literature by investigating how a group of postgraduate students attached to th...

In this conceptual paper, we address the problem that novice scholars in social sciences sometimes have in constructing conceptual or theoretical frameworks for their dissertations and papers for publication. In the first part of the paper, we discuss why the topic is important in the high pressure environment that novice scholars face, in which fi...

In this paper I discuss some constraints and implications in accessing fellow academics as research participants, a topic that has rarely been addressed thus far in the literature. I will point out that a lack of cooperation from fellow academics may defeat our research purposes, and will survey some studies involving U.S., European, and Chinese ac...

Publishing English papers in journals listed in Science Citation Index (SCI) has become a requirement for degree conferment for doctoral science students at many universities in China. The publication requirement engenders high pressure for doctoral students and their supervisors and shapes the politics of the relationship between the two parties....

China’s medical research has been growing in visibility at the international level in recent years. Contributing to this development is the English-publishing policy now often found in the country’s major hospitals. In this paper, I report a study conducted at the Orthopedics Department of a major hospital in east China. Based on interviews with el...

In hospitals around the world it is common to find clinician researchers who play the dual roles of clinician and researcher. In major Chinese hospitals, the young generation of clinical doctors, especially those who hold a doctoral degree, is commonly expected to stay research-active. The study reported in this article was conducted at a major hos...

Despite calls for more research into the writing expertise of senior scientists, the literature reveals surprisingly little about the writing strategies of successful scientist writers. The present paper addresses the gap in the literature by reporting a study that investigated the note-taking strategies of an expert writer, a Chinese professor of...

Research on how EAL academics in the social sciences engage in international publication has been limited. The case of EAL management academics is potentially interesting because the international standard-seeking business schools around the world, including those in China, are increasingly subscribing to journal ranking systems in which North Amer...

Much of the previous research concerning student plagiarism has been conducted in Anglo-American settings. The present paper reports a case study of academic staff's perspectives upon student plagiarism at a university in Hong Kong. Based on interviews with 16 instructors, the study focused on the teachers' views and pedagogical practices, includin...

How university students write from sources has been an issue of long-standing interest among researchers of advanced academic literacy. Previous research in this regard in the context of L2 writing has tended to focus on novices' textual borrowing; less attention has been given to exploring the potential light that theories from other intellectual...

Reporting a case study of two high-achieving Chinese students studying at a university in Hong Kong, this paper presents evidence that poses an anti-thesis to the stereotypes of first year university students as holding naïve beliefs about learning and of ‘Chinese learners’ as lacking in critical thinking. Many studies have examined Chinese student...

In the literature on academic publishing, little attention has been paid to the needs and concerns of non-English-speaking researchers in professional contexts. This paper addresses the gap in that literature by providing insights into the situation with medical doctors in China. Following an overview of the broad picture, I will report a case stud...

With the Internet-evoked paradigm shift in the academy, there has been a growing interest in students’ Web-based information-seeking and source-use practices. Nevertheless, little is known as to how individual students go about searching for sources online and selecting source material for writing particular assignments. This exploratory study focu...

In this paper we report a case study of two first-year students at a university in Hong Kong doing the same writing assignment that required the use of sources. We explore the students’ understanding of plagiarism, their strategies for composing, the similarity between their texts and source texts, and the lecturer's assessment of their work. The a...

Text-based plagiarism, or copying language from sources, has recently become an issue of growing concern in scientific publishing. Use of CrossCheck (a computational text-matching tool) by journals has sometimes exposed an unexpected amount of textual similarity between submissions and databases of scholarly literature. In this paper I provide an o...

English as an Additional Language (EAL) students’ textual borrowing in disciplinary writing has attracted wide research interest in recent years. However, much of the research was conducted in the regular curriculum setting while the relevance of the issue in a writing-for-publication context has largely been overlooked. In particular, disciplinary...

As is the worldwide trend, scientists in China face strong and increasing pressure to publish their research in international peer-reviewed journals written in English. There is an acute need for graduate students to develop the required language skills alongside their scientific expertise, in spite of the distinct division currently existing betwe...

Text-based plagiarism, or textual copying, typically in the form of replicating or patchwriting sentences in a row from sources, seems to be an issue of growing concern among scientific journal editors. Editors have emphasized that senior authors (typically supervisors of science students) should take the responsibility for educating novices agains...

The Academic Word List (AWL) (Coxhead, 2000) was a word list systematically established on the basis of a computerized academic corpus. The 570 word families, which supposedly represent high-frequency academic words across a range of disciplines, have provided valuable reference for vocabulary pedagogy, while inspiring the development of some more...

It has been recognized that English as the language of international scholarship represents a more complex picture in the humanities and social sciences (HSS) than in science and engineering, with multilingual scholars in the HSS often negotiating international engagement and local commitment by publishing both in English and their first language....

Within a global trend of the anglicization of academic publishing, in the humanities and social sciences (HSS) publication in indigenous languages, nevertheless, in many contexts, continues to thrive. Given that the overall anglicization of academic publishing tends to be negotiated at the local level, this study seeks to discover how a potentially...

Researchers of scholarly literacy are becoming more aware that a published research article, especially if it is written by an English as an Additional Language (EAL) author, needs to be viewed as a product involving a range of “shapers” who participate in the editorial process (e.g., Burrough-Boenisch, 2003). Drawing on data gathered over a period...

Little is known about what an apprentice scholar in a non-Anglophone context undergoes when writing a research article for publication in English-medium journals. This study highlights “a rich notion of agency” by examining a nonnative-English-speaking graduate student's engagement with his community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998)...

This is a sociopolitically-oriented qualitative case study [Casanave, C. P. (2003). Looking ahead to more sociopolitically-oriented case study research in L2 writing scholarship (But should it be called “post-process”?). Journal of Second Language Writing, 12, 85–102.] of the writing-for-publication experience of an NNSE (nonnative speaker of Engli...

Despite the rich literature on disciplinary knowledge construction and multilingual scholars’ academic literacy practices, little is known about how novice scholars are engaged in knowledge construction in negotiation with various target discourse communities. In this case study, with a focused analysis of a Chinese computer science doctoral studen...

The present paper examines the disciplinary enculturation experience of a Chinese doctoral student. I first refer to Lave and Wenger’s (1991) concept of legitimate peripheral participation (LPP) as the theoretical background of this study. I then present the case of Fei, a doctoral student of physics in a major university in East China, focusing on...

Research and publication is an important means for the professional development of an academic in higher education, but the CPD literature on academics has tended to focus on their role as "teachers", neglecting the "researcher" part of their identity. The global knowledge-based economy has facilitated marketisation of academy where "quantifiable"...