TY - JOUR AU - Jomaa, Nayef Jomaa AU - Bidin, Siti Jamilah PY - 2017/12/31 Y2 - 2024/03/29 TI - PERSPECTIVES OF EFL DOCTORAL STUDENTS ON CHALLENGES OF CITATIONS IN ACADEMIC WRITING JF - Malaysian Journal of Learning and Instruction JA - MJLI VL - 14 IS - 2 SE - Articles DO - 10.32890/mjli2017.14.2.7 UR - https://e-journal.uum.edu.my/index.php/mjli/article/view/mjli2017.14.2.7 SP - 177-209 AB - <div><strong>Purpose -</strong>&nbsp;Citation is vital in academic writing but particularly&nbsp;challenging for novice writers who use English as a second or&nbsp;foreign language. While much is known about citations types and&nbsp;functions, scarce knowledge is available about what makes citing a&nbsp;complicated procedure. Hence, this study explores the difficulties in&nbsp;citing and integrating information from academic sources into the&nbsp;literature review chapter of PhD proposals.</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div><strong>Methodology -</strong>&nbsp;The study, which falls under New Rhetoric studies,&nbsp;involved conducting individual discourse-based interviews with&nbsp;six male Arab doctoral students who were selected purposefully&nbsp;from the Information Technology department of a Malaysian&nbsp;public university. The participants’ literature review chapters were&nbsp;employed in a stimulated recall to retrieve their inner perceptions&nbsp;when writing their PhD proposals. Hand analysis, mind mapping,&nbsp;and visual mapping were used in the analysis of the data. Multiple&nbsp;codes were initially obtained and further reduced to form four major&nbsp;themes and several sub-themes.</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div><strong>Findings -</strong>&nbsp;The findings revealed that challenges in citation included&nbsp;addressing the credibility of information in published sources,&nbsp;adopting a stance toward the citations, insufficient knowledge about&nbsp;using citations, and second language difficulties.</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div><strong>Significance -</strong>&nbsp;The findings highlight that EFL Arab students lacked&nbsp;both awareness of using citations and advanced skills in academic&nbsp;writing. Consequently, the study has pedagogical implications&nbsp;in that it points to a need to enhance EFL Arab students’ skills in&nbsp;citing, evaluating, and writing academically. This could be probably&nbsp;achieved through developing discipline-specific teaching materials&nbsp;that take into consideration the different practices of citation in&nbsp;various academic disciplines.</div> ER -