Many hats: expanding repertoires in academic communication

To communicate their research to others and advance their careers, academics must wear many hats. Young scholars operating in English in addition to their native language often need linguistic and cultural support in developing those hats and becoming, as per the Open University’s PACE program (directed by METM24 keynote speaker Julia Molinari), “confident and engaging communicators”. Being multi-hatted facilitators of communication ourselves, sensitive to genre and register and versed in cross-cultural differences, we are well placed to provide training to multilingual scholars. The aim of Maria Sherwood-Smith’s engaging presentation was to help us explore how we might do that.

Maria first chronicled how academics’ communicative repertoires have changed. Twenty-odd years ago, scholars mainly had to write for peers (i.e. scholarly articles, reviews and books) and speak at specialist conferences, plus write grants, abstracts, CVs and biographical statements. Whatever explicit instruction young scholars received was haphazard: they learned what their supervisors and peers passed on.

Today’s landscape is different. Given the proliferation of dissemination platforms and expectations to work across disciplines, involve societal stakeholders in research, and communicate findings to lay audiences, academics must be proficient in more communicative repertoires and engage a variety of audiences. To illustrate, Maria took a (web)page from a Dutch researcher’s online profile: along with the traditional academic tasks of publishing and presenting at conferences, this researcher routinely juggles an array of genres and audiences: she maintains a lab website, writes for blogs and platforms like The Conversation, appears in media outlets and on podcasts, and runs a YouTube channel – all in her native Dutch and in English. Although instruction in communication is better and more formalized, not all scholars have access to it, nor are all needs adequately addressed. These gaps are our opportunity to help.

Maria introduced Swales and Feak’s distinction between open and supporting genres. Open genres are outward-facing, like the activities listed in the previous paragraph. Supporting genres are activities that constitute the building blocks of an academic career; these include cover letters, peer review responses and the above-mentioned grants, CVs, and biographical statements. To those Maria added a third category, academic life skills, to address needs like networking at conferences and understanding the writing process. The three categories help us identify our clients’ communicative needs, pinpoint our expertise, and craft – or refresh – training offers that meet those needs.

Maria then described the group training she runs for early-career researchers at her university. Here’s a quick glance; see Maria’s slides in the METM25 archive (sign-in required) for details:

• Presenting in English to non-specialist audiences (open genre); scholars practice giving 5-minute or 10-minute talks at a PhD defense to a lay audience; sharing their research with a multidisciplinary audience (e.g. funding panel) via poster + 2-minute pitch. The goal is to craft a core message the audience can easily understand and remember; attention is paid to structure and clarity (non-specialist vocabulary; pronunciation, e.g. word stress, devoicing).
• Writing academic emails and CVs (supporting genre); scholars practice polite language for inquiries, cultural differences in what is/isn’t included.
• Writing Quest game (academic life skills), developed by Maria and a colleague; a clever way to engage scholars in awareness and discussion of the writing process while moving through “three colour-coded stages on the journey to Submission Summit”.

The discussion that followed was also enlightening. Those outside universities might begin by talking to graduate schools or research centers. Even at institutions that provide in-house support, training is fragmented, and external and internal training providers may find a foothold. A final but important caveat was to be aware that some universities will try to claim your content as theirs; ensure that whatever you develop remains yours.

This METM25 presentation was chronicled by Wendy Baldwin.

Featured photo by METM25 photographer Julian Mayers.