From the library shelves to an academic journal: a journey of knowledge construction

Students in master’s programs in Colombia need to write research based thesis to obtain their degree. These theses are often socialized only with their academic advisor and the evaluation committee in a presentation at the end of the process. Unfortunately, these works tend to remain in shelves in university libraries or reading rooms and hardly become a resource for the academic community. In this presentation I will report my experience in helping graduate students make visible their research through an academic writing course. I will share the outcomes of this pedagogical experience with a group of Colombian graduate students from a language teacher education program in a public university in Bogotá. The students had recently finished writing their master thesis, but they felt unprepared to share their findings beyond the thesis format. They were interested in learning the genre of scientific writing in order to produce a publishable article for a professional journal. I will focus specifically on the approach I used to introduce academic genre, the challenges that the students and I experienced, and the outcomes attained. The course was organized in fifteen class sessions developed in an academic semester. As the instructor of the course, I guided the students in the writing of the main sections of their manuscript. Additionally, I promoted peer feedback provision, proofread the documents, and provided information about the APA format followed for the publication of the article. Finally, I described to them the process that their article follows when submitted to scientific journals and the challenges of being accepted for publication. This pedagogical experience allowed students to understand the benefits of having a supportive writing community in a learning environment; to experience the challenges of preparing a publishable manuscript for a national professional journal; and to gain awareness on their potential to contribute to the creation of local knowledge in the areas of ELT and Applied Linguistics to TEFL in Colombia