Developing Russian Phd Students’ Academic Culture in EAP Courses for International Communication and Co-Operation

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This paper focuses on the under-researched genre of PhD supervision meetings (but see Vehviläinen, Sanna. 2009a. Problems in the research problem: Critical feedback and resistance in academic supervision.Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research53[2]. 185–201; Vehviläinen, Sanna. 2009b. Student-initiated advice in academic supervision.Research on Language and Social Interaction42[2]. 163–190; Björkman, Beyza. 2015. PhD supervisor–PhD student interactions in an English-medium Higher Education [HE] setting: Expressing disagreement.European Journal of Applied Linguistics3[2]. 205–229; Björkman, Beyza. 2016. PhD adviser and student interactions as a spoken academic genre. In K. Hyland & P. Shaw [eds.],The Routledge handbook of English for Academic Purposes, 348–361. Oxon: Routledge; Björkman, Beyza. 2017. PhD supervision meetings in an English as a Lingua Franca [ELF] setting: Linguistic competence and content knowledge as neutralizers of institutional and academic power.Journal of English as a Lingua Franca6[1]. 111–139) and investigates knowledge construction episodes in PhD students’ discussions with their supervisors on their co-authored papers. In these meetings, all supervisors and students use English as their lingua franca (ELF). Such supervision meetings are made up of “social negotiation” and “collaborative sense-making,” providing a good base for learning to take place (Vygotsky, L. S. 1978.Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), which in the present context is the “enculturation” of the PhD student into the research community (Manathunga, Catherine. 2014.Intercultural postgraduate supervision: Reimagining time, place and knowledge. New York: Routledge). It is precisely these negotiation and collaborative sense-making practices that the present paper focuses on, in order to investigate knowledge construction practices. While there is an abundance of research in disciplinary knowledge construction and academic literacy practices from cognitive and behavioral sciences, knowledge about novice scholars’ knowledge construction practices is scant in applied linguistics (but see Li, Yongyan. 2006. Negotiating knowledge contribution to multiple discourse communities: A doctoral student of computer science writing for publication.Journal of Second Language Writing15[3]. 159–178). Even less is known about how PhD students may negotiate knowledge construction and engage in meaning-making practices in interaction with their supervisors. The material comprises 11 hours of naturally occurring speech by three supervisors and their students where they discuss the reviewers’ comments they have received from the journal. The predominant method employed here is applied conversation analysis (CA) (Richards, Keith & Paul Seedhouse [eds.]. 2005.Applying conversation analysis. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), which includes both local patterns of interaction as well as “the tensions between [these] local practices and any ‘larger structures’ in which these are embedded, such as conventional membership categories, institutional rules, instructions, accounting obligations, etc.” (Have, Paul ten. 2007.Doing conversation analysis. London: Sage 199). The analyses here aim to show how the PhD supervisors and students discuss the reviewers’ comments with reference to (i) their own disciplinary community of climate science, and (ii) the domestic discourse community of the target journals (see also Li, Yongyan. 2006. Negotiating knowledge contribution to multiple discourse communities: A doctoral student of computer science writing for publication.Journal of Second Language Writing15[3]. 159–178). The preliminary findings of the analyses show a tendency by the PhD students to focus more heavily on the domestic discourse community of the target journals, especially when justifying their methodological choices. The PhD supervisors, on the other hand, base their meaning-making on the conventions of the disciplinary community of climate science, pointing out broader disciplinary community practices. These findings, highlighting a need to focus on novice scholars’ meaning-making efforts, can be used to inform PhD supervision in general.

Issue 63 of the Rhetoric and Communications journal is dedicated to themes that align with the publication’s philosophy and editorial policy, specifically rhetoric, as well as pedagogical, academic, and intercultural communication. This issue features nine scholarly contributions, categorized into distinct sections following the established editorial traditions of previous issues. The first section explores two interconnected themes: rhetoric and pedagogical communication. Foteini Egglezou, President of the Hellenic Institute of Rhetorical & Communication Studies and an expert in pedagogy, presents best practices in rhetoric education at the elementary school level in Greece, including the organization of festivals and the development of public speaking, argumentation, and debating skills. Svetla Tsankova introduces a novel topic concerning media literacy, with findings based on research conducted in the early stages of the Bulgarian education system. Ilyan Vasilev offers a distinctive perspective on education by presenting research on how technical disciplines can incorporate and enhance communicative and cognitive skills within the pedagogical discourse. Irena Shunina discusses fundamental principles of pedagogical communication based on Thomas Gordon’s methodology and examines its potential for effective teaching. The second section comprises four studies focusing on academic and intercultural communication. Katya Issa analyzes communication and eloquence within academic environments, emphasizing the factors influencing dialogicity and the role of ethics in this specialized communicative sphere. Tiha Boncheva investigates the impact of artificial intelligence on academic communication, offering a contemporary analysis of its evolving parameters. Radeya Gesheva highlights the intersection of academic and intercultural communication in the context of university education, particularly in the didactics of Italian literature. Jo Joseph examines business communication in the IT sector across multiple continents, identifying national characteristics and intercultural perspectives. Denitsa Hinkova systematically presents the roles and functions of academic conferences and research centers, emphasizing creativity, innovation, and future-oriented dimensions. Her scholarly work is included in the section Contemporary Research Methods on Artificial Intelligence. Prof. DSc. Tsvetan Davidkov is a lecturer at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, where he teaches courses in national and organizational cultures, management fundamentals, entrepreneurship, and organizational behavior. His academic research focuses on intercultural communication, business communication, entrepreneurship, and organizational culture. He has published numerous monographs, textbooks, and articles, including National and Organizational Cultures (2009), The Values of Wealth: Entrepreneurs in Bulgaria (1991-2004) (2009), and Studies on Cultures: Cultural Guidelines for Management (2019). His co-authored work with Iya Petkova-Gurbalova, Master’s Thesis: Theory, Practice, Challenges – Chapter 3: General Structure of the Master’s Thesis, provides a comprehensive structural framework for academic writing (2020). Prof. Yovka Tisheva is a Doctor of Philology and a member of the Department of Bulgarian Language at the Faculty of Slavic Philology, Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”. She lectures on academic and business communication for undergraduate and graduate students in the Faculty of Slavic Philology and the Faculty of Philosophy, alongside courses in linguistics. Her research interests include academic and business communication, oral and written communication, and linguistic pragmatics. She has authored several books and articles, including Academic Communication (2010), Academic Writing for Doctoral and Postdoctoral Students (2014), and From Abstract to Master’s Thesis: Academic Writing for Students (2016), co-authored with Ivanka Mavrodieva. Issue 63 of the Rhetoric and Communications journal (April 2025) is published with the financial support of the Scientific Research Fund, Contract No. KP-06-NP6/48, dated December 4, 2024. Rhetoric and Communications Journal, issue 63, April 2025 Read the Original in Bulgarian and English

Strategies used by nurses, academics and students to overcome intercultural communication challenges

This study is part of a larger project that examines a school-wide peer support scheme conducted in a higher education institution in the UK. Through providing peer mentoring from PhD students to postgraduate taught (PGT) students, this project addressed the need to enhance international student experience. This study focused on PhD students’ perspectives, and data were collected from three sources: PhD participants’ (n = 7) reflective journals, mid-way focus group discussion, and related documents. Thematic analysis was adopted to analyse the data. Key findings of the study include the community-building scheme yielded reciprocal benefits for the two sides of communication: both PGT and PhD students gained benefits in terms of academic, psychological, and intercultural communication and experience. Findings were detailed in topics that international students were commonly confronted with. In addition, the benefits and challenges that PhD students reported were scrutinised in order to provide suggestions for further peer support initiatives.

In her fictional narrative Bir Gün, Gece, the Turkish writer Mine G. Kırıkkanat depicts the consequences of a devastating earthquake which happens in İstanbul, followed by another in İzmit. The crisis immediately becomes an international disaster issue with the involvement of international aid providers. In such a crisis scenario in which effective communication is crucial, the main characters of the narrative act both as intercultural speakers and crisis sojourners. They need to have intercultural communicative competence (ICC) as well as crisis communication competencies for coping with the disaster. Therefore, intercultural crisis communication, which combines the fields of intercultural communication and crisis communication, should be studied in order to understand the intercultural communication processes in the best way. However, there is a lack of studies which focus on the ICC aspect of intercultural crisis communication. In order to contribute to filling this gap, this paper integrates thematic analysis with critical discourse analysis to provide an interpretation of the novel Bir Gün, Gece from the perspective of ICC. The study reveals that the most effective communicative practices of ICC displayed in the face to face intercultural interactions of the main characters in the novel are related to the knowledge, skills and critical cultural awareness dimensions. Moreover, the mostly addressed competencies of intercultural crisis communication which contribute to ICC appear to be language proficiency and managing conflict. It is suggested that intercultural crisis communication should be investigated more in terms of its crucial dimension of ICC.

The present study explores the challenges of lingua franca intercultural communication in Asia Pacific in view of non-native speakers’ communicative (phonetic) competence in English. With the eastward shift of the global economy, and the advancement of English as the intermediary language in East Asia, strong demands in achieving high English proficiency have been imposed upon non-native interlocutors involved in lingua franca communication in the region. However, East Asian mesolect speakers of English tend to demonstrate particular features in their accent, which may somehow impede communication. The authors proceed from the assumption that accent in late bilingualism may be attributed to cognitive constraints mandatory for processing linguistically important phonological information of the speakers’ native language, and, thus, should be viewed as a likely feature of non-native (L2) phonetic competence, i.e. phonetic organization of speech by functional language users. Phonetic competence, treated in the present article as part and parcel of overall human ability to communicate, is regarded especially important in the context of intercultural interaction via intermediary language. Given the intrinsic relation between the sound system of the language and mental structures (mapping of sound representations and meanings), as well as cognitive and mental computational processes characteristic of human speech, the role of phonetic means is argued to be vital for achieving real-life communicative goals, such as conveying a message, signaling interrupting, asking for clarification, changing the subject, concluding an argument, etc. The findings of the research on intelligibility of East Asian English accent, which involved a shadowing experiment with participation of non-native and native speakers of English, and of the survey on East Asian English comprehensibility, are presented. The importance of developing L2 phonetic competence and perceptual adaptation strategies in lingua franca intercultural communication is discussed.

This chapter explores how literary reading may contribute to a reconceptualization of intercultural competence as an educational goal through a focus on conflict, ambiguity and imagination. According to hermeneutic theory and the reader reception tradition of literary theory, the process of interpreting a text is a dialogical, negotiative experience that leads to a gradual expansion of the reader’s perspective. From this viewpoint, the reading of Foreign Language (FL) literature may be regarded as a form of intercultural communication. With a basis in Byram’s model of intercultural communicative competence (ICC) and the concept of the ‘intercultural speaker’, the chapter focuses on what distinguishes reading from real-time communication in order to define the qualities of a profoundly engaged, analytical and imaginative ‘intercultural reader’. A descriptive model of ‘the intercultural reader’s’ engagement with FL literature is proposed. This model shows how the text interpretation process may operate at three, interlinked levels of communication, each of which involves the ‘intercultural reader’s’ emotions as well as her cognition. At all three levels, she considers the effects of the narrative style and structure of the text as well as the cultural, social and historical subject positions of text(s) and reader(s). Furthermore, the chapter shows how the text interpretation process may take place across notions of time and place, involving varying degrees of critical and abstract thinking. It also provides a practical example of how the fostering of such ‘intercultural readers’ may take place in the FL classroom. In doing so, the chapter sheds light on aspects of the reader-FL text relationship on which Byram’s model of ICC, as well as other theoretical perspectives on reading and intercultural competence, are unclear. Finally, it brings attention to the complexities of intercultural communication and the need to promote young individuals’ ability to handle conflict and ambivalence in a constructive, creative manner.

Aim/Purpose: This article explores the content of PhD student tweets. It has three main aims: (a) to examine what is discussed regarding the PhD process, (b) to evaluate whether tweets express primarily positive or negative sentiments, and (c) to uncover the key themes discussed in both positive and negative tweets. Background: Recent surveys of PhD students have raised concerns about their wellbeing by pointing to high prevalence rates of adverse mental health conditions. However, our understanding of which factors pose the highest risks is still evolving. Self-selection into surveys also raises the possibility of discounting positive aspects of the PhD experience. We use a different data source (Twitter) to explore both these issues. Methodology: Using 16,928 tweets with the Twitter hashtags #phdlife and #phdchat, we first conduct dictionary-based sentiment analysis in R to determine whether tweets are dominated by positive or negative sentiment. We then hand-code the dominant sentiment of a randomly selected subset of 1,994 tweets and qualitatively analyse positive and negative tweets separately to uncover the key themes in each category. Contribution: This article contributes to the emerging literature on the wellbeing and mental health of PhD students by using a novel data source (tweets). It highlights both positive and negative aspects of the PhD student experience. Findings: We find that most tweets express positive rather than negative sentiment, indicating that PhD students do enjoy many aspects of their experience. Negative tweets are dominated by mental health concerns. They also highlight problems with academic culture (especially the normalization of overwork) and the effects of the pandemic on students. Recommendations for Practitioners: Our results indicate that there is a need to change the academic culture of normalizing overwork, ensure adequate institutional provision of mental health support and ability to spot signs of emotional distress, devise strategies to combat the imposter phenomenon, and respond to the particular challenges that the pandemic has created for PhD students. Recommendation for Researchers: The authors recommend that future research explore the specific challenges and opportunities faced by PhD students in different disciplines and geographical locations. As the data used here were collected during the pandemic, it would be useful to track post-pandemic sentiments to observe changes. Impact on Society: Improving the graduate experience of PhD students and providing them adequate mental health support will help to ensure their continued productivity and wellbeing. Future Research: Future research in this area should focus on the efficacy of different interventions to address key problems, such as the imposter phenomenon, stress, anxiety, depression, and isolation.

Higher education has provided a set of curriculum to equip graduates with complete skill sets to enter the industry. Hard skills, as well as soft skills, are inseparable components for graduates to acquire. Industries today have rapidly changed due to the advancement of technology. Almost every aspect of life is going digital; therefore, graduates have to adapt to the simultaneous and continuous changes. In this situation, intercultural communication competence is one of the skills that will accommodate the fresh graduate to face and overcome challenges in the industry, especially in the VUCA era. All industrial players should adapt to the working cultures and adopt the advanced technological changes. This study explores the experience of fresh graduates in the industry regarding intercultural communication challenges and their coping strategies to overcome the situations. The phases of their adaptation towards the work environment will be addressed as well to understand the context better. Interviews were conducted to explore and understand their experience which eventually categorised to identify strategies that could accommodate the continuously changing situation. This study will contribute to the preparation of graduates to enter the workforce as the study found that there are three main challenges faced among fresh graduates regarding skill mismatch, lack of experience, and career adaptability. Furthermore, intercultural communication competence has contributed to their adaptation and coping strategies towards those challenges in their first job. Keywords: Intercultural competence, fresh graduate, soft skills, VUCA, coping strategies.

According to the latest figures, the increase in English-taught programs in European Higher Education (HE) has been tremendous at a growth rate of 500% since 2002 (Wachter and Maiworm 2014). In all these HE institutes, English serves as the main lingua franca for students and staff. The present paper reports from such a HE setting in Sweden and focuses on how disagreement is expressed in PhD supervisor-PhD student supervision meetings, a spoken genre largely neglected in the study of spoken academic discourse. The material comprises digitally-recorded, naturally-occurring speech adding up to approximately seven hours, all by PhD supervisors and students from different L1 backgrounds, who all use English as a lingua franca. All recordings have been transcribed, and the instances of disagreement have been analysed by a mixed-methods approach, drawing on Conversation Analysis (CA). The results show, first of all, that the PhD students directly construct disagreement with their supervisors on content-related advice despite the academic and institutional power asymmetry present in these interactions. The supervisors, on the other hand, seem to indirectly construct disagreement with their students. It is suggested here that linguistic competence and content knowledge may be two factors mitigating the power asymmetry. Also, the expression of disagreement does not seem to be perceived as confrontational by either the supervisors or students. On the contrary, disagreement seems to be typical of this spoken genre in this setting, implying that it may even be a “preferred second” turn in this spoken genre with reference to the enculturation of the PhD student into the academic community.

With the progress and development of artificial intelligence technology, the use of AI is becoming more and more frequent in people's lives and many fields. The application of AI in academic understanding and communication has attracted wide attention, but there are still shortcomings in the fields related to intercultural communication. This paper analyzes the role of AI in intercultural academic understanding and communication. By using ChatGPT and DeepSeek as two AI tools to translate literature in the field of intercultural communication, this paper analyzes and concludes that AI can be used more efficiently and conveniently in intercultural academic understanding and communication, reduce language barriers, and promote more intercultural academic understanding and communication. Based on the advantages and disadvantages of the two AI tools, this paper puts forward some suggestions, such as learning to use AI in advance, choosing AI tools that better meet the needs of users according to the characteristics of different AI, and insisting on self-thinking.

Aim: To determine the relationship between effective communication and the Quality of Life (QoL) of cancer patients through conducting a Meta-analysis (MA) to quantify and summarize the evidence and present the results of our local findings in the National Center for Cancer Care & Research (NCCCR) of HMC in Qatar. Methods: MA was conducted via searching four online databases including PubMed, Medline, EMBASE and Psych info electronic and grey literature database, ProQuest dissertations. The MA encompassed published cross-sectional, longitudinal studies and a postgraduate PhD dissertation, that investigated the communication among cancer patients on one hand, and health care professionals (HCPs) and health caregivers (HCGs), and their impact in the QoL, on the other hand. Out of 20,796 hits, 204 full-text articles were assessed for eligibility. The final eligible studies were 19 articles that satisfied the inclusion criteria (18 published papers and one PhD dissertation). The quality of encompassed studies was calculated according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) guidelines. Comprehensive (CMA) software version 2 was used to perform the MA. The pooled effect size was calculated using the random effect and ANOVAs were performed for moderation analyses for categorical moderators and meta regression analysis for continuous moderators. In addition, publications bias analysis was also performed. The Cochrane software “Review Manager v5.3” was employed to examine the quality of the included studies. Patient perception of physician’s communication skills was compared with the perception of physicians using the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) communication assessment tool and QoL of cancer patients was assessed via FACTG questionnaire. Correlation coefficients of perception of patients were carried out using positive correlation analysis via SPSS V.26. Results: Communication had a significant positive impact on the QoL of cancer patients and a significant association and moderation was observed for the mental component summary (MCS). Furthermore, a significant positive impact of involving Health Caregivers (HCGs) in communication on the QoL of cancer patients was also found. Covariate analysis indicated a true variation in effect sizes between studies and confirmed the existence of inconsistencies among different studies due to the diverse definitions and assessment tools used to measure the outcomes. The heterogeneity assessment offered explanation where possible to the consistencies and diversities between studies. Clinical and design heterogeneities were observed and reported. Our local pilot study in Qatar suggested a significant positive correlation between QoL and patients perception of physicians’ communication skills, r = 0.222, P=0.3. Moreover, our pilot study suggests a significant discrepancy between the patients perceptions & HCP perceptions, of the different communication skills set (Interpersonal, Content, Total Communication Skills). The patients reporting a lower perception 57% vs 86% total communication skills p=0.0028, 58% vs 88% for IP communication skills p=0.0003, and 55% vs 84% for content communication skills p=0.0042. Conclusion: This MA covered a gap that existed in the literature among published systematic reviews and meta-analyses. It confirmed a significant correlation between communication and QoL of cancer patients irrespective of cancer type, age group, culture, gender, prognosis, or year of study. These results were global, transcontinental, and transcultural. It clearly highlighted the significant need to communicate with cancer patients and how much its benefits improve their QoL, as well as medical services. The results can be used to inform policy makers and health practitioners. Future Interventions should take into account these results to improve the communication between health practitioners and cancer patients and the involvement of families in the communication process. The health care system should consider communication as a vital component of providing a holistic patient and family centered care. The umbrella of QoL, provides a clear picture about patients and their families’ conditions and dictates that their communication needs are addressed as part of a standard of care. Furthermore, communication with its wide list of components should undergo a crucial level of studying, researching, critiquing and standardization, so that patients’ right to access a high standard of care is guaranteed across all health care systems. Our local results in Qatar resonate with this MA and raise the attention needed to clinical communication practice.

Arabic communication possesses distinct characteristics that set it apart from other cultures. Understanding the specific aspects of Arabic communication is crucial, particularly for public relations officers who interact with Arab patients in healthcare settings. The increasing language and communication barriers between healthcare providers and Arab patients necessitate the involvement of public relations officers as mediators, interpreters, or facilitators. However, non-native Arabic speakers among public relations officers until now face misconception and confusion of task, lack of knowledge on Arabic communication and Arabic culture during their daily work at the healthcare centers. Therefore, this study aims to identify the challenges faced by public relation officers in healthcare centers when attending to Arab patients and to analyze the needs of these officers toward the development of a comprehensive Arabic communication model for public relations in the healthcare industry. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with five public relation officers from different healthcare centers in Kuala Lumpur. The collected data was analyzed using NVivo data analysis software version 12. This qualitative research incorporates Hutchinson and Waters' (1987) theory of needs analysis, focusing on three key components: necessities, lacks, and wants. The findings reveal that public relations officers encounter difficulties due to the lack of references or guidelines on Arabic communication, an uncooperative working environment, language barriers in translating medical terminology, and the use of uncommon Arabic dialects. The study also highlights the PR officers' pressing needs, which include the implementation of an Arabic communication model as a guiding framework for communication with Arab patients, as well as the enhancement of their communication skills and Arabic language proficiency to ensure high-quality service provision to Arab patients in healthcare centers.

Intercultural and multilingual communication has become a necessity for all institutions in the age of globalization and transculturation. Higher-education institutions are no exceptions to this, mainly due to increasing contact with universities and other institutions at the international level, student and teaching staff mobility, and exchange of knowledge and experience. Intercultural communication in universities includes not only national cultures of respective parties, but also educational and even legal cultures. Higher-education institutions are required to manage multilingual and intercultural communication effectively, undoubtedly with the help of translation. Today, in most higher-education institutions in Turkey, academics employed in foreign-language departments are responsible for translation work, i.e. intercultural communication. This paper mainly focuses on the role of academics as translators in the management of intercultural communication in higher-education settings. The paper first draws attention to the increasing need for intercultural and multilingual communication in higher education. It then explores the translator’s role, power, responsibility and limitations in achieving intercultural communication in higher-education institutions.