‘It can facilitate so much!’ Student writers’ practice of self efficacy to develop their use of formulaic phrases

This study is about student writers’ development of their own approaches to using formulaic phrases from a compendium ( Academic Phrasebank ). While the essential role of formulaic phrases in academic texts has been well established in research, teaching about the effective use of these phrases is not widely available, and little attention has been paid to how students learn to employ formulaic phrases in their own writing. Therefore, this research aims to explore this gap in understanding how student writers develop individual approaches to using formulaic phrases through the lens of self-efficacy. Twelve self-selected student writer participants at undergraduate, master’s and PhD levels, who were all L1 English speakers, were interviewed and asked about how they used formulaic phrases from the resource. Three key findings emerged from the data: firstly, that the resource may support inclusion as an empowering tool to enable student writers to participate confidently in academia; secondly, that students could employ the resource flexibly at different stages of the writing process depending on their individual approach to text construction; thirdly, that it could offer particular support with writing to students who have a specific learning difficulty (SpLD). This paper contributes to understanding these individual student learning processes in the use of formulaic phrases for writing through self-efficacy. The implication for learning development is that making more guidance about formulaic phrases widely available and accessible would be beneficial to students’ writing processes.

There were four participants at each level of study, undergraduate, master's and PhD. The majority of participants (nine) were studying in the UK, the remainder in other countries where the language of study was English. A large number (eight) were students of Psychology or Social Sciences. It is striking that six out of the 12 participants self-identified as having a learning difficulty, although we did not ask them to supply this information.
There was no trend related to level of study and learning difficultytwo out of four of students at each level of UG, MSc and PhD self-identified in this way.

Findings
Following analysis of the interview transcripts, three broad thematic areas of interest emerged. We grouped these under the headings of facilitating inclusion, adopting different approaches, and helping writers with learning difficulties, as discussed below.

Facilitating inclusion in academia
Perhaps the most important theme that emerges from the study is that access to a phraseological resource for academic writing such as the AP appears to facilitate the integration into the academic community of students who might have, at some point, considered themselves excluded. The fact that all 12 of our participants reported they found the AP resource to be very useful for their writing is unsurprising, given that we were working with a self-selecting sample of willing participants who had responded to a survey about its usefulness. However, it was especially notable that some participants demonstrated its impact on their sense of belonging at university. The comment below, for example, from a writer who originally felt that they were not 'made' for academic study, suggests that use of the resource, and the resulting awareness of academic phraseology, had a transformational effect on their perception of their own abilities to the extent that it influenced their decision to pursue a higher degree.
Actually, now it makes me really comfortable, and I am able to say I can definitely do a master's now. Before I was thinking I'm going to finish my undergraduate and that's it, I am not made for this, but it has changed my mind, I am definitely going to do a master's now, I feel more confident. (Participant 3) Davis  Another participant commented that, as a result of having access to the resource and having greater awareness of academic phrases which they felt could be compared to 'stepping stones, academic pixels or academic essentials', they had begun to develop their own 'academic identity' as a writer (Participant 5). These comments demonstrate persistence in the face of difficulty and drive for individual improvement of performance, which are concordant with self-efficacy (Bandura, 1997).
The helpfulness of having a good command of academic phraseology does not seem to be restricted to the medium of writing. Two of our participants spoke about the importance of understanding the academic phraseology in facilitating the reading of research papers.
Furthermore, five participants stressed the interdependence of reading and writing, and reported that, while they are reading, they either actively look for or simply take note of academic phrases used by more experienced academic writers, as this was one way that they themselves could develop as writers: Being able to see how they implemented formulaic phrases within their own writing is something that you really have to do, and you should be reading journal articles every day because that is really the core of where your knowledge is going to be able to come from. (Participant 4) One concern about academic phraseology was expressed related to plagiarism: I know which phrases are the formulaic ones, and which phrases are the content of the research or the idea, but what I worry about is the formula creates the structure, and it is also possible to plagiarise this way of presenting ideas, the structure, so that's what's trickier. (Participant 10) We investigated this concern in a previous paper (Davis and Morley, 2015) and concluded that use of formulaic phrases should be a way of avoiding plagiarism by presenting alternative standard ways of using organisational language, but it is striking that this participant considered that it would be possible to plagiarise another author's writing style from phrasal choices.
It is easy to get stuck in your own words, your own way, and I try to introduce variation, so how I use it is to create a bit of interest. (Participant 12) In contrast to the 'before' writing approach, other participants described how they prioritise writing their own ideas down on paper first, before turning to the resource to improve their text later. So rather than serving as a trigger or prompt as we have seen above, the phrases are being used to shape ideas that have already been written down -the 'after' writing approach: I try to make the first draft about getting words on the page and not structuring beyond a loose outline [. . .]. So once I know that I have a sturdy word count, then I start shaping it. I apply formulaic phrasing as part of a trimming and organising step.

(Participant 9)
When I read over my essay, I tend to discover some weakness where I add formulaic phrases to make my text better. (Participant 2) Another approach to using the resource might be described as a 'during' approach where the writer looks to the resource to find alternative words and perhaps more suitable ways to express an idea while they are writing. This approach is explained in the two comments below: In the middle of writing an essay, I might think 'oh how shall I say that?', and then I check the list and think 'ok that one suits this point', so I will use that.