Academic and scientific communication in the context of doctor of philosophy training

Introduction

scientific communication doctor of philosophy

Today, educational and scientific programs for training Doctor of Philosophy are increasingly diversified due to introducing such disciplines as “Academic Writing”, “Methodology of preparation of scientific publications”. Such disciplines are aimed at developing the competencies based on scientific professional knowledge and skills in the field of academic writing, in particular, those which are necessary for finding information sources, processing and critical comprehension of the obtained information, its use and presentation, producing own academic and research papers, establishing effective communication with other participants of the academic, scientific, and professional environment.We agree with the opinion of O. Semenog that “successful formation of competencies of doctors of philosophy (PhD students) largely depends on the educational policy of universities, whose mission is education, research and innovation and it should be aimed at ensuring the competitiveness of graduates in Ukrainian, European and international education space, deepening international activities, developing individuals as citizens not only of the country but also of the world with a high level of academic culture and academic integrity” [5, 321].

Analysis of recent research and publications

The specifics of teaching academic writing has been the subject of research for both domestic and foreign scholars. Thus, the research has been done on the following: peculiarities of preparing students for academic communication (M. Kozolup [1]), the content and specific character of academic writing (N. Maloshonok [2], S. Revutska [3], B. Green, K. Beavis [9]), academic writing in cultural and linguistic discourse (O. Selivanova [4], O. Semenog [6], L. Shulinova [7], T. Yakhontova [8]) etc.

The purpose of the article is to present the results of the research into the specific features of academic and scientific communication in the context of training Doctor of Philosophy, as well as the principles underlying them.

Research methods

The following theoretical methods have been used during the research: analysis and synthesis for processing scientific and pedagogical literature on the research problem, systematization and generalization for formulating the main provisions and conclusions to the research; prognostic analysis for outlining the prospects for further research.

Presentation of the main material

Academic writing is rooted in metalinguistic skills, i.e., the ability to critically read and understand the written text and analyse it, formulate the author's position, and so on. Academic writing deals with theories and causes that govern processes and practices of everyday life and explores alternative explanations for these events.

Language is a system of sound and graphic signs. Speech is the process of expressing thoughts using language means, i.e., a system of sound and graphic signs. Throughout life, a person learns to understand and use different languages, and these are not only foreign languages. We mean both letters and numbers, chemical and physical, mathematical, and medical signs, financial symbols etc., which form a system of signs, i.e., the language of a particular field of scientific knowledge or profession.

In society, we always meet and use different types of language, which is inherent in a particular social environment and is called a sociolect (social dialect), jargon or slang. Thus, members of a certain professional community (doctors, financiers, computer scientists) can use vocabulary that is completely or partially incomprehensible to a person working, for instance, in the field of agriculture or cultural studies. Prison or street slang is not entirely clear to many people. The dialect used by the population in the Zakarpattia region differs significantly from the dialect of the neighbouringIvano-Frankivsk region and is sometimes completely incomprehensible to the residents of Cherkasy, Kharkiv or Sumy regions. However, if a doctor lives in the Zakarpattia region and works in a rehabilitation centre for drug addicts, it is only natural that he understands and uses not only his professional language and jargon of medicine but also the dialect of his community and the street slang. So, one person, being in different environments, adapts to them and uses appropriate vocabulary to establish communication with their representatives: the scientific and professional community, family, government officials, service, and trade workers etc.

Communication is the subject of research for specialists in various fields of scientific knowledge - philosophy, cultural studies, linguistics, psychology, pedagogy, sociology, media studies and more. Communication is considered as a “purposeful process of information exchange between two or more subjects” [4, 552], where the subjects can be not only people but also automated systems, artificial intelligence systems etc. Still, when people are the subjects of communication, we can define communication as a process of information exchange involving two or more people who use verbal (vocabulary) and nonverbal (body language) means, and its varieties are oral, written, and visual communication.

In the academic environment, communication is aimed at ensuring the effectiveness of the educational process and involves the transfer of knowledge from teachers to students (in our context we mean postgraduate students) or assistance in self-acquisition of knowledge with the teacher support. Here we are talking about a transfer of knowledge from one person to another, which involves its processing and presentation in a format that post-graduate students will be able to perceive, understand, and transform into their system of knowledge for further use. And here it is crucial that the teacher and the post-graduate student “speak the same language”. This task is not easy, as it requires from the teacher the skills and abilities to organize the text with the optimal amount of special vocabulary and terminology, which is logically and reasonably used and disclosed in the text. “Academic communication occurs in the relevant educational, general scientific, sectoral and professional oral and written genres and is implemented in various forms of academic discourse. The proper mastery of academic communication strategies is the key to the quality acquisition of professional knowledge and skills by students, their future effective social interaction with members of relevant scientific and academic communities and success in achieving professional goals” [1, 5]. In other words, the implementation of academic communication requires the presence of such components as “subjects (members of the academic community), objects (goals, motives, and intentions of communicators) and means of communication (academic genres as units of discourse)” [1, 34].

Since the education process involves interaction between the teacher and post-graduate students, it is essential to establish the communication that will foster the solution of the main learning tasks and achievement of the major goal, which is to obtain the outlined learning outcomes for post-graduate students. It is important to form the following competencies of future Doctor of Philosophy: the ability to work with a reference base in the scientific field of knowledge or professional field, ability to critically comprehend and analyse the information obtained, ability to develop original ideas and present them in the form of text documents, ability to establish, organize and implement written communication.

There are different views on the structure of academic writing. Thus, N. Maloshonok considers that academic writing should be structured according to the principle “from simple to complex”, which is predetermined by the specific nature of mastering academic writing, which moves from simple elements (lexical and grammatical constructions) to complex elements (research papers and methods of their presentation) [2].

The author distinguishes the following levels:

1) mastering the basics of academic writing: features of structural elements of a paragraph, a thesis; formulation of arguments; paragraph design; competent text formatting;