Exploring postgraduate student voice in expressing critical thinking in academic writing

Drawing on a diverse cohort of postgraduate students in an Australian university, this article examines the way Australian and Chinese students used linguistic features of ‘voice’ to demonstrate critical thinking in their academic writing. Research continues to highlight how both a lack of voice and attention to criticality remain common criticisms of student academic writing. With this in mind, this research project aimed to understand which linguistic features students used to express their critical thinking. Student perceptions of critical thinking in their own writing were juxtaposed with a textual analysis to identify voice in selected excerpts of students’ literature reviews. The findings in this paper report on an exploratory study which is part of a larger study into the demonstration of critical thinking of 27 postgraduate education students who were educated in either Australia or China for their pre-tertiary education. Demonstration of critical thinking using linguistic features of voice appeared to be linked more closely to academic writing ability and experience than cultural background. In terms of voice, the study found some key features of voice were absent from the literature review excerpts (e.g. self-mentions), but that students conveyed voice through other mechanisms such as citations and lexical choices.