The Supervisory Conference: Academic Socialisation and the Thesis Genre

When university students enrol in an undergraduate program, they are required to master the genres specific to the academic disciplines in which the norms of the discourse community are embedded (Beaufort 1999, 103). Students acquire the appropriate genres by participating in the target discourse community through interactions with peers and more experienced members of the community (Beaufort 1999; Rogoff 1990). It is common, though not universal, for final-year students to undertake a graduation thesis at universities in Japan where all undergraduate degrees in areas such as arts and humanities are four years in length. For such students, this graduation thesis is their first encounter with this new academic discourse type and typically constitutes an enormous challenge for them.