A scientific communication mentoring intervention benefits diverse mentees with language variety related discomfort

Autor: Cameron Carrie A., Lee Hwa Young, Anderson Cheryl B., Dahlstrom Erin K., Chang Shine
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2023
Předmět:
Zdroj: Psychology of Language and Communication, Vol 27, Iss 1, Pp 436-462 (2023)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 2083-8506
DOI: 10.58734/plc-2023-0020
Popis: We studied social-psychological effects over time of a faculty-mentor workshop intervention that addressed attitudes associated with language variety and their impact on scientific communication (SC) skill development of PhD and postdoctoral STEM research trainees (N = 274). Six months after their mentors attended the workshop, all mentees had significant gains in productivity in speaking tasks. In particular, mentees with high language discomfort rated their quality of communication with their mentor and their enthusiasm about communicating more highly (p < .05 for both measures), compared to mentees with low language discomfort. In addition, mentees raised speaking nonstandardized varieties of English reported significant reductions in discomfort related to language use (p = .003), compared to mentees raised speaking standardized English. We conclude that training mentors to understand and respond to language diversity and development results in multiple beneficial outcomes for mentees, including the amelioration of language-variety related discomfort in the research environment.
Databáze: Directory of Open Access Journals