Dissertation grant proposals as “writing games”: An exploratory study of two L2 graduate students' experiences

• Understanding grant genre systems formed the major part of the games.
• The students played the games through repeated practice.
• They cited important figures' works.
• They also networked with more experienced players to improve their proposals.
• Grant writing helped the students to see the big picture of their dissertations.

Previous studies have examined grant proposals written by faculty rather than graduate students. Little research has focused on L2 students' grant writing challenges, particularly with their dissertation grant proposals. Drawing on Casanave's (2002) “writing games,” this study aims to explore how two doctoral grant writers from two disciplines (biophysics and musicology) enculturate into their discourse communities at an American university. Through qualitative analyses of interviews with students and their grant proposals, I report strategies and problems of the students in four themes: learning how to play, following or bending the rules, deciding whether to play, and identifying who to cite in the grant proposals. I show that understanding grant genre systems formed the major part of the games, where students had to learn certain rules and interpret funding agencies' expectations. Despite multiple challenges, the students played the games through repeated participatory practice, citing important figures' works, and networking with more experienced players of the communities to improve their proposals. The findings reveal that grant writing helped the students to see the big picture of their dissertation projects. This study raises awareness of L2 graduate students' dissertation grant writing practices, and it calls attention to discipline-specific grant writing instruction.