A Survey of the Writing Needs of Foreign and American College Freshmen

Kroll, Barbara

doi:10.1093/elt/xxxiii.3.219

Cited by 44 publications

(26 citation statements)

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“…L1 and L2 researchers have conducted a number of surveys to determine what writing tasks are actually assigned across academic disciplines. Horowitz (1986d) has found fault with some of the studies (Bridgeman & Carlson, 1984;Johns, 1981Johns, , 1985Kroll, 1979;Ostler, 1980), which, he points out, "beg the question" of what the tasks are: "Instead of trying to discover and classify university writing tasks-a logical prior endeavor-they began with a set of preconceived classifications, forcing on the respondents the particular scheme used in each survey" (p. 448). The surveys of Behrens (1980), Rose (1983), and Horowitz (1986d) take a more ethnographic view, creating classifications after examining the data.…”

Section: Defining Academic Writingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Initiating ESL Students into the Academic Discourse Community: How Far Should We Go?

1988

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In the interest of finding ways to help their students succeed in university studies, college‐level L2 writing researchers and teachers have endeavored for years to define the nature of academic writing tasks. The effort to determine what academic writing is and what ESL students need to know in order to produce it has led to the development of a number of different approaches to the teaching of writing. Most recently, this effort has led to a problematic trend toward having teachers of English, including teachers of freshman composition, teach students to write in other disciplines. This trend has emerged in response to criticism of previous writing programs, analyses of surveys of academic writing tasks, and movements such as Writing Across the Curriculum and English for specific purposes. This article reviews studies of L1 writing programs in which students learn to write in various disciplines, discusses the implications of the researchers' findings, and argues that (a) the teaching of writing in the disciplines should be left to the teachers of those disciplines and (b) L2 English composition teachers should focus on general principles of inquiry and rhetoric, with emphasis on writing from sources.

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Section: Defining Academic Writingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Initiating ESL Students into the Academic Discourse Community: How Far Should We Go?

1988

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“…1 Recently a number of researchers have attempted to identify some of the writing tasks that are required of graduate and undergraduate students within functional contexts: Freedman (1979), Johns (1981), Kroll (1979), Ostler (1981), Weaver (1982. Their findings, which identified writing task demands within the contexts of their specific institutions, are described in a report of our previous research (Bridgeman & Carlson, 1983).…”

Section: Field-specific Writing Task Demandsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Relationship of Admission Test Scores to Writing Performance of Native and Nonnative Speakers of English

Carlson

Bridgeman

Camp

et al. 1985

ETS Research Report Series

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Four writing samples were obtained from 638 applicants for admission to U.S. institutions as undergraduates or as graduate students in business, engineering, or social science. The applicants represented three major foreign language groups (Arabic, Chinese, and Spanish), plus a small sample of native English speakers. Two of the writing topics were of the compare and contrast type and the other two involved chart and graph interpretation. The writing samples were scored by 23 readers who are English as a second language specialists and 23 readers who are English writing experts. Each of the four writing samples was scored holistically, and during a separate rating session two of the samples from each student were assigned separate scores for sentence‐level and discourse‐level skills. Representative subsamples of the papers also were scored descriptively with the Writer's Workbench computer program and by graduate‐level subject matter professors in engineering and the social sciences. In addition to the writing sample scores, TOEFL scores were obtained for all students in the foreign sample. GRE General Test scores were obtained for students in the U.S. sample and for a subsample of students in the foreign sample. Students in the U.S. sample also took a multiple‐choice measure of writing ability. Among the key findings were the following: 1) holistic scores, discourse‐level scores, and sentence‐level scores were so closely related that the holistic score alone should be sufficient; 2) correlations among topics were as high across topic types as within topic types; 3) scores of ESL raters, English raters, and subject matter raters were all highly correlated, suggesting substantial agreement in the standards used; correlations and factor analyses indicated that scores on the writing samples and TOEFL were highly related, but that each also was reliably measuring some aspect of English language proficiency that was not assessed by the other; and (5) correlations of holistic writing sample scores with scores on item types within the sections of the GRE General Test yielded a pattern of relationships that was consistent with the relationships reported in other GRE studies.

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“…Recently a number of researchers have attempted to identify some of these tasks, with a focus on improving instruction by more directly addressing students' communicative needs through instruction. Kroll (1979) surveyed a small number of students in freshman English courses for international students and in comparable courses for native speakers of English at the University of Southern California. Her results indicated that the past writing experiences and current writing needs of foreign and American students were predictable and similar, justifying the requirement that foreign students take the -5-English writing course.…”

Section: Writing Task Demands Within Functional Contextsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Survey of Academic Writing Tasks Required of Graduate and Undergraduate Foreign Students

Bridgeman¹,

Carlson

1983

ETS Research Report Series

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A continuing program of research related to TOEFL Is carried out under the direction of the TOEFL Research Committee. Its six members Include representatives of the Polley Council. the TOEFL Committee of Examiners, and distinguished English-as-a-second-Ianguage specialists from the academic community. Currently the committee meets twice yearly to review and approve proposals for test-related research and to set guidelines for the entire scope of the TOEFL research program. Members of the Research Committee serve three-year terms at the Invitation of the Policy Council; the chair of the committee serves on the Polley Council.Because the studies are specific to the test and the testing program, most of the actual research Is conducted by ETS staff rather than by outslde researchers. However, many projects require the cooperation of other Institutions, particularly those with programs In the teaching of English as a foreign or second language. Representatives of such programs who are Interested In participating In or conductlng TOEFL·related research are Invited to contact the TOEFL program office. Local research may sometimes require access to TOEFL data. In such cases, the program may provide this data tollowlnq approval by the Research Committee. All TOEFL research projects must undergo appropriate ETS review to ascertain that the confidentiality of data will be protected. Current (1981-82) Unauthorized reproduction in whole or in part is prohibited. AbstractA survey, of' the, academic writing skills needed by beginning undergraduate and gr adua t e students was conduct.ed ; Faculty, in 190 academic departments at thirty-four U. S. and Ca nad Lan universities with high foreign student enrollments completed the questionnaire. At the graduate level, six academic disciplines with relatively high numbers of nonnative students were surveyed: business management (MBA), civil engineering, electrical engineering, psychology, chemistry, and computer science. Undergraduate English departments were chosen to document the skills needed by un~ergraduate students.The major findings are summarized below. o Although writing skill was 'rated as important to success in graduate training, it was consistently rated as even more fmpo~tant to success after graduation.o Even disciplines with relatively light writing requirements (e. g. ,electrical engineering) reported that some writing is required of first-year students.o The writing skills perceived as most important varied across departments.o Faculty members reported ibat, 1n their evaluations of student writing, they rely more on discourse-level characteristics than on word-or sentence-level characteristics.o Discourse-level writing skills of natives and nonnatives were perceived as fairly similar, but significant differences between natives and nonnatives were reported for sentenceand word-level skills and for overall writing.o Among the ten writing sample topic types prOVided, preferred topic types differed across departments.Although some important common elements among the ...

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A Survey of the Writing Needs of Foreign and American College Freshmen

Cited by 44 publications

References 0 publications

Initiating ESL Students into the Academic Discourse Community: How Far Should We Go?

Initiating ESL Students into the Academic Discourse Community: How Far Should We Go?

Relationship of Admission Test Scores to Writing Performance of Native and Nonnative Speakers of English

Survey of Academic Writing Tasks Required of Graduate and Undergraduate Foreign Students

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