Dimensions of difference: a comparison of university writing and IELTS writing

Moore, Timothy; Morton, Janne

doi:10.1016/j.jeap.2004.02.001

Cited by 94 publications

(59 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…Moore & Morton, 2005). Examination of this dataset lends support to our argument that the high use of particular linking adverbials in the Chinese students' undergraduate writing in English can be partially attributed to the way texts are used within secondary schools in China.…”

Section: Figuresupporting

confidence: 60%

Besides … on the other hand: Using a corpus approach to explore the influence of teaching materials on Chinese students’ use of linking adverbials

Leedham

Cai

2013

Journal of Second Language Writing

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Studies conducted on first and second language student writing in English have pointed to the latter group's high use of features such as informal language, pronouns, and linking adverbials, yet few studies have been conducted on assessed undergraduate writing produced within an English-speaking environment. This paper reports findings from a corpus study of Chinese and British students' writing in UK universities, confirming that a key area of difference is the Chinese students' higher use of particular linking adverbials (e.g., besides, on the other hand). We hypothesise that one reason for this higher usage is the influence of secondary school teaching materials in mainland China prior to UK university study and examine a set of model texts from the English paper in the Chinese university entrance test, selected as these texts comprise much of the teaching material in the final year of secondary education. We argue that Chinese students are "primed" (Hoey, 2005) to favour particular linking adverbials, to disregard issues of informality, and to prefer sentence-initial positioning. It is hoped that the reported findings will challenge English language teachers and textbook writers to consider the requirements of writing within the academy.Keywords: Chinese students; teaching materials; corpus linguistics; linking adverbials; intensive reading lesson; National Matriculation Test. 2 IntroductionStudents from China are increasingly choosing to study at undergraduate level in English-speaking countries; in the UK, Chinese people now comprise the "largest single overseas student group" with more than 90,000 Chinese students engaged in learning in the UK (the British Council, 2011). However, relatively few large-scale studies have been carried out on the assessed undergraduate writing of this group within English-speaking contexts; instead, the majority of large-scale studies of both Chinese 1 students' writing and non-native speaker (NNS 2 ) student writing in general have been corpus studies concentrating on data sets of unassessed, extremely short, argumentative essays collected mainly from non-UK universities. While these "learner corpus" studies have yielded useful insights into L2English students' writing, it is unclear how far the findings can be extended to longer pieces of assessed writing.A common assertion of learner corpus studies is that NNSs "overuse," "under- English-speaking context, and this paper aims to address this gap. The dataset for 1 While it is recognised that the term 'Chinese students' refers to a range of geographical locations, dialects and ethnic groups, the majority of students in the study are from the PRC. Moreover, the contextual data in the corpus used in this study (BAWE) details only the student's self-proclaimed L1 (for many Chinese students this is simply 'Chinese'), and does not request information on perceived ethnicity. The group termed 'L1 English' or 'British' students gave English as their L1 and undertook all or most of their secondary education in the UK. 2 In this pap...

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Section: Figuresupporting

confidence: 60%

Besides … on the other hand: Using a corpus approach to explore the influence of teaching materials on Chinese students’ use of linking adverbials

Leedham

Cai

2013

Journal of Second Language Writing

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“…These studies have concentrated mainly on comparing IELTS essay writing and university essay writing in general (Moore and Morton, 2005). The results of this study revealed that IELTS essays have some similarities with the main genre of the essay in University although there are some important differences.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 78%

Argumentative Features of International English Language Testing System (Ielts) Essays: A Rhetorical Analysis on Successful Exam Essays

Ananda

Arsyad

Dharmayana

2018

ijole

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An argument in academic writing is an essential element; it is used to convince readers that the writer's opinion or claim can be acceptable. However, this may be problematic for university students or new writers especially when writing in a language other than their first language such as Indonesians who take an international English writing test. The aim of this study is to identify and describe the rhetorical features of successful academic IELTS essays. Sixty academic essays were taken from six different common topics with band scores 8-9 (high quality essays) and were analyzed on elements of argument following Toulmin (1979). The results show that: a) the common sections found in the essays are lead in, thesis statement and deduction; b) the common elements of argument in the essays are claim, data and warrant; and c) the common types of argument structures of the essays are simple argument structure and strong argument structure. This implies that the essay sections, argument elements and argument structure can be used to describe the quality features of IELTS essay organization. It is suggested that in order to be able to write good quality essays in English, test takers must have a good command of essay sections, argument elements and argument structure type of good quality essays.

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“…Some of these examples are; Allen (2016) who investigated the washback of IELTS test to the test takers in Japanese universities; Moore and Morton (2005) who examined the authenticity of IELTS writing tests by comparing the IELTS writing tasks to that of writing tasks in universities; Veerappan & Sulaiman (2012) who investigated the inter-rater reliability of IELTS writing tests. To date, there are no studies on the overal usefulness of IELTS test.…”

Section: Apples -Journal Of Applied Language Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although the discourse modes (descriptive and essay writing) are similar to those of university tasks; the length, topics, and time allotment are more to public discourses (Moore & Morton, 2005). In addition to that, level of linguistic demands of particular courses are also varied, law courses are much more linguistically demanding compared to that of pure Mathematics, for instance.…”

Section: Construct Validitymentioning

confidence: 99%