Students’ practices and abilities for writing from sources in English at universities in China

Cumming, Alister; Yang, Luxin; Qiu, Chenhui; Ji, Xiaojun; Wang, Junju; Wang, Ying; Zhan, Jianming; Zhang, Fengjuan; Xu, Chao; Cao, Rongping; Yu, Lu; Chen, Meng; Liu, Meihua; Cao, Min; Lai, Conttia

doi:10.1016/j.jslw.2017.11.001

Cited by 47 publications

(39 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…To wrap up with this section, we would like to underscore that the vast majority of research on writing in second languages has been undertaken in English-speaking contexts (Manchón, 2009), which is why some authors question whether the pedagogies that emanate from them are appropriate in foreign language contexts (Cumming and others, 2018). The latter caveat can also be extended to EMI non-English-speaking settings in which English is a foreign language, as is the case of the present study.…”

Section: Language Errors and Feedbackmentioning

confidence: 99%

Language Errors in an English-Medium Instruction University Setting: How do Language versus Content Teachers Tackle them?

Herrarte¹,

Bienzobas²

2018

Porta Linguarum Revista Interuniversitaria De Didáctica De Las Lenguas Extranjeras

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Section: Language Errors and Feedbackmentioning

confidence: 99%

Language Errors in an English-Medium Instruction University Setting: How do Language versus Content Teachers Tackle them?

Herrarte¹,

Bienzobas²

2018

Porta Linguarum Revista Interuniversitaria De Didáctica De Las Lenguas Extranjeras

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“…Secondly, given the numbers of students who reported lack of proficiency in the English language and poor reading comprehension skills as sources of their difficulties, further research into how L2 learners can best benefit from what type of instruction, both inside and outside classroom settings is in order. If research has shown that patchwriting is an indicator of L2 learners' struggle (Wen, 2016, in Cumming, et al, 2018 with summarizing and paraphrasing tasks, how can this be used as a tool to achieve linguistic and reading literacies among them? What reading exercises and writing tasks would lead them towards acquisition of the target language and automaticity in using formulaic expressions and employing generic styles prevalent in the discourse community they intend to be members of?…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It will be unfair to the learners, if not an exercise in futility, to expect them to summarize and paraphrase a source text when they do not understand it. Several studies and ample evidence in various contexts have reported how direct instruction develops the reading skills of students (see, for example, Brown & Dale, 1983;Cumming, et al 2018;Dovey, 2010). Corollary to providing explicit instruction to L2 learners is holding review lessons and giving exercises on basic reading skills, such as identifying the topic, the main idea and the supporting details of a text which may help teachers diagnose their students' ability to comprehend a text.…”

Section: Pedagogical Implications and Interventionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Self-reported summarizing and paraphrasing difficulties in L2 writing contexts: Some pedagogical interventions

Flores

Lopez

2019

Indonesian J. Appl. Linguist.

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The utility of paraphrasing and summarizing is key to effective academic writing. Both require that students have a good grasp of the source material not only in terms of understanding, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating the information found in the sources, but also in terms of selecting information, organizing, drafting, and revising their papers. Although several studies have identified L2 students’ difficulties when utilizing paraphrasing and summarizing, this paper examines the cognitive and metacognitive aspects of these complex activities from the students’ eyes. With essays from 120 freshman undergraduate students from a private university in Manila, this study qualitatively determined their reported difficulties when paraphrasing and summarizing, and the areas of improvements in these skills. Participant students identified four major areas of concern: 1) lack of proficiency in English, 2) poor reading comprehension skills, 3) lack of vocabulary and 4) lack of or poor documentation skills. Findings of this study provide grounds for presentation of pedagogical interventions/classroom instructions to address these students’ reported difficulties.

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“…Noticing the importance of stance and students' difficulties, many scholars postulated that students may not be well-prepared by the academic writing instruction they received [18][19][20][21][22]. As Wingate [11] argued, stance features in academic writing are rarely made explicit to students, which may result in the lack of awareness and incompetence in stance performance.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fostering Stance-Taking as a Sustainable Goal in Developing EFL Students’ Academic Writing Skills: Exploring the Effects of Explicit Instruction on Academic Writing Skills and Stance Deployment

Zhang

2021

Sustainability

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Effective stance-taking is considered as a crucial skill for successful academic writing and sustainable development of writing scholarship. However, student writers often encounter difficulties in this aspect. Scholars have thus called for explicit instruction to develop students’ academic writing ability as a sustainable goal. Learning stance-taking is a particularly relevant area of intensive interest among writing scholars. Yet, few empirical studies have been conducted to examine its effectiveness on students’ academic writing quality and stance deployment. To fill this gap, a quasi-experimental research was conducted with 46 undergraduate students in a Chinese university, who were randomly assigned to two conditions: a treatment group and a comparison group. The treatment group received an eight-week explicit stance instruction, while the comparison group received curriculum-based writing instruction at the same time. Academic texts were collected both prior to and after the period of intervention. Results revealed that the treatment group outperformed the comparison group in the post-test in terms of academic writing quality and stance performance. Their writing also exhibited changes in the frequencies of an array of stance types deployed (e.g., proclaim: pronounce, proclaim: endorse, entertain, attribute), indicating their enhanced understanding of stance and improved competence of mitigation and integrating external voices for better academic writing. Implications for writing instruction are discussed.

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Students’ practices and abilities for writing from sources in English at universities in China

Cited by 47 publications

References 47 publications

Language Errors in an English-Medium Instruction University Setting: How do Language versus Content Teachers Tackle them?

Language Errors in an English-Medium Instruction University Setting: How do Language versus Content Teachers Tackle them?

Self-reported summarizing and paraphrasing difficulties in L2 writing contexts: Some pedagogical interventions

Fostering Stance-Taking as a Sustainable Goal in Developing EFL Students’ Academic Writing Skills: Exploring the Effects of Explicit Instruction on Academic Writing Skills and Stance Deployment

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