Where from, who, why and how? A study of the use of sources by first year L2 university students

Students' writing from sources for academic purposes: A synthesis of recent research

“…Individual differences in writing from sources inevitably arise because of the challenges inherent in knowing what and how much to focus on, selecting which sources to use, what to cite and not to cite and how, how to establish the relevance and authority of sources, how to achieve diverse purposes, express one's own views, select between source ideas easily or poorly understood, resolve contradictions, and so forth (Shi, 2010(Shi, , 2011(Shi, , 2012a(Shi, , 2012bAllen, 2004;McCarthy Young & Leinhardt, 1998;Petric & Harwood, 2013;Thompson, Morton, & Storch, 2013). Wette (2010, p. 158) succinctly observed that "students had difficulties comprehending complexities in texts, summarizing propositional content accurately, and integrating citations with their own voices and positions."…”

“…Writing effectively from sourcesdlearning how to appropriate others' words and ideas appropriatelydis as inherent a dimension of learning another language (Pennycook, 1996) as it is of learning a new academic register (Beaufort, 2004), and it may be the epitome of both in developed societies, knowledge-based economies, and increasing international mobility. Moreover, much writing from sources in academic contexts currently involves multi-modal sources of informationdsuch as graphs, charts, or images (O'Halloran, Tan & Bradley, 2016;Yu & Lin, 2014)dand interacting collaboratively with groups of others in multi-media contexts (Cho, 2016;Storch, 2013), which warrant further investigation in addition to, and alongside, the study of students learning to use or produce conventional written texts individually. If the focus of research remains solely at a micro-level of individual performance, text analysis, or behaviour within courses or researcher-designed tasks, then the basis for explanation cannot account for the societal, cultural, intergroup, political, and economic factors that also facilitate and constrain learning, literacy, and teaching.…”

“…These include differences between summary and response essays based on the same source text (Ascenci on Delaney, 2008), summary and argumentative essays on the same topic (Gil, Braten, Vidal-Abarca, & Strømsø, 2010;Greene, 1993), summary and opinion essays (Shi, 2004), writing in a restricted manner (short answers to study questions) or an extended manner (in analytic essays) (Newell & Winograd, 1995), open-ended versus instructor-directed writing tasks (Petric & Harwood, 2013), argumentative writing based on one or two source texts (Mateos, Martin, Villaon, & Luna, 2008;Plakans, 2010), and science inquiry writing tasks from sources of variable reliability (Wiley & Voss, 1999). As observed above in respect to students' abilities in Claim 2, numerous studies have found differences in expectations and practices for writing from sources across academic disciplines and broadly between students' writing in the arts and in sciences (Mateos et al, 2007;Rinnert & Kobayashi, 2005;Shi, 2012aShi, , 2012bThompson et al, 2013). The genre of writing a thesis has been studied extensively and shown to involve unique, extensive, sophisticated, and varied demonstrations of scholarly citation conventions (Basturkmen, 2009;Harwood, 2010;Harwood & Petric, 2012;Petric, 2007Petric & Harwood, 2013).…”

“…Studies in various countries have found group differences in their knowledge and perceptions about appropriate citation forms between university students in the arts and in sciences, including Australia (Thompson et al, 2013), Canada (Shi, 2012a(Shi, , 2012b, Japan (Rinnert & Kobayashi, 2005), and Spain (Mateos, Villalon, Dios, & Martin, 2007). In other studies, the writing performance of certain individuals with more knowledge or work or educational experience has stood them apart from less experienced students.…”

What our students tell us: Perceptions of three multilingual students on their academic writing in first year

“…Academic English Economics & Business [AE Eco/Bus]). These subjects are all one semester (12 weeks) in duration (see Thompson, Morton & Storch, 2013 for further details). Students who enrol in these subjects have met the standard English language requirements for university entrance (an overall score of 6.5 out of 9 on the IELTS or equivalent).…”