Development of academic writing by international students

1
Students literacy practices insights on
academic writing development
Weronika Górska King's College London Academic
Literacies Seminar QUEEN MARY 12 June 2009
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Session content

• Background of the study
• Research aim
• Conceptual framework
• Methodology
• Data presentation and analysis
• Emerging themes and issues
• Directions for further research

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What is there for teachers?

• Course books for academic writing
• Text structure
• Sentence structure
• Academic vocabulary
• Punctuation
• Referencing systems
• General readings and critical thinking exercises
• Examples of texts from different disciplines
• Writing as technology (Leki, 2000)

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Seen by the public eye
Faculty members It is interesting how our
students are able to communicate fluently when
they speak, but how poor ability in writing they
have. Writing courses should be the most
difficult ones to pass. Writing classes provide
the basis for other courses, and content courses
are not the place to teach writing Or maybe ?
But we will not do it. Press publications The
previous year's 2002/03 report Annual Course
Monitoring Report had also warned of falling
standards. One staff member on the German honours
course complained that students' ability in
written language had "declined" in recent years,
while another official raised the "diminishing
general knowledge base" of undergraduates.
Sunday Herald, 19.09.2005

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International students-data from UKCISA

• All non-UK domicile in HE  in 2007/2008
• Postgraduate research 39,860
  43
• Postgraduate taught 115,805
  42
• Postgraduate other 11,825
• First degree 143,570
  11
• Other undergraduate 30,735
• Total non-UK 341,795
• The total number of non-UK students for
• 2005/06 was 307,040
• 2006/07 was 325,985
• 2007/08 was 341,790 the 2007/08 represent a
  5 on the previous year

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Research aim

• To explore the situation of international
  undergraduate students and recognize what assists
  student learning of academic writing and where
  the learning actually takes place
• To investigate change from writing in writing
  classes to writing in content classes and
  cultural processes involved in that change

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Approaches to academic writing

• Focus on text
• College composition
• Theories from literary and rhetorical studies,
  cultural studies
• WAD/WID
• Sociocultural theories, activity theories and
  communities of practice
• EAP/ESP, Academic Socialization
• Applied linguistics, theories of genre and
  discourse
• Genre pedagogies
• Genre theory, systemic functional linguistics
• Study skills

• Focus on practices
• Academic literacies (ACLITS)
• New Literacy Studies, critical discourse studies,
  the sociology of knowledge
• Ideological model of literacy where the focus is
  on acknowledging the socioculturally embedded
  nature of literacy practices and the associated
  power differentials in any literacy related
  activity
• (Lillis Scott, 2007)

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Conceptual framework

• Academic Literacies
• requirement to switch writing styles and genres
• contested nature of academic knowledge
• epistemological nature of writing
• power relations, identity
• (Lea Street, 1998)
• Culture - ? - culture more as an action rather
  than only a static description of certain rules
  or realities
• (Roberts et al, 2001)
• Critical stance towards current models of writing
  support provision (Lillis, 2006)

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Research questions
How do international students learn academic
writing in English?
1.
Do students find writing courses a useful and
sufficient support in learning how to write at an
English medium university?
2.
What assists students learning to write and in
what spaces does their learning take place?
How is learning to write viewed from the
perspectives of both international students and
faculty members?
3.
What do students experience when entering an
English writing academic culture and how does
their participation in that culture affect their
writing development?
4.
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Methodology

• Ethnographic-type approach, facilitating
  discussion around writing classes in relation to
  writing in content based courses
• Insider perspective, making the familiar strange
• Ethnography is the study of people in naturally
  occurring settings or fields by methods of data
  collection which capture their social meanings
  and ordinary activities, involving the researcher
  participating directly in the setting, if not
  also the activities, in order to collect data in
  a systematic manner but without meaning being
  imposed on them externally
• 
  (Brewer, 2000)

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Research field

• a university in central London with a substantial
  number of international students

change

• Writing Classes
• Composition and Rhetoric
• Different types of argumentation
• Sentence Structure

• Content Courses
• Fashion Marketing,
• International Business
• Research reports
• Evaluation reports
• Reflective evaluation

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Data collection

• Research sample
• 5 international undergraduate students
  representing various European and Asian countries
  
• 5 lecturers teaching content based courses, both
  of native and non native English background
• Interview areas
• Experience / Training
• Types of assignments
• Working with texts
• Feedback students written comments on their
  own texts
• Writing courses/Content courses

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Change writing classes /
content courses Data from
interviews with students

• Lisa
• We dont need to follow like causal,
  evaluation...just the main structure
  introduction, body, conclusions. I just write
  in different paragraphs, explain what I was
  talking about. And thats fine too.
• Writing for Business and Computers I think it
  differs.
• I also use Internet to translate,...dictionaries..
  .and its good when a friend or somebody looks at
  your paper
• Nicole
• Writing for my other classes is different it's
  more general. I wrote it just today, so I don't
  know. I hope it's ok.
• When we were doing presentations, I have realized
  how writing differs among disciplines and even
  within a discipline, how differently ideas are
  expressed.
• When I lived here three years ago, I used to read
  a lot, and yea, reading helps, so I have to read
  a lot.

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Change writing classes /
content courses Data from
interviews with lecturers

• Jenny
• I dont want to be teaching them an English
  class. Thats not my job. I need to teach them
  their class content wise it has to deal with the
  class. Anything English related I send them to
  the Learning Centre.
• Clark
• I give them examples. But writing is an issue.
  They should go to some foundation programme for
  one or two years, learn how to write and then
  come to other courses.

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Change cultural aspects Data from
interviews with students

• Lisa
• My native language is a completely different
  language. When I read my sentences, sometimes it
  looks like I am saying it in my native
  language.
• In my country we dont write for other subjects,
  we just write about literature. It surprised me a
  lot when I came to England.
• Nicole
• I know how to say it in English as well, but I
  know a better way to say it in my native
  language. Its more like a childish way if you
  see what I mean. I know how to say it in English
  in very basic way sometimes I feel like I am
  five years backwards when I am writing in English
  to me when I read it, it is like someone with
  less education than I have or would have written.
• I did one year of undergraduate studies in my
  country, and we didnt write much. One essay, I
  think, with no specific instructions. So we do
  not really write.

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Change cultural aspects
Data from interviews with lecturers

• Jenny
• I dont think that language has anything to do
  with writing skills, you know the difference in
  language. Obviously they dont learn how to speak
  in order to write, but it doesnt mean that
  writing is so differentWhat is important here is
  motivationAnd I always tell them make sure you
  go to the Learning Centre.
• Clark
• No, it is not about culture, it is about
  training. Because those who have learnt English
  like Africans and Americans, their English is a
  bit better. You see that they have the command.
  But those who come from countries like Turkey or
  Middle East they havent had training.

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Change feedback on students texts

• Students focus
• Sentence structure
• Vocabulary
• Text structure (introduction, conclusions)

• Facultys focus
• Understanding of disciplinary knowledge
• Meaning-making
• Appropriate voice and stance
• Coherent and logical text structure
• Surface level of language

Study skills
ACLITS understanding
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Emerging themes and issues

• Writing courses prove to be a useful but at the
  same time insufficient support in learning how to
  write at university.
• The perspective on learning to write represented
  by the faculty seems to contradict their own
  expectations of students writing
• Faculty members direct students towards study
  skills but in practice they expect ACLITS
  understanding.
• Students seem to be disempowered as a result of
  the institutional
• writing support received at university
• Students appear to come with ACLITS
  understanding, but they are directed towards
  study skills.
• Students compensate by engaging in various
  outside classroom literacy practices that help
  them meet writing conventions of their
  disciplines and in which they attempt to use
  culture as an active resource.
• Alternative pedagogic practices and institutional
  spaces for teaching/learning writing (dialogues
  of participation, Lillis 2006).

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Directions for further research

• What students literacy practices assist their
  learning to write at university?
• Can insights from students own literacy practices
  assist pedagogy design?
• How to use ethnography to investigate students
  literacy practices and outside classroom spaces
  where these practices take place?

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Thank you
Weronika Górska
weronika.gorska_at_kcl.ac.uk