scholarly journals Chinese Postgraduates’ Explanation of the Sources of Sentence Initial Bundles in their Thesis Writing

RELC Journal ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-52
Author(s):  
Liang Li ◽  
Margaret Franken ◽  
Shaoqun Wu
Keyword(s):  
Academic Writing ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Writing Pedagogy ◽  
Pedagogical Practices ◽  
Student Writers ◽  
Postgraduate Students ◽  
Lexical Bundles ◽  
Language Writing ◽  
Functional Features ◽  
Thesis Writing

Lexical bundles, recurrent multiword combinations in a register, are extremely common and important discourse building blocks in academic writing. An increasing number of studies have investigated lexical bundles in academic writing in recent years, but few studies have explored L2 learners’ interpretations of their own bundle production, particularly sentence initial bundle production. Investigating the sources that have appeared to influence learners’ choices and knowledge of bundles is important as it complements what we know about the structural and functional features of lexical bundles and provides useful first-hand information for second language writing pedagogy. The present study interviewed five Chinese postgraduate students to probe possible reasons for their use of the typical sentence initial bundles identified in the self-built Chinese Masters and PhD thesis corpora. The interviews revealed diverse explanations including interlingual transfer, classroom learning, noticing in reading, a lack of rhetorical confidence, and misunderstanding of rhetorical conventions. The results suggest the need for raising students’ awareness of the common sentence starters in postgraduate academic writing, increasing their confidence as student writers, familiarizing them with rhetorical conventions, and incorporating effective corpus-based tools into pedagogical practices.

scholarly journals Understanding the Sustainable Growth of EFL Students’ Writing Skills: Differences between Novice Writers and Expert Writers in Their Use of Lexical Bundles in Academic Writing

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (10) ◽  
pp. 5553
Author(s):  
Shaojie Zhang ◽  
Hui Yu ◽  
Lawrence Jun Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Academic Writing ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Academic Community ◽  
Sustainable Growth ◽  
Pedagogical Practices ◽  
Student Writing ◽  
Student Writers ◽  
Lexical Bundles ◽  
Academic Scholarship ◽  
Novice Writers

Lexical bundles, as building blocks of discourse, play vital roles in helping members from the same academic community achieve successful communication and disseminate sustainable disciplinary knowledge. However, little attention has been paid to lexical bundles in postgraduate writing. Drawing on Biber et al.’s (1999) structural taxonomy and Hyland’s (2008a) functional taxonomy, we identified and compared lexical bundles in two self-built corpora, an EFL student writing corpus and an expert writing corpus. The results indicate considerable structural differences between the two groups: the student writers used verb phrase-based bundles more frequently and prepositional phrase-based and noun phrase-based bundles less frequently. In terms of function, although the two academic groups showed similar distributions of the three main functional categories, as student writers they exhibited insufficient reader-awareness and incomplete knowledge of stance expressions. It is hoped that the findings will shed light on future pedagogical practices to help novice writers improve their academic writing competence as a sustainable goal in enhancing their academic scholarship.

scholarly journals Effects of Process-Genre Approach on Writing Anxiety among English Academic Writing Learners in Pakistan

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 741-752
Author(s):  
Abrar Ajmal ◽  
Humaira Irfan
Keyword(s):  
Academic Writing ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Esl Writing ◽  
Writing Anxiety ◽  
Student Writers ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Language Writing ◽  
Quasi Experimental ◽  
Product Approach ◽  
Writing Instructors

Writing ability is a prerequisite to be successful in academic pursuits. Pakistani student writers experience a range of issues, including psychological, cognitive, social, and linguistic when they write. Writing instructors need to use appropriate teaching strategies and methodologies to tackle writing-related issues (Khan & Zaki, 2018). Most of the Pakistani ESL writing students are educated through the stereotypical teacher-centered Product Approach focuses on the memorization of ready-made answers. As a result, the learners face great challenges; ESL writing Anxiety is one of the major challenges (Gopang, Bughio, & Pathan, 2018). The aim of this quasi-experimental study based on predominantly the post-positivist and the marginally pragmatic philosophical framework is to explore the effects of the Process-Genre Approach (PGA) on writing anxiety among ESL intermediate/pre-university students in Pakistan. The research tools were included to collect data: Second Language Writing Anxiety Inventory (SLWAI), 22-item multidimensional questionnaire, and interviews to investigate the effects of the experiment on writing apprehensions. Data were collected before and after the designed academic writing module based on the Process-Genre approach and pair sample t-test was applied to yield statistically significant results showing that average writing anxiety score was reduced from 77.17 to 66.72 among control group and from 73.57 to 50.25 among the experimental group. Quantities data collected through interviews were analyzed using thematic analysis also supplement that the treatment was effective to reduce writing anxiety.

scholarly journals The Writer, the Text and the Reader: An Exploration of  Identity in Second Language Academic Writing

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Kirsten Reid
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Second Language Writing ◽  
English For Academic Purposes ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Student Writers ◽  
Language Writing ◽  
The Relationship

<p>Students studying in university contexts often find learning to write English for academic purposes especially challenging. Some of the challenges reside in acquiring the necessary skills and strategies to be successful academic writers. A less tangible consideration which has received recent attention from first and second language writing researchers is the relationship between writing and identity. How do student writers become part of a situated community in which some discourses may be privileged over others? While all writing can be a potential site of struggle, this may have particular significance for second language students who bring their own unique backgrounds and literacy histories to their academic writing and may find becoming part of a new and heterogeneous discourse community profoundly unsettling. Using case study methods, this dissertation explores the experiences of four undergraduate students as they become academic writers in a second language. It also carries out an analysis of some of the linguistic features one particular student essay to examine how writers simultaneously construct their texts and are constructed by them.</p>

Learner Agency and Identity in Second Language Writing

2008 ◽  
Vol 156 ◽  
pp. 109-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heekyeong Lee
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Critical Discussion ◽  
Social Worlds ◽  
Student Writers ◽  
Learning Challenges ◽  
Language Writing ◽  
Learner Agency ◽  
Agency And Identity

Abstract In this paper, I provide a critical discussion about the socio-cultural-historical dimension of a student’s struggle in the processes of learning academic writing in second language (L2). Some teachers or researchers may assume that L2 students often struggle because they do not know or do not understand the information they are taught. Therefore, teachers may feel that it is their duty to explicitly teach the information to students. I argue that some L2 students’ difficulties in their academic writing processes should not only be viewed as due to their limited proficiency of language or motivation to learn. Rather, L2 student writers’ struggles can be influenced by the process of negotiating learner agency and identity in their multiple social worlds. The primary source of the data presented is one Korean student’s personal narrative about his learning challenges and struggles in an intensive ESL program at a Canadian university. Findings of data call for a re-examination of hegemonic approaches that have become normative ways of framing, representing and describing L2 student writers and their learning challenges from a deficit view.

scholarly journals The Writer, the Text and the Reader: An Exploration of  Identity in Second Language Academic Writing

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Kirsten Reid
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Second Language Writing ◽  
English For Academic Purposes ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Student Writers ◽  
Language Writing ◽  
The Relationship

<p>Students studying in university contexts often find learning to write English for academic purposes especially challenging. Some of the challenges reside in acquiring the necessary skills and strategies to be successful academic writers. A less tangible consideration which has received recent attention from first and second language writing researchers is the relationship between writing and identity. How do student writers become part of a situated community in which some discourses may be privileged over others? While all writing can be a potential site of struggle, this may have particular significance for second language students who bring their own unique backgrounds and literacy histories to their academic writing and may find becoming part of a new and heterogeneous discourse community profoundly unsettling. Using case study methods, this dissertation explores the experiences of four undergraduate students as they become academic writers in a second language. It also carries out an analysis of some of the linguistic features one particular student essay to examine how writers simultaneously construct their texts and are constructed by them.</p>

scholarly journals Argument Structure in Arabic and English: Re-assessing Purity and Redeeming Hybridity

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 104
Author(s):  
Faisal Said Al-Maamari
Keyword(s):  
Academic Writing ◽  
Argument Structure ◽  
Rhetorical Analysis ◽  
Writing Pedagogy ◽  
Wide Distribution ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Foreign Language Learners ◽  
Language Writing ◽  
Dynamic Hybrid ◽  
Arabic And English

This study presents a contrastive rhetorical analysis of 20 argumentative Arabic and English editorials in argument structure. Samples were selected from two daily newspapers with equally wide distribution, and articles were written by their respective native writers. Both graphical and textual analyses captured the argument structure in terms of macro and micro arguments. A core finding is that the argument structure in the sampled editorials did not conform to the current predominant model of argument structure, which tended to polarize argument structure in terms of through or counter argumentation. The study contributes to the existing literature by defying the polarized traditional purity typology of argument structure frequently cited in the literature, and emphasizes a more dynamic hybrid model to understanding and analyzing arguments in general and in Arabic and English specifically. Additionally, the study of the professional genre of editorails has implications for academic writing and second language writing pedagogy by sensitizing foreign language learners to existing models of argument structure and possible ways to structure their arguments in the target language. 

scholarly journals Error Analysis in Academic Writing: A Case of International Postgraduate Students in Malaysia

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 141
Author(s):  
Fatemeh Amiri ◽  
Marlia Puteh
Keyword(s):  
English Language Learners ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
English Language ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Sentence Structure ◽  
Intensive English ◽  
Significant Information ◽  
Postgraduate Students ◽  
Term Papers ◽  
Term Paper

This paper examines the different types of writing errors performed by 16 international postgraduate students undertaking an intensive English course at a public university in Malaysia. It was mandatory for international postgraduate students who obtained less than IELTS Band 6 to undertake an Intensive English Course (IEC) offered by the University, prior to entering their respective faculties’ academic programs. The students were required to write a 3-5 page term paper assignment on a topic related to their field of study. Mixed methodology approach was employed to examine and analyze corpus of students’ term papers. The errors in the term papers were identified and classified accordingly. The results of the study revealed that four most common English language errors committed by the participants were sentence structure, articles, punctuation and capitalization. This study also shed light on the manner in which students assumed the rules of English to that of their native language. Such insight is useful for both instructors and students because it provides significant information on the building blocks experienced by English language learners in academic writing. 

Learner Agency and Identity in Second Language Writing

2008 ◽  
Vol 156 ◽  
pp. 109-128
Author(s):  
Heekyeong Lee
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Critical Discussion ◽  
Social Worlds ◽  
Student Writers ◽  
Learning Challenges ◽  
Language Writing ◽  
Learner Agency ◽  
Agency And Identity

In this paper, I provide a critical discussion about the socio-cultural-historical dimension of a student’s struggle in the processes of learning academic writing in second language (L2). Some teachers or researchers may assume that L2 students often struggle because they do not know or do not understand the information they are taught. Therefore, teachers may feel that it is their duty to explicitly teach the information to students. I argue that some L2 students’ difficulties in their academic writing processes should not only be viewed as due to their limited proficiency of language or motivation to learn. Rather, L2 student writers’ struggles can be influenced by the process of negotiating learner agency and identity in their multiple social worlds. The primary source of the data presented is one Korean student’s personal narrative about his learning challenges and struggles in an intensive ESL program at a Canadian university. Findings of data call for a re-examination of hegemonic approaches that have become normative ways of framing, representing and describing L2 student writers and their learning challenges from a deficit view.

scholarly journals Written Corrective Feedback: The Practitioners’ Perspective

2010 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norman W. Evans ◽  
K. James Hartshorn ◽  
Emily Allen Tuioti
Keyword(s):  
Second Language Writing ◽  
Corrective Feedback ◽  
Writing Pedagogy ◽  
L2 Writing ◽  
Writing Classroom ◽  
Writing Teachers ◽  
Written Corrective Feedback ◽  
Language Writing ◽  
Fundamental Research ◽  
Research Questions

Considerable attention has been given to written corrective feedback (WCF) in second language writing (L2) over the past several decades. One of the central questions has focused on the appropriateness of its use in L2 writing. In these academic discussions, scholars frequently describe how WCF is utilized in the classroom. However, many of these claims of teacher practice have no research base, since few studies have actually asked teachers what place WCF has in their writing classroom (Ferris, et al., in press/2011a; Ferris, et al., in press/2011b; Hyland, 2003; Lee, 2004). This paucity of data from teachers about their WCF practices is problematic. Understanding teacher perspectives on corrective feedback is integral to our understanding the place of WCF in L2 writing pedagogy. Accordingly, this article reports on a study that asks two fundamental research questions: (a) To what extent do current L2 writing teachers provide WCF? and (b) What determines whether or not practitioners choose to provide WCF? These questions were answered by means of an international survey completed by 1,053 L2 writing practitioners in 69 different countries. Results suggest that WCF is commonly practiced in L2 pedagogy by experienced and well-educated L2 practitioners for sound pedagogical reasons.

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