scholarly journals Integrating Project-based Learning into Academic English Writing Class: A Case Study on Doctoral Candidates of Engineering

Author(s):  
Yuan Peng
ReCALL ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 243-259 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ji-Yeon Chang

AbstractCorpora have been suggested as valuable sources for teaching English for academic purposes (EAP). Since previous studies have mainly focused on corpus use in classroom settings, more research is needed to reveal how students react to using corpora on their own and what should be provided to help them become autonomous corpus users, considering that their ultimate goal is to be independent scholars and writers. In the present study, conducted in an engineering lab at a Korean university over 22 weeks, data on students’ experiences and evaluations of consulting general and specialized corpora for academic writing were collected and analyzed. The findings show that, while both corpora served the participants well as reference sources, the specialized corpus was particularly valued for its direct help in academic writing because, as non-native English-speaking graduate engineering students, the participants wanted to follow the writing conventions of their discourse community. The participants also showed disparate attitudes toward the time taken for corpus consultation due to differences in factors such as academic experience, search purposes, and writing tasks. The article concludes with several suggestions for better corpus use with EAP students regarding the compilation of a corpus, corpus training, corpus competence, and academic writing.


Author(s):  
Xiaodong Zhang

This study reports on how a Chinese suburban English writing teacher responded to systemic functional linguistics (SFL)-based distance education. The study draws on qualitative content analyses of the teacher’s reflections, interviews, and classroom interactions. The results show that through SFL-based distance education, the teacher, interacting with his agency, overcame multiple constraints and developed academically in terms of how to understand valued academic writing. Additionally, the teacher also harnessed this newfound knowledge to support students’ socialization into academic English discourse. The study concludes the effectiveness of SFL-based distance education for English writing teachers in similarly constrained contexts, which could be enhanced by teachers’ agency. Implications of the study include synergizing the SFL-based curriculum with distance teacher education so that language educators can better assist students in gaining the knowledge needed for navigating academic English literacy.


2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Tuan Anh Truong

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] Providing written response to students' writing has been the most widely used method for English teachers to communicate with students of English in EFL/ESL contexts. However, how the EFL students perceive, prefer, and understand the teachers� written response is by no means conclusive. Researchers, educators, teachers are also puzzled by the extent to which teachers' written response influences the students' writing progress. The current study reports the findings from a mixed methods case study with 20 undergraduate Vietnamese students from an intact advanced English writing class at an urban college in Vietnam. Various types of data were collected and examined, including 24 semi-structured interviews with eight selected participants, 80 argumentative papers written within a period of ten weeks, observations, a survey questionnaire including selected-response and open-ended items, and supplementary materials. The study was designed under the theoretical framework of Second Language Acquisition, Sociocultural Perspectives, and Composition Theories on response and error. The study's aim were twofold: (1) to demystify the EFL students' perceptions of and preferences in regard to teachers' written response, and their strategies for understanding and using the response; and (2) to explore the influence of teachers� written response on the students' writing progress. The findings both echoed and contradicted the understandings found in current L2 response literature as to how the students perceive and prefer the focuses, the forms, and the types of teachers� written response, and how the teachers� written response affects the students� writing progress. The findings also indicate important implications for improvement of the L2 writing curricula and the practice of proving instructional responses in the EFL/ESL contexts.


Author(s):  
Ria Jubhari ◽  
Etty Bazergan ◽  
Karmila Mokoginta ◽  
Simon Sitoto ◽  
Besse Puspita Syarif ◽  
...  

This descriptive-qualitative case study aims to (1) identify the values of Buginese/Makasaresse local wisdoms that shape the learning process of Hasanuddin University students attending the Writing2 (MBI2) subject in the even semester, 2014; (2) find out which of the local wisdoms that strongly shape the student-centred learning (SCL) process in the Writing II class. The study focused on students classroom interaction. Data were collected from classroom observations, questionnaires, interviews and teachers note on the learning process in classroom. This study found that what is thought as Buginese or Makassarese local wisdoms can both support and inhibit the SCL process in MBI2. Such local wisdoms include respect to older people and mutual help


2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 979 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jing Li ◽  
Lei Zeng

As many scholars have realized the significance and urgency of academic English writing research in English-as-foreign-language countries, numerous studies have been conducted on the topic. However, little has focused exclusively on multidisciplinary empirical research on High-level Project (HLP) postgraduates’ academic English writing in China. The present study intends to explore the general tendency of HLP students’ academic English writing. It first investigates the difficulties and writing habits of fifty-one HLP postgraduates in the English training center of a “Project-985”  university in China through a questionnaire and semi-structured interviews, and then discusses some problems of the present academic English writing classroom and academic English writing skills that need to be improved promptly.


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