Student preferences: using Grammarly to help EFL writers with paraphrasing, summarizing, and synthesizing

This study explores students’ perceptions about using Automated Writing Evaluation (AWE), Grammarly (a paid version), as a complementary instructional tool to teach and support writing from sources. Participants were second-year students (n=37) at a public university in Japan. After in-class tasks aimed at teaching paraphrasing, summarizing, and synthesizing, students completed a survey that measured their perceptions. Students had positive attitudes about Grammarly in general but had somewhat polarized opinions on how useful the tool is in teaching writing from sources and helping with plagiarism.

Integrating reading and writing: supporting students' writing from source

Writing from sources is an important academic skill but students find it a difficult skill to learn. The lesson study method was used to design and evaluate learning and teaching strategies aimed at improving students’ writing from sources skills. The team developed a seven-part lesson plan and associated learning activities and practice opportunities which was delivered over 12 hours. The lesson was delivered to first-year students (n = 150) taking a Critical Skills module. Students’ writing was analysed to identify how they approached integrating sources into their writing. Analyses of student texts suggest significant improvement in some skills, for example, finding, interpreting and synthesising content across sources. Other skills showed less marked improvement, for example, critiquing sources and creating new text. This paper shares the lesson and makes suggestions for future iterations of the lesson.

Book Review: Reading, Research, and Writing: Teaching Information Literacy with Process-Based Research Assignments

Research papers are ubiquitous in college, as common for freshmen as they are for seniors. To support these assignments, librarians typically have been limited to “go-here-click-that” one-shot sessions. Frequently, the results are faculty who are unhappy with the quality of student papers and librarians who are frustrated that they cannot contribute more to student learning and success. Reading, Research, and Writing takes scholarship from psychology, education, library science, and rhetoric and communication and, in six concise chapters, demonstrates that focusing on the messy process of research, rather than its product, leads to better learning outcomes. To keep the spotlight firmly on this untidy process, the phrase “writing from sources” rather than “research paper” is used throughout the book.