This qualitative research study attempts to discover the real thinking process of learners who are native Chinese speakers in Academic English Writing(AEW)through interviews.Introspecting an EFL learner’s thinking pr...This qualitative research study attempts to discover the real thinking process of learners who are native Chinese speakers in Academic English Writing(AEW)through interviews.Introspecting an EFL learner’s thinking process in English writing is based on two theories:critical period hypothesis and translanguaging.The results of the study indicate that translanguaging has a positive impact on the English CET-4 writing of learners who lack proficiency in English.For those learners who lack proficiency in the second language,translanguaging is an effective auxiliary tool for them to complete AEW.展开更多
Academic writing is social interaction between writer and reader,during which writers can employ discursive and non-discursive features to construct their identities.However,many student writers who are users of Engli...Academic writing is social interaction between writer and reader,during which writers can employ discursive and non-discursive features to construct their identities.However,many student writers who are users of English as an additional language(EAL)may find it challenging to construct their identities in academic writing.Properly constructed identity in academic writing can help EAL student writers develop a stronger sense of self,exercise their agency,and negotiate the academic discourse.Therefore,this paper reviews empirical studies on EAL student writers'identity construction when they write in English to investigate the features of identities that EAL student writers construct in texts and the factors that influence their identity construction.The findings show that,compared with expert writers and native-English-speaking(NES)counterparts,EAL student writers tend to present a weak authorial identity.Furthermore,EAL student writers tend to be more engaged with texts than with readers and lack commitment to their claims.The identities that EAL student writers construct in academic writing are also interwoven with EAL students'English proficiency levels,educational experience,disciplinary conventions,genre affordances,and audience awareness.The findings of this literature review can help teachers and educators raise EAL students’identity awareness and facilitate students in strategically constructing writer identities in academic writing.展开更多
Academic writings, whether they are BA dissertations or semester papers, are important carriers of one's ideas and findings of their own study and research spheres. In academic papers, the most important part is the ...Academic writings, whether they are BA dissertations or semester papers, are important carriers of one's ideas and findings of their own study and research spheres. In academic papers, the most important part is the choice of topics which determines the macro direction of the paper. Important as it is, it is difficult for the English majors to choose the most appropriate topics with idea-invested thesis statements instead of some factual statements. Therefore, in order to make clear of the status quo and underlying obstacles of topic choosing, this paper is to study on 98 samples from China University of Political Science and Law's junior English majors. By observing and analyzing their writings, the paper intends to fred out some possible and accessible methods to improve English majors' academic writing and offer some insights for teachers to make some adjustments in accordance with the status quo.展开更多
The aim of this study is to conduct the validity analysis of the test paper of the academic English reading and writing course referring to the freshmen of non-English majors in a university of Technology in Shanghai....The aim of this study is to conduct the validity analysis of the test paper of the academic English reading and writing course referring to the freshmen of non-English majors in a university of Technology in Shanghai.The validity is mainly analyzed from these three aspects:the content and construct validity,the reaction process,and the internal structure of the test paper.And the principles of language assessment in the design of the test paper are given in this study.The validity study was also conducted in a class with 42 freshmen,and the scores of them were analyzed through the internal correlation coefficient from Statistic Package for Social Science(SPSS)25.0.Finally,the validity of the test paper is concluded.展开更多
This paper seeks to identify errors made my English majors in academic writing so that preventive measures such as effective pedagogic strategies and learning activities can be devised and conducted to reduce these er...This paper seeks to identify errors made my English majors in academic writing so that preventive measures such as effective pedagogic strategies and learning activities can be devised and conducted to reduce these errors. In order to facilitate learners in horning their skills in paraphrasing, a practical strategy is proposed. It is hoped that by implementing strategies like this, ESL learners will be confident in using their own words to paraphrase academic texts with minimal errors.展开更多
Owing to the negative view of Hong Kong English(HKE)in popular discourse,few English lecturers in Hong Kong universities directly acknowledge or discuss the variety in a non-linguistic course.This paper illustrates an...Owing to the negative view of Hong Kong English(HKE)in popular discourse,few English lecturers in Hong Kong universities directly acknowledge or discuss the variety in a non-linguistic course.This paper illustrates an action research study of how HKE may play a role in an academic writing course of a sub-degree program in Hong Kong.Focusing on 8 representatives from an academic writing course with 100 students,it employed the qualitative experiment method to examine whether students who had possessed basic linguistic knowledge of HKE from an additional tutorial would perceive HKE and academic writing differently from those who had not.Student representatives from each group were invited to a focus group to explore ideas about the two subjects discussed in class.Their conversations suggested that prior knowledge of the syntactic features of HKE might raise students’awareness of the grammatical differences between the variety and the standard.The analysis also suggested that introducing the linguistic view of HKE to students might render them optimistic about their variety,helping them identify the situations where the variety would be tolerant of and settings where Standard English would be expected.The study suggested that such an intervention might facilitate students’learning of Standard English for academic purposes and practices of English in actual professional communication.Upon the improvement or advancement,they will position themselves more powerfully in the dichotomy between the standard and non-standard.More formal research on a similar or relevant topic is required to validate the impact of understanding HKE on learning academic writing.展开更多
Owing to the negative view of Hong Kong English(HKE)in popular discourse,few English lecturers in Hong Kong universities directly acknowledge or discuss the variety in a non-linguistic course.This paper illustrates an...Owing to the negative view of Hong Kong English(HKE)in popular discourse,few English lecturers in Hong Kong universities directly acknowledge or discuss the variety in a non-linguistic course.This paper illustrates an action research study of how HKE may play a role in an academic writing course of a sub-degree program in Hong Kong.Focusing on 8 representatives from an academic writing course with 100 students,it employed the qualitative experiment method to examine whether students who had possessed basic linguistic knowledge of HKE from an additional tutorial would perceive HKE and academic writing differently from those who had not.Student representatives from each group were invited to a focus group to explore ideas about the two subjects discussed in class.Their conversations suggested that prior knowledge of the syntactic features of HKE might raise students’awareness of the grammatical differences between the variety and the standard.The analysis also suggested that introducing the linguistic view of HKE to students might render them optimistic about their variety,helping them identify the situations where the variety would be tolerant of and settings where Standard English would be expected.The study suggested that such an intervention might facilitate students’learning of Standard English for academic purposes and practices of English in actual professional communication.Upon the improvement or advancement,they will position themselves more powerfully in the dichotomy between the standard and non-standard.More formal research on a similar or relevant topic is required to validate the impact of understanding HKE on learning academic writing.展开更多
The goal of this short paper is to bring English academic writing(EAW)and mobile-assisted language learning(MALL)together to examine to what degree the latter can be effectively employed to support the former in the H...The goal of this short paper is to bring English academic writing(EAW)and mobile-assisted language learning(MALL)together to examine to what degree the latter can be effectively employed to support the former in the Hong Kong higher education context.It utilizes the perspectives generated from the literature,together with professional interpretation,to illustrate the affordances of MALL in EAW in the community.It is suggested that MALL can be employed to integrate academic English into the students’daily lives,through which they can implicitly build the knowledge of academic register outside of the classroom and ultimately use it in the classroom.展开更多
Teachers are supposed to apply the Genre-Based Approach(GBA)to teach academic writing in the Foundation Year Program(FYP)in the colleges of technology.However,students in these colleges find it difficult to produce a ...Teachers are supposed to apply the Genre-Based Approach(GBA)to teach academic writing in the Foundation Year Program(FYP)in the colleges of technology.However,students in these colleges find it difficult to produce a formal piece of academic work(Al-Husseini,2004).Students seem to face lot of writing problems and so the author conducted this study to have a better understanding of what is happening.He carried a questionnaire study to reveal the causes of difficulties in academic writing.The author restricted his focus on research to lack of practice in applying these skills in students’writing as that is more relevant in the technical colleges’context.The study proved that the absence of practicing learning and teaching academic writing due to the insufficient use of the GBA,partly discourage the adequate mastering of these skills.Following the GBA to tackle such problem might be useful.As a consequence,the author considers this research study’s results as an additional evidence for the value of the GBA in developing the learning and teaching of academic writing skills to FYP Omani students in the technical colleges.展开更多
This research investigates four categories of high-frequency grammatical errors from 45 students’academic writings via script analysis.A group of 36 students responded to a questionnaire focusing on their beliefs reg...This research investigates four categories of high-frequency grammatical errors from 45 students’academic writings via script analysis.A group of 36 students responded to a questionnaire focusing on their beliefs regarding these grammatical constructions.The participants are enrolled in an international school in Suzhou City.A total of 646 sentences were analyzed,among which295(45.7%)are inaccurate.Of the 364 errors found,most of them(64.0%)fall into the category of Subject-verb agreement,followed by subordinate clauses(28.6%);errors in English existential construction and the passive voice are a few.Also,the usage rate of subordinate clause is 42.7%,of which a large proportion was incorrect.展开更多
For the past several decades, it has been clear that the ability to write texts for academic and professional purposes ("academic writing" in this article) is key to the success of adults in U.S. society--in schoo...For the past several decades, it has been clear that the ability to write texts for academic and professional purposes ("academic writing" in this article) is key to the success of adults in U.S. society--in school, in university courses, on tests that they need to take to progress through learning and into work, and in the workforce. Academic writing has specific features and involves approaches that are different from much of the writing that is done with adult learners, particularly those learning English as an additional language (e.g., described in reviews by Hinkel, 2015; Leki, Cumming, & Silva, 2008; and a survey by Rosenfeld, Courtney, & Fowles, 2004). However, a recent survey of adult educators, conducted by the authors, found that academic writing has not been a focus in many adult education programs, and teachers receive limited professional development in this area and instructional support in implementing it. This article describes the importance of academic writing at all levels of adult education, the key features of academic writing, and the current state of writing instruction in adult education programs. It then describes the motivation for, design, and outcomes of a survey of and interviews with adult educators across the country on their preparation for and instructional practices with academic writing (conducted in 2014 and 2015). Finally, it describes approaches that can be used in adult education programs to meet the writing proficiency needs of students at all levels and next steps that the adult education field might take.展开更多
According to the Degree Regulations of the People’s Republic of China,our country implements a three-level Bachelor’s,Master’s,and Doctoral degree system,graduates at all levels must pass the course examination and...According to the Degree Regulations of the People’s Republic of China,our country implements a three-level Bachelor’s,Master’s,and Doctoral degree system,graduates at all levels must pass the course examination and thesis defense before they can obtain a degree certificate.It can be seen that writing academic papers is a very important skill.For English majors,academic papers need to be written in English to illustrate their academic achievements.However,judging from the current papers of English majors,there are prominent problems in thesis writing,such as:blind selection of topics,empty content,scattered research,and improper attitudes of students.This study mainly adopts the literature method,on the basis of reading academic writing-related literature and English majors’paper,the author finds out the commonalities of English major students’academic writing and puts forward effective countermeasures.This study will provide new strategy for English majors to improve their thesis writing ability,avoid making general mistakes,and to a certain extent,reduce the tutoring pressure for essay instructors,so as to improve the academic writing quality of English majors.展开更多
Academic writing in College English Teaching is considered to be one of the most importanttopics. More important ly, the issue of personal voice in ESL writing attracts many second language researchers' attention ...Academic writing in College English Teaching is considered to be one of the most importanttopics. More important ly, the issue of personal voice in ESL writing attracts many second language researchers' attention recently. Through reviewing the supportive or opposite perspectives about using personal voice in writing, the paper aims to explore the barriers to expressing personal voice. The most significant part is to give some pedagogical implications for teaching academic writing.展开更多
Plagiarism is one of the main problems Chinese English majors face in thesis writing. This paper talks about the reasons behind it and then comes up with some ways for college English teachers to help their students b...Plagiarism is one of the main problems Chinese English majors face in thesis writing. This paper talks about the reasons behind it and then comes up with some ways for college English teachers to help their students better understand and avoid plagia?rism.展开更多
文摘This qualitative research study attempts to discover the real thinking process of learners who are native Chinese speakers in Academic English Writing(AEW)through interviews.Introspecting an EFL learner’s thinking process in English writing is based on two theories:critical period hypothesis and translanguaging.The results of the study indicate that translanguaging has a positive impact on the English CET-4 writing of learners who lack proficiency in English.For those learners who lack proficiency in the second language,translanguaging is an effective auxiliary tool for them to complete AEW.
文摘Academic writing is social interaction between writer and reader,during which writers can employ discursive and non-discursive features to construct their identities.However,many student writers who are users of English as an additional language(EAL)may find it challenging to construct their identities in academic writing.Properly constructed identity in academic writing can help EAL student writers develop a stronger sense of self,exercise their agency,and negotiate the academic discourse.Therefore,this paper reviews empirical studies on EAL student writers'identity construction when they write in English to investigate the features of identities that EAL student writers construct in texts and the factors that influence their identity construction.The findings show that,compared with expert writers and native-English-speaking(NES)counterparts,EAL student writers tend to present a weak authorial identity.Furthermore,EAL student writers tend to be more engaged with texts than with readers and lack commitment to their claims.The identities that EAL student writers construct in academic writing are also interwoven with EAL students'English proficiency levels,educational experience,disciplinary conventions,genre affordances,and audience awareness.The findings of this literature review can help teachers and educators raise EAL students’identity awareness and facilitate students in strategically constructing writer identities in academic writing.
文摘Academic writings, whether they are BA dissertations or semester papers, are important carriers of one's ideas and findings of their own study and research spheres. In academic papers, the most important part is the choice of topics which determines the macro direction of the paper. Important as it is, it is difficult for the English majors to choose the most appropriate topics with idea-invested thesis statements instead of some factual statements. Therefore, in order to make clear of the status quo and underlying obstacles of topic choosing, this paper is to study on 98 samples from China University of Political Science and Law's junior English majors. By observing and analyzing their writings, the paper intends to fred out some possible and accessible methods to improve English majors' academic writing and offer some insights for teachers to make some adjustments in accordance with the status quo.
文摘The aim of this study is to conduct the validity analysis of the test paper of the academic English reading and writing course referring to the freshmen of non-English majors in a university of Technology in Shanghai.The validity is mainly analyzed from these three aspects:the content and construct validity,the reaction process,and the internal structure of the test paper.And the principles of language assessment in the design of the test paper are given in this study.The validity study was also conducted in a class with 42 freshmen,and the scores of them were analyzed through the internal correlation coefficient from Statistic Package for Social Science(SPSS)25.0.Finally,the validity of the test paper is concluded.
文摘This paper seeks to identify errors made my English majors in academic writing so that preventive measures such as effective pedagogic strategies and learning activities can be devised and conducted to reduce these errors. In order to facilitate learners in horning their skills in paraphrasing, a practical strategy is proposed. It is hoped that by implementing strategies like this, ESL learners will be confident in using their own words to paraphrase academic texts with minimal errors.
文摘Owing to the negative view of Hong Kong English(HKE)in popular discourse,few English lecturers in Hong Kong universities directly acknowledge or discuss the variety in a non-linguistic course.This paper illustrates an action research study of how HKE may play a role in an academic writing course of a sub-degree program in Hong Kong.Focusing on 8 representatives from an academic writing course with 100 students,it employed the qualitative experiment method to examine whether students who had possessed basic linguistic knowledge of HKE from an additional tutorial would perceive HKE and academic writing differently from those who had not.Student representatives from each group were invited to a focus group to explore ideas about the two subjects discussed in class.Their conversations suggested that prior knowledge of the syntactic features of HKE might raise students’awareness of the grammatical differences between the variety and the standard.The analysis also suggested that introducing the linguistic view of HKE to students might render them optimistic about their variety,helping them identify the situations where the variety would be tolerant of and settings where Standard English would be expected.The study suggested that such an intervention might facilitate students’learning of Standard English for academic purposes and practices of English in actual professional communication.Upon the improvement or advancement,they will position themselves more powerfully in the dichotomy between the standard and non-standard.More formal research on a similar or relevant topic is required to validate the impact of understanding HKE on learning academic writing.
文摘Owing to the negative view of Hong Kong English(HKE)in popular discourse,few English lecturers in Hong Kong universities directly acknowledge or discuss the variety in a non-linguistic course.This paper illustrates an action research study of how HKE may play a role in an academic writing course of a sub-degree program in Hong Kong.Focusing on 8 representatives from an academic writing course with 100 students,it employed the qualitative experiment method to examine whether students who had possessed basic linguistic knowledge of HKE from an additional tutorial would perceive HKE and academic writing differently from those who had not.Student representatives from each group were invited to a focus group to explore ideas about the two subjects discussed in class.Their conversations suggested that prior knowledge of the syntactic features of HKE might raise students’awareness of the grammatical differences between the variety and the standard.The analysis also suggested that introducing the linguistic view of HKE to students might render them optimistic about their variety,helping them identify the situations where the variety would be tolerant of and settings where Standard English would be expected.The study suggested that such an intervention might facilitate students’learning of Standard English for academic purposes and practices of English in actual professional communication.Upon the improvement or advancement,they will position themselves more powerfully in the dichotomy between the standard and non-standard.More formal research on a similar or relevant topic is required to validate the impact of understanding HKE on learning academic writing.
文摘The goal of this short paper is to bring English academic writing(EAW)and mobile-assisted language learning(MALL)together to examine to what degree the latter can be effectively employed to support the former in the Hong Kong higher education context.It utilizes the perspectives generated from the literature,together with professional interpretation,to illustrate the affordances of MALL in EAW in the community.It is suggested that MALL can be employed to integrate academic English into the students’daily lives,through which they can implicitly build the knowledge of academic register outside of the classroom and ultimately use it in the classroom.
文摘Teachers are supposed to apply the Genre-Based Approach(GBA)to teach academic writing in the Foundation Year Program(FYP)in the colleges of technology.However,students in these colleges find it difficult to produce a formal piece of academic work(Al-Husseini,2004).Students seem to face lot of writing problems and so the author conducted this study to have a better understanding of what is happening.He carried a questionnaire study to reveal the causes of difficulties in academic writing.The author restricted his focus on research to lack of practice in applying these skills in students’writing as that is more relevant in the technical colleges’context.The study proved that the absence of practicing learning and teaching academic writing due to the insufficient use of the GBA,partly discourage the adequate mastering of these skills.Following the GBA to tackle such problem might be useful.As a consequence,the author considers this research study’s results as an additional evidence for the value of the GBA in developing the learning and teaching of academic writing skills to FYP Omani students in the technical colleges.
文摘This research investigates four categories of high-frequency grammatical errors from 45 students’academic writings via script analysis.A group of 36 students responded to a questionnaire focusing on their beliefs regarding these grammatical constructions.The participants are enrolled in an international school in Suzhou City.A total of 646 sentences were analyzed,among which295(45.7%)are inaccurate.Of the 364 errors found,most of them(64.0%)fall into the category of Subject-verb agreement,followed by subordinate clauses(28.6%);errors in English existential construction and the passive voice are a few.Also,the usage rate of subordinate clause is 42.7%,of which a large proportion was incorrect.
文摘For the past several decades, it has been clear that the ability to write texts for academic and professional purposes ("academic writing" in this article) is key to the success of adults in U.S. society--in school, in university courses, on tests that they need to take to progress through learning and into work, and in the workforce. Academic writing has specific features and involves approaches that are different from much of the writing that is done with adult learners, particularly those learning English as an additional language (e.g., described in reviews by Hinkel, 2015; Leki, Cumming, & Silva, 2008; and a survey by Rosenfeld, Courtney, & Fowles, 2004). However, a recent survey of adult educators, conducted by the authors, found that academic writing has not been a focus in many adult education programs, and teachers receive limited professional development in this area and instructional support in implementing it. This article describes the importance of academic writing at all levels of adult education, the key features of academic writing, and the current state of writing instruction in adult education programs. It then describes the motivation for, design, and outcomes of a survey of and interviews with adult educators across the country on their preparation for and instructional practices with academic writing (conducted in 2014 and 2015). Finally, it describes approaches that can be used in adult education programs to meet the writing proficiency needs of students at all levels and next steps that the adult education field might take.
文摘According to the Degree Regulations of the People’s Republic of China,our country implements a three-level Bachelor’s,Master’s,and Doctoral degree system,graduates at all levels must pass the course examination and thesis defense before they can obtain a degree certificate.It can be seen that writing academic papers is a very important skill.For English majors,academic papers need to be written in English to illustrate their academic achievements.However,judging from the current papers of English majors,there are prominent problems in thesis writing,such as:blind selection of topics,empty content,scattered research,and improper attitudes of students.This study mainly adopts the literature method,on the basis of reading academic writing-related literature and English majors’paper,the author finds out the commonalities of English major students’academic writing and puts forward effective countermeasures.This study will provide new strategy for English majors to improve their thesis writing ability,avoid making general mistakes,and to a certain extent,reduce the tutoring pressure for essay instructors,so as to improve the academic writing quality of English majors.
文摘Academic writing in College English Teaching is considered to be one of the most importanttopics. More important ly, the issue of personal voice in ESL writing attracts many second language researchers' attention recently. Through reviewing the supportive or opposite perspectives about using personal voice in writing, the paper aims to explore the barriers to expressing personal voice. The most significant part is to give some pedagogical implications for teaching academic writing.
文摘Plagiarism is one of the main problems Chinese English majors face in thesis writing. This paper talks about the reasons behind it and then comes up with some ways for college English teachers to help their students better understand and avoid plagia?rism.