Diagnosing EFL writers’ development of discourse competence in disciplinary writing: an ecological approach
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Yumin Wang
und
Qin Xie
Abstract
This study employed a multiple-case study design to investigate nine English-as-a-foreign-language undergraduates’ disciplinary writing experiences in a bilingual teaching and learning context. Drawing on writing samples, writer’s logs, and semi-structured interviews, the study identified weaknesses in their discourse features and explored their relationships to the composing processes, immediate personal traits, and larger environmental factors. Overall, the students demonstrated a basic level of discourse competence (i.e., they could write an essay on the topic and use complex connectives accurately). However, they tended to ignore other discourse features (e.g., composing a statement to control ideas in the introduction, closing the essay with an effective conclusion, and maintaining appropriate reader-writer interactions). The data revealed a positive association between English proficiency and discourse features. Typically, those with low novice and intermediate novice proficiency levels relied on text-recognition technology to translate English materials into their L1s, thus enabling source processing. They also depended on automatic translation applications to translate their essays into English, which were written in their L1s first. Based on these findings, this study suggests the integration of adequate genre knowledge, academic reading skills, and discipline-relevant task design into L2 writing instruction and assessment practice in undergraduate study.
Funding source: Research Grant Council, Hong Kong Government
Award Identifier / Grant number: 28607115
Acknowledgments
The authors have accepted responsibility for the entire content of this manuscript and approved its submission. The authors would like to thank Wang Zihan for double-coding student essays and the interview data. We would also thank Mr. Li Shuchen, Ms. Miao Lili, Ms. Yang Junqing, and Ms Guo Jinyu for their close communication of the disciplinary courses.
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Research ethics: The research has received ethical approval for data collection from the university’s research ethics committee.
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Author contributions: The first author: conceptualization, investigation, data analysis, writing of the first draft; The second author: supervision, secure funding, conceptualization, revising and finalizing the manuscript.
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Competing interests: The authors state no conflict of interest.
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Research funding: This work was partially supported by a studentship grant given to the first author from the Hong Kong SAR Government and was partially supported by a research grant given to the second author from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong government (ref# 28607115).
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Data availability: The raw data can be obtained on request from the corresponding author.
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