Goals for Academic Writing ESL students and their instructors (Language Learning & Language Teaching)

218 Pages·2006·1.07 MB·English

by  Alister H. Cumming

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GoalsforAcademicWriting
Language Learning and Language Teaching
TheLL&LTmonographseriespublishesmonographsaswellaseditedvolumes
on applied and methodological issues in the field of language pedagogy. The
focusoftheseriesisonsubjectssuchasclassroomdiscourseandinteraction;
languagediversityineducationalsettings;bilingualeducation;languagetesting
andlanguageassessment;teachingmethodsandteachingperformance;learning
trajectories in second language acquisition; and written language learning in
educationalsettings.
Serieseditors
NinaSpada
OntarioInstituteforStudiesinEducation,UniversityofToronto
JanH.Hulstijn
DepartmentofSecondLanguageAcquisition,UniversityofAmsterdam
Volume15
GoalsforAcademicWriting:ESLstudentsandtheirinstructors
EditedbyAlisterCumming
Goals for Academic Writing
ESL students and their instructors
Editedby
Alister Cumming
OntarioInstituteforStudiesinEducation
JohnBenjaminsPublishingCompany
Amsterdam(cid:1)/(cid:1)Philadelphia
TM Thepaperusedinthispublicationmeetstheminimumrequirements
8
ofAmericanNationalStandardforInformationSciences–Permanence
ofPaperforPrintedLibraryMaterials,ansiz39.48-1984.
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Goalsforacademicwriting:ESLstudentsandtheirinstructors/editedby
AlisterCumming.
p. cm.(LanguageLearningandLanguageTeaching,issn1569–9471
;v.15)
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindexes.
1.Englishlanguage--Studyandteaching--Foreignspeakers--
Research.2.Englishlanguage--Rhetoric--Studyandteaching--Foreign
speakers.3.Englishlanguage--WrittenEnglish.4.Englishlanguage--
Rhetoric--Studyandteaching--Canada.5.Academicwriting--Studyand
teaching--Canada.I.Cumming,AlisterH.II.Series.
PE1128.A2.G57 2006
808.042--dc22 2006047724
isbn9027219699(Hb;alk.paper)
isbn9027219710(Pb;alk.paper)
©2006–JohnBenjaminsB.V.
Nopartofthisbookmaybereproducedinanyform,byprint,photoprint,microfilm,or
anyothermeans,withoutwrittenpermissionfromthepublisher.
JohnBenjaminsPublishingCo.·P.O.Box36224·1020meAmsterdam·TheNetherlands
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Foreword v
Contents
Foreword – William Grabe vii
1. Introduction, purpose, and conceptual foundations
Alister Cumming 1
Section I. The Main Study 19
2. Context and design of the research 21
Alister Cumming
3. Students’ goals for ESL and university courses 29
Ally Zhou, Michael Busch, Guillaume Gentil, Keanre Eouanzoui,
and Alister Cumming
4. A study of contrasts: ESL and university instructors’ goals for
writing improvement 50
Jill Cummings, Usman Erdősy, and Alister Cumming
Section II. Case Studies 71
5. Nine Chinese students writing in Canadian university courses 73
Luxin Yang
6. Students’ and instructors’ assessments of the attainment of
writing goals 90
Khaled Barkaoui and Jia Fei
7. The language of intentions for writing improvement:
A systemic functional linguistic analysis 108
Michael Busch
8. Goals, motivations, and identities of three students writing
in English 125
Tae-Young Kim, Kyoko Baba, and Alister Cumming
9. Variations in goals and activities for multilingual writing 142
Guillaume Gentil
vi Contents
Section III. Implications 157
10. Implications for pedagogy, policy, and research 159
Alister Cumming
References 174
Appendices
A. Profiles of 45 students and 5 ESL instructors (Phase 1) 189
B. Profiles of 15 students, their courses, academic
programs, and 9 of their university instructors (Phase 2) 191
C. Protocols for interviews and stimulated recalls 193
Subject index 199
Contributors 203
Foreword vii
Foreword
William Grabe
In some ways, research on second-language (L2) writing development is rapidly
superceding research on first-language (L1) writing in university settings. L2
writing research is not fettered by a need to endorse post-modernist thinking
about research, and thus it is not discouraged from engaging in a full variety of
empirical research approaches (cf. Haswell, 2005). L2 writing research is also
carried out in contexts in which L2 students’ needs for effective instruction is
obvious and readily measurable; there is a greater urgency to “try to get it right.” At
the same time, L2 writing research is open to the full range of interpretive concepts
and theoretical arguments that drive most post-modernist inquiry in L1–writing
research. This book by Cumming and colleagues provides an outstanding model
for how such a range of research perspectives can be integrated to examine impor-
tant issues in L2 writing.
The book explores a seemingly simple question: What types of writing goals
do L2 students set for themselves in university settings, how do they vary from
the goals of their instructors, and how do these goals change as students move
from ESL support courses to disciplinary subject courses? However, the simplicity
of the question belies the complexity of the issues involved and the complexity
of research efforts that need to go into the search for answers. The question
also suggests a number of larger issues that can be inferred from this project:
How do we understand better the nature of academic writing goals? How do
contexts influence student writing goals? How can we observe and examine writing
goals among students longitudinally – from pre-university to the second year
in university studies? Cumming et al. sought answers to these questions through
multiple research methods: questionnaires, interviews, retrospective think-aloud
data, and case studies of students in differing settings. In the process they devel-
oped an important descriptive framework for the interpretation of writing goals in
academic settings, and they offer a range of insights on goal setting for L2 writers
as well as writing in university settings more generally.
The concept of “goals” is complex. Goals themselves imply self-regulated
learning; they imply motivation (and motives for action); they imply agency
(deciding to act) and a pro-active set of deliberate decisions. Goals have long
been associated with writing. Bereiter and Scardamalia (1987) depicted writing
viii Foreword
as a primarily goal-oriented activity in their major volume on the psychology of
composition. Goals also suggest strategic actions, and thus learning strategies as
part of the act of writing and the development of writing abilities. The research
project integrates many of these various perspectives through activity theory: an
approach that sees sets of activities as driven by motives (the motivation to act)
in specific contexts, carried out by individuals who vary in their personal histo-
ries. These more general motives lead to specific, concrete actions in response to
particular immediate goals in specific situational contexts.
Situating writing development within activity theory emphasizes the com-
plexity of the student writer as a focus of inquiry and the importance of goals for
writing, whether the goals are driven by individual, social, situational, or institu-
tional forces. Such a view of writing provides one window into the complexity of
writing instruction in academic institutional settings, often driven by long-range,
if not always well articulated or carefully examined, goals of teachers, students,
curriculum planners, and institutions. In this way, the study of goals also opens
up explorations of linkages among research, educational policy, and pedagogical
practice.
Major features of the project
Staying with the theme of complexity, I would like to comment on eight aspects
of the research project. Each is given some prominence at various points in the
research described in this book, and each reflects aspects of applied linguistics and
writing research that merit further exploration.
1. A contextually-grounded descriptive framework for the research
The main two-year study of students’ writing goals is guided by a descriptive
framework based on contextually rich information about the varying purposes
and contexts of writing goals in this one setting (presented in Chapter 3). This
framework, created on the bases of carefully collected data (described in Chapter
2), provides an interpretive scheme for all of the studies in the book. Although
not as extensive or indepth as a full ethnography, the inquiry accounts sufficiently
for the local situation and the perspectives of students and their instructors to
allow the researchers to consider various contextual factors that influence writing
goals – providing a way to examine continuities and differences in writing goals
across an extended period of time, across types of goals, across different types of
courses, and across types of actions taken. The results of the main study highlight
the power of the framework. It is also interesting to note that the socioculturally-
Foreword ix
oriented, interpretive studies by Kim, Baba and Cumming (in Chapter 8) and
Gentil (in Chapter 9) suggest additional categories that could be considered in this
descriptive framework in the future (e.g., students’ L1 literacy history, students’ L2
proficiency, prior opportunities for writing particular types of assignments, levels
of motivation, the scope of goal identified).
2. A multiple case study approach
One of the strengths of case study research for writing is the ability to under-
stand the details of students’ efforts to engage in writing and the consequences
of these efforts. An obvious limitation of most case study research is the inability
to generalize beyond the immediate setting of the study itself. Many case studies
involve one, three, or perhaps five cases of students in a given learning context,
and they tell a narrative of success, failure, coping, or not coping related to a major
point of inquiry. The present project has a much broader scope: It involved up
to 45 students, 14 instructors, at least 11 different courses, two continuous years
of data collection and analysis, and a team of 10 committed researchers. Such a
context for research allows for comparative analyses as well as comparisons with
other case study and ethnographic literature on L2 writing. It offers the potential
for exploring larger issues such as the connections among research, policy, and
pedagogy; the relation between goals for writing and writing development; and
patterns of variation among groups of learners.
3. Multiple theoretical frames
This project also moves beyond exploratory, ethnographically-oriented case
studies in another sense. The research was explicitly guided by specific theoretical
orientations that were intended both to shape the research design and to assist
interpretations of the results (as described in Chapters 1, 2, and 5 to 9). While
much exploratory qualitative research offer insights into a context and raises
important questions for further research, this project sought both to raise ques-
tions and to provide evidence for (or against) theoretical expectations. The project
is grounded by activity theory (Russell, 1997a) as a way to understand the role
of goals in writing classrooms. It also draws strongly on research on learning
goals, self-directed learning, and motivation from the educational psychology
literature. Both orientations converge on the role of goal-directed activity in
the writing instruction context. The project also makes use of social theory and
rhetorical theory in interpreting motives and outcomes for several of the case
study students.
Finally, the project affirms the importance of reliable, empirical data in L2