Writing and Writing Instruction in Different Academic Contexts
UTILIZING KNOWLEDGE OF STUDENTS’ PREVIOUS L1 AND ENGLISH WRITTEN RHETORIC INSTRUCTION TO INFORM INSTRUCTION OF WRITTEN RHETORICAL STYLES IN ENGLISH
Monique Yoder
LCC International University, Klaipėda, Lithuania
Teaching developmental academic writing in a multidisciplinary context is a challenge. Adding an international, multicultural, and multilingual student body on top of this context in an Englishmedium institution provides further complications in that those not confident with L2 rhetorical forms attempt to transfer their L1 rhetorical styles (Carson et al. 1990; Leki 1995). Creating an effective plan of instruction becomes difficult, given the range of L1 backgrounds. A third layer of complication to this teaching environment is language learners’ previous writing instruction experiences, both in their L1 and L2. From this last point, 42 university freshmen enrolled in a developmental academic writing course at an international university in Lithuania were given a set of guided, selfreflection questions to describe their experiences in learning conventions of an academic essay in both their L1 and English while studying in secondary school in their home countries. Responses to these questions were then coded for common themes. This qualitative data revealed three major factors that influence learners’ ability to successfully write an academic essay in English: 1) the quality of writing instruction in both languages, 2) what is perceived to be valued in an essay; for instance, grammatical accuracy, lexical complexity, content, organization, word count, etc., and 3) the method of teacher feedback on writing. This paper aims to explore the results of this classroom research and offer suggestions on how knowing students’ writing instruction experiences can be used to shape effective writing instruction in Englishmedium higher education institutions with a diverse student body.
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