Faculty of Humanities School of Human and Community Development/Psychology 9503776d Kajeean@educ.wits.ac.za / This study investigated English Second Language (ESL) students’ experiences of academic writing in a tertiary institution. It focused particularly on ESL students’ interpretations of what is expected in academic writing. Consequently, ESL students’ expectations were compared and contrasted to the academic writing expectations of a group of academics in the same institution. The study aimed to explore how the concepts of Basic Interpersonal Communicative Skills (BICS) and Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP) were manifest in the students’ expectations and writing. The main aim was to identify the BICS and CALP distinction in ESL students as explanatory of their ability to write academically. In other words, the assumption was that ESL students experience difficulty with writing because they achieve surface fluency in terms of BICS but do not seem to develop sufficient levels of CALP to cope with the demands of the curricula in academic study. The sample consisted of thirty first year ESL Psychology students and six academics who taught on the first year Psychology course. ESL student volunteers were organized into focus groups, while academics were asked to participate in semi-structured, individual interviews. The participants’ responses were recorded and subsequently analyzed using thematic content analysis. It was found that academic writing was conceptualized in terms of structure and content. Through this distinction, ESL students recognized that, although they are able to operate at surface levels of language proficiency they find it problematic to operate at deeper levels of cognitive academic language proficiency. This in turn explained why they found it difficult to perform higher order academic tasks that go beyond the rote recall of content to analysis, synthesis, evaluation and application of concepts and theory. Further findings were extrapolated that lie at the level of the ESL student and the tertiary institution. It was found that academic writing expectations needed to be communicated to students by academics in more distinct terms. The internalization of academic discourse by ESL students, and students in general, seemed to require further facilitation by academics in the tertiary community of practice. Furthermore, the study raised the issue of English Second Language as a label impacting on ESL student’s confidence, self-esteem and overall attitude towards transcending challenges associated with academic writing.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--City University of Hong Kong, 2006. / "Submitted to Department of English and Communication in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy" Includes bibliographical references (leaves 289-316)

Thesis (Ed. D.)--West Virginia University, 2001. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains viii, 106 p. : ill. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 91-96).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2003. / Title from first page of PDF file. Document formatted into pages; contains x, 224 p.; also includes graphics. Includes abstract and vita. Advisors: George E. Newell and Diane Belcher, College of Education. Includes bibliographical references (p. 219-224).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 293-302). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

In EFL contexts like China where research and application of findings in the field of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) is still in its infancy, graduate students are in urgent need of support in developing their academic literacy, especially in terms of academic writing and research article writing skills under the forces of globalization of education. This study sets out to develop a contextualized EAP genre-based approach to scaffold novice academic writers and examine its impact through assessment tasks and analysis of students’ uptake. The theoretical traditions of ESP research article (RA) genre analysis (e.g. Swales, 1990, 2004; Swale & Feak, 2004) and lexical bundle studies (e.g. Biber & Barbieri, 2007; Hyland, 2008)are drawn upon and two dimensions of building blocks of academic discourse are conceptualized: the top-down dimension (i.e., genre schematic structuring) and the bottom-up dimension(i.e. general and move-specific academic lexical phrases). Then, the Sydney School genre-based Teaching and Learning Cycle and corpus-informed explicit bundle instruction were incorporated into the ESP genre-based framework to generate a new theoretical and pedagogical model taking into consideration the needs of the local context. In order to evaluate this innovative course thoroughly in a natural and intact classroom, careful triangulations of data were achieved. A mixed-methods programme evaluation framework was developed with two major components, namely an intervention study and individual case studies. In terms of the average gains of the whole class, there was significant improvement in the receptive test of knowledge of genre and bundles after the course. In addition, the instruction significantly narrowed the achievement gap among the high, mid and low starting level students. Most importantly, the increase in the appropriate use of lexical phrases in rewriting suggests the effectiveness of the course in enabling active production. Regression analysis further indicated a strong relationship between the development of bundle knowledge and that of genre and genre-specific features. The rich descriptions of the two student cases delineate the different learning trajectories of learners of distinct starting levels. Although the low starting level learner showed much slower in-class uptake, her active engagement and integration of knowledge in the rewriting task by drawing on various resources has increased her understanding of the RA genre. The high starting level learner with satisfactory in-class uptake, however, suffered from lots of textual borrowing in writing due to her high expectation of academic content but lack of corresponding genre and linguistic competences. The fact that both learners exhibited a strong lack of basic linguistic resources to verbalize their sophisticated thinking in the rewriting task pointed to the importance of developing the linguistic aspects in the initial stage of genre knowledge development in EFL contexts, which has been neglected in previous studies focusing on ESL contexts. The careful investigation of the instructional context has led to detailed discussions of a few prominent issues in the pedagogical design, in particular, the importance of focusing on the role of “task” in curriculum and pedagogical design in future research of genre-based pedagogy. / published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

The EAP written multiple trait rubric used in the City University of Hong Kong is believed to be of central importance to formative and high-stakes summative assessment in the institution. Crucial to both of these roles are the perceptions and interpretations of the key stakeholders: teachers and students. The learning and test scores deriving from the rubric are filtered entirely through these stakeholders. Investigating the perceived effects of the rubric on the EAP assessment's validity, reliability and student learning (three key strands revealed in testing literature) is seen as being essential as proof of the rubric's value. This paper presents an analysis of teacher (n=25) and student (n=123) perceptions of an EAP rubric, investigating core elements of both, comparing them, and probing into whether teachers' interpretations of rubrics influence their students. A mixed-methods study seeks to determine perceptions through combining qualitative analysis of interview data with quantitative analysis of questionnaire responses. Key elements of rubrics and how they both impact and are impacted by stakeholder perceptions are discussed. Findings indicate several strong trends in student and teacher perceptions of the rubric, and tentatively illustrate how teachers may affect their students. Arguments are made for a greater focus on standardising the teaching and learning of the rubric, for greater realisation of the learning potential of the rubric, and for investigating the appropriacy of certain domains and wordings. / published_or_final_version / Applied English Studies / Master / Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics

"The Falling Scholar - Essays in the Outside" is a collection of six essays that explore the effects and affects of crisis in the contexts of academic writing. Crisis, from the Greek root word, Krinein, means "to turn;" and is applied in a variety of historical settings that allow for the writing itself to turn towards writing. As the writer, I am always in a position of turning towards, or away from the crisis as a site of learning, or of turning the crisis into something else. These essays constitute a performance-writing that attempts to expose new possibilities in meanings and interpretations through "turning," and for revealing the subject-in-process. The subject-in- process is an identity that flows in and out of each effort to address the crisis: whether personal, social, or political, each crisis is an event for turning towards what might not yet be written about how we understand ourselves as authors of our bodies. These essays are invested with a writer's vigilance, attending ceaselessly to the ways writing can refuse, deny, displace, disguise, conceal, and protect what might be revealed in writing. By locating this work in the university, I have tried to explicate the conflicts and contradictions that arise for women who are writing within the institutionalized discourses that originate in a historically misogynist vernacular. The "poetic conscience" is foregrounded as what might assist in writing outside of the traditional academic language practices, and each essay contains stories that work to disclose what is so often closed or forbidden by university writing systems. It is a writing that subjects the reader to the process of the writer's learning to write as an intellectual and as an artist - an initial effort to perform intellectual artistry as a passionate practice, and as a performance of the passionate intellectual.

Thesis (MA--Applied Language Studies) -- Auckland University of Technology, 2004. / Also held in print (124 leaves, 30 cm.) in Wellesley Theses Collection. (T 808.042 MEY)

Thesis (PhD) - Swinburne University of Technology, 2009. / Submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Swinburne University of Technology - 2009. Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (p. 291-303)