Writing from sources is a common academic task for L2 students in higher education. It is a task that requires the orchestration of numerous skills such as reading source texts, incorporating information from the source texts within the written text, and reading the rhetorical context to interpret the task. Being such a complex activity, it has received relatively little attention. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the complexity of a writing-from-sources task within an L2 environment. Using an ethnographic design, I examined the writing of four Chinese (L1) students with varying levels of English (L2) proficiency completing an argumentative writing-from-sources essay task for a required writing class. The task spanned two and a half weeks and required the participants to cite five sources within a 1500-word essay. Over the course of writing, I interviewed each participant several times about their writing process, observed the participants during class, and collected all notes, drafts, and reading materials. The results revealed the complexity of the writing-from-sources task. Constructing a suitable cognitive representation of the task was one key to success and there were a number of personal and contextual factors that influenced the creation of the participants’ task representations, factors such as individual background experiences, the writing process, and information from and interactions with the teacher and other people within the writing context. These factors varied in the strength of their influence from the beginning to the end of the essay assignment, and I present a tentative theory of task representation to explain the points at which these influencing factors had the greatest impact within the writing process. Low L2 proficiency constrained the writing performance of some of the participants. This resulted in one participant avoiding elements of the writing task requirements in order to earn passing marks and two other participants producing plagiarized texts and receiving failing marks on the assignment. The two participants who plagiarized showed no ill intentions and, consequently, felt receiving zero marks for their writing efforts was unjust. / New Zealand Tertiary Education Commission

Writing from sources is a common academic task for L2 students in higher education. It is a task that requires the orchestration of numerous skills such as reading source texts, incorporating information from the source texts within the written text, and reading the rhetorical context to interpret the task. Being such a complex activity, it has received relatively little attention. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the complexity of a writing-from-sources task within an L2 environment. Using an ethnographic design, I examined the writing of four Chinese (L1) students with varying levels of English (L2) proficiency completing an argumentative writing-from-sources essay task for a required writing class. The task spanned two and a half weeks and required the participants to cite five sources within a 1500-word essay. Over the course of writing, I interviewed each participant several times about their writing process, observed the participants during class, and collected all notes, drafts, and reading materials. The results revealed the complexity of the writing-from-sources task. Constructing a suitable cognitive representation of the task was one key to success and there were a number of personal and contextual factors that influenced the creation of the participants’ task representations, factors such as individual background experiences, the writing process, and information from and interactions with the teacher and other people within the writing context. These factors varied in the strength of their influence from the beginning to the end of the essay assignment, and I present a tentative theory of task representation to explain the points at which these influencing factors had the greatest impact within the writing process. Low L2 proficiency constrained the writing performance of some of the participants. This resulted in one participant avoiding elements of the writing task requirements in order to earn passing marks and two other participants producing plagiarized texts and receiving failing marks on the assignment. The two participants who plagiarized showed no ill intentions and, consequently, felt receiving zero marks for their writing efforts was unjust. / New Zealand Tertiary Education Commission

Writing from sources is a common academic task for L2 students in higher education. It is a task that requires the orchestration of numerous skills such as reading source texts, incorporating information from the source texts within the written text, and reading the rhetorical context to interpret the task. Being such a complex activity, it has received relatively little attention. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the complexity of a writing-from-sources task within an L2 environment. Using an ethnographic design, I examined the writing of four Chinese (L1) students with varying levels of English (L2) proficiency completing an argumentative writing-from-sources essay task for a required writing class. The task spanned two and a half weeks and required the participants to cite five sources within a 1500-word essay. Over the course of writing, I interviewed each participant several times about their writing process, observed the participants during class, and collected all notes, drafts, and reading materials. The results revealed the complexity of the writing-from-sources task. Constructing a suitable cognitive representation of the task was one key to success and there were a number of personal and contextual factors that influenced the creation of the participants’ task representations, factors such as individual background experiences, the writing process, and information from and interactions with the teacher and other people within the writing context. These factors varied in the strength of their influence from the beginning to the end of the essay assignment, and I present a tentative theory of task representation to explain the points at which these influencing factors had the greatest impact within the writing process. Low L2 proficiency constrained the writing performance of some of the participants. This resulted in one participant avoiding elements of the writing task requirements in order to earn passing marks and two other participants producing plagiarized texts and receiving failing marks on the assignment. The two participants who plagiarized showed no ill intentions and, consequently, felt receiving zero marks for their writing efforts was unjust. / New Zealand Tertiary Education Commission

Writing from sources is a common academic task for L2 students in higher education. It is a task that requires the orchestration of numerous skills such as reading source texts, incorporating information from the source texts within the written text, and reading the rhetorical context to interpret the task. Being such a complex activity, it has received relatively little attention. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the complexity of a writing-from-sources task within an L2 environment. Using an ethnographic design, I examined the writing of four Chinese (L1) students with varying levels of English (L2) proficiency completing an argumentative writing-from-sources essay task for a required writing class. The task spanned two and a half weeks and required the participants to cite five sources within a 1500-word essay. Over the course of writing, I interviewed each participant several times about their writing process, observed the participants during class, and collected all notes, drafts, and reading materials. The results revealed the complexity of the writing-from-sources task. Constructing a suitable cognitive representation of the task was one key to success and there were a number of personal and contextual factors that influenced the creation of the participants’ task representations, factors such as individual background experiences, the writing process, and information from and interactions with the teacher and other people within the writing context. These factors varied in the strength of their influence from the beginning to the end of the essay assignment, and I present a tentative theory of task representation to explain the points at which these influencing factors had the greatest impact within the writing process. Low L2 proficiency constrained the writing performance of some of the participants. This resulted in one participant avoiding elements of the writing task requirements in order to earn passing marks and two other participants producing plagiarized texts and receiving failing marks on the assignment. The two participants who plagiarized showed no ill intentions and, consequently, felt receiving zero marks for their writing efforts was unjust. / New Zealand Tertiary Education Commission

This dissertation investigates the challenges faced by learners of English for academic purposes (EAP) when required to complete writing assignments that use source texts. In order to address this problem, I explore the issue from the perspectives of applied linguistic researchers, writing program administrators, and classroom composition instructors. These three perspectives are highlighted in distinct articles that build on one another to create a more complete understanding of the challenges that EAP students face when writing from sources. The first article contains a literature review of relevant studies that explore the reading-to-write construct. Experts suggest that unintentional plagiarism, or patchwriting, can be attributed to a lack of cultural and linguistic competence. In order to address these limitations, researchers identify several reading and writing subskills that are integral to success in academic source writing. The literature review concludes with recommendations for teaching and testing contexts. The second article details a rater training evaluation study that resulted in unexpected, but welcomed, recommendations. Teacher-raters provided feedback that influenced how the institution made use of benchmark portfolios to train teacher-raters as well as inform students about writing achievement standards. The increased use of benchmark portfolios also helped to clarify classroom and program standards regarding citation, attribution, and anti-plagiarism policies. The final article is a practical guide for classroom composition instructors. I outline a recommended curriculum for teaching source writing to EAP students. The guide incorporates the findings of the literature review and the evaluation study into a collaborative and iterative pedagogical model. This recursive approach to EAP writing instruction helps students to diagnose and develop the advanced literacy subskills required for successful source integration into their writing. As a set, the three articles demonstrate that effective solutions to instructional issues can be developed when a problem is approached from multiple perspectives. Indeed, linguistics-based research, program administration, and teacher experience can be combined to produce a model for writing instruction that acknowledges principles of second-language advanced literacy and accounts for learner struggles as students develop source writing skills.

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