What happens to ESL students’ writing after three years of study at an English medium university?

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2015.02.005Get rights and content

Highlights

  • We investigated the writing development of 31 undergraduate ESL students over three years.

  • We collected writing samples at the beginning and end of undergraduate study, and interviewed the students at the end of the study.

  • We found no statistically significant development on all discourse measures except fluency.

  • The interview data show that students are not required to do much writing and receive little feedback on their writing in content classes.

Abstract

The number of international students coming to study in Australian universities has increased exponentially in the past decade, mirroring trends in other English speaking countries. For the majority of these students, English is an additional language. The motivation for studying in an English medium university is presumably not only to gain a degree but also to improve English language proficiency. Studying in an English-medium university provides these students with a rich immersion environment. However, research on whether these students’ English proficiency does improve has to date been scarce, and has generally examined students’ gains after a relatively short duration (e.g., 12 weeks). The current study examined 31 undergraduate students’ L2 (ESL) writing proficiency following a three-year degree study in an Australian university. The study used a test–retest design which required participants to write a 30-minute argumentative essay on the same topic at the commencement and at the end of their degree program. A range of measures was used to assess writing, including global and discourse measures. All participants were also interviewed about their writing experiences at the university. The study found that students’ writing improved after three years of study but only in terms of fluency; changes in accuracy, grammatical and lexical complexity, as well as global scores of writing fell short of significance. The students reported in the interviews that they were not required to do much writing in their degree studies and when they did, their lecturers almost exclusively commented on the content of their writing. We discuss our findings in relation to the students’ L2 proficiency, the nature of the test, and the nature of their immersion experience.

Introduction

The number of international students coming to Australian universities to pursue their degree has increased greatly in the past decade. In 2013 international students formed a substantial proportion (almost 20%) of the 1.1 million higher education students in Australia (Australian Government Department of Education, 2014a). These students come from a diverse range of countries, but predominantly from Asian countries (Australian Government Department of Education, 2014b). For the majority of these students English is an additional language (EAL). Thus studying in Australia presents for these students not only an opportunity to gain a degree but to concurrently attain higher proficiency in English. Hyland (2013, p. 54) suggests that English language skills are “becoming less a language than a basic academic requirement for many users around the world.”

The attainment of high levels of language skills is indeed what universities expect from all their students. The published graduate attributes of leading universities in Australia state explicitly that all students are expected to develop excellent communication skills in addition to acquiring disciplinary knowledge when studying for a degree course. These attributes often single out written communication. For example, at the University of Melbourne, the document “Melbourne graduates” (University of Melbourne, n.d.) states that Melbourne University graduates are “effective oral and written communicators.”

However, research on whether students’ second language writing develops as a result of studying in L2-medium universities is scant. What research exists suggests that these learners’ writing does not necessarily improve whilst studying for their degree courses (e.g., Humphreys et al., 2012, Storch, 2007, Storch, 2009). The findings of such studies bear theoretical and pedagogical implications for the field, as well as political implications for the educational policy makers at universities who need to examine the extent to which this particular graduate attribute (i.e., written communication skill) has been achieved. However, most of these studies have examined writing development following usually one semester of study (i.e., 12 weeks) which is a period of time perhaps not long enough to record improvement.

The present study set out to investigate second language writing development of EAL students following three years of studying an undergraduate degree course in an English-medium university. In addition, the students’ perceptions and reflections on their writing development were examined through individual interviews at the end of the third year. We begin with a review of the available studies on L2 writing development before describing our study.

Section snippets

Research on L2 writing development

There is a small but growing body of research on second and foreign language writing development. Studies on foreign language writing development have been conducted either with young learners (in high schools) receiving limited language instruction (e.g., Gunnarsson, 2012, Verspoor & Smiskova, 2012) or adult learners who were beginners (e.g., Vyatkina, 2012). Of more relevance to our research are studies on second language writing development with adult learners of high intermediate

L2 writing development after one year or longer

Studies investigating L2 learners’ writing after immersion in the L2 environment of one year or longer are rare. These include the studies by Craven (2012), O’Loughlin and Arkoudis (2009) and Knoch, Rouhshad, and Storch (2014) investigating the impact of degree study on the writing of ESL students and by Serrano, Tragant, and Llanes (2012) who investigated the impact of the study abroad experience on the writing of EFL students. Their findings are more uniform particularly in terms of some

Variables which account for improvement or lack thereof in L2 writing

Few studies (e.g., Elder and O’Loughlin, 2003, Green and Weir, 2003, Storch and Hill, 2008) also administered questionnaires to identify factors that influence second language writing development. Elder and O’Loughlin (2003), for example, showed that participants’ perceptions of the importance of academic writing for future studies were a predictor of writing gain. Storch and Hill (2008) also found a positive correlation between accuracy in writing and participants’ integration (operationalized

The present study

The present study sets out to investigate the possible impact of three years of undergraduate degree study in an English-medium university on the English writing development of EAL students. We employed a test–retest research design. Participants completed two Diagnostic English Language Assessment (DELA; described in more detail below) essays three years apart (Time 1 and Time 2). Writing development was gauged using rater-based band scores and a wide range of discourse measures. Participants

Participants

Data was collected from 31 EAL students over three years of their degree study at a large university in Australia. At entry all participants had satisfied the university's English language proficiency requirement in one of several different ways (e.g., having an IELTS overall score of 6.5, completing secondary education in an Australian school, etc.).

Twenty participants (64.15%) were female and 11 male (35.48%). Nineteen (61.29%) were either native speakers of Chinese or Malaysian. The rest

Diagnostic English Language Assessment (DELA)

Although all students at the university are required to meet minimum English language proficiency requirement at entry, those whose proficiency is at the minimum level required (e.g., IELTS 6.5 or equivalent) are strongly encouraged to sit the Diagnostic English Language Assessment (DELA). DELA was designed and validated by the university's Language Testing Research Centre. The rationale for this policy is that even students who meet the proficiency requirement can benefit from further English

Data collection procedures

Data collection began in February 2009 (Time 1), just prior to the commencement of the academic year. For the writing component, students were required to write an argumentative essay on the topic of corporate advertising. They also completed a questionnaire which elicited background information. A year later all who sat for DELA in 2009 were invited to take part in a writing development study. One hundred and one students (101) consented to participate (see Knoch et al., 2014). Two years later

Research Question 1: Writing development over time

To answer the first research question, we first compared the band scores for each of the criteria as well as the average writing scores between Time 1 and Time 2. As shown in Table 2, the means of the band scores decreased from Time 1 to Time 2 for all band scores; however, the differences were more noticeable for form and average writing scores. The results of the Wilcoxon Signed Rank Tests showed that for all band scores the differences fell short of significance as they were smaller than the

Research Question 2: Factors influencing writing development

To answer the second research question, we asked participants about the length/nature of writing assignments throughout their degree study, the nature of feedback from lecturers, and self-perception of their improvement/lack thereof. We compared their self-perception of improvement with quantitative measures of the discourse features to examine whether they were consistent.

Discussion

The current study set out to investigate whether the writing (measured via band scores and discourse-analytic measures) of second language learners develops over three years of degree study in an L2-medium university and what factors can explain improvement or lack thereof. Consistent with Knoch et al. (2014) band scores of form, content, organization and style and average writing score fell short of significance suggesting that three years of degree study did not improve these aspects of the

Ute Knoch is a senior research fellow and the Director of the Language Testing Research Centre at the University of Melbourne. Her research interests are in the areas of second language writing assessment, writing development, and assessing languages for academic and specific purposes.

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      On the other hand, no change in MLT was found in studies where learners had already reached a certain higher level of language proficiency, including matriculated learners in English-medium universities (e.g., Knoch et al., 2015; Mazgutova & Kormos, 2015; Storch, 2009), or when observations were conducted over one semester in EFL contexts (e.g., Ishikawa, 1995; Tsang & Wong, 2000). With respect to subordination, prior research has found that subordination measures do not tend to increase over time in the writing of university-level ESL and EFL learners when observations last one year or less (Knoch et al., 2015; Mazgutova & Kormos, 2015; Ishikawa, 1995; Storch, 2009; Tsang & Wong, 2000). On the other hand, a recent study (Polat et al., 2020) reported an upward trend in subordination in Turkish-speaking beginning-level EFL university-aged students who took intensive English programs over one year and a half.

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    Ute Knoch is a senior research fellow and the Director of the Language Testing Research Centre at the University of Melbourne. Her research interests are in the areas of second language writing assessment, writing development, and assessing languages for academic and specific purposes.

    Amir Rouhshad received a PhD in Applied Linguistics at the University of Melbourne. His areas of interests include learner-learner interaction, second language writing development and second language attrition.

    Su Ping Oon is currently teaching General Paper in Nanyang Junior College, her alma mater. She graduated with a Master in Applied Linguistics from the University of Melbourne in 2012 and it was during this period that she developed an interest in second language writing and feedback.

    Neomy Storch is a senior lecturer in ESL and Applied Linguistics at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Her research has focused on issues related to second language (L2) pedagogy. These issues have included feedback on L2 writing, writing development, the nature of peer collaboration, and the role of L1 in L2 classes.

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