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Teaching English academic writing to postgraduates in China : an institutional case study of Chinese EFL teachers’ perceptions and classroom practices
Author
Gu, Rong
Supervisor
Tang, Ramona
Abstract
With the spread of English as a global academic lingua franca, there has been increased pedagogical and research attention placed on EFL (English as a Foreign Language) scholars and students producing academic writing in English (e.g., Flowerdew & Li, 2009; Hyland, 2009; Lillis & Curry, 2010). In China, a growing number of Chinese universities, like their non-native-English-speaking counterparts, require their English language teachers to move from teaching General English to teaching English academic writing, to prepare non-English-major doctoral and master students to write and publish in English. However, despite this trend, there is a paucity of research exploring how tertiary EFL teachers actually teach academic writing on a daily basis, and how they perceive their roles as academic writing teachers. In response to this gap, my study aims to investigate a group of Chinese tertiary EFL teachers who newly moved from teaching General English to teaching English academic writing in a postgraduate program at a Chinese university. Specifically, the study explores how they teach academic writing to non-English-major master students, what they perceive as being their role as English academic writing teachers, what difficulties they experience in their teaching, and what possible connection there may be between teacher beliefs and their classroom practices.
To best serve the purpose of this study, an institutional case study approach was adopted. A questionnaire containing both open- and close-ended questions, a structured classroom observation scheme and a semi-structured interview guide were developed specially for my study, drawing on the theoretical and pedagogical principles underlying three major approaches to teaching academic writing (study skills, academic socialization, and academic literacies approaches). Responses from the questionnaire survey administered to the university's entire academic writing teaching team of 11 teachers were first analyzed to help me gain a general sense of the teachers' backgrounds, and their experiences and perceptions of teaching English academic writing. Three focal participants from the 11 were then selected for the second research stage, which involved classroom observations and post-lesson interviews. Observational data, complemented by instructional documents, were analyzed to identify the features that appeared to be in use in the classes that were observed, with regard to what elements of the three approaches to English academic writing instruction the participants incorporated into their teaching. Interview data, complemented by the survey responses, were analyzed to explore the participants' perceptions of their roles as English academic teachers and the difficulties they experience, and to establish the extent to which these two factors help to explain their classroom practices.
The study reveals that the study skills approach appears to dominate this group of Chinese tertiary EFL teachers' academic instruction, which largely focused on explaining general models and writing conventions of English academic research papers. Comparatively, the presence of the academic socialization approach in the participants' instruction is rather weak and superficial. Typically, the participants utilized authentic texts from genuine academic journal articles in a variety of disciplines with an intention to train students' ability to analyze and explore the writing conventions in their chosen disciplines, whereas the ways in which they conducted such instructional activity were rather broad-brush and context-free. The least visible is the academic literacies approach, with only one teacher scratching the surface of power relations in academic writing and publishing.
These elements of the three approaches to teaching English academic writing that were observed from the participants' classroom teaching can be well explained by their perceptions of their roles as English academic writing teachers, together with the difficulties they report experiencing in the course of their teaching. In preparing non-English-major master students for discipline-specific English academic writing tasks, the participants largely viewed their specific roles to be improving students' general knowledge and skills of English academic writing. Although they recognized the necessity to raise students' awareness of the specificity of disciplinary writing, they believed that English language teachers should leave the teaching of discipline-specific discourses and writing conventions to subject specialists. Their perceptions can largely explain the dominance of the study skills approach in their classes and the sparsity of the other two approaches. Moreover, the difficulties they encountered, including difficulties with disciplinary texts, their unfamiliarity with discourses and writing conventions in other disciplines, lack of support from subject faculty, and complex student profile also contributed to their choice of teaching approaches.
It is hoped that this in-depth investigation of this group of Chinese tertiary EFL teachers' teaching of English academic writing to NNES postgraduates in China will contribute to the understanding and improvement of English academic writing instruction in higher education in China and other similar EFL contexts.
To best serve the purpose of this study, an institutional case study approach was adopted. A questionnaire containing both open- and close-ended questions, a structured classroom observation scheme and a semi-structured interview guide were developed specially for my study, drawing on the theoretical and pedagogical principles underlying three major approaches to teaching academic writing (study skills, academic socialization, and academic literacies approaches). Responses from the questionnaire survey administered to the university's entire academic writing teaching team of 11 teachers were first analyzed to help me gain a general sense of the teachers' backgrounds, and their experiences and perceptions of teaching English academic writing. Three focal participants from the 11 were then selected for the second research stage, which involved classroom observations and post-lesson interviews. Observational data, complemented by instructional documents, were analyzed to identify the features that appeared to be in use in the classes that were observed, with regard to what elements of the three approaches to English academic writing instruction the participants incorporated into their teaching. Interview data, complemented by the survey responses, were analyzed to explore the participants' perceptions of their roles as English academic teachers and the difficulties they experience, and to establish the extent to which these two factors help to explain their classroom practices.
The study reveals that the study skills approach appears to dominate this group of Chinese tertiary EFL teachers' academic instruction, which largely focused on explaining general models and writing conventions of English academic research papers. Comparatively, the presence of the academic socialization approach in the participants' instruction is rather weak and superficial. Typically, the participants utilized authentic texts from genuine academic journal articles in a variety of disciplines with an intention to train students' ability to analyze and explore the writing conventions in their chosen disciplines, whereas the ways in which they conducted such instructional activity were rather broad-brush and context-free. The least visible is the academic literacies approach, with only one teacher scratching the surface of power relations in academic writing and publishing.
These elements of the three approaches to teaching English academic writing that were observed from the participants' classroom teaching can be well explained by their perceptions of their roles as English academic writing teachers, together with the difficulties they report experiencing in the course of their teaching. In preparing non-English-major master students for discipline-specific English academic writing tasks, the participants largely viewed their specific roles to be improving students' general knowledge and skills of English academic writing. Although they recognized the necessity to raise students' awareness of the specificity of disciplinary writing, they believed that English language teachers should leave the teaching of discipline-specific discourses and writing conventions to subject specialists. Their perceptions can largely explain the dominance of the study skills approach in their classes and the sparsity of the other two approaches. Moreover, the difficulties they encountered, including difficulties with disciplinary texts, their unfamiliarity with discourses and writing conventions in other disciplines, lack of support from subject faculty, and complex student profile also contributed to their choice of teaching approaches.
It is hoped that this in-depth investigation of this group of Chinese tertiary EFL teachers' teaching of English academic writing to NNES postgraduates in China will contribute to the understanding and improvement of English academic writing instruction in higher education in China and other similar EFL contexts.
Date Issued
2014
Call Number
P301.5.A27 Gu
Date Submitted
2014