Faculty staff members were identified and approached based on the units in which ex-EAPP program students had chosen to study.
Table 4.6
Faculty Staff: Designation and Lecturing Experience
Designation N Lecturing Experience Faculties/Schools/Courses Represented Professor (Faculty Chair)
1 21 years Architecture, Landscape, Visual arts
Architecture, Urban design
Arts
Journalism, International relations
Business
Accounting, Human Resources, Marketing, Commerce, Information Management
Education
Early childhood education
Engineering, Computing, Maths
Civil and Resource, Computer Science, Mechanical and Chemical
Law
International relations
Medicine, Dentistry, Health Education
Population Health, Social Work
Science
Agriculture, Resource Economics, Animal Biology, Chemistry and Biochemistry, Earth and Environment Professor 5 18 years
10 years 18 years 14 years 30 years
Associate professor 4 12 years 12 years 10 years 5 years Assistant professor 3 12 years 18 years 12 years Lecturer 2 10 years 22 years Teacher/Learning Officer 1 16 years Unit Coordinator 1 5 years
Note: Almost 90% of the 17 faculty staff had teaching experience of more than ten years. Fifteen
listed PhD qualifications, while two failed to indicate their qualifications.
Initially, the target staff members were contacted by email; however, because it was the start of the university year and faculties were busy organising new classes, responses were very low, so it proved necessary to adopt a personal approach. Each academic was contacted by phone to arrange a meeting, the purpose of which was
to discuss the rationale for the research, to explain details of the study and to answer any questions that staff might raise. Questionnaires, letters explaining the research and consent forms were issued at each meeting. Of the 24 academics contacted, 17 agreed to participate and seven declined citing time constraints as the reason. This further eroded that amount of data that could be collected and the scope of information about cross-faculty genre expectations. As shown in Table 4.6, those who consented represented eight faculties or schools and 20 different courses. Fifteen of them held a PhD or equivalent qualification; while two failed to list their qualifications. Lecturing and tutoring or teaching experience ranged from five years to 30 years.
The Writing Corpuses: Phases One and Two
To collect marked samples of the students’ writing, permission was sought from the CELT Director, teachers of the EAPP program, the target students, the Dean of each chosen faculty and the academic staff involved in teaching the target students. Involvement was voluntary, with volunteers being sought prior to the commencement of the study. To ensure the integrity of the study and to prevent a potential conflict of interest between the roles of researcher and teacher-assessor, the researcher who was teaching on the EAPP program, withdrew from marking texts written by students from both cohorts. This was to ensure that the cohorts’ survey responses and work samples would not be influenced by their perceptions of the researcher’s status.
To ascertain which genres and writing skills were seen as necessary, the initial database for this study included all expository writing assessed in the EAPP
program and listed within the course outlines. This information formed the basis for later comparisons to identify if discipline specific writing skills and genres deemed important by faculties were addressed in the EAPP program.
In Phase 2, a second data base of writing was collected. The samples were a
component of cumulative assessment set by academic markers within the university courses chosen by the Phase 2 combined cohorts. Information related to the typical
writing assignments set, the type of texts and the structure of the genres students were expected to have mastered was collected in order to identify the nature of writing demands in each discipline. This information was analysed to gauge which text structures were commonly used and which differed across and within faculties.
Since the volume of texts collected was immense, it was decided to use case studies based on disproportional, stratified random sampling. However, because it was necessary to ensure that EAPP writing samples could be compared to faculty samples, the selection pool included only students who had submitted faculty writing (N = 31).
The stratification variable which dictated the population division was the faculty/school in which these students were enrolled. Student de-identified numbers were then used to randomly select one student from each faculty or school. The results are shown in Table 4.7.
Table 4.7
Phase 2: Writing Corpus
Student Weeks in EAPP Year of Birth Gender Country of origin Mother tongue(s) Faculty or school
A 20 1982 F Saudi Arabia Arabic Biochemistry
B 20 1982 F Kenya Swahili/ English
Medicine
C 20 1988 F Asian Mandarin Education
D 10 1983 F Colombia Spanish Agriculture
E 10 1987 M China Mandarin Electrical Engineering
G 10 1990 M China Mandarin Business School
F 10 1989 M China Mandarin Media and communication
Instruments Used and Collection of Data
The research used primary data, such as responses to questionnaires and student-produced texts that formed part of the overall assessment of their EAPP
program and faculty courses. Primary data also included feedback sheets from markers, the annotations they made on student texts and the student reflection forms. The researcher also consulted secondary data sources such as student records, guidelines from EAPP program books and faculty course outlines,
assignment prompts and adjunct writing guidelines provided for student reference.
Questionnaires.
The use of questionnaires as a technique to collect data is one of the most common methods deployed in second language research (Dörnyei, 2003). The design of the questionnaires was informed from previous research conducted by Ferris and Tagg (1996) and Meuter (1994) and modified to suit the needs of the current research project. Over the three phases of the study, Cohorts A and B completed four questionnaires. In Phase 1, three questionnaires were administered and analysed. Questionnaire items requested the following: nominal data for recording personal variables; quantitative data requiring ordinal responses in
relation to student perceptions of difficulty and error frequency, and qualitative data requiring responses to open-ended questions. Some of the quantitative items were repeated on more than one questionnaire so that any changes in perception over time could be identified.
Descriptive statistics, rather than inferential statistics, were used to analyse ordinal data; therefore it was not deemed necessary to test for significant differences. Measures used included the mean, standard deviation and mode. Although it is not possible to claim that the intervals between each value listed on the ordinal scales are identical, mean and standard deviation measures were used to gauge comparability of 15 skill categories perceived as being the most and least difficult for this intake of students. The items were completed by the same students over three questionnaires, increasing the probability that they would perceive the scale in the same way each time, thus making the comparison more valid.For data listed on four-point Likert scales, the mode was used in preference to the mean because the number of variable responses was less. In this situation, the mode provided information that was more informative than the mean regarding changes over time.
Student questionnaires.
Upon entry to the EAPP program, a questionnaire (Appendix C) was administered to ascertain the English language background and other relevant details for members of both student cohorts. As Reid (1998) notes, the Australian university population is diverse and so is the English language background of the many overseas students who attend. Given that English language learning forms part of the curriculum in many countries, but varies in intensity and duration, students were required to provide information about their language backgrounds.
A second questionnaire (Appendix D) was administered to Cohort A after ten weeks of study, followed by a third questionnaire (Appendix E) at the end of the 20-week course. The third questionnaire was also administered to Cohort B at the end of their 10-week course. The purpose of the second and third questionnaires was to ascertain which genres and features of English academic writing ESL students perceived as the most problematic for them, so that any differences between what students perceived as their writing abilities and what their actual writing revealed could be assessed. The third questionnaire included an extra item that required students to rate the degree to which they felt the course aims had been met. A final questionnaire (Appendix F) was administered at the end of the first year of the students’ degree study at Swan University to gauge their opinions regarding which skills, if any, they felt had transferred from their EAPP program to assist them with faculty writing.
EAPP teacher and faculty staff questionnaires.
A single questionnaire was administered to EAPP teachers at the start of the July, 2012 EAPP program (Appendix G) and to faculty staff (Appendix H) at the beginning of Semester 1, before ex-EAPP students entered their chosen faculties. Ordinal items and the measures used to gauge them were the same as those used for student data, so that comparisons could be made between the perceptions of EAPP teachers, faculty staff and students. Questionnaire items focused on identifying academic qualifications and teaching experience as well as ascertaining what they considered to be the most important aspects of academic writing. To gauge the opinions of academic staff from the target faculties and teachers from the EAPP
program, views were sought on who should teach academic writing to EAL students. Three statements were provided. The statements reflected the three options outlined in Chapter 2 and required them to decide whether direct entry into a faculty was preferable to entry into an EAPP program, or entry into a general EAP course. They were asked to choose the statement with which they most agreed and to provide reasons for their choices.
Identifying and Analysing the Writing Samples
A central goal of this study was to identify the academic writing tasks and genres that students needed to master to succeed within their chosen faculties at Swan University and to compare these tasks and genres with those taught within the EAPP program to see if the course addressed the students’ essential writing needs. A list of nine writing tasks that were deemed to be the most common university writing assignments was compiled from previous research findings (Hale et al, 1996; Horowitz, 1986b; Cooper and Bikowski, 2007; and Gardner & Nesi, 2008). The list included: essay; article or book review; report on an experiment/project; plan/proposal; case study; journal article; electronic journal entry; summary of an article, and library research paper. These were included as a questionnaire item which asked EAPP teachers and faculty staff to indicate the tasks they included in their writing courses.
A related questionnaire item listed seven genres: description;
narration/recount; explanation (cause and effect); explanation (process and procedure); exposition (argument); comparison, and report. EAPP teachers and faculty staff were asked to record any writing tasks and genres missing from the lists provided. Faculty staff responses were then compared with EAPP teacher responses to identify any items not covered in the EAPP writing course.
The influence that task type plays in helping to shape the way students responded when composing text in different disciplinary forums was also investigated (Greene, 1993) using frame analysis.
Frame analysis.
Research by Kaldor, and associates (1998) provided direction for forming the frames that were subsequently used to analyse the students’ writing. The authors investigated two types of frames: circumtextual and genre-based intratextual frames. They identified three types of circumtextual frames that influence student writing: task requirements, assumed reader and content. As Figure 4.1 shows, this study includes two extra frames: extratextual and intertextual frames.
Figure 4.1 Circumtextual, Extratextual, Intertextual Levels of Analysis
INTERTEXTUAL
Task requirements Assumed reader Content origin
PROBLEMS PROBLEMS PROBLEMS
Response to requirements of the task
Structure of prompt cue Content depth (assumed reader) Content origin (primary research, created by the student, secondary research, a combination) Verb in the prompt cue misunderstood Reading skills Cultural differences
Inadequate Library search skills and note-making Insufficient direction Lack of planning Poor note-making skills Cultural influences on writing style and expectations Unfamiliar with group writing expectations Lack of confidence Time-management Thinking skills Cultural differences regarding plagiarism Analysing and categorising Synthesising ideas from a number of sources Reconciling different points of view to present a concessive argument Unsure of how to paraphrase Unsure of how to summarise
Reference listing, in-text citation formattimg
EXTRATEXTUAL