Developing First Year ESL Undergraduates’ Source-based Writing Skills

Source-based writing is the most common genre of academic writing in higher education. It is a complex writing task encompassing the synergistic utilisation of reading, writing, and higher order thinking skills. Many students struggle to meet the demands and requirements of tertiary level writing assignments, particularly assignments that require the integration and synthesis of ideas from multiple sources. This study investigated the effects of a 6-week intervention that incorporated an integrated reading-writing instruction on developing first year Malaysian ESL undergraduate students’ source-based writing skills. Instructional modules for the intervention were designed to target students’ critical reading, analytical writing, and discourse synthesis skills. Students’ source-based writing abilities and the difficulties they encounter in performing source-based writing tasks were examined; additionally, writing instructors’ reported teaching practices and perceptions of students’ source-based writing abilities were explored. Participants were 78 first year undergraduate students enrolled in a compulsory academic writing course and two instructors. The quasi-experimental repeated measures design was employed. Qualitative and quantitative data were obtained from open-ended student surveys, semi-structured interviews with instructors, and students’ writing assignments. Findings from this study demonstrated the potential benefits of an integrated reading-writing instruction on improving students’ source-based writing performance. An analytic scoring rubric for source-based writing, which addressed both general writing and source-based writing dimensions, was developed and validated. In addition, findings from this study offered valuable insights into understanding students’ source-based writing experiences, particularly their difficulties with multiple text comprehension, textual borrowing, and source attribution. This thesis concludes with a discussion of the implications on academic writing pedagogies and institutional-level support for academic writing.

Name thesis:degree_name

PhD

Level thesis:degree_level

Doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Education

Grantor dc:publisher

ResearchSpace@Auckland

Year dc:date.issued

2022

Author dc:creator

• Selamat, Joanna Tiffany

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Parr, Judy
• Wilson, Aaron

Statement dc:rights

• Items in ResearchSpace are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• https://researchspace.auckland.ac.nz/docs/uoa-docs/rights.htm

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/2292/63761

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:researchspace.auckland.ac.nz:2292/63761