Undergraduate ESL students' engagement in academic reading and writing in learning to write a synthesis paper

Date

2015-10

Contributor

Advisor

Department

Instructor

Depositor

Speaker

Researcher

Consultant

Interviewer

Narrator

Transcriber

Annotator

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

University of Hawaii National Foreign Language Resource Center
Center for Language & Technology

Volume

27

Number/Issue

2

Starting Page

219

Ending Page

241

Alternative Title

Abstract

As an important and a challenging source-based writing task, synthesizing offers rich opportunities to explore the connections between reading and writing. In this article, we report findings from a qualitative study of two Chinese students’ learning experiences with academic synthesis writing in a university ESL composition course. Specifically, we discuss how the two students’ understanding of synthesis and sources influenced their synthesis writing practices and how they perceived the connections between their reading strategies and synthesis writing processes. Our results reveal that the students’ understanding of synthesis and the functions of sources played a crucial role in learning to synthesize, as did their ability to use rhetorical reading strategies to complete this new literacy task. We argue that whether second language (L2) students understand the complex reading-writing relationships underlying synthesizing is crucial for their successful textual production. These findings carry valuable implications for understanding reading and writing connections and teaching L2 source-based writing.

Description

Keywords

writing from sources, discourse synthesis, reading and writing connections, learning to write, task representation, Chinese undergraduate students

Citation

Extent

Format

Geographic Location

Time Period

Related To

Related To (URI)

Table of Contents

Rights

Rights Holder

Local Contexts

Email libraryada-l@lists.hawaii.edu if you need this content in ADA-compliant format.