Developing Discourse Competence in EFL Academic Writing through an Online Course

Author(s):

Gabriela Hublová(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2015

Network:

Emerging Researchers' Group (for presentation at Emerging Researchers' Conference)

Format:

Paper

Session Information

ERG SES H 01, Language and Education

Paper Session

Time:

2015-09-08

11:00-12:30

Room:

397. [Main]

Chair:

Joana da Silveira Duarte

Contribution

Research aim:

The aim of the study is to decide whether the intervention carried out in the Masaryk University Learning Management System and the Peer Review Application resulted in the development of discourse competence in English as a foreign language (EFL) academic writing of B.A. and M.A. students participating in the CJV_AW Academic Writing_ONLINE course delivered at Masaryk University, Czech Republic, and to describe the extent and specifics of the prospective development.

Main research question:

Did the intervention result in the development of discourse competence, i.e. the development of text structure and organisation, lexical cohesion, and grammatical cohesion (conjunction) in the participating students’ EFL academic writing?

Partial research questions:

1 Did the level of text structure and organisation in the participants’ EFL academic writing differ before and after the intervention? If so, how?

2 What types of lexical cohesive devices did the participants use and what was the frequency and appropriateness/accuracy of this usage before and after the intervention?

3 What types of grammatical cohesive devices (connectors) did the participants use and what was the frequency and appropriateness/accuracy of this usage before and after the intervention?

Theoretical framework:

According to the currently predominant foreign language teaching and learning paradigm, the main aim of foreign language instruction consists in developing learners’ communicative competence.

Discourse competence represents one of the main “components” of communicative competence and has been part of communicative competence models since the early 1980s (see e.g. Canale, 1983; Savignon, 1983; Bachman, 1990; Celce-Murcia et al., 1995; Usó-Juan & Martínez-Flor, 2006 or Celce-Murcia, 2007). Usó-Juan & Martínez-Flor (2006) define discourse competence as “the selection and sequencing of utterances or sentences to achieve a cohesive and coherent spoken or written text given a particular purpose and situational context” (p. 17). Recent approaches (e.g. Tanskanen, 2006) see cohesion as one of the factors that can contribute to coherence. This view is adopted also in the present study. Therefore, for the purposes of this research, discourse competence is defined as the ability to produce coherent, meaningful, and logically organised written texts respecting particular communication purpose and situational context. The key features of discourse competence that are in the centre of attention in this study include text structure and organisation, lexical cohesion and grammatical cohesion (conjunction).

The intervention whose effect on discourse competence is being investigated consists in participation in a one-semester e-learning course of academic writing CJV_AW Academic Writing_ONLINE provided by the Masaryk University Language Centre. The intervention is realised solely in the Masaryk University Learning Management System and the Peer Review Application and as such involves no face-to-face teaching or learning.

The course design draws on the fundamental principles of cognitive and socialconstructivism (active learning, learner autonomy and collaborative learning in particular) as well as the common principles of the student-centred approach, such as personalised instruction, “partnership” between the teacher and students, and positive/motivating criticism.

The approach to teaching and learning writing follows the process/genre-based approach (for details, see e.g. Badger & White, 2000; Nordin & Mohammad, 2006).

In terms of the current second language theories, the intervention is mostly grounded in the Output Hypothesis and the three functions of output formulated and reformulated by Merill Swain (e.g. Swain, 1985; Swain, 1995; Swain, 2005). The “core” of the intervention was the composition of two writing assignments (a comparison/contrast essay; an argumentative essay) with the help of teacher and peer feedback. Next, participating students were asked to provide peer feedback on their fellow students’ writing. Thus, it is expected that the intervention facilitated all three function of output contributing to language learning: noticing, hypothesis-testing as well as reflection.

Method

A quasi-experimental one-group pretest posttest design (Gall, Gall & Borg, 2010, p. 304) was followed. The research sample comprised 28 undergraduate and postgraduate Masaryk University students of various study programmes (humanities, science and technical disciplines) with B2 level of English who enrolled on the CJV_AW Academic Writing_ONLINE course. Students of English as their major were excluded, resp. prevented from registering the course. All students were informed about the research and have given their consent with research participation. The research design involved the following phases: pre-test administration + administration of a questionnaire examining potential extraneous variables; intervention (14 weeks); posttest + administration of a questionnaire examining potential extraneous variables; pre/post-tests analyses; statistical processing of the data, interpretation of the results and their discussion. Both pre-test and post-test were administered electronically in the researcher’s presence and comprised authoritative writing tasks, in both cases a “Writing task 2” of the “IELTS Academic” examination. From the variety of possible academic writing genres, argument essay was selected. All pre-tests/post-tests are analysed using the following instruments: 1) category system of criteria and descriptors constructed by the researcher for the analytical assessment of text structure and organisation, 2) instrument for the identification, classification and evaluation of lexical cohesive relations based on the categorisation of lexical cohesion by Tanskanen (2006) and 3) instrument for the identification and evaluation of grammatical cohesive relations (conjunction) based on the categorisation of grammatical cohesion by Martin & Rose (2003). Each of the above instruments was piloted on a sample of four corresponding writing tasks and adapted before being applied in the main research phase. When possible, the analyses of pretests/posttests were conducted by two evaluators and inter-rater reliability was calculated. The data were analysed using standard descriptive and inferential statistics.

Expected Outcomes

The post-test was administered at the beginning of January 2015, so the analyses of both pre-tests and post-tests are still in progress. Nevertheless, a few notable observations have been made. First, the pre-tests show that before the intervention, most participants needed to develop their ability to structure and organise their academic writing to produce united and coherent texts that would follow common genre conventions and, thus, the readers’ expectations. The observed shortcomings concern text, paragraph as well as sentence level, and include the absence of introduction or inappropriate paragraph division. In terms of lexical cohesion, simple repetition and substitution were identified as two dominant types of reiteration, with clumsiness and inappropriate level of personality as the most frequent signs of immature writing. Last, in terms of grammatical cohesion, most pre-tests show only a limited range of elementary/A2 devices enabling conjunction, with “and” and “but” as the most frequent ones. Discourse connectives typical of academic writing were practically absent. This finding is particularly interesting, indicating a discrepancy between the entrance level of general English and the ability to use a variety of discourse connectives to express the logical links between ideas. The preliminary pos-test analyses suggest that after the intervention, the ability to effectively structure and organise texts improved in most participants. Further, they were able to use a greater variety of both lexical and grammatical cohesive devices and achieved more appropriateness/accuracy in their use.

References

Bachman, L. (1990). Fundamental considerations in language testing. Oxford: OUP. Badger, R., & White, G. (2000). A process genre approach to teaching writing. ELT Journal, 54(2), 153-160. Canale, M. (l983). From communicative competence to communicative language pedagogy. In J. Richards & R. Schmidt (Eds.), Language and Communication (pp. 2-27). London: Longman. Celce-Murcia M., Dörnyei, Z., & Thurrell, S. (1995). A pedagogical framework for communicative competence: A Pedagogically motivated model with content specifications. Issues in Applied Linguistics, 6(2), 5-35. Celce-Murcia, M. (2007). Rethinking the role of communicative competence. In E. Alcón Soler & M. P. Safont Jordà (Eds.), Intercultural Language Use and Language Learning (pp. 41-57). Springer. Retrieved from http://elechina.super-red.es/celcemurcia.pdf Gall, M. D., Gall, J. P., & Borg, W. R. (2010). Applying educational research: How to read, do, and use research to solve problems of practice. Boston: Pearson. Martin, J. R., & Rose, D. (2003). Working with discourse: Meaning beyond the clause. London, New York: Continuum. Nordin, S., & Mohammad, N. (2006). The best of two approaches: process/genre based approach to teaching writing. The English Teacher, 35, 75-85. Tanskanen, S.-K. (2006). Collaborating towards coherence: Lexical cohesion in English discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing. Savignon, S. J. (1983). Communicative competence: Theory and classroom practice. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Swain, M. (1985). Communicative competence: Some roles of comprehensible input and comprehensible output in its development. In S. Gass & C. Madden (Eds.), Input in second language acquisition (pp. 235-253). Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Swain, M. (1995). Three functions of output in second language learning. In G. Cook & B. Seidlhofer (Eds.), Principles and practice in applied linguistics (pp. 125-144). Oxford: OUP. Swain, M. (2005). The output hypothesis: Theory and research. In E. Hinkel (Ed.), Handbook of research in second language teaching and learning (pp. 471-483). New York: Routledge. Usó-Juan E., & Martínez-Flor A. (2006). Current trends in the development and teaching of the four language skills. Berlin: M. de Gruyter.

Author Information

Gabriela Hublová (presenting / submitting)

Masaryk University, Faculty of Education

Brno

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