Yanti Sri Rezeki

EDU435 Theory and Practice in the Teaching and Learning of ESOL/Foreign Languages
Instructor: Dr. Mary Jane Curry

Annotated Bibliography –title? Focus?

Coxhead, A. (2012). Academic vocabulary, writing and English for academic purpose:

Perspectives from second language learners. RELC Journal, 43(1), 137-145.

The article reports a study on the perspectives of 14 English as an additional

language students at a New Zealand university with regard to vocabulary and writing.

Specifically, the author attempts to find out what effect an academic context has on

students’ lexical choices and what academic conventions the students employ to

incorporate vocabulary into their writing. Data for the study were obtained from the

writing and reading tasks conducted by the participants and the results of their interviews

about language learning background, academic studies, and their uses of vocabulary in

reading and writing tasks. The author concludes from the study results that the

participants have high awareness of the important relationship between their audience

and the vocabulary they chose for their writing. Another important finding that the author

reports isare the various techniques used by the participants to incorporate academic or

technical words into their writing. interesting The author ends her article by suggesting

several implications for pedagogy and further research. One of the implications she offers

is to consider other majors and their impacts on the vocabulary uses in students’

academic writing. yes

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 The study, which only involves a majority of Chinese first language speakers,

informs suggests? the importance of its replication for larger and different contexts, for

example in EFL (English as a Foreign Language) contexts. In my opinion, such a study,

which focuses on the importance of vocabulary choices and uses for academic writing

and also the use of reading texts to trigger students’ options for vocabulary uses in their

writing, is worth researching since vocabulary is often neglected in the teaching and

learning of English academic writing. yes, which seems odd, but true As far as I know, at

least in my context, students’ poor performance in academic writing is probably caused

by their lack of vocabulary to be used in writing. possibly as well as a limited knowledge

of generic conventions This also implies that as teachers, we do not help our students a

lot in terms of academic vocabulary they have to know. Therefore, I could not agree more

with Coxhead’s opinion on assisting students with academic vocabulary and their uses for

academic writing, one of which is by incorporating the academic word lists and their use

into our curriculum.

Liu, Y. & You, X. (2008). Negotiating academic discourses: Taiwanese and U.S. college

students in research writing. International Journal of English Studies, 8(2), 152-

172.

Arguing that studies in academic writing across contexts which focus on

contrastive rhetoric and broad literacy development as are insufficient in understanding

students’ negotiation into new academic discourses, the article presents the authors’

research on the research writing of Taiwanese and U.S. college students. The research

examines the cross-national students’ initiation and struggles when entering academic

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discourse. Both authors, who also acted as the researchers, employed teacher research

methods and involved first-year writing students in both Taiwan and U.S. contexts.

Interesting The sources of the data are teaching journals, online discussions between the

teachers (researchers), students’ writing, and notes from teacher-student conferences. The

research findings reveal that factors like the academic writing experiences that they

gained in high school in both contexts, in addition to “teachers’ expectations, new

perceptions of research and writing, and their dreams and experiences” (p. 153) affect

their students’ writing.

The research is fairly strong in terms of the methodology used. However, since

the researchers seek for the micro views of students in two different contexts, it would

have been better that interview technique was also employed in order to obtain stronger

and more reliable accounts from the participants. Good point Besides thatIn addition,

although it has been confirmed that both authors/ researchers have quite a large number

amount of experiences living or teaching in the U.S., which is helpful for their position as

an insider or outsider of the research contexts, the fact that both are/ were Chinese would

more or less affect they ways they interpret students’ negotiation strategies in their

writing. yes Thus, verification of students’ reflection papers is needed to avoid any

misinterpretation. How would this take place?

Paltridge, B. (2004). Academic writing. Language Teaching, 37(2), 87-105.

In his review article, Paltridge presents fairly extensive reviews on research and

development of second language academic writing. He covers various research topics

ranging from writing requirements in academic setting, the contexts of academic writing

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in which issues like native and non-native speakers of English, discourse community,

plagiarism and textual borrowing are discussed, and the analysis of academic writing. In

addition, he also reviews research related to the teaching and assessment of academic

writing and finally suggests areas for further research.

Paltridge’s review is very important and helpful to gain broad understanding and

insights about research in academic writing. Reading this article, we can at least map out

topics that have been studied and see opportunities that are available for further research

or development in the field. However, it should be noted that going directly to the

references he reviews is important for deeper understanding and discussions. Yes Besides

that, considering the year of the article, we definitely have to read more recent research or

studies.

Ismail, S.A.A (2011). Exploring students’ perceptions of ESL writing. English Language

Teaching, 4I(2), 73-83.

In his article, Ismail describes his research investigating students’ perceptions of

an ESL academic writing course and writing in general. His research involves 64 female

students of an ESP program where?. The nature of the research is both a qualitative and

quantitative study in which data were gathered through questionnaires and focus group

interview. From the research results, Ismail concludes that the participants demonstrate

positive views toward the ESL academic writing course in specific and ESL writing in

general. They also display high awareness of the need and requirements of ESL writing.

While research exploring students’ perceptions regarding academic writing

including Ismail’s is always necessary in order to provide richer accounts of students

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from different contexts, there are a few points that I found were overlooked in this

particular work. First of all, Ismail did not provide clear explanation about the

participants involved in his research and its implications to the findings. Ok For example,

it is questionable unexplained? why all participants were female and why students from

two different majors were selected. Yes Besides that, investigating students’ perceptions

about specific academic writing course and about ESL writing in general might entail two

different results. Excellent critique Nevertheless, I agree with the author that further

research investigating the influence of L1 writing conventions in improving L2 writing is

needed.

Lee, I. (2007). Assessment for learning: Integrating assessment, teaching, and learning in

the ESL/EFL writing classroom. The Canadian Modern Language Review, 64(1),

199-213.

Lee highlights in her article some key concepts of AFL (Assessment for Learning)

especially related to ESL/EFL writing. Addressing the tendency that assessment is used

to focus on the product and grading, Lee argues that assessment in writing should be

integrated into its teaching and learning. Yes! According to Lee, assessment should be

aimed at helping and empowering students in their learning. An illustration of how the

AFL principles can be incorporated into a writing classroom is provided especially for

the context of Hong Kong secondary writing class. In addition to the key principles of

AFL in writing and an example of its instructional unit, Lee also presents challenges that

could be encountered while implementing the principles. She finally concludes her article

by proposing ways how these challenges can be overcome.

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 I could not agree more with Lee as well as others who contend advocate the

importance of implementing effective assessment for students’ writing. In the field of

ESL/EFL writing, assessment seems to be an ongoing debate as there are a lot of

conflicting ideas as to what constitutes effective assessment. Lee’s key concepts of AFL

which emphasize students’ writing/ learning development instead of the end result or

product of their writing which may decrease their motivation and success of learning

should be encouraged more. Although it addresses low level students, the example of

instructional unit she provides can be a good model and modified to suit higher level

students. good More importantly, opportunities for research or studies, which investigate

how the principles can work in different ESL/EFL writing contexts, are widely open and

promising.

Hollander, P. (2010). Finding “sponsorship” in the academy: Three case studies of first-

year writing students. Journal of College Reading and Learning, 41(1), 29-48.

Hollander presents her study of three basic writing students in order to know what

influences their reaction toward the social constructivist elements of the curriculum she

implemented in her basic writing course that she taught. Hollander states that sixteen 16

students in her class came from various backgrounds:. They are Affrican-American,

Asian, Haitian, Latino and white European-American. Based on some considerations like

she notes such as technical problems with the interviews technical problems, according to

her, three out of the sixteen 16 students were selected as the research participants.

Hollander explains that all the data for the research which ranged from the course

materials, student writing, teacher-note, and interview transcripts were gathered and

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analyzed by using a poststructural perspective and a combination of qualitative methods,

that is, ethnographic observation, teacher-research, interviewing, and critical data

analysis. The findings of the research are in line with the argument that including class

readings written by authors of various cultural and ethnic groups and asking students to

link their lived experiences with these readings are crucial for what kind? transformation,

which is the main objective of learning in social constructivism. Additionally, the study

informs teachers about the potential of autoethnography to bridge students’ critical

writing. cool!

Hollander’s case study is fairly informative and useful for ESL/EFL writing

teachers. It provides clear ideas on how autoethnography can be used to encourage

students’ critical thinking in writing, especially through the use of readings. However,

since the study involves ESL students, which means those who still suffer from English

language constraints, I would like to know more about the methods or instructions that

the researcher who was also a writing teacher incorporated in her classroom to help

students write their ideas well and critically.

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