Chinese-Speaking Undergraduates in Australia : A Lexical Approach to Teaching Academic Writing

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Chinese-speaking students enroll in Australian tertiary institutions in large numbers. Success for these international students is heavily dependent upon their mastering the conventions of academic writing in English. How best to ensure such mastery among EAL learners has been a matter of debate among tertiary educators and language specialists, with competing theories and methods proposed. This paper reports on an attempt to improve English academic writing through intensive lexical instruction, a method proposed by Ackermann & Chen (2013), Boers et al. (2016), Lewis (1993), Selivan (2018), Wray (2005, 2018) and others. Nine Chinese-speaking tertiary students were offered training in recognising and employing those lexical constructions commonly found in relevant technical and academic genres. The project employed a mixed methods case study approach to describe students’ performance and their perceptions and responses to the teaching they underwent. While gains in performance were evident in some cases, the outcomes of the teaching were inconsistent and equivocal overall. We conclude that this raises questions about the efficacy of purely lexical methods and underscores the challenge involved in teaching complex genres at tertiary level. These findings have implications for those teaching Chinese-speaking students, particularly in EAL contexts.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• Abstract
• Introduction
• Literature Review
• Lexical Chunks and the Lexical Approach
• Research on Lexical Chunks in EFL Contexts
• The Writing Challenges Faced by EAL Students
• Methodology
• Participants and Recruitment
• Training Program
• Data Collection and Analysis
• Interviews
• Findings
• Analysis of the Writing Samples
• English Experts’ Ranking of Writing Samples
• Semi-Structured Interviews
• Perceptions of the relationship between knowledge and awareness of relevant lexical chunks and students’ writing proficiency
• Perceptions of the effects of learning about lexical chunks on their writing
• Perceptions of the transfer of lexical awareness from writing to other modes of communication
• Changes in students’ attitudes towards learning about lexical chunks before and after focused instruction.
• Discussion
• A Relation between the Knowledge and Awareness of Lexical Chunks and Writing Proficiency
• Effects of intensive lexical instruction on writing proficiency
• Conclusion
• Implications
• Limitations and Further Research
• The Authors
• References
• Appendix A
• Appendix B
• Appendix C