Online language learning for addressing Hong Kong tertiary students - PDF document

Online language learning for addressing Hong Kong tertiary students’ needs in academic writing Online language learning for addressing Hong Kong tertiary students’ needs in academic writing Jonathan J WEBSTER, Angela CHAN, & John S.Y. LEE The Halliday Centre for Intelligent Applications of Language Studies & Department of Chinese, Translation and Linguistics City University of Hong Kong City University of Hong Kong City University of Hong Kong  Established in 1984  3 Colleges, 4 Schools  College of Business  College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences  College of Science & Engineering  School of Creative Media  School of Energy and Environment  School of Law  School of Graduate Studies  Programmes from Bachelor to PhD  > 12,000 FTE students in 2010/11  Ranked 124th in 2009 THES ranking (or 129 th in 2010 QS 3 ranking) 3 eLearning Forum Asia 2011, NTU Singapore 1

Online language learning for addressing Hong Kong tertiary students’ needs in academic writing Outline  The Language Companion Course Project  The CityU Learner corpus of academic writing  Preliminary studies based on the corpus  Further research  Conclusion 4 The Language Companion Course Project Rationale (1/2)  Language enhancement is seen as a companion to the student’s normal course of study.  Language enhancement is not seen as something extraneous to the student’s normal learning, instead it must come along side of a designated course which is part of the student’s core curriculum.  Students are made aware of the fact that their ability in English language writing goes hand‐in‐hand with their learning in their chosen discipline. 6 eLearning Forum Asia 2011, NTU Singapore 2

Online language learning for addressing Hong Kong tertiary students’ needs in academic writing Rationale (2/2) online subject language teacher specialist coach  Our aim is to provide a linguistically‐sophisticated pedagogically‐motivated e‐learning platform for assisting CityU students to improve their English language writing ability within the context of courses in the student’s chosen 7 discipline. Involved parties & generic workflow Subject teacher 2 6 Subject teacher Student Student Online tutor 3 1 5 4 Online tutor Online tutor Online tutor coordinator coordinator Key: 1. Designing an assignment & submission schedule 2. Giving an assignment 3. Providing support materials for assignment writing 4. Submitting a draft for comments 8 5. Returning a commented draft 6. Submitting a finalized assignment for assessment Blog‐based interface eLearning Forum Asia 2011, NTU Singapore 3

Online language learning for addressing Hong Kong tertiary students’ needs in academic writing Built‐in generic word processor A codified comment is linked to a page showing explanations of the comment Other types of comments (1/2)  Additional comments inserted behind a comment code  eLearning Forum Asia 2011, NTU Singapore 4

Online language learning for addressing Hong Kong tertiary students’ needs in academic writing Other types of comments (2/2)  End comments provided to point out general problems The CityU Learner corpus of academic writing Downloading student writing  The blog‐based interface made the downloading of student essays possible  The download process took place at the end of each semester  Up to five versions of an essay are downloaded:  The very first version  The first version with a tutor’s comments  The second version  The second version with comments  The final version submitted for grading eLearning Forum Asia 2011, NTU Singapore 5

Online language learning for addressing Hong Kong tertiary students’ needs in academic writing Texts by discipline No of Subtotal Faculty Discipline (Abbreviation) texts (%) Business Business (FB) 2406 4231 Information Systems (IS) 549 (27%) Management Sciences (MS) 1276 Humanities Applied Social Studies (SS) 877 3470 and Social Asian and International Studies (AIS) 383 (23%) Sciences Linguistics (LING) 2210 Science and Applied Physics (AP) 1001 Engineering Biology (BIO) 3585 7312 Building Science and Technology (BST) 703 (48%) Computer Science (CS) 460 Electronic Engineering (EE) 1563 Other Creative Media (CM) 117 379 faculties Law (LW) 262 (2%) Total 15392 (100%) Genres  Different subject disciplines gave assignments of different genres  Science and Engineering courses  lab reports  Business courses  case study reports  Linguistics students  descriptions of data analysis  Social sciences  argumentative essays  Yet, determining the genre of an assignment is not always clear‐cut. An assignment may consist of several components and each component constitutes one single genre. Preliminary studies based on the corpus eLearning Forum Asia 2011, NTU Singapore 6

Online language learning for addressing Hong Kong tertiary students’ needs in academic writing Study 1:Comment rates  A computer tool was developed for extracting comment bank (CB) codes and producing statistics on comment usage in texts.  Comment rates were compared across drafts and assignments to measure students’ progress.  Main findings: the numbers of CB codes inserted reduced remarkably across almost all subjects as the semester progressed  The findings suggest that the language tutors’ feedback did help students reduce errors in their academic writing and the effect was carried over into their subsequent work. Comment rates across versions 7.5 No. of CB codes (per 100 words) 6.5 6.3 5.3 5.4 4.2 4.3 3.8 3.8 3.7 3.6 3.3 2.9 2.8 2.7 2.6 2.2 2.4 2.2 1.9 1.9 1.8 1.3 1.0 AIS_A1 AP_A1 BIO_A1 BST_A2 CS_A2 LING_A2 Version 1 Version 2 Comment rates across assignments 7.9 No. of CB codes (per 100 words) 7.6 7.5 7.2 7.0 6.5 6.3 5.9 5.3 5.0 4.8 4.5 4.4 4.1 3.9 3.8 3.6 3.1 2.9 2.8 2.7 2.7 2.6 2.4 1.9 1.6 AIS_i AIS_ii AP BIO_i BST CS EE_i EE_ii FB_i FB_ii LING LING_i MS_i Assignment 1 Version 1 Assignment 2 Version 1 eLearning Forum Asia 2011, NTU Singapore 7

Online language learning for addressing Hong Kong tertiary students’ needs in academic writing Study 2: Students’ responses to tutors’ comments  Drew on 35 assignments by 30 students from 3 subject disciplines  Each assignment was commented on by a language tutor twice and revised by the author twice  In total 1901 comments were identified  Each comment was categorized by  Strategy used to insert the comment  Type of issue it addresses  Response taken in the revision  Outcome of the revision Language tutors’ commenting strategies (1/2)  Example 1: insertion of a CB code  Its aims are to identify who had been [53] most adversely affected by the movement, and to compare them with had moved [53] into tertiary sectors or remained in manufacturing. (where [53] represents “Verb – past simple”)  Example 2: OECs which provide explanation for an error (an example of CB + OEC)  the job duties they were doing in clause 6) response [58 ] ("response" is not a verb) to each other. (where [58] represents “word choice”)  Example 3: OECs which provide revision suggestion  Conjunction is a mechanism for expressing the links of semantic connection between spans in a text. (This is the topic sentence for the paragraph about conjunction. Join it to the examples that follow) Language tutors’ commenting strategies (2/2)  Example 4: OECs which raised questions for clarification  I will explore the letter by analyzing how cohesive it is and thus reach the decision to what extent the letter can be considered as a text. (Aren't you supposed to analyze the letter based on seven criteria? If so, you should state that in the introduction)  Example 5: Corrections  The quota samples are also inappropriate since this proposal aim is to study the SMEs and the large companies (those companies who have fewer [25] (fewer than) 50 employees), so that the research method should include SMEs. (where [25] represents “Preposition – missing”)  Example 6: Highlighted with no comments  Also, the reasers had no idea about the research purpose, whether the researchers were in favour of such policies or they were just curious about why these policies were not widely implemented. eLearning Forum Asia 2011, NTU Singapore 8