CROSSING THE BRIDGES:ESL students’ perspectives on academic english learning in the pre- and post-undergraduate context

Eric Cheung (eric.cheung@polyu.edu.hk), Research Associate

Department of English, Hong Kong Polytechnic University

ISFC40 Sun Yat-sen University: Colloquium

Outline

Brief overview of Hong Kong pre-tertiary and postgraduate education

Concerns and expectations on academic literacy from pre-tertiary and postgraduate students

Lexicogrammatical analysis of effective student texts using Appraisal framework

Current support for PolyU students Future research and ambitions

UGC Policy (2007)

Education hub of the region Whole higher education as one force Provision of excellent teaching in all

areas relevant to its role Promotion of “international

competitiveness”

Hong Kong Pre-tertiary Education

More choices for senior secondary school graduates

Annual Policy Address 2000: By 2010, 60% of the senior secondary school

leavers will receive tertiary education Associate Degree

Referring to Community College in the US 2- or 3-year programmes

Higher Diploma Professional Diploma

Hong Kong Pre-tertiary Education

S6 School Leavers

Degree (Year 1)

Em

plo

ym

ent/

Conti

nuous

Educa

tion

Degree programmes (Year 2)

Degree programmes (Year 3)

Yijin Diploma Programmes

HD (3)

HD (2)

HD (1)Pre-Associate Diploma

AD (2)

AD (1)

Degree programmes (Year 4)

Postgraduate Studies in Hong Kong Types of postgraduate studies

Taught Postgraduate Programmes Research Postgraduate Programmes

RGC launched Hong Kong PhD Fellowship Scheme in 2009 to attract students around the world to pursue PhD studies and research in UGC-funded institutions in Hong Kong

210 candidates were offered a fellowship in 2013/14 academic year (28 from PolyU)

Enrolment 2009-13 (UGC, 2013)

2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13

Sub-degree 7009 6983 6927 7041

Undergraduate 56610 57565 58412 76353

Taught postgraduate 3611 3578 3686 3721

5000

15000

25000

35000

45000

55000

65000

75000

85000

No.

of

Stu

den

ts

Enrolment 2006-2013 (PolyU)

2009/2010 2010/2011 2011/2012 2012/2013

Sub-de-gree

4176 4136 3943 3760

Under-gradu-ate

15265 15611 15605 18571

Taught Post-gradu-ate

8099 8105 8448 3760

100050009000

1300017000

No.

of

Stu

den

ts

Non-local Students Intake, 2010-13

*Data includes Macau SAR and Taiwan.

2010/11 2011/12 2012/13

China 8885 9182 11369

1000

3000

5000

7000

9000

11000

No o

f S

tud

en

ts

Non-local Students Intake (PolyU)

*Data includes Macau SAR and Taiwan.

2010/2011 2011/2012 2012/2013

China 2231 2572 3105

250

750

1250

1750

2250

2750

3250

No.

of

Stu

den

ts

Necessity of EAP

Hyland (1997) conducted a survey of HK undergraduates Students related their academic success to

their English competence and acknowledged EAP classes

They confessed to difficulties in writing, speaking and specialised vocabulary

Struggling between acquiring subject knowledge and mastering English

Thus students would require language support as English is still the principle tertiary instruction language.

Necessity of EAP

Evans and Green (2007) revisited Hyland’s (1997) question Linking sentences, expressing ideas in

correct English and in appropriate academic style are the most difficult in academic writing skills

Lexical and grammatical aspects are seen as difficult

Problems would likely be intensified as more students from the Chinese MOI backgraound enrol on programmes in English-medium universities.

Preliminary Survey

Online questionnaire survey 19 post-secondary students 14 post-graduate students

Focus group interview Semi-formal 30 – 45 minutes; audio recorded 3 post-secondary students 3 post-graduate students

Academic Support Received

Sub-degree Students Postgraduate Students

Types of Academic Support

Sub-degree RespondentsPostgraduate Respondents

Types of Texts Covered

Sub-degree RespondentsPostgraduate Respondents

Content of Support

Sub-degree RespondentsPostgraduate Respondents

Students’ Reflection

Sub-degree Students (2013) Did not see importance of strategies

maintain textual cohesion or coherence such as “topic sentences”

Needed more vocabulary to achieve the “academic style”

Writing support only happened during consultation with supervisors; academic conventions not explicitly taught

Regarded findings as the primary source of evaluation of their own research

(Cont’d)

Postgraduate Students (2009, 2012) Viewed “Critical Thinking” as

Thinking with a “negative” attitude Strong mental disposition to argue Not easily accepting given knowledge

Showed lack of confidence in contesting existing knowledge

Needed academic vocabulary and “style guide”

Reliance on “models” or “templates” of academic writing

Lexicogrammatical analysis of effective student texts using Appraisal framework

26 research papers from MAELT students (local, Mainland Chinese, overseas)

UAM Corpus Tool (O’Donnell, 2008)Annotation of Attitudinal valuesDelicacy of Analysis: AFFECT, JUDGEMENT,

APPRECIATION without sub-types identifiedCorpus analysis

Attitudinal density (per 1,000 words) in each stage

Types of Attitude in each stage

Structural Patterns of Research Articles (Lin & Evans, 2012)

Generic Stages Remarks

Stage 1 – Introduction Value and significance

Stage 2 – Literature Review Related research in the field of study

Stage 3 – MethodologyIncluding Data, Participants

(optional)

Stage 4 – Results and Discussion

Including Analysis of Results

Stage 5 – ConclusionIncluding Implication,

Suggestions, Limitations, Future research, etc.

Selection of effective student texts

Natural, authentic student texts

Assignments vs. Research Articles

Getting A+ in assignments is the priority

Vocabulary for evaluation is essential

Repertoire of interpersonal meanings in student academic discourse

Resources for Evaluation and Critical Stance

MOOD & MODALITY (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004)

Hedges & Boosters (Hyland, 1998, 2004)

Evaluative language, adjectives as canonical forms (Swales & Feak, 2004)

Evaluative nouns & adjectives (Hunston & Sinclair, 2000)

Appraisal Analysis (Martin & White 2005, Hood 2010)

Discourse Semantics – Interpersonal Meanings

• Appraisal Analysis (e.g. Martin & White 2005, Hood 2010) Engagement

Attitude

Graduation

JUDGEMENT & APPRECIATION as Institutionalised AFFECT

Affect

Appreciation

Judgement

feeling institutionalised as propositionsaesthetics or value (criteria & assessment)

moral or ethics (criteria & assessment)feeling institutionalised as proposals

Martin & White (2005, p. 45)

Evaluation in Academic Writing

Hood (2004a, 2004b, 2005, 2009, 2010) on

Evaluation in the Introduction section

Prosody of interpersonal values in textual periodicity

Recent studies on research genre

Attitudinal values in academic writing (Lee, 2008; Mizusawa, 2010)

Appraisal resources across generic stages of grant proposals (Pascual & Unger, 2010)

Layers of Theme and New in Discourse

(Martin & Rose 2007, p.199)

Method of development

(genre focus)

Point

(field focus)

Predict AccumulateTheme … Rheme

macroTheme

hyperTheme

hyperNew

macroNew

Corpus & Case Study

UAM Corpus Tool (O’Donnell, 2008)Annotation of Attitudinal valuesDelicacy of Analysis: AFFECT,

JUDGEMENT, APPRECIATION without sub-types identified

Corpus analysis Attitudinal density (per 1,000 words) in each

stage Types of Attitude in each stage

Assignment Topic & Requirements A small scale classroom-based research project Relate observations and reflections to

literature read on the topic. Solution-oriented investigation of the approach

to teaching written language (reading and/or writing) with an insider perspective

Test the solution or make recommendations to the solution

Develop concrete solutions which can then be incorporated in the classroom

Effective Research Paper

Attitudinal Density across the Effective Papers

Introduc-tion

Literature Review

Method-ology

& Partici-pants

Findings& Dis-

cussion

Conclusion0

10

20

30

40

50

60

1.59 0.65 0.61 2.24 0.91

8.745.48 7.66 7.32 11.27

43.97

29.6319.61

23.98

36.64

Affect Judgement Appreciation

Att

itu

din

al D

en

sity

(p

er

1,0

00

w

ord

s)

Introduc-tion

Litera-ture Re-

view

Method-ology

Findings & Dis-

cussion

Conclu-sion

Summary of findings

APPRECIATION is the dominant choice to maintain objectivity

Encoding of JUDGEMENT and AFFECT depends on objects of study

Reflecting that effective student writers were able to institutionalise of feelings to establish objective criticality

APPRECIATION

Evaluating teaching approaches, background of study, limitations, etc.

Teachers always find problems [-app] and

difficulties [-app] in teaching students with

low proficiency.

Such approach is effective [+app] to enable

[+app] students to grasp fundamental facts

[+app] and sequences in the context of exam

question.

Firstly, there is a time constraint [-app] in the

lesson.

JUDGEMENT

Evaluating students’/teachers’ involvement, disposition, capabilities, etc.

The teacher in study is an experienced [+jud] female teacher with good pronunciation and excellent class management skills [+jud].

Positive reinforcement can always help students to build up their self-confidence [+jud] and provide them motivation [+jud] to make progress [+jud] and achieve an academic goal [+jud].

Most people ignored [-jud] the teacher and would not listen [-jud] but doze [-jud] or play mobile phone games [-jud].

AFFECT

Evaluating students’/teachers’ emotional responses

it is easy to find that students were well involved [+aff] and interested [+aff]. They laughed [+aff] after the teacher’s joking question in the end.

The writer does not need to worry [+aff] if his writing contains grammatical mistakes or incoherence.

She was young in twenties and interested [+aff] in experimenting innovative approaches in her teaching.

As a result, many teachers were frustrated [-aff] at the gap …, cited by T2 and T3.

Support for PolyU students

Department of English Effective English for Postgraduate Research

Students (EEPRS)

Academic Support Programme (ASP) MA Learning Hub

English Language Centre Credit-bearing academic English courses

Academic Writing Websites

Academic Writing Websites

Future Research

Obtain a larger survey sampling size

Increase corpus size for colligational patterns evoking evaluation

Investigate diachronic change of students' critical voice represented in written discourse

Collect teachers’ and students’ opinions about the academic support website

Ambitions

Develop a dynamic, interactive academic support platform

Human-computation for large-scale research

MOOC

Map the interpersonal values across academic genres

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THANK YOU VERY MUCH!

eric.cheung@polyu.edu.hk