A Qualitative Case Study Of An EFL Academic Writing Course:An Activity Theory Perspective

This qualitative case study focused on a newly innovated academic writing curriculum in a Chinese university from an Activity Theory perspective. Focusing on the learners’perspective, the present thesis aimed to investigate two Chinese EFL students’learning processes in the academic writing class. The study was also designed to explore the factors that facilitated or constrained the students’learning processes. Sources of data included reflective journals, interviews, classroom observation and the students’written documents.The study demonstrated that the students differed in their motives for taking the course. They showed similar learning processes pertaining to some class activities (i.e. lecture and class presentation) but different learning processes regarding the others (i.e. review paper writing and final paper writing). The similarities and differences were manifested in the similar and diverse mediating artifacts they adopted in the processes. Five factors were identified that mediated the students’ learning processes. They were:students’motives, class activities, the instructor, the utilization of cases and examples and the introduction of rules.The present study made contributions in two aspects. Theoretically, the study exemplified the application of Activity Theory as a framework of analyzing the curriculum design in an EFL context. It enriched the existing literature on the Chinese EFL students’writing from the sociocultural perspective. Practically, the study provided empirical evidence from the students’ perspective for the Chinese EFL academic writing curriculum innovation. It also shed light for the design, implementation and reformation of Chinese EFL writing courses in other discourses.