| English research article (RA) writing is the highest and final stage for Chinese college-level learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) in classroom settings. After grasping communicative competence in English, EFL learners need learn English RA writing to lay a foundation for writing RAs in English in their future academic study, such as writing BA theses or course paper during MA study. RA writing is not an easy task even for NNS scholars and learners. Therefore, EFL students need systematic guidance and well-designed instruction to acquire RA writing competence.There exist some limitations in the current RA research, RA teaching practices and research methodology.Firstly, research on the EFL learners’development of RA writing competence in classroom context still needs further investigation. In the existing research of RA writing, there are the textual studies on the written RAs, and the studies on developing NNS learners" RA writing skills. Those studies usually focus on MA students, PhD candidates and scholars, especially in English-speaking countries. In the field of textual studies of RAs, researchers attempted to identify the linguistic features and organizational structures of RAs from the genre analysis and functional grammar perspectives, for the purpose of RA writing instructions.Among the studies on developing learners’RA writing skills, there are studies on the genre-based approach and inquiry-based approach. The former approach tries to teach RA writing through analyzing the genre of the target type of texts. The genre-based approach has its strength in explaining the features of academic discourse explicitly and analytically in order to raise the students’genre awareness of certain types of RAs. However, this approach limits itself in the introduction to the isolated knowledge points. Students can hardly integrate all the knowledge into the RA writing tasks. As for the genre-based approach, there are a few empirical studies to prove the effectiveness of this approach, and many of the studies merely gave suggestions to this approach based on the textual analysis of the RAs. The inquiry-based approach helps students acquire RA writing by engaging students in authentic RA writing tasks. Through the process of conducting research, students are able to experience the phases in research and apply the knowledge of academic discourse to the RA writing tasks for real communicative purposes. There are several empirical studies on the inquiry-based approach, but with some limitations. Some studies didn’t present students’improvement based on the data analysis of students’RAs, but mainly based on the questionnaire feedback which was not solidly convincing enough. In other studies, students didn’t write the complete RAs, only the outlines of RAs, which couldn’t fully demonstrate students’acquiring of all the skills needed in RA writing.Moreover, the existing writing models are all about LI or L2writing processes on the non-academic writing tasks, and the only one academic writing model cannot reflect the development of EFL learners’RA writing competence in the classroom setting.Secondly, most of the current RA writing teaching cannot help students grasp the RA writing competence as expected. In the RA writing teaching, researchers and teachers believed that the difficulties in RA writing were caused by language proficiency and unfamiliarity with the genres of RAs. Researchers regarded study skills such as note-taking as the only solution to the EAP study. Most of the RA writing textbooks and courses mainly explained the mechanics of RAs; however, studies show that students couldn’t acquire RA writing competence, and plagiarism was often found in students’RAs. Therefore, the teaching of RA writing needs to focus on more than just language-related issues.In addition, in terms of research methodology, the frequently used methods in writing studies, such as the textual analysis of the RAs, the controlled experimental research design, interview and think-aloud protocol, cannot fully explore the complex and dynamic processes of the development of learners’RA writing competence. Furthermore, those methods cannot be connected with the curriculum. In the real classroom the teacher usually adjusts the teaching procedures depending on the students’performance. Classroom observational method adopted in the present study can collect the data in the classroom without the researcher’s intervention and interference, from which the developmental patterns and leading factors to the students’development in the EFL classroom context can be found out.Due to the limitations of the previous studies in terms of participants, learning contexts, and research methodology, the present study will approach the issue of developing learners’RA writing competence from the sociocultural perspective, which intends to explore the contributors of learners’development of such competence from both the internal factors and external factors through classroom observational method. English RA writing competence is defined as having the following three aspects:1) the discourse structure of an RA (the discourse level of an RA),2) academic language (syntactic-lexical-semantic features of an RA), and3) scientific thinking and reasoning. This study intends to answer these three general research questions:1) What aspects of the competence of English RA writing can students learn from classroom instruction?2) If RA writing competence can be gained from classroom instruction, what aspects of such competence can be transferred from one RA writing task to another?3) If English RA writing competence can be learned from classroom instruction and be transferred, what contributes to the learning and transferability? This longitudinal study gathered both qualitative and quantitative data from classroom observational method. Two classes (Class A&Class B) of English-major senior students from the English Department at one normal university in Shanghai participated in the study. There were28students in each class, with similar English language proficiency. The empirical study consisted of Study1, Study2, and Study3. Studies1&2were carried out in Class A in the fall semester of2009-2010academic year. Study3, as the control study, was conducted in Class B in the spring semester of2010-2011academic year. Class A and Class B were taught by one same professor. Class A adopted the theme-oriented, process-centered and inquiry-based pedagogy, while Class B adopted the traditional teaching approach.In Study1, the participants’writing assignments of4Projects of that semester and reflections of conducting the projects were collected. In Study2, one group’s discussions during Project4completion were video-recorded and transcribed. Study3was conducted to further explore the specific mediating roles of the three mediating tools in RA writing model.The present study provides multi-source data to enrich the present understanding towards the EFL learners’RA writing processes, and the findings are summarized as follows:First of all, it has been confirmed that learners could acquire discourse knowledge, linguistic structure of academic language and scientific thinking and reasoning through classroom instruction, compared with themselves across4projects during one-semester’s training, and compared with another group of learners with the similar English proficiency. Data of Study1showed the development of Class A’RA writing competence across4projects, and data of Study3supported Study1’s findings in another group of students, although with some variations.Secondly, conditions of the learning and transferring of the three aspects of RA writing competence have been found, moreover, the different roles of the three mediating tools have been specified based on the data obtained of Study1and Study3. The three mediating tools are:1) the sample academic writing,2) norms and conventions of RAs, and3) the teacher’s instant feedback and mini-training sessions. The first two mediating tools can help learners to acquire low-level parts of RA writing competence, such as linguistic features of academic language, recalling facts; while the third mediating tool plays a crucially important role in acquiring both the low-level and high-level skills in RA writing competence.Finally, the development pattern of English RA writing competence has been depicted. People always regarded RA writing learning as the learning of conventions, genre and norms of RAs. It was assumed that once learners learned the form and style of RAs, they were able to write RAs successfully. However, the research competence, or scientific thinking and reasoning, is the more essential factor that determines the quality of RAs. Learners’ language knowledge and research skills develop interactively and simultaneously. Learners’ development of academic language is dependent on the development of their research competence.This study has theoretical significance in exploring the learners’ development of RA writing competence under the framework of Activity Theory from the sociocultural perspective. Moreover, this study presents a more comprehensive scenario of how learners realize the final outcomes of writing RAs in classroom instruction setting. The empirical data obtained from the present study offers new evidence to enrich sociocultural theory. This study also has some implications for RA writing teaching practices in Chinese EFL writing classroom settings, especially the inquiry-based approach and the teacher’s instant feedback on the discourse level of students’ RAs. |
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