A Study Of Overtime Changes In Source Use In English Writings By Chinese EFL Learners

Source use is an important skill and technique for L2 writers.Previous studies on this topic,however,were generally limited in their scope,and their suggestions on developing students' ability of source use were merely based on the assumptions derived from their synchronic study instead of a real diachronic exploration of how EFL learners develop their ability.This study,therefore,intends to investigate the overtime changes in source use in English writings by Chinese EFL students,with its focus on specific changes in language use and strategies adopted for source use over a year.The present study,conducted at a university in Shandong Province,involved 50 college students majoring in English.A total of 28 undergraduate students and 22 postgraduate students participated in the research.Both groups were in the first year of their undergraduate/postgraduate program when the research started.Data were collected from the students' writing samples on an integrated reading-writing task,self-evaluated questionnaires,and semi-structured interviews.All the samples were coded and analyzed in terms of both the linguistic features and strategies for source use.The participants repeated the reading-to-write task and the questionnaire after a year.The study found that Chinese EFL students did improve their ability to write from sources after a year,suggesting that source use practice is an uneven developmental process.Students could produce better languages and discourses,and employ strategies for source use more wisely over a certain period of time.However,undergraduate and postgraduate students demonstrated certain differences in their changes in source use.Postgraduates were found to present more positive changes,indicating that their ability of source use improved more greatly than undergraduates.Multiple factors were assumed to contribute to such changes,including the direct influence from students' improved performance on their interactions with task and source,and the more fundamental impacts of academic contexts,i.e.the external instruction and previous writing experience.This study fills the gaps and enriches the research in source use in the Chinese EFL context,and provides pedagogical implications for college English teaching.