Textual Borrowing Behaviors In English Response Essays Written By Chinese Freshmen

Source-based writing is becoming increasingly common in second language(L2)writing assessment.However,it is also pointed out in literature that over-reliance on language from source texts may mask gaps in proficiency and thus lead to an inaccurate evaluation of writing skills(Leki & Carson,1997).This paper,thus,attempted to explore textual borrowing behaviors from both linguistic and content dimensions in English response essays composed by Chinese freshman writers.Specifically,the study investigates the amount and types of textual borrowing,and,it also explores whether these textual borrowing behaviors are correlated with the essay scores.Ninety-six response essays were collected and examined for textual borrowing behaviors.Five dependent variables were calculated:(1)number of words;(2)percent of borrowing;(3)rate of borrowing strings per 100 words;(4)number of source ideas;(5)content accuracy.One-way ANOVAs were run with the score level as the independent variable and total words,percent of borrowing,rate of strings per 100 words,number of source ideas,and content accuracy as the dependent variables.The study revealed that although in general the L2 writers in the current study did not conduct extensive textual borrowing,they mainly relied on the non-referenced copied strategy.In terms of the content features,all the source ideas taken from the source text were 100%accurate,but overall,these writers did not incorporate many source ideas in the essays constructed.As for the score level differences,the study reported that higher scored essays did contain significantly more source ideas than their lower scored counterparts.However,no difference was identified as to content accuracy of the source ideas,rate of borrowed strings per 100 words or percentage of borrowed strings.The overall low rate of borrowed language and borrowed ideas might suggest that L2 writers were still not skilled at identifying and incorporating source materials in their own writing,especially given the dominant use of non-referenced copied strategy.However,the significant difference in source ideas among score levels indicates that the writers were rewarded for incorporating source ideas in such integrated writing tasks.Therefore,future writing instruction might need to focus on awareness-raising and practice of information mining and incorporation.