Placement of ESL Students in Writing-Across-the-Curriculum Programs

Four years ago, a writing-across-the-curriculum (WAC) program was established at the University of Hawai'i. As part of that program, new English composition courses were implemented and placement testing for writing courses was mandated for all incoming undergraduate students on the campus- native speakers and ESL students alike. As a result, all new freshmen are assigned by placement tests to one of six composition courses: accelerated composition, regular composition, regular composition with required laboratory, remedial composition, regular ESL composition or preparatory ESL composition. The five-hour Manoa Writing Placement Examination (MWPE) requires students to write on two topics and revise both essays later in the day. ESL students were also required to sit the three-hour English Language Institute Placement Test (ELIPT), which has subtests for ESL listening, reading and writing skills. This paper explores the place of ESL students in such a WAC placement testing system. The data for this study are based on an entire year's administrations of the MWPE (N = 1769 incoming freshmen), and of the ELIPT (N = 470 incoming international students). Not surprisingly, the position of the ESL students is low in the overall distribution of MWPE scores. The ways in which foreign students are identified at UHM are discussed in light of these results. In addition, the relative reliability and validity of the MWPE and the ELIPT are examined for appropriateness in making decisions about the placement of ESL students. The results are further examined in terms of how ESL testing and decision making were affected by these university-wide policies

Rating Writing Samples: An Interdepartmental Perspective

This study investigated the degree to which significant differences existed between the mean writing scores of native speakers and international students at the end of their ESL 100 and ENG 100 freshman composition courses, respectively. Eight English Language Institute teachers (from the ESL Department) and eight English Department teachers were paid to rate 112 randomly assigned compositions without knowing which type of students had written each. As a side issue, the degree to which raters differed in the scores they assigned (both between and within departments) was also investigated. A holistic six-point rating scale initially devised by the composition teachers in the English Department was used by all raters. A three-way analysis of variance with repeated measures on two of the three factors was conducted to determine whether there were significant differences for main effects due to the type of student (ESL 100 versus ENG 100), the raters (ESL or English Departments), the order of reading within each department, or any interaction of these three factors. Raters were also asked to choose the best and worst features (from a list of six possibilities: cohesion, content, mechanics, organization, syntax, and vocabulary) of each composition as they rated it. The frequencies of these responses were analyzed using chi-square statistics for overall statistical differences followed by more detai1ed analyses for differences between and within the two departments. Raters were also asked to choose the best and worst features (from a list of six possibilities: cohesion, content, mechanics, organization, syntax, and vocabulary) of each composition as they rated it. The frequencies of these responses were analyzed using chi-square statistics for overall statistical differences followed by more detai1ed analyses for differences between and within the two departments. All results are discussed in terms of how ESL testing and decision making were affected

Tutor Handbooks: Heuristic Texts for Negotiating Difference in a Globalized World

I would like to begin this article by telling a true story. When I was a graduate student earning my doctoral degree, I worked in a writing center on a midsized and predominantly white university campus. Every week I attended and sometimes facilitated the writing center’s tutor education workshop. At one of these meetings, an undergraduate tutor from a Euro- American background said that one of the things she liked about working at the writing center was that if she had a question about grammar during a conference with a client, she could simply lean over to the next table and ask another tutor for advice. In response to this statement, an African-American tutor said that she would never ask another tutor for grammar help because she felt that doing so would undermine her authority and lead clients to question her competence in Standard American English. At this point a bilingual Asian-American tutor said that clients often doubted her ability to tutor based solely on her appearance. For many of her American clients she was too foreign, while for many of her international clients she was not American enough. This discussion was a revelation for many of the Euro-American tutors, since it had never occurred to them that one’s physical appearance could bring his or her linguistic competence into question. All of the tutors learned a great deal from this remarkable discussion, and the theory and practice of the writing center shifted in ways that more fully accounted for the experiences of tutors from diverse backgrounds. I tell this story for two reasons.University Writing Cente

Vitrification and determination of the crystallization time scales of the bulk-metallic-glass-forming liquid Zr58.5Nb2.8Cu15.6Ni12.8Al10.3

The crystallization kinetics of Zr58.5Nb2.8Cu15.6Ni12.8Al10.3 were studied in an electrostatic levitation (ESL) apparatus. The measured critical cooling rate is 1.75 K/s. Zr58.5Nb2.8Cu15.6Ni12.8Al10.3 is the first bulk-metallic-glass-forming liquid that does not contain beryllium to be vitrified by purely radiative cooling in the ESL. Furthermore, the sluggish crystallization kinetics enable the determination of the time-temperature-transformation (TTT) diagram between the liquidus and the glass transition temperatures. The shortest time to reach crystallization in an isothermal experiment; i.e., the nose of the TTT diagram is 32 s. The nose of the TTT diagram is at 900 K and positioned about 200 K below the liquidus temperature

English-language writing instruction in Poland: Adapting to the local EFL context

This paper is intended to foster reflection about the development of a locally-suitable approach to English-language writing instruction in Poland. In order to provide background information to contextualize a subsequent discussion of English-language writing, the paper starts with a brief overview of the history of L2 writing instruction, including an overview of the four most influential approaches to teaching ESL composition in the U.S. from 1945–1990: Controlled Composition, Current-Traditional Rhetoric, the Process Approach, and English for Academic Purposes. This is followed by a discussion of the concept of a „needs analysis,” where it is noted that needs analysis is complex in foreign language contexts such as Poland, where students may not have obvious, immediate needs for writing in English after graduation. The notion of needs analysis is illustrated with an example drawn from the English Institute at the University of Łódź. The needs analysis indicated that some students of English had negative attitudes and/or anxiety towards writing in English, but some had positive attitudes based on previous experiences with creative and expressive writing. Additionally, it was determined that students needed to learn many skills for writing academic papers that they had not learned in secondary school and that require extensive instruction and practice. Based on the needs analysis, it was determined that the purposes of a new writing course for first-year English majors should be to foster and develop positive attitudes toward writing and to support students’ academic work. The assignments and activities for the course are described. Additionally, a description is provided of the possible purposes that Polish students in general might have for writing in English, the goals that instructors might pursue in assigning writing, and the types of writing teachers might assign. Recommendations are provided for responding to student writing

Beyond foreign language writing instruction: The need for literacy pedagogy

The situation we have found ourselves in after 1989 has all the signs of a literacy crisis. As academic teachers, we find the academic literacy skills of many our students below our expectations. Yet, we must not exclude such students, but admit them and find new ways to educate them, taking example from American institutions of higher education which faced a similar literacy crisis in the 1970s. We must provide literacy instruction for those students who lack the traditionally expected literacy skills. My point is that tertiary-level students in Poland should be offered such assistance as long as our goal is university education not only for the elite. For our democracy to thrive, its foundations need to be broadened, which means increasing the number of citizens with critical thinking/literacy skills. By organizing conferences like this one, we can build bridgeheads from which to launch not just writing instruction but literacy instruction in our tertiary education. The key point is understanding what is involved in the transition from being a teacher of the standard academic language to being a teacher of literacy

Microcirculatory blood flow: Functional implications of a complex fluid

This paper was presented at the 3rd Micro and Nano Flows Conference (MNF2011), which was held at the Makedonia Palace Hotel, Thessaloniki in Greece. The conference was organised by Brunel University and supported by the Italian Union of Thermofluiddynamics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, University of Thessaly, IPEM, the Process Intensification Network, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, the Heat Transfer Society, HEXAG - the Heat Exchange Action Group, and the Energy Institute

Research Studies in Second Language Writing and in Contrastive Rhetoric

The major aim of this article is to review studies of second language writing. The first part deals mainly with the process of writing in the second and first languages. The second part concerns contrastive rhetoric. In this second part, the findings of research studies on the relationship of first and second language rhetoric will be presented. Included in the discussion are research studies on contrastive rhetoric in the Indonesian context. The last section of this article concludes the discussion and proposes the implementation of more research on the relationship between Indonesian rhetoric and English rhetoric in essays written by Indonesian learners of English

Self-reported problems of L1 and L2 college writers: what can writing instructors do?

Understanding self-reported problems of L1 and L2 writers regarding the writing process holds important pedagogical implications for instructors to address their students’ specific writing needs. L2 writers were usually reported to have more difficulty setting goals and generating material, and to produce less accurate and effective texts (Leki, 1992; Silva 1993, 1997). This paper compares the self-reported writing difficulties of two groups: L1 (N=19) and L2 (N=19) freshman composition students from an American university. To analyze the group differences, a questionnaire (using 5-point Likert scale) about the perceptions of writing difficulties and approaches to writing process was used. Findings from the descriptive statistical analysis suggest that despite self-reported common problems, such as keeping clarity by using appropriate syntax, the L1 and L2 students presented different views on the importance of visuals in a text. While L1s find visuals to be least important for the reader to understand the text, L2s find visuals to be most important. The results reveal that although instructors focus on teaching essay organization, both L1 and L2 students need more instruction on creating better sentence structures. Encouraging L2 students to use visuals (pictures and graphs) in their persuasive essays would prove beneficial for them to overcome writing problems in English