Writing development in a study abroad context
While study abroad at the university level has been shown to benefit many aspects of second language proficiency, little is known about how this affects participants’ writing skills. The present study explores writing development in a group of 30 EFL learners over a period of 15-months and compares...
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| Formato: | tesis doctoral |
| Estado: | Versión publicada |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2012 |
| País: | España |
| Recursos: | CBUC, CESCA |
| Repositorio: | TDR. Tesis Doctorales en Red |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:www.tdx.cat:10803/96196 |
| Acesso em linha: | http://hdl.handle.net/10803/96196 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palavra-chave: | Anglès escrit Anglès Ensenyament Estudiants estrangers 81 |
| Resumo: | While study abroad at the university level has been shown to benefit many aspects of second language proficiency, little is known about how this affects participants’ writing skills. The present study explores writing development in a group of 30 EFL learners over a period of 15-months and compares the progress made in two distinct learning contexts: study abroad (SA) and classroom instruction at home (AH). The learners’ writing before and after each learning context is evaluated by trained raters and analyzed quantitatively, using an assortment of computational tools, to determine whether progress is made in the domains of complexity, accuracy, fluency, lexical diversity and sophistication, and cohesion. The learners’ writing is also compared, in terms of both quality and characteristics, to the writing of 28 native speakers of English who wrote on the same topic under the same conditions. Results indicate the writing improves significantly after the SA context, and that learners make considerably more progress while abroad than during the AH context. |
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