Journal of Asian Pacific Communication - Volume 15, Issue 1, 2005

This study explores the notion of plagiarism and the Internet from 11 English as Second Language (ESL) teachers and 186 first-year ESL students at South-Coast University in Melbourne, Australia. Data collection was by a questionnaire and semi-structured interviews, and coded using SPSS and N*Vivo software to ascertain trends in response. The most significant difference in response related to the concept of the Internet as copyrightable space. ESL teachers in this study regarded cyberspace as a limitless environment for ‘cut and paste’ plagiarism in students’ academic writing, whereas ESL students considered the Internet a ‘free zone’ and not governed by legal proprietary rights. These conflicting views, it is suggested, relate to differing notions of authorship and attribution: the Romantic notion protected by legal theory and sanctions versus literary theory and techno-literacy notions of authorship. This research highlights the need to reformulate plagiarism policies in light of global and technological perspectives of authorship and attribution of text.

This study investigates Japanese university students’ perceptions related to the notion of plagiarism in their L1 academic context in Japan. The analysis is based on questionnaire and interview responses from Japanese undergraduate (N = 605) and graduate students (N = 110). The responses are compared across disciplines (science versus liberal arts majors) and across academic levels (undergraduate versus graduate students), along with a cross-cultural comparison with similar responses from a smaller number of native English speaking undergraduates in the U. S. (N = 76). The findings of the study indicate that Japanese students do not have much knowledge of citation of sources, particularly as compared to U. S. students, and they perceive the borrowing of words or ideas without citing the source to be not entirely negative. Although both academic level and major field apparently affect students’ knowledge of citation conventions and attitudes toward borrowing words or ideas, the results suggest that academic discipline may be more influential than academic level. In particular, liberal arts (humanities and social science) majors showed more awareness than science (computer science, engineering and physical science) majors of a need for crediting sources. The insights provided by the participants suggest a number of ways in which teachers might facilitate students’ acquisition of academic literacy and citation conventions in their L2.

The acquisition of second language (L2) academic literacy has attracted increasing interest among L2 literacy researchers as the number of English Language Learners (ELLs) studying in schools in Anglophone countries like Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States continues to grow. However, this emphasis on academic literacy has led L2 researchers to overlook the importance of exploring other types of literacy, especially out-of-school literacy. In particular, few studies have examined the impact of out-of-school literacy activities on overall literacy acquisition, as well as on the development of academic literacy skills. This article describes a study that examined the nature of three Asian adolescent ELLs’ out-of-school literacy practices and their implications for school-based literacy growth. These Asian adolescent ELLs engaged in various types of reading and forms of writing in both their native language (L1), Korean, and their L2, English, within both print and computer-based contexts. The findings suggest some often overlooked connections, direct or indirect, between in and out-of-school literacy. The article discusses the implications of these findings for pedagogy and future research.

Economic immigration to Japan has increased the number of language minority students in certain Japanese elementary schools to as many as one in four. Little is known, however, about how these children are influencing language and literacy practices in schools. This article looks at the classroom interaction in the International Community School (ICS), a small school run by a Non-Profit Organisation (NPO) in Gunma Prefecture in which the presence of English‑, Portuguese‑, and Japanese-speaking children has given rise to an experiment in trilingual education. A project to create world globes in a first-grade trilingual classroom is examined using a social semiotic framework. The physical characteristics of the globes bear traces of the political and linguistic environment as well as the organization and management of the school. Children and teachers in turn question and transform geographic systems of representation and approaches to literacy in the process of creating and using a multilingual globe to talk about interests, experiences, and knowledge related to the world.

This study examines language arts textbooks commonly used in junior high schools (grades 7, 8, and 9) in Mainland China and Japan in order to identify (1) what kinds of writing instruction are provided; and (2) how reading materials illustrating opinion writing are structured rhetorically. Findings suggest that these textbooks instruct students to follow a direct and linear pattern in opinion writing, represented by such descriptors as “good organization and paragraphing,” “clarity,” “effective supporting details and counter opinions,” and “main point placed at the beginning.” However, unlike prototypical organization of English writing, the statements of main points that appear in the beginning of model texts do not include a preview statement that forecasts the content and organization of the supporting details. This sheds light on culturally situated interpretations of deduction. In addition, a small number of texts exhibit a structure that might be interpreted as quasi-inductive. This interpretation is partly influenced by the difficulty of assigning a single text type to opinion essays. These findings call for further investigation of what purposes these texts serve, how they are written, and whether a gap exists between writing instruction and the actual texts that L1 English student writers are exposed to.

This article discusses a case study examining a Chinese graduate student’s experience with reading-to-write tasks in business, particularly the student’s use of source articles in performing the tasks. Data on six library research papers were collected from several sources in three semesters, including (1) course syllabi, (2) the source articles and the student’s reading notes, (3) the student’s outlines, drafts, and final versions of the six papers, and (4) interviews with the student. Analysis of the data indicated that the source articles scaffolded the student’s representations of the tasks and that the student’s task representation was influenced by several factors such as the student’s goals, the perceived purpose of the assignments, and the student’s beliefs and experience. Implications of the study for second language writing instruction and research are discussed.

The present paper examines the disciplinary enculturation experience of a Chinese doctoral student. I first refer to Lave and Wenger’s (1991) concept of legitimate peripheral participation (LPP) as the theoretical background of this study. I then present the case of Fei, a doctoral student of physics in a major university in East China, focusing on his interactions with specialist texts, the supervisor, and the research community. In the discussion of the findings, I cast Fei’s experience in the light of LPP. I conclude by emphasizing the value of naturalistic case studies in extending English educators’ scope of vision of academic enculturation.

Instruction in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) writing classes often involves the use of group writing tasks in which small groups of students co-construct written texts. One purpose of using such tasks is for students to negotiate the meanings they wish to express and in so doing engage in language related episodes (discussion of language forms). In writing classes it is expected that at least some of the language related episodes will be discourse related and concern aspects of writing, such as text organisation and genre conventions. The study reported in this paper aimed to investigate the extent to which students discussed language forms (grammar, vocabulary, spelling, discourse, etc) while engaged in small group writing tasks. The study focused particularly on students’ discussion of text and discourse by recording, transcribing and analysing small group interaction and the roles students played during group writing tasks. The analysis showed that the students paid considerable attention to language forms in general and to discourse in particular.

Project-based instruction has been heralded as a most promising activity that can socialize students into academic language and literacy skills (e.g., Beckett, 1999; Stoller, 1997). However, there is scanty research on project-based instruction in general and fewer still on ESL students’ perceptions of it (Thomas, 2000); furthermore, the few available studies show conflicting results (see Beckett, 2002). This article reports the findings of part of a larger research study conducted to understand how secondary school immigrant ESL students were socialized (taught) to acquire academic language and literacy skills in a public school in Vancouver, Canada. The findings of the study confirm the findings of earlier studies that ESL learners actively construct meaning from project-based instruction, and that some clash exists between language policy, teacher perceptions, and ESL students’ perceptions of this activity. I conclude by taking the discussion of clashes between teachers and students beyond the current cultural model and by making recommendations for further research and practice.