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Improving Second Language Writing Across the Disciplines: Resources for Content Teachers

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Teaching Language and Content in Multicultural and Multilingual Classrooms

Abstract

This paper summarizes the steps taken in a Hong Kong higher education institution to develop a teaching and learning project to improve academic writing in English across all disciplines. Key features of academic writing that could be easily transferred to content teachers were developed as a series of writing instruction modules. The modules were trialled with two consecutive cohorts of the same subject but with different degrees of student interaction. Qualitative analysis of students’ writing indicated that some of the key language features taught had been implemented in their texts while quantitative analysis of the survey results indicated that better content-integrated writing instruction resulted in larger increases in confidence levels.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    As the answers ranged from 1 to 3, the maximum difference between a pre and post survey was 2. In the 2018 cohort there were 20 respondents, therefore the total of the compiled differences could not be higher than 40 (20 × 2 = 40). This was taken to calculate the percentage of the actual total difference recorded for each question. In the 2019 cohort there were 33 respondents, so the divisor to calculate the percentage was 66 (33 × 2).

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Acknowledgements

This study is based on the proposal won by Dr Gail Forey and funded by the Teaching and Learning Fund of the Hong Kong University Grants Committee (2017). It is supported by the Research Centre for Professional Communication in English (RCPCE) of the Department of English of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Thank you to all the participants who have made this study possible, in particular to students who gave us access to their writing and the colleagues who agreed to be interviewed. I am also grateful to colleagues from the ELC, Dr Julia Chen and Dr Grace Lim and Dr Josephine Csete from EDC and to the members of the project team: Dr Eric Cheung, Mary Johannes and Cyril Lim.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China

    Renia López-Ozieblo

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  1. Renia López-Ozieblo
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Correspondence to Renia López-Ozieblo .

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  1. Departamento de Lingüística Aplicada, Universitat Politècnica de València, Valencia, Spain

    María Luisa Carrió-Pastor

  2. English Studies Department, Jaume I University, Castellón, Spain

    Begoña Bellés-Fortuño

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López-Ozieblo, R. (2021). Improving Second Language Writing Across the Disciplines: Resources for Content Teachers. In: Carrió-Pastor, M.L., Bellés-Fortuño, B. (eds) Teaching Language and Content in Multicultural and Multilingual Classrooms. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56615-9_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56615-9_8

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