Students' Perceptions of EAP Writing Instruction and Writing Needs across the Disciplines

TLDR

Many academic writing requirements are implicit in disciplinary curricula, making it difficult to assess how well ESL writing courses meet students' needs. The study aims to determine how effectively ESL writing courses identify and address students' writing needs across the university curriculum and to what extent students carry over ESL instruction into content courses. A survey of former ESL students now enrolled in university-level content courses was conducted to capture their perceptions of the relationship between ESL instruction and the writing tasks encountered in various disciplines. Survey results revealed which ESL-taught writing skills students found most useful for disciplinary writing tasks and highlighted ongoing writing needs beyond the ESL curriculum.

Abstract

As English for academic purposes (EAP) writing instructors and writing curriculum planners, we need to know the degree to which ESL writing courses have been successful in gauging and providing for ESL students' writing needs across the university curriculum. However, making this determination is difficult because many academic writing requirements may be implicit in the curriculum of the disciplinary course and thus not amenable to ready description by the outsider. Furthermore, we also need to know how much carryover from ESL writing courses occurs with ESL students—that is, what elements of their ESL writing instruction have they found useful and available to them as students in content courses? This article reports on a survey of former ESL students now in university-level content courses that is designed to investigate students' perceptions of the relationship between the writing instruction the students received in ESL writing classes and the actual writing tasks they found in courses across the disciplines. The results of the survey include indications of which writing skills taught in ESL writing courses students found most useful in dealing with the writing demands of other content courses. In their answers to open-ended survey questions, ESL students also described their perceptions of their ongoing writing needs beyond the ESL writing curriculum.