Colloquium

A Web-based EFL writing environment as a bridge between academicadvisers and junior researchers: A pilot study

Barry Lee Reynolds

Address for correspondence: Mr Barry Lee Reynolds, National Central University, Graduate Institute of Learning &Instruction, no. 300, Jhongda Rd., Jhongli City, Taoyuan County 32001, Taiwan. Email: barry@cl.ncu.edu.tw

IntroductionIn the age of “publish or perish,” publishing academic journal articles is a must not only forprofessors but also for graduate students in Taiwan. Increasingly, Taiwanese research universitiesare requiring masters and PhD students to write theses and dissertations in English, with anadded caveat for PhD students to publish two or more articles in high-impact factor Englishlanguage journals. Non-Anglophone writers, especially first-language Chinese speakers, considerthemselves to be at a disadvantage for a number of reasons (Flowerdew, 1999). Research hasshown one source of the difficulty lies in not being a part of the discourse community for whichthey are required to write (Flowerdew, 2000); furthermore, a lack of both content schemata(Carrell & Eisterhold, 1983) and the practice of writing beyond the sentence level (Mohan & Lo,1985) leave many junior researchers feeling that they will never enjoy a level playing field whenwriting articles for publication. Professors that have received higher education in a countrywhere English is the lingua franca may have benefited from a mentor–mentee relationship withtheir academic advisers and thus be able to provide a similar relationship for their advisees(Flowerdew, 1999). Nevertheless, professors’ attempts at providing such a relationship are notalways feasible in Taiwan, leaving many junior researchers struggling to meet graduationrequirements. It is more common for academic advisers to restrict feedback to the marking ofdrafts, but because of the time necessary for marking written work, advisers often simply high-light incorrect turns of phrase while advisees reviewing their writing have difficulties recallingwhy they made those particular errors.

As a possible solution, IWiLL 2.0 (http://cube.iwillnow.org/IWiLL/), a Web-based writing plat-form designed to aid teachers in providing electronic feedback on student writing, was used by anacademic adviser to provide writing feedback to graduate students enrolled in an academicreading/writing course offered through a university English self-learning center.

MethodologyAn English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teacher and an academic adviser from the sameTaiwaneseuniversity cooperated in the teaching of a blended course targeting graduate students (n = 11)who had previously encountered difficulty with scholarly writing. Both the academic adviser andthe EFL teacher used IWiLL 2.0 to provide feedback and communicate with students, while the EFLteacher also used the IWiLL platform for instruction. The EFL teacher guided students in thenarrow reading of 20 “core” scholarly articles selected by the adviser from the students’ future areaof expertise (Industrial Management) and also taught text structure, a method found to positivelyfacilitate ESL reading comprehension (Carrell, 1985). At the end of the 3-month course, aface-to-face interview was conducted with the adviser, and students were administered an onlineanonymous questionnaire containing both open- and closed-ended questions.

British Journal of Educational Technology Vol 44 No 3 2013 E77–E80doi:10.1111/j.1467-8535.2012.01344.x

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IWiLL 2.0IWiLL 2.0, the updated version of IWiLL 1.0 (Wible, Kuo, Tsao & Liu, 2001), encapsulates amyriad of functions relevant to students, teachers and researchers. The features of most interestto this study are the teacher’s interface for marking student essays and the teacher’s commentbank. The comment bank is a personalized bank of grammatical, stylistic or other written feed-back types input by the teacher and stored in one’s user profile to be retrieved and appended tostudent writing when providing feedback. Unlike other electronic platforms that allow teachers toprovide feedback on student writing, the comment bank improves with use. For example, if ateacher encounters a stylistic error and recalls previously providing feedback on such an error,there is no need to key in the same feedback. The teacher simply retrieves the previous commentfrom the bank, highlights the error in the student essay and appends the comment. If the error inquestion requires a slightly different comment than the one given previously, additional informa-tion can be added, and the teacher has the choice to save the updated comment or simply appendwithout saving. Students will have access to these comments when revising their subsequentdrafts that will be linked together in both the teacher and student interface. Furthermore, unlikethe pitfalls encountered when providing electronic feedback dependent on word processing pro-grams (see Denton, Madden, Roberts & Rowe, 2008), IWiLL 2.0 allows teachers the option ofsharing a portion or their entire comment bank with other teachers. In addition, all annotationsas well as the highlighted errors in students’ writing are indexed, which allows for future execu-tion of individual or group cumulative profiling (Figure 1).

Preliminary resultsAdviser’s reactionsThe adviser stated that the system provided more opportunities to interact with advisees regard-ing writing than the previous semester when instruction was given only during weekly researchmeetings. The turnaround time for drafts was faster than before with advisees also adhering moreto advice. The adviser used the system more for providing what he referred to as “stylistic errors”than grammatical errors and found himself highlighting the same problem for multiple students,

Figure 1: IWiLL 2.0 teacher’s interface for marking student writing

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which was easier to accomplish; thanks to the comment bank. He also found it useful knowingwhat papers advisees had read; he often linked advisees to specific journal article passages asexamples when providing feedback. The adviser also mentioned that it was helpful to have accessto advisees’ multiple drafts but wished IWiLL provided a feature allowing a simultaneous“merged” view of all drafts; this would provide a cumulative view of all changes made to a singlemanuscript.

Students’ reactionsOverall, students reported enjoying receiving feedback through IWiLL, with the most commoncomment being that electronic feedback is much easier to read than handwritten feedback; thissupports the result reported by Denton et al (2008). For example, one student noted, “[This class]was very helpful. The teacher taught us the tips for the structure of the articles. It definitely helpedmy writing. When I made mistakes in my paper and my adviser left a comment, then I knew whathe meant.” Several students said they felt less inhibited asking their adviser for advice or clarifi-cation through IWiLL than during face-to-face meetings. Adviser’s comments also seemed toincrease motivation and a yearning to improve. Another student responded, “When I startedseeing my adviser’s comments I thought he worked harder at grading than I did at doing myhomework. I knew my adviser was reading every word I wrote. Before when I gave him mypaper[s] . . . , he [would] mark . . . [very] little. Before I never knew he read [my writing] so hard.”

Discussion and conclusionMost Taiwanese enter academia without much need for English until they start graduate school.Here, they are expected to read and understand scholarly articles from their future areas ofexpertise while also adding to this community of research by writing academic journal articlesregardless of how ill-prepared most of them are. Professors are expected to not only guide adviseesin the beginnings of their academic research careers but also provide them with advice onimproving their English academic writing. Like Deegan (1995) discovered with law professorsteaching native speakers of English, Taiwanese professors often assume that their adviseesrequire no formal training in the structure or the reading of scholarly writing from their respec-tive research fields. The results of this pilot showed that Taiwanese junior researchers benefitedfrom narrow reading of scholarly articles with a focus on text structure. Combined with theaffordances provided by IWiLL 2.0, a similar method adopted by future Taiwanese academicadvisers may assist these future advisers not only in providing English academic writing feedbackbut also aid advisees in receiving and internalizing this feedback.

AcknowledgementsThe author would like to thank the logistical assistance of Chiung-Chun Chen and the GraduateInstitute of Industrial Management at National Central University. The author would also like tothank Professor David Wible for his comments and suggestions during the early stage of thisresearch project.

ReferencesCarrell, P. L. (1985). Facilitating ESL reading by teaching text structure. TESOL Quarterly, 19, 4, 727–752.Carrell, P. L. & Eisterhold, J. C. (1983). Schema theory and ESL reading pedagogy. TESOL Quarterly, 17, 4,

553–573.Deegan, D. H. (1995). Exploring individual differences among novices reading in a specific domain: the case

of law. Reading Research Quarterly, 30, 2, 154–170.Denton, P., Madden, J., Roberts, M. & Rowe, P. (2008). Students’ response to traditional and computer-

assisted formative feedback: a comparative case study. British Journal of Educational Technology, 39, 3,486–500.

Flowerdew, J. (1999). Problems in writing for scholarly publication in English: the case of Hong Kong.Journal of Second Language Writing, 8, 3, 243–264.

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Flowerdew, J. (2000). Discourse community, legitimate peripheral participation, and the nonnative-English-speaking scholar. TESOL Quarterly, 34, 1, 127–150.

Mohan, B. A. & Lo, W. A.-Y. (1985). Academic writing and Chinese students: transfer and developmentfactors. TESOL Quarterly, 19, 3, 515–534.

Wible, D., Kuo, C. H., Tsao, N. & Liu, A. (2001). An online writing platform for second language learners.Journal of Universal Computer Science, 3, 3, 278–289.

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