Page 38 - English - Teaching Academic Esl Writing

24 CHAPTER 2
sonal meaning but to find, organize, and present data according to fairly ex- plicit instructions" (p. 452). According to the author, sentence-level grammar, use of discourse markers, and clarity of academic text remain "vi- tal" (p. 454) in the teaching of academically bound NNS students.
In the 1980s, several studies endeavored to learn about the reactions of faculty to particular features of NNS students' text (Johns, 1981; Ostler, 1980; Santos, 1988; V ann, Lorenz, & Meyer, 1991; V ann, Meyer, & Lorenz, 1984). Most professors in the disciplines are not well versed in the complex- ities of ESL instruction or L2 learning and acquisition. Nonetheless, their perceptions of text quality are important because they are the ones who grade students' assignments. According to the results of these studies, the employment of syntactic, lexical, and discourse features of text and errors in the uses of these features have an influential effect on the perceived quality of students' text. Although sentence- and phrase-level errors are often seen in relative rather than absolute terms, the problems in students' uses of verb tenses, word order, subordinate clauses, passive voice, and impersonal con- structions have been found to obscure the text's meaning. In the view of fac- ulty in various disciplines, such as physical and natural sciences, human- ities, business, and the arts, accuracy in the uses of these and other syntactic and lexical features is very important and, in most cases, syntactic and lexi-
cal errors result in lower assignment grades.
When thinking about the importance of accuracy in the academicwriting
of NNS students, many ESL and EAP teachers believe that syntactic and lex- ical errors in L2 texts are not particularly damaging because NS writers also make numerous mistakes in their texts. However, several studies have found that faculty in the disciplines have a far more critical view of ESL errors than those of NSs (Santos, 1988; Vann et al., 1984, 1991). Although the indica- tions of error gravity vary across disciplines and even vary according to the age of faculty, the conclusions in all investigations largely remain similar: ESL errors in students' texts are costly in terms of grades and overall evalua- tions of work quality.
To determine whether the needs of academically bound NNS learners were adequately addressed in EAP writing instruction, Leki and Carson (1997) interviewed a large group of students who began their ESL training and then continued their studies in various disciplines, such as engineering, biology, business, communications, and social work. The students reported great differences between the demands of writing in EAP classes and those in the disciplines. Among other important considerations, many students identified shortfalls in their vocabulary repertoire and a lack of familiarity with the dry academic textual style. Most important, the students spoke about the fact that EAP writing instruction represents what Leki and Carson called "non-text-responsible writing" (p. 63), whereas in the disciplines stu- dents are held accountable for the context of the text they read and the con- tent and accuracy of the text they produce. The authors concluded thatwhat
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