University student textual borrowing strategies.

摘要

Over the past decade, much attention has been paid to the importance of reading in academic writing tasks, and the textual borrowing strategies that students use to integrate source texts into their written work. In particular, many educators have discussed university students' use of copying and paraphrase as strategies for completing their academic assignments. Few empirical studies, however, have attempted to describe how, and to what extent, university students use copying and paraphrase in their writing. To expand our understanding of university students' textual borrowing strategies, this dissertation analyzed summaries composed by university undergraduates writing in English as a first language (L1; n=124) and undergraduates writing in English as a second language (L2; n=103), and compared their textual borrowing strategies. To do this, the dissertation identified instances of Exact Copying and Paraphrase, or instances in which students selected a specific excerpt of a source text, and either copied it word-for-word, or made at least one linguistic change to that excerpt. The dissertation also developed a method for classifying student Paraphrases into four major Paraphrase Types, which represent a continuum of textual borrowing: Near Copy, Minimal Revision, Moderate Revision, and Substantial Revision.; Using the constructs of Exact Copy and Paraphrase, the dissertation investigated (a) the strategies used by students when selecting and integrating source text excerpts into their summaries, and (b) how the use of Exact Copies and the Paraphrase Types varied across different student groups. The study found that both L1 and L2 writers typically followed the sequence of source text paragraphs when selecting information to include in their summaries, though particular excerpts elicited larger numbers of Exact Copies and Paraphrases than others. And though much of the discussion in the literature has focused on student copying, it was found that both L1 and L2 writers used a variety of different textual borrowing strategies, including those which made substantial linguistic changes to the selected excerpt. Different student populations, however, varied in the extent to which they borrowed language from the source text. As a group, L2 writers used significantly more Exact Copies and Near Copies than L1 writers. Conversely, the summaries of L1 writers contained significantly more Moderate and Substantial Revisions. Within the L2 group, however, there was considerable variation in the amount of copying used: While most L2 writers did not use Exact Copies, for East Asian students in their first year of study in the U.S., over 40% of the language used in the summary was either exactly or nearly copied from the source text.; The findings of the dissertation suggest that recent discussions and investigations of student textual borrowing, which focus almost exclusively on instances of copying or near copying, fail to capture the full range of linguistic strategies that both L1 and L2 writers employ. The dissertation concludes by outlining a textual borrowing research agenda that addresses some of the major concerns of educators who work with developing academic writers.