The Self-Reported Perspectives Regarding Academic Writing among Taiwanese Graduate Students Specializing in TEFL.

This study explored how four Taiwanese graduate students specializing in Teaching English as a Second/Foreign Language at a U.S. university perceived the academic writing tasks required of them for their coursework. Collected over the course of one semester, data were derived from structured/semi-structured interviews with the students and reflective journals in which students recorded their writing experiences throughout the study period. The grounded theory approach to data collection and analysis was used. Results indicated that respondents believed that their previous English language training in Taiwan did not adequately prepare them for the writing tasks they encountered during their graduate studies in the United States. The master's and doctoral students had markedly different perceptions of academic writing as opposed to other types of writing. Respondents' perceptions of the art of academic writing were directly related to their perceived future roles as English instructors. They employed a variety of strategies to compose their academic writing projects. All respondents considered academic writing to be an anxiety-provoking event. Pedagogical implications of the study findings are noted. (Contains 38 references.) (SM) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. The Self-Reported Perspectives Regarding Academic Writing among Taiwanese Graduate Students Specializing in TEFL ROBERT JOHANSON, University of Texas at Austin This study explored how four Taiwanese graduate students (two Master's and two doctoral) specializing in Teaching English as a Second/Foreign Language at a U.S. university reported perceiving the academic writing tasks required of them for their coursework. Collected over the course of one semester (five months), data were derived from structured/semi-structured interviews with the respondents and reflective journals in which they were asked to record their writing experiences during the period of the study. Utilizing the grounded theory approach (Strauss & Corbin, 1998) to data collection and analysis, the researcher detected four major themes emerging from the data: (a) Respondents reported that their previous English language training in Taiwan did not adequately prepare them for the writing tasks they encountered during their graduate studies in the U.S., (b) the Master's and doctoral students had markedly different perceptions of "academic writing" as opposed to other types of writing, (c) the respondents employed a variety of strategies to compose their academic writing projects, and (d) all of the respondents considered academic writing to be an anxiety-provoking event. Following a presentation of the findings, some of the pedagogical implications of the study are enumerated. INTRODUCTION "When I am stuck in the process of writing, I will pray, and God is an inspiration. It really works! Especially on the content. ... As for the composition and for the language level, I can do it by myself" [Shih-hua] As the enrollment figures for international graduate students in North American universities continue to increase, it is becoming increasingly important that the U.S. academy learn as much as possible about the challenges that these "world majority" (Fox, 1994) students face as they compose the writing tasks required of them. This is *especially the case for international students in the social sciences, where the ability to express complex ideas in writing is often a bellwether of academic success (Schneider & Fujishima, 1995). In recent years, researchers in the field of second language writing have investigated the writing experiences of international students of various nationalities as they compose papers for their coursework in the social sciences (e.g., Angelova & Riazantseva, 1999, Indonesian, Russian, and Taiwanese; Connor & Mayberry, 1996, Finnish; Jin, 1998, Chinese; Riazi, 1998, Iranian; Spack, 1997, !\( Japanese; Yao, 1996, Taiwanese). While these studies have yielded numerous beneficial results, none has focused primarily on a participant population consisting of graduate students I N.' PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY