Term
Fall 2021
Capstone
Capstone Project
Degree Name
MA-TESOL
Facilitator(s)
Betsy Parrish
Content Expert
Sarah Schmidt de Carranza
Abstract
This capstone project explores the research question: “What factors contribute to the struggle of nonnative writers with academic writing in English? Knowledge of North American writing conventions is essential in U.S. colleges and universities. College students who are native speakers of the English language are familiar with these conventions from elementary education. However, international or English Learners (ELs) do not have enough exposure to these conventions as they enroll and attend colleges and universities in the U.S. These ELs struggle in academic writing classes with issues beyond grammar and syntactic structure. This struggle is partially attributable to cultural and linguistic differences between the first language of ELs and North American English. Ulla Connor (1996) suggests that writing is embedded in culture. And Robert Kaplan (1967) states that “rhetoric is culturally determined.” To investigate this question, the findings draw mainly from two research areas: Robert Kaplan’s contrastive rhetoric and Malcom Knowles’ andragogy. Attention is given to the salient intercultural and linguistic factors that are at play in the writings of ELs as well as teaching approaches and best practices that would lead to the success of ELs with academic writing. This capstone project is followed by a professional development consisting of three sessions: The Foundation, The Application: 1- Syntax level and 2 - Discourse level. The PD is intended to guide college writing center tutors working to ELs and leans toward explicit instruction.
Project Type
Professional Development
Keywords
Adult Education, Contrastive Rhetoric, Academic Writing, Writing Center
Recommended Citation
Soyan, Abdullahi, "Exploring the Effect of Cultural and Linguistic Features on the Academic Writing of College-Level English Learners" (2021). School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects. 751.
https://digitalcommons.hamline.edu/hse_cp/751
dc_type
text
dc_publisher
DigitalCommons@Hamline
dc_format
application/pdf
dc_source
School of Education Student Capstone Projects