As a natural outgrowth from the earlier stages, we decided to look

Stage 3 As a natural outgrowth from the earlier stages, we decided to look

more specifically at the role of writing instruction/experience in the development of Japanese EFL students’ writing ability. Unlike Stage 1, Stage 3 investigates the effects of specific kinds of instruction: preuni- versity short-essay writing training, EFL writing instruction in a Japanese more specifically at the role of writing instruction/experience in the development of Japanese EFL students’ writing ability. Unlike Stage 1, Stage 3 investigates the effects of specific kinds of instruction: preuni- versity short-essay writing training, EFL writing instruction in a Japanese

The two sets of studies in Stage 3 involved novice writers and more experienced writers, respectively, to examine the effects of particular kinds of previous writing training/experience on L1 and L2 writing. In this stage, we have looked not only at English, but also at Japanese writing, focusing on essay-level and paragraph-level discourse/rhetori- cal features, to explore the issue of transfer across languages.

Studies with novice writers knowledge from L1 to L2 writing. We were looking in more depth at the

specific effects of intensive training for university entrance exams, identified in Kobayashi and Rinnert (2001b), on the writing of novice university writers.

Method all at an intermediate English proficiency level: (1) those with both L1

and L2 intensive training; (2) those with only L1 training; (3) those with only L2 training; and (4) those with no intensive training in either L1 or L2. They wrote Japanese and English essays in response to two open- ended topics: what students thought about living alone or with family, and what they thought about traveling alone or in a group. The wording of the prompts left the writers free to decide how to frame their responses, rather than requiring a specific discourse type, such as argumentation or exposition. Immediately following the writing,

Situated Writing Practices in Foreign Language Settings 31

32 Part 1: Looking Back. Research Insights in-depth interviews were conducted to probe the students’ perceptions of

their writing in both languages. Findings

Analysis of the text structure supplemented by analysis of the interview data showed that the intensive instruction affected text construction in both L1 and L2. Moreover, transfer was found from L1 to L2, and to some extent from L2 to L1.

Identification of the task responses revealed four discourse types in the essays. The first was argumentation, defined as taking a position, such as ‘I think that it is much better to travel with friends or family’ or ‘I think that university students should start to live by themselves’, usually placed near the beginning of the essay, and supporting it. The second was exposition, which generally involved comparing the two sides of the issue, without taking a position in favor of either one, but stating a thesis such as ‘Which type of travel to choose would depend on what you seek in the journey’ or making a general statement like ‘They both have their merits’. The third was self-reflection, in which the writer narrates and reflects on personal experiences related to the issue, without stating a position, thesis or general statement. The last was a mixed pattern, which consisted mainly of combinations of either exposition and argumentation or self-reflection and argumentation. Major differences in the frequencies of discourse types across languages were found. Overall, argumentation was the most frequent discourse type in the English essays (48% for all students combined, and 71% for those with only L2 training). In contrast, there were more expository (37%) and mixed (33%) than argumentation (22%) essays in Japanese. In particular, the students who received L1 training alone used exposition most often in L1 (56%) and tended to transfer this response to the L2 essays (28%) (Kobayashi & Rinnert, 2008). In sum, it was found that the L2 instruction strongly promoted the use of an argumentation discourse type in the L2 essays, whereas the L1 training was associated with a more diverse choice of discourse types. These findings suggest that compared to the English training, which tended to concentrate on argumentation, the intensive Japanese training presented more varied models of effective texts, as was also seen in the junior high school textbooks analyzed by Kubota and Shi (2005).

In relation to discourse types, we also found that students’ early experiences with sakubun (expressive writing) in their kokugo (Japanese language) classes throughout their elementary and secondary school years led to frequent use of self-reflection, either as a single discourse type or as part of a mixed type (with either argumentation or exposition).

Situated Writing Practices in Foreign Language Settings 33 Most notably, students who had no intensive L1 training tended to rely

heavily on this earlier L1 writing experience, using personal reflection and evidence in their L1 and L2 essays (Kobayashi & Rinnert, 2008; Rinnert & Kobayashi, 2007).

One methodological weakness in our analysis of text types was the fact that it depended entirely on textual analysis to interpret the writer’s intention. As pointed out by Kubota and Shi (2005: 122), the determina- tion of text types, especially for hybrid (mixed) texts, requires a determination of the purpose of the writing in the context, but we were not able to confirm our interpretations with the students, mainly because of the time lag between the data collection and the completion of the analysis. A fruitful area for future research would be the exploration of the whole notion of discourse type, particularly how it is addressed in L1 Japanese training.

A second main finding was that while the internal structure of the English essays was rather simple, the structure of the Japanese essays by the students with L1 training tended to be more complex, with a substantial number (over 30%) containing an original or extended perspective (Kobayashi & Rinnert, 2008). One student, for example, first compared and contrasted the two sides of the given topic (Should college students live alone or with family?) and then gave an extended perspective, in which the student writer pointed out that ways students live are similar to those of the elderly, as follows (translated from Japanese):

an increasing number of senior citizens have begun living together after they became alone or lost living partners, forming a new type of family. I think living alone for [X University] students is closer to this type of living arrangement. When someone gets hurt or ill, we can come and take care of him or her immediately.

After this extended perspective, the writer ended with a statement of a position. This difference between English and Japanese essays appar- ently resulted from a strong emphasis on the importance of demonstrat- ing originality in the Japanese entrance examination essays.

This result may be related to earlier findings from Stages 1 and 2. In the Stage 1 evaluation studies, the inexperienced students (with no university EFL writing instruction) tended to focus much more on the content and originality of the essays than either the experienced students or the Japanese teachers (though not more than the native English- speaking teachers). This could be at least partially explained by the finding from Stage 2 that Japanese high school kokugo classes place major

34 Part 1: Looking Back. Research Insights emphasis on content for reading and writing, which may also be related

to the genre of university entrance exam essays.

A third major finding concerned the striking effects of the interaction between L1 and L2 specialized training. Most notably, whereas L1 training clearly led to greater use of metadiscourse markers such as ‘There are three main reasons’, ‘First’ and ‘In conclusion’, students who had a combination of both L1 and L2 training tended to produce coherently structured L2 essays with a wide variety of discourse markers and rich elaboration of content, particularly specification in the form of concrete examples (Kobayashi & Rinnert, 2004a; Rinnert & Kobayashi, 2007). This strong positive interaction between the L1 and L2 training apparently resulted from the increased amount of writing practice, which was substantial enough to allow them to activate the linguistic and discourse knowledge they had acquired and apply it in their L2 writing. Furthermore, some students who had received both types of training were found to have transferred their knowledge of such features as discourse markers from L2 training to L1 writing, even though most of the transfer observed in the study was from L1 to L2. This bidirectional transfer could occur across languages when common features are perceived to be shared between tasks (L1 and L2 writing, in this case), just as Singley and Anderson (1989) observed a high level of positive transfer between similar line text editing tasks. At the same time, this group of students can be considered ‘multicompetent writers’ who are developing the capacity to draw on abilities across the languages they know as they learn to write effectively for various communities (Ortega & Carson, 2009).

One possible criticism of our above interpretations of some essays as being ‘coherently structured’ or containing ‘rich elaboration of content’ is that these positive characterizations have not been confirmed through independent evaluation of the quality of the essays. Although we attempted such an evaluation, we were unable to use the assessments because of unacceptably low inter-rater reliability in the judgments of essay organization, which we attributed to the difficulty of evaluating different discourse types in relation to each other. This is one reason we decided to concentrate on only one main discourse type in the next set of studies.

Studies with more advanced writers The second set of studies 2 (12 in Table 1.1) aims at investigating the effects of writing instruction/experience Japanese EFL students received

Situated Writing Practices in Foreign Language Settings 35 in overseas school settings, including a variety of academic levels from

high school to postgraduate, on text construction in Japanese and English. One main reason for undertaking these studies is the social phenomenon of a large number of Japanese students going overseas to study in institutions where English is the medium of instruction (see Sasaki, this volume). This phenomenon led us to go beyond our investigation of L1 to L2 transfer in the preceding studies to consider the effect of L2 writing experience on L1 writing in this set of studies. Extrapolating from previous studies of L1 to L2 transfer (e.g. Cumming, 1989; Hirose, 2003; Kobayashi, 2005; Kubota, 1998b) and L2 to L1 transfer (Berman, 1994; Eggington, 1987; Shi, 2003), as well as cases of transfer in both directions among the novice writers as explained above, we posited

a bidirectionality of transfer of writing features across languages. This perspective conforms with that of Mancho´n and Roca (2007), who found evidence of bidirectional transfer, including features of text organization, in the Spanish and English writing by the higher-proficiency students in their study.

Method In this set of studies, we have been focusing on possible influences of L2 training/experience on L1 argumentation essays. We chose the discourse type of argumentation because many similarities have been identified between Japanese and English argumentation essays (e.g. Hirose, 2003; Kobayashi & Rinnert, 2004a; Kubota, 1998a), and we were interested in exploring these similarities in relation to the influences of L1 and L2 instruction. The first study (12 in Table 1.1) included three groups

and fourth year undergraduate students, one with no overseas experi- ence and one with two semesters of study in English-speaking countries; and one group of postgraduate students and teachers who had spent at least three years engaged in academic work in English-speaking countries. The participants wrote essays in both Japanese and English on relatively challenging argumentation topics: for/against foreign language education for elementary students, and for/against elderly parents living with their family. The writing sessions were followed by in-depth retrospective interviews that probed the writers’ perceptions of the textual structure and writing process, in relation to their previous writing experiences.

Findings One main finding was that in both L1 and L2 essays, the overall argumentation structure, particularly placement of a position statement

36 Part 1: Looking Back. Research Insights at the beginning and end of the essay, resulted mainly from L2 training.

A second feature of the argumentation essays that could more often be traced to L2 than to L1 training was the inclusion of a counterargument component within the body of the essay, which occurred most frequently in the L1 essays of those writers with overseas experience, particularly those with two semesters’ overseas college experience (L1: 60%; L2: 33%) as opposed to students without overseas experience (L1: 30%; L2: 30%) (Kobayashi & Rinnert, 2007). Moreover, the interview data clearly indicated that the content of the instruction played a role, in that those who had not been taught to use counterarguments did not include them. It was also found that learning about making a counterargument from L2 training did not necessarily lead to the inclusion of counterarguments in L2 essays (due to risk avoidance strategies, lack of confidence and difficult formulation), but this knowledge could be transferred to L1 essays, most likely because the use of L1 allowed the mental capacity to cope with a cognitively challenging task (Berman, 1994).

Another major effect from L2 experience, identified mainly in the L1 essays by participants who had spent long periods overseas, was elaboration of the introductions to include a preview of the content of the paper, specification of both sides of the issue, clarification of the topic and definition of terms. The following excerpt from an elaborated introduction from an English essay by a long-term overseas resident illustrates clarification of the topic (Should elderly people live with family?) and definition of terms [the underline indicates the clarification; the underlined italics, the definition of terms]

Furthermore, it is a quite personal, complex issue that has to take lots of things into consideration. A should-or-shouldn’t debate is thus unrealistic. Based on this point of view, I will discuss some major possible pros and cons for old people to live with their family members. In this essay, ‘‘old people’’ refers to single old people and ‘‘family member(s)’’ to sons or daughter’s family member(s).

Such elaboration features apparently resulted mainly from disciplin- ary knowledge and/or training the participants acquired in their specialized areas, which appears to represent a clear instance of expertise acquired through extensive experience of situated writing practice (Carter, 1990).

A final influence of L2 training was seen in the conclusions of the L1 essays. Most of the L1 essays by the participants with no overseas experience included an extended idea or future concerns (L1: 90%; L2: 20%), in which the writer went one step beyond a summary to relate the

Situated Writing Practices in Foreign Language Settings 37 topic to a broader context or a future perspective such as a suggestion.

These elements appeared much less frequently in the L1 conclusions of the overseas groups (L1: 20%; L2: 20%). An example of an extension is seen in the following excerpt from a conclusion by a writer without overseas experience (written on the topic Should foreign language education begin in elementary school?) [translation of original Japanese; the underline indicates the extension part of the Japanese conclusion]

As seen above, the implementation of early foreign language education has many advantages and it is expected to help improve the English ability of Japanese. As the world goes more global, chances of Japanese taking an active role in the world must be increasing. In such cases, the need for speaking foreign languages will be remarkably high. Regrettably, Japan now has only a handful of people with good command of English. In order to change this situation and turn Japan into a new and open country, we should move ahead with early foreign language education.

The interview data suggest that the infrequent use of such compo- nents by the writers with overseas experience resulted from explicit L2 instruction that conclusions summarize an essay and contain ‘no new ideas’, descriptions that match the characteristics of English conclusions in English writing textbooks (e.g. Langan, 2000; Reid, 1988). Interestingly, even those writers with overseas experience who reported that English and Japanese conclusions differ tended to transfer this L2 feature (suppression of extended ideas/future concerns) to their L1 conclusions.