For blog post by Monday, noon: Choose a quote or concept about culture, digital technologies, plagiarism,
error correction, or automated marking
that resonates with you from one of the “boxes.” Explain why it resonates with
you, applying it what else Hyland says about the concept and to relevant writing experiences, life experiences, and/or teaching experiences.
Our first guest writing researcher, Warren Merkel, will come class on Tuesday to talk about his L2 writing research. His dissertation focuses on UI L2 undergrad writers' pereceptions of and experiences with plagiarism using interviews and students' writings.
Can you post a question or two for him?
The most familiar automated writing evaluation systems to me is the e-rater. If you are familiar with the TOEFL test, you probably know that the e-rater have been used in the test to measure test takers’ speaking and writing performance. It is true that e-raters have many strengths, such as low cost and time saving. However, many research articles have examined its level of reliability compared with human raters, after its adoption by TOEFL test developers years ago. So far, many research published on Language Testing has proved that e-raters have the levels of reliability compared with human raters. However, critics surrounded by e-rater still exist, for instance, its lack of emotional attachment with the test takers’ writing essays. To me, this is like collecting qualitative data without transcribing them by myself. Similar to grading essays, transcribing think-aloud or interview data is very time consuming. However, it is the best way for a researcher to know about how participants develop their thoughts throughout the entire research process. As teachers, we all know grading students’ essays are time consuming and tiring, even though we have a small size classroom. However, when our job is replaced by the artificial technology and we become dependent on it, I can’t imagine how terrible that it. There are many online learning tools designed for learning English. One of them is called BurlingtonEnglish, which is what I am using in my current teaching job. BurlingtonEnglish has a very comprehensive sets of English courses and I can just use it for my class without devoting time to think out teaching materials and lesson plans. However, when something looks holistic, I always believe it has flaws because it can not be applied to every student. Thus, while relying on BurlingtonEnglish to teach one part of the class, I force myself to make critical judgment about this learning tool and create relevant lessons when things become detached from students’ experiences. Technology saves our time, but it makes us lazy and forget the nature of our job at the same time.
ReplyDeleteAnother weakness of the automated writing evaluation system is its washback on test takers’ preparation process. Students are more likely to create essays that can earn a high score based on the scoring criteria. However, does it occur as well when essays are graded by human raters? The answer is yes! I remember throughout my middle and high school years, I just had less motivation to learn Chinese compared with English. Thus, my Chinese composition score was not very high. However, there were many test preparation materials for the Chinese National College Entrance Exam. One year before I took the test, I read a lot of high-scored essays and became familiar with their sentence patterns. Almost two months before the test, I switched my writing style to these high-scored writing patterns and eventually received a high score on the national entrance exam. This fake writing proficiency was a product of the negative test washback. In large-scale language tests, human raters have formed a certain pattern of what a good writing should be after grading hundreds of essays. Their internal grading mindsets are similar with the computer evaluation system. This “steady” criteria bring the same level of harm to test takers as the artificial intelligence technology.
Questions for Warren:
Plagiarism is a western-coined concept given that individualism and authorship in many western countries. Students from oriental countries experience a lot of frustration brought by plagiarism in the US. I am curious about if any western scholars (Ken Hyland at the University of HK?) who are residing in an oriental country or a country favoring collectivism deal with the different ideologies of plagiarism?
Hi Fang! I don't necessarily know where all these scholars are now, but some Western scholars have conducted research on plagiarism/writing from sources while they worked/lived in Asian countries. One example is Rinnert and Kobayashi (2005), who focused on their Japanese students' perceptions of plagiarism within their L1 academic context of Japan. There's also an article by Deckert (1993) about how students recognized plagiarism and how they perceived it. The latter was a fairly controversial article, and Pennycook (1994) had a good response to it. Another thing to consider is that although most studies on plagiarism take place at Western institutions, it has become easier/more common to conduct these studies in Asia, as an increasing number of Asian academic institutions have adopted (or tried to adopt) tenets of Western writing culture. Finally, to answer your question about "favoring" collectivism, I don't think the scholars try to favor one angle or another - they try to cover each fairly equally and as objectively as possible to raise awareness. Typically, however, this involves a lot of "unpacking" of different ideologies and a stronger focus on Asian cultures, since most Westerners are already fairly familiar with their own culture.
DeleteIt’s an interesting post, Fang. In terms of effectiveness of e-raters, I personally think that it is effective when the form of the test is multiple choice. The only reason for the higher reliability is the number of the items, regardless of the validity issues. I agree with your points about problems related to e-raters lack of humanity, but at the same time, developing valid and reliable criteria for evaluating writing could be another way to improve the situation for the sake of saving time. For this reason, many writing assessments were developed in computerized version, which includes multiple choice items (e.g. clicking the words to fill in the blank questions or arranging the sentence to create a paragraph).
DeleteWhen teachers develop writing items, they should check whether they contain culturally biased information, such as politically and religiously sensitive issues. Teachers also need to consider their students’ diverse reasoning processes while evaluating or providing feedback to a student’s written work.
Thanks for the interesting post, Fang! I know very little about assessment and even less about automated assessment, but a while back, Carrie and I had the opportunity to review a book about automated writing instruction. Students were basically asked to revise their essays until they closely resembled the master texts in the system. I wonder, what changes in terms of a writer’s orientation towards the composition task, and how does it impact the final product, when they believe they are writing to impress a robotic audience as opposed to a human one?
ReplyDeleteI was heartened to read that there are a number of people who believe that the concept of plagiarism will soon go the way of the dodo, but it is hard for me to not be cynical about those prospects. That is because I see plagiarism and the enforcement of it not so much as a problem as the symptom of a problem. The problem I have in mind relates to an industry where massive amounts of money and power are constantly changing hands, ensuring that a lot of people would prefer the current system remain in place. Of course, I’m talking about the publishing industry, which is linked to authorship, which requires protection, hence the need for the concept of plagiarism.
It’s an interesting supposition that due to the internet, policing of intellectual property (at least of the textual kind) will simply become too challenging. MOOCS and open access journals are hardly standing outside our capitalist system, but they do operate under different assumptions and through different venues and are driven by different forces, so I can see how that could throw a monkey wrench into the works, particularly as the reach and influence of these new virtual environments grow. Will this impetus be strong enough, however, to disrupt the current system? I suppose only time will tell.
Okay, so I hope you’ll indulge me a bit of fun here: Ownership of words promotes stinginess when it comes to sharing ideas with others. Imagine what it would look like if the system rewarded not the person who wrote the words but the writers who subsequently give that person credit for them? Would people start competing to rightfully attribute ideas to their originators instead of competing to claim them for our own. Would it help to highlight the fact that we are all connected through our participation in an unending conversation? Would that lead to increased collaboration and sharing of ideas and maybe new voices being granted access to the conversation?
My question for Warren is, what do you think? Do you agree with those who believe that intellectual property and copyright laws will meet an untimely demise? If so, how and why do you see this happening? Or conversely, how and why not?
I know it's not related to plagiarism, but I have to chime in about the whole automated writing assessment thing! Aside from the issue of validity (e.g. the TOEFL writing section), namely how does writing 300 words in 20 minutes mirror at all what students will face in a university classroom, there's also the issue of gaming the system. Because there's so much instruction of and focus on the final product, lots of students have started to memorize large swaths of canned/generic material, and then artfully plug in key words connected to the prompt. I know this because I've been an ETS rater for about a year. It's amazing how much time is spent on memorizing and attempts to deceive - I always wonder if just buckling down, learning how to write, and tapping into what's in your heart and head wouldn't be easier. Alas...
DeleteAnyway, onto your question, Amanda. That's a great question and I'm not sure if I have a strong answer in either direction. One point is that there's quite a distinction between plagiarism and copyright/intellectual property - suddenly we're getting into the notions of patents, music, etc. In short, though, I don't think that these phenomena will "meet an untimely demise," at least not for a while. Although the Internet and other forms of technology have played a role in blurring the lines of ownership and intertextuality, I think one thing that's often overlooked is the purpose of a lot writing in the first place. At universities, why do we write? I'm generalizing a bit here, but I'd say students must write to improve their writing and their thinking, the latter of which comes from marrying their own ideas with the scholarship of others (field experts). So while some may argue that virtual environments render texts "unownable," a student who uses this rationale to justify copying and pasting simply isn't going to learn how to write very well, or, I'd argue, think very well. Advances in technology, to me, simply change the vehicle for writing, but they don't change the heart and soul that must go into a good piece of writing. Totally not sure if I answered your question - let's talk when I visit!
Canagarajah on Culture and Writing
ReplyDelete“Though difference is always going to be there in writing, and though much of it may derive from culture, the ways in which this influence takes place can be positive or negative, enabling as well as limiting, and teachers have to be aware of all these possibilities when they teach students writing. More importantly, teachers must keep in mind that no one needs to be held hostage by language and culture; students can be taught to negotiate conflicting rhetorical structures to their advantage.”
On Friday, I participated in the MLK Diversity in Education poster conference in the College of Education. My poster poses these research questions:
1. What D/discourses construct L2 graduate students’ identities as writers?
2. How do L2 graduate students negotiate competing identities as educational researchers and L2 writers?
One of the judges, an Instructional Designer from Kenya, told me “you know, we have a shared academic language to eliminate bias in our research.” His response caught me completely off guard and reminded me how challenging it is to explain the complexities involved in writing to people who aren’t used to paying attention to them. The judge speaks accented English and works closely with international programs. I looked him up. He is a true advocate for diversity, but he was unwilling to extend his definition of diversity to academic writing.
One of the themes I reported is that L2 writers experience micro-aggressions in response to their writing. A different judge challenged me to provide examples of these micro-aggressions. I shared two recurring themes from my data:
1. instances of instructors wrongly suggesting that a student’s work is not her own.
2. instances of instructors responding, “I don’t understand what this says.”
The judge responded angrily, “I want you to tell me how I can tell a student that I don’t understand their writing without creating a micro-aggression.” She went on to rant with increasing anger, “I send them to the writing center, but they don’t all go. I want you to tell me what to do when I just don’t understand what they are saying.”
In response, I’d like to extend Canagarajah’s words and add that instructors can be taught to accept and appreciate a wider variety of academic language. My experience at the conference reminded me that as a scholar involved in writing education, I am going to have to work with members of the university community who are not sensitive to issues of language, and if I am going to be successful, I have to be prepared to engage in dialog with them about writing that they can understand and relate to. My responses should be less theoretical and more concrete. So for Warren, I wonder if you have any suggestions for communicating your scholarship to professionals not familiar with writing? I'm looking forward to seeing you in class!
Hi Carrie, do you mean professionals in academe not familiar with the struggles of the craft of writing, or issues of intercultural rhetoric? Or do you mean professionals outside of academe who engage in no writing at all? Right now, sorry, I don't think I have any suggestions. However, I wonder if helping these professionals see these issues on their own terms might be helpful. For instance, in my dissertation study, I found that my participants struggled with writing from sources based on the professor, the course, and the discipline. Consequently, I imagined myself talking to one of these professors and thought about what I would say, or how I would approach the issue of being an international student, and what it means to them to be pulled in so many different directions. I believe that sometimes professors get uber-focused on their own research and discipline, and forget that students cross all these disciplines just to fulfill their liberal arts core course requirements. If I come at it from that angle - namely not in my shoes but in their shoes (could be the shoes of the students, or the professors) - I tend to find it more helpful. Does that make sense?
DeleteOn page 59 we find a quote by Purcell et al. (2013) on teaching writing and blogs. I absolutely agree with their idea that students “are more willing to put their ideas down in writing when writing for an authentic audience.”
ReplyDeleteBlogs have been used in the teaching of second and foreign languages for a while now, not only writing, because their benefits are many, and Hyland mentions only a few. I have noticed however, that when it comes to CALL, things seem to be moving fast. I wonder if the younger generations, those students that are nowadays in high school or are freshmen in college, and who grew up with internet and smartphones as a normal part of life, would be as interested in blog writing as we are. By “we” I refer to the people who have seen the internet grow, the birth and development of blogs and online resources. For us, the internet was a novelty, and being able to write, being published and read by anywhere in the world was fascinating. For the younger generations, not so much. Last semester, one of my Writing Center students (a freshman) mentioned she wanted to improve her writing skills in Spanish. I jumped out of my chair and said, “get a blog!” and proceeded to explain how I got my own blog when I felt the need to practice my own Spanish writing. But her reaction was the opposite of what I was expecting. I might as well have said “go and carve your ideas on a rock.” She didn’t say it explicitly, but let me to the understanding that blogging was somehow “not cool.”
I remembered this episode with the student after reading Hyland, and wondered if, in order to keep our students interested, we need to be up-to-date with technologies, and incorporate the most recent ones in the classroom. Or, is it ok to recur to “old fashion blogging”? Maybe “we,” the older generation, are using written blogs while the younger ones are using vlogs, and Youtube. Can they find that authentic audience writing blogs if they aren’t reading blogs?
I also remembered the case of a Chilean teacher whose evaluation of the novel “A Hundred Years of Solitude” was to asked her students to create “memes.” (You can see some –in Spanish- here: http://laopinion.com/2016/06/12/cien-anos-de-soledad-en-memes-las-creativas-estrategias-de-la-profesora-que-conquisto-a-las-redes-con-una-tarea-de-literatura/).
I keep wondering how we (instructors) can provide that authentic audience for our writing students. Especially with the appearance of so many different resources. There’s a mobile phone app called “Hello Talk,” which promises to “connect you with native speakers of other languages, for FREE!” That way, users can chat with “penpals,” and learn language as well as culture. I somehow feel like technology and our brains are flying, and the teaching of writing is still trying to catch up.
My questions for Warren are:
Do you think plagiarism is a cultural concept? I wonder if it we could somehow use intercultural rhetoric theory to understand it or explain it better.
What has been, so far, the most surprising realizing you have come across?
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DeleteHi Claudia, indeed plagiarism is a cultural concept. If you're interesting in reading more about that, Pennycook's 1996 essay/article is really eye-opening. As for Intercultural Rhetoric, I think the concept of plagiarism is one of many facets that could fall into that category.
DeleteOne of the more surprising findings of my dissertation study has been that - at least for my 5 participants - they were very aware of and concerned about committing plagiarism in their writing. So while much previous scholarship focuses on the "mistakes" these students make as they attempt to enter a Western academic/writing community, I found that my participants had incredibly insightful questions and concerns about writing from sources and avoiding plagiarism. For instance, one of my participants wondered how to cite images, pictures, and music for a presentation she had to give in her Rhetoric class, while another participant was concerned about finding the "original" sources for a historical paper for her Psychology class, despite the fact that the "original" sources dated back to the 1800's (I informed her that she could use other sources that were not "original" and simply referred to the original sources, and that these sources would still be considered credible, primary sources).
I chose to write on plagiarism for this chapter because it really made me reflection upon my definition and understanding of plagiarism and why it might occur. More specifically, I did not even realize that there was a defined spectrum for plagiarism (concept 3.4 on pg. 62). I am often able to recognize when my students submit work that is a clone or a mashup because I am aware of their individual voice. However, I realized that my definition of plagiarism was different depending on the writing context. Often times in my class activities with lower proficiency students, I was more concerned with the students’ intent in using another’s text rather than the act of using it. I found that many thought it easier to just use what the other person wrote “because it said exactly what I wanted to say” or because they had different learning backgrounds that did not require they restate the information. However, I tended to be a little stricter with my higher proficiency students because they had more language control and they better rephrase the information. Reflecting on this, I find that I will need to improve this mindset to better help my students understand the different types of plagiarism and the different levels of severity.
ReplyDeleteAmanda’s perspective of plagiarism not as the problem but a symptom of a problem aligns with my personal perspective on the publishing industry. I have often thought that some of the problems that we face with “ownership” of perspectives and theories is strongly enforced by a desire to make money from the publishers and not necessarily about crediting an individual with their work. As the chapter mentions, this becomes more complicated with the open access of the internet and the blurred lines between public and private ideas or texts.
I truly appreciate Amanda’s questions as the end of her post because it got me thinking more about “uniqueness” and collaboration. Should the focus simply be on identifying and “owning” new ideas and/or approaches or should it be on improving and expanding one’s field of study? Isn’t there something to be said for the diversity of perspectives that would come though the sharing of ideas and experiences? Wouldn’t this actually strengthen the data?
Question for Warren:
Similar to Fang, I am curious about some of the struggles those in different cultures (collectivist vs. individualist) may have when writing in a different culture and how this might change as we become more globalized. How does one’s conceptualization of plagiarism get defined and enforced in their cultures and how is it changing? Also similar to Claudia, I am curious about different intercultural approaches, however, I am curious how these approaches might help better teach writing in a second language. Is there something that we as teachers should be doing to better assist our students with understanding and avoiding plagiarism?
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DeleteHi Rocky, I think one thing that can be done is to help students understand that committing or not committing plagiarism is not necessarily related to transgression. Assuming a student is honest (which, in my experience, is a safe assumption most of the time), then instances of plagiarism tend to relate to writing as a learning process. Even now when I write, I still wonder at times if I've changed the wording enough for it to be a truly appropriate paraphrase. And this process of learning - if I think back to how far I've come as a writer since high school - has lasted decades (and will continue). In short, I think we should impart to our students that writing well (with or without sources) is not an easy thing and takes a long time to get decent at, let alone master.
ReplyDeleteI also think it's important for students to realize that not plagiarizing does not equal quality writing. In other words, what is the greater context in which plagiarism is situated that causes all of this? In academic writing, I believe, we ground our writing in the scholarship of others to show that we've done our homework, that we know what we're talking about - and once we've accomplished that, we're in a better position to pose our own arguments - it's a marriage of our thoughts as relative novitiates with the field experts who have pushed the envelope for years.
I agree with Carrie about culture. Culture is the believe and practice of people of a particular group sharing a language, dressing style and behaving, usually passed from one generation to another. On my opinion culture is very important in language. In my own teaching experience it is impossible to teach language itself without explaining to students the way the native users use it. I believe, the language we speak contributes to shaping the way we think. For example Swahili language is a language built in high respect to native speakers, Second language leaner’s and also guests. Being a Tanzanian it is hard for me to pass by people without saying a greeting, it is consider being extremely impolite by not greeting people you meet on the road or anywhere.
ReplyDeleteAugust year I attended a Fulbright Foreign Teaching Assistant Conference, it included people from other countries too. Me and another guy from Tanzania where given the opportunity to teach Swahili for about 20min. The first thing we started teaching was greetings but we had to explain about the Tanzanian culture in order for the audience to understand when, where and how the language one L1 speakers communicate. Usually we address people according to their title and age. A greeting I give to my age mate will be different from a greeting I give to an older person. If I compare it with English language, one greeting “hi” is used by everyone regardless the age and position of person in the community.
I like this quote (lantoff, 1999). As a result, language and learning are inextricably bound up with culture. Not only are our beliefs and values reflected in and carried through language, but cultures make available certain taken-for-granted ways of organizing perceptions and expectations, including those we use to learn and communicate.
I would like to end this by saying as I am teaching Swahili as L2 I have the duty to play part as a cultural ambassador from Tanzania by teaching the Swahili culture. I have not written a lot so far but due to my little experience in writing English as a second language I have experienced some challenges of not understanding the writer’s message due to difference in culture. I suggest culture and language should be used side by side in writing L2.
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ReplyDeleteQuestions for Warren,
DeleteWhat are the effective ways to avoid plagiarism? Do you have any suggestions for international students?
Is plagiarism limited to writing activities? I wonder how we define plagiarism in speaking activities as well.
I agree with Warren’s response to Amanda’s opinion that their voice from their idea cannot be taken by just copying and pasting a few words or phrases. Sometimes, not even in written text but also speech, people have found out that famous people had used the same phrases. For example, the section in Trump’s speech that was the same as the line in a movie. Using smartphone became easier and a fast way to communicate with one another, and it also helps to increase collaboration among writers (Hyland, 2016). For example, the tools for the collaboration work (e.g. Google Docs or wikispaces) are very helpful when we co-construct the study from different spaces without barriers.
DeleteAs an international student, I realized that writing became an inescapable part of communication, interaction, and showing my work; which are essential parts to fulfill my academic path. Sometimes conflicts occur, when I understand differently or misunderstand the intention of the written messages, especially when I’m busy or in bad situation. This also happens when I communicate in my L1. Before I submit my paper, I tend to visit a writing center and I sometimes feel differently when I receive feedback from online version and in person. I felt it is much easier and faster when I receive the service online, especially when I had many papers to be completed because of time and I cared less about my mistakes when I receive the feedback. One of my cohort said that receiving online feedback was different for writers because she could choose the correction based on her decision, compared to having feedback in person.
In this sense, I became interested in examining how writing consultants’ perspectives (or perceptions) about providing corrective feedback to students are different between online and in-person situations. They might think that the way of giving corrective feedback can be different and how different dynamic engagement occurs with corrective feedback through different mediums. I also want to examine how student’s perspectives are different or similar depending on their preference of their situation or their perception (or expectation) of services. This was a good chance to think about my final project while I think about the discussion topic.