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Volume 11 Number 1, Spring 2014, Pages 1-148   


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Evaluating an Academic Writing Course-based on an Integrated Model

    Li Zhang, Yue Sheng and Lan Li


This paper intends to evaluate an academic writing course for ESL learners with the aid of technology. Such a course is based on an integrated model that draws strength from both the model of writing as a process and as a social construct. Forty-one learners from various Asian language backgrounds attended the course in a large Midwestern American university. Details of how the students completed their research paper during the course are described, and evaluation of the course is done through a questionnaire investigating the students' perceptions about the usefulness of the elements involved in the writing process, a paired samples t-test of the students' pre- and post-course writing, and a qualitative analysis of the students' reflective ideas on how the course benefits them. The result of the t-test (t=2.316, p<0.05) indicates that the students did improve their writing competence as a result of taking the course, and the analysis of the questionnaire shows that most of the students had positive opinions of the course. Therefore, it is believed that the course incorporating the integrated model has achieved the goal of helping ESL learners improve their competence and confidence in academic writing, which will enable them to cope successfully with future writing tasks in their academic disciplines.

Keywords: integrated model of writing; academic writing process course evaluation