Diagnosing EFL writers’ development of discourse competence in disciplinary writing: an ecological approach

Abstract This study employed a multiple-case study design to investigate nine English-as-a-foreign-language undergraduates’ disciplinary writing experiences in a bilingual teaching and learning context. Drawing on writing samples, writer’s logs, and semi-structured interviews, the study identified weaknesses in their discourse features and explored their relationships to the composing processes, immediate personal traits, and larger environmental factors. Overall, the students demonstrated a basic level of discourse competence (i.e., they could write an essay on the topic and use complex connectives accurately). However, they tended to ignore other discourse features (e.g., composing a statement to control ideas in the introduction, closing the essay with an effective conclusion, and maintaining appropriate reader-writer interactions). The data revealed a positive association between English proficiency and discourse features. Typically, those with low novice and intermediate novice proficiency levels relied on text-recognition technology to translate English materials into their L1s, thus enabling source processing. They also depended on automatic translation applications to translate their essays into English, which were written in their L1s first. Based on these findings, this study suggests the integration of adequate genre knowledge, academic reading skills, and discipline-relevant task design into L2 writing instruction and assessment practice in undergraduate study.