Tapping into Students’ Perception of Source Use in Undergraduate Essay Writing Practices in Applied Linguistics

Source use in writing, commonly known as integrated writing, involves drawing insights from listening or reading input to compose a text. Such source-informed writing has gained ground in L2 writing instruction and assessment. However, the extent L2 learners find integrated tasks effective in promoting their writing ability has been rarely touched upon. In addition, research should consider students’ needs and perspectives when it comes to the differences between integrated tasks and traditional independent writing practices in satisfying their writing requirements. In this paper, we report on the attitudes of non-Anglophone undergraduate students toward the incorporation of integrated writing tasks as part of essay writing classes and whether they perceive these tasks as effective compared to default independent practices without source use. A researcher-made self-report scale consisting of 44 items on integrated and independent writing tasks was distributed among undergraduate students following their participation in an integrated essay writing program and a regular undergraduate writing course at the university. We interviewed 15 participants to gain further insights into their attitudes toward source use in writing classes. We found that non-Anglophone students significantly favored the inclusion of integrated tasks in their classes. However, they hold fairly positive attitudes toward independent writing tasks, as our interview analysis disclosed. We think that source use could be integrally integrated into L2 writing classes, which seems proportionate to students’ needs in non-English settings.