Evaluating Chinese Undergraduate EFL Student learning on Writing Using Sources in Academic Writing

Citation is a typical feature of academic writing and requires writers to effectively and appropriately integrate the source information into the written essays based on the understanding of source texts, which should follow the academic convention. The process has brought a huge challenge for English learners, especially L2 writers. Recently, some studies have proved that most students have no intension to cheat in writing and explained that most students inappropriately use sources. Therefore, the research focus has transformed from academic cheating to the features of learners’ citation practices and their challenges in writing from sources.

This study explores the citation practice in 60 research papers by the second-year English majors through text analysis and semi-structured interviews. The results show that students can incorporate various sources in their writing and report the main information of sources accurately. In addition, students can establish connection with sources by comparing their own research and previous findings. However, students’ texts have a low citation density, but tend to include long direct quotes. They also obtained citation from the Internet without examining its authority. In terms of citation strategies, they rely on summary strategy, but rarely use paraphrasing and generalizations, synthesizing multiple sources. Interview results show that students face challenges in four aspects: citation format, literature search, reading comprehension and paraphrase. The results of this study have implications for teaching academic writing.