Education lecturers’ expectations about writing proficiency: Insights from corpus analysis of teacher feedback on academic writing

Abstract

Understanding disciplinary lecturers’ expectations about writing proficiency is essential for instruction on Writing for Academic Purposes (WAP) that prepares university students for their written assessment in disciplinary studies. However, few studies have systematically analysed disciplinary lecturers’ feedback on academic writing to reveal their expectations about proficient disciplinary writing. This makes WAP instruction potentially disjointed with disciplinary writing and consequently, students could be ill-prepared for their writing performance in disciplinary assessment. To reveal disciplinary lecturers’ expectations about writing proficiency, this study developed and analysed a 104,765-word corpus of feedback provided by 41 education lecturers on 230 assignments, submitted by international postgraduates who speak English as a second/foreign language (L2). Subsequent regression analyses uncovered how various facets of writing proficiency related to coursework marks. The results showed that Education lecturers commented on a wide spectrum of elements of writing proficiency. Style, coherence, vocabulary, and effective communication were predictors that made unique and significant contributions to the overall quality of assignments. Concordance analyses revealed lecturers’ perspectives on what constitutes writing proficiency and how each component should be manifested in postgraduate disciplinary writing. The paper concludes with important implications for the development and assessment of L2 writing proficiency in Education or related fields.