The intertextual relationship between source texts, prompts and student writing in L1 and L2

The interrelation between source texts, prompts, and student writing is a research area both well researched and under-researched. Well researched in so far that it has long been a highlighted area in research connected to standardized assessment and tests (Weigle & Parker, 2012). However, at the same time under-researched in classroom contexts with teacher assignments and tests (Miller et al., 2016).

This paper concerns students' understanding and use of prompts in integrated writing assignments. It presents result on how source texts and prompts, such as pictures, figures and statistics, affect upper secondary students' understanding of instructions and their ability to write argumentative and expository texts in in Swedish (L1) and English (L2). The focus is on eight assignments and how they were comprehended and used by 40 students, part of a larger cohort of 240 students (in total 320 written essays).

The study is part of a large-scale research project, Content and Language Integration in Swedish Schools (CLISS), funded by the Swedish Research Council (2011-2015). The main objective with the CLISS project is to compare the development of academic literacy in both Swedish and English.

References

Miller, R.T., Mitchell, T.D. & Pessoa, S. (2016). Impact of source texts and prompts on students' genre uptake. Journal of Second Language Writing, 31: 11-24.

Weigle, C.S. & Parker, K. (2012) Source text borrowing in an integrated reading/writing assessment. Journal of Second Language Writing 2: 118-133.