A longitudinal case study of curriculum-based L2 writing development. (February 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Maxim, Hiram H.
• Is Part Of: System. Volume 96(2021)
• Publication Date: 2021-02
• Subjects: Genre -- Longitudinal case study -- Curriculum -- L2 writing -- Systemic-functional linguistics; Language and languages -- Study and teaching -- Periodicals; Langage et langues -- Étude et enseignement -- Périodiques; Electronic journals; 407
• DOI: 10.1016/j.system.2020.102397
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0346-251X

Abstract

Abstract: In light of the long-term support needed for L2 writing development (Byrnes et al., 2010), this chapter presents a multi-year longitudinal case study of three L2 learners who completed three consecutive instructional levels of German in an articulated undergraduate program at a U.S. university. The article begins by contextualizing the study in terms of the SFL-informed literacy-oriented curriculum, wherein writing development is driven by the use of sequenced genre-based writing tasks throughout the four-year program. Next, a triangulated analysis is conducted of the three learners' performances on these writing tasks according to (a) traditional syntactic complexity variables (e.g., mean length of sentence; mean length of clause); (b) SFL-based measures of learners' emergent meaning-making (e.g., transitivity development; taxis; thematization patterns); and (c) learner interviews. Individual differences and similarities across curricular levels are reported and also correlated with a larger cohort who completed the same tasks ( n = 117). Emphasis is placed on the varied development within an articulated program of study that has clear goals for learners' writing performance across the curriculum. Learners' reactions to the genre-based pedagogy and curricular sequencing are also presented. Last, implications of these findings for building models of collegiate L2 writing instruction are discussed.