Writing from sources is a common academic task for L2
students in higher education. It is a task that
requires the orchestration of numerous skills such as
reading source texts, incorporating information from
the source texts within the written text, and reading
the rhetorical context to interpret the task. This
book reports on an ethnographic study that followed
the experiences of four L2 students enrolled in a
required academic writing course as they worked
through an argument essay task. The two major
challenges uncovered were building an accurate mental
representation of the writing task and maneuvering
around the contexts of plagiarism. The participants
task representations were constantly changing and
were heavily influenced through interactions with the
teacher. Low L2 proficiency constrained the
performance of some of the participants resulting in
one participant plagiarizing in order to meet the
perceived task requirements and another participant
slighting part of the task in order to avoid
plagiarism.
students in higher education. It is a task that
requires the orchestration of numerous skills such as
reading source texts, incorporating information from
the source texts within the written text, and reading
the rhetorical context to interpret the task. This
book reports on an ethnographic study that followed
the experiences of four L2 students enrolled in a
required academic writing course as they worked
through an argument essay task. The two major
challenges uncovered were building an accurate mental
representation of the writing task and maneuvering
around the contexts of plagiarism. The participants
task representations were constantly changing and
were heavily influenced through interactions with the
teacher. Low L2 proficiency constrained the
performance of some of the participants resulting in
one participant plagiarizing in order to meet the
perceived task requirements and another participant
slighting part of the task in order to avoid
plagiarism.