TZU-SHAN CHANG (TAMKANG UNIVERSITY)

A HUMAN-BASED L2 COMPOSITION CLASS WITH DIGITAL TOOLS: ENHANCING SELF-REGULATED WRITING COMPETENCE : SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND LITERACY DEVELOPMENT

The development of technology enhances teachers’ efficiency in customizing L2 composition teaching materials that meet students’ needs and students’ productivity in L2 writing. However, under such a technology development condition, teachers and students do not appear to benefit from the L2 composition class. First, although the customized teaching materials help solve problems for students, individual needs are not met. Also, as digital natives, interestingly, novice L2 writers seem to rely on the function restricted to the translation from L1 to L2 or the other way around in composing L2 texts, and they can only wait for teachers’ assistance with these issues. Last, even though they work hard on revision each time, if students fail to review their writings from a half-yearly perspective, they might miss what their instructors see. The three concerns unfold one core issue—technology development fails to reduce teachers’ burden of marking L2 papers and minimizes the chances of students learning self-regulation. Through pre-and-post tests of student writings, questionnaires, and interviews, this case study—following the self-regulated learning cycle and incorporating COCA—aims to investigate whether students become more mature self-regulated learners and develop their writing competence. Ultimately, this study manifests itself as a human-based L2 writing class with digital tools, aiming to cultivate students to more efficiently correct their papers and be more responsible for their learning so students become masters of their knowledge.

I am currently working as an associate professor in English Department at Tamkang University, Taiwan. My research consists of two related strands centering on composition and learning. The first strand focuses on rhetoric and composition in decoding L2 learner’s composing processes and strategies; the second strand has developed to cross-disciplinary studies, revolving around the analysis of students’ story creation that integrates both mathematical and linguistic elements.