| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立清華大學 === 外國語文學系 === 89 === With the development of information technology, more and more foreign language learners have access to information written in the target language and transmitted via the Internet. Among various Internet resources, the World Wide Web (the Web) becomes very popular recently and plays an influential role in EFL learning. Studies on the Web use in Taiwan have investigated how Web resources can be incorporated into activities in the classroom. However, there is not much known about how students use hypertextual sources to write their own compositions.
This study aimed to explore how college-level EFL learners in Taiwan used reading materials on the Web to write their own compositions. Fifteen sophomores in an English composition course participated in the study in the fall semester, 1999. Before the study, a reading section of TOEFL test was used to measure the subjects’ reading proficiency and a questionnaire was used to investigate their former Web experiences and perception about the Web. It took three weeks during the semester for the subjects to write and revise their source-based papers. During the writing process, they were asked to record the Web sites they browsed on an off-line Web site log designed by the researcher. An end-semester questionnaire was used to obtain students’ evaluation on such a writing process. Correlation of the scores of the source-based papers (holistically graded by two raters using the ESL Composition Profile), TOEFL reading scores, previous Web experiences, and Web search amount was conducted. Qualitative analyses of students’ citation strategies, including the format, type, and relevance of citation, was also conducted.
The results showed that when citing Web articles to write source-based compositions, better readers also wrote better papers but previous Web experiences and Web search time may not predict the subjects’ writing performance. Qualitative analyses of the subjects’ citation strategies showed that (1) half of the subjects had difficulty using the correct citation format due to lack of knowledge of standards of western academic citation; (2) direct quotation was the most frequently used citation type among the three citation types (quotation, paraphrase, and summary) and the subjects did rely on Web texts to substantiate their compositions; (3) regarding relevance to the writing, 90% of the citation in students’ papers was appropriately used and summary was the best-used type, although it was not used as frequently as the others two citation types: quotation and paraphrase.
The results of the study suggested when using Web sources to write academic papers, students need guidance to learn how to use search engines well enough in order to locate relevant and in-depth Web sources. Also, students should be taught how to differentiate good sources from bad ones as well as how to cite sources into their compositions. Finally, there is still a need for qualitative studies which investigate students’ on-line behaviors and their writing process when using hypertextual source sources to write academic papers.
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