Comparative Study Of Second Language Writing Research In China And Overseas: Key Issues And Research Methods

Since China’s reform and opening up policy, international communication becomes more and more frequent than ever before. Second language writing plays an increasingly significant role in communicating with the world. International exchange of information and technology is undoubtedly realized through second language writing. Second language writing is always a difficult part in the process of second language teaching. While teachers and students spend a lot of time and energy in second language writing, the effect is still very limited. The situation requires further investigation covering second language writing research in different focus. This paper focuses on the similarities and differences of key issues and research methods of second language writing research between China and overseas. This study is conducive to second language writing researchers to get more insights into the similarities and differences of key issues and research methods of second language writing research between China and overseas, which provides an important reference to domestic second language writing researchers in order to approach foreign researchers, connecting with the international second language writing research step by step.There have been some comparative studies in the English community in China. For instance, Gui Shichun, Ning Chunyan(1997) compared research contents and research methods of linguistics in China and abroad. Gao Yihong, Li Lichun, Lv Jun(1999) compared the research methods and the development trend of applied linguistics home and abroad. Gao Yunfeng, Li Xiaoguang(2007) compared the research papers written by foreign language teachers and the similar subject papers written by the educational community. The basic method of the above researches is to select a number of important journals home and abroad, analyzing the research issues and research methods of the paper to find the gap between Chinese and international research, so as to clarify the direction of future research. Although in recent years some scholars have paid attention to the research, the researches of second language writing are found few. At the same time, along with the development of cognitive linguistics, psychology linguistics, II corpus linguistics and other related subjects, there have been some new situations in second language writing research field both in China and abroad since 2010. Therefore, it is necessary to update the information of the second language writing research. This paper conducts a comparative study on the current situation of second language writing research between 2010 and 2014. The study mainly analyzes and compares the similarities and differences of key issues and research methods of second language writing research between 2010 and 2014 between in China and overseas, The present study attempts to answer the following two research questions:1. What are the similarities and differences on key issues of second language writing research between China and overseas?2. What are the similarities and differences on research methods of second language writing research between China and overseas?This paper adopts quantitative research method. The papers about second language writing research published in the 16 applied linguistic journals are analyzed using quantitative method. For the purpose of analysis, the researcher carried out the directory search for the 16 applied linguistic journals both in China and overseas from 2010 to 2014 with the CNKI and Elsevier. The study selects eight major core journals of applied linguistics and foreign languages in China, namely Foreign language teaching and research, Foreign Languages in China, Foreign language world, Foreign language and their teaching, Foreign language education, Foreign language research, Computer-assisted foreign language education and Journal of PLA university of Foreign languages. At the same time, the study selects eight international journals about second language writing abroad, namely Journal of Second Language Writing, English for specific purpose, Computers and composition, Journal of Pragmatics, Linguistics and education, Journal of English for Academic purpose, Assessing writing, Language sciences. These 16 applied linguistic journals are influential, representative and authoritative in the field of second language research in China and abroad, implying that the data have a relative high level in second language. Therefore, the papers can reflect the latest features and development trends of second language writing both home and abroad. Although second language writing research papers are not limited to second language writing journals, as well as monographs corpus and so on which are not within the scope of this study corpus. According to the title and keywords, the researcher does the second retrieval. Then the researcher classifies the search results one by one, and count all kinds of second language writing research published in the 16 applied linguistic journals from 2010 to 2014. Then the researcher uses Excel to display various trends of research issues and research methods both in China and overseas. Researchers determine the classification criteria for second language writing research from two perspectives: one is research issues and the other is research method. On the one hand, the researcher refers to the research issues on second language writing division of Qin Zhaoxia(2009) which covers seven aspects of the research issues with detailed entries. On the other hand, about research method, this study only focuses on quantitative research and qualitative research methods. Although second language writing research papers are not limited to quantitative research and qualitative research methods, as well as summary of experiences, theory, review, introduction or opinion articles and so on which are not within the scope of this study.Findings based on the analysis of the key issues and research methods of second language writing research in China and overseas are as follows.Firstly, the research issues on second language writing cover seven aspects: writing instruction, written products, writing process, writing contextual factors, research review, reader feedback, and writing assessment, score and test. Among the seven research issues, there are some similarities between second language writing research in China and that overseas. The three key issues on second language writing both in China and overseas from 2010 to 2014 are writing instruction, written products and writing process. According to the five-year data, the trend change abroad was not obvious, which reflected second language writing research overseas was more mature and each related issue all had a specialized research field. However, there are some differences. At first, the last one in China are writing contextual factors research and writing assessment, score and test research, while the last one overseas is research review. What is more, the proportion of reader feedback in China is significantly higher than that overseas. This reflects that reader feedback receives more attention in China between 2010 and 2014.Besides, this study focuses on quantitative research method, qualitative research method and mixed research method. In China, second language writing researchers are more inclined to use quantitative method which accounts for 60.6% of the total. Qualitative method was significantly lower than quantitative method, which shows that qualitative method is still relatively unfamiliar to second language writing researches in China. However, the number of qualitative research accounted for 44.74% in the 8 applied linguistic journals overseas, which is very close to the ratio of quantitative research. It can be seen that the tendencies of qualitative research and quantitative research are stable.Thirdly, different from foreign countries, domestic second language writing researches are published sporadically in numerous journals, not concentrated in certain journals. Journal of Second Language Writing is a journal which is specialized in second language writing research papers, and most of second language writing papers are published on Journal of Second Language Writing.Compared with the studies overseas, there are still many problems to be solved and many areas have to be expanded in the field of Second Language Writing in China. The author argues that second language writing scholars in China should participate in the international second language writing circle.By comparing papers published in major journals in China and overseas on second language writing, a gap is found between China and other countries on research issues and research methods of second language writing. As long as second language writing researchers in China keep the consciousness of “method” in second language writing research and constantly try new teaching methods in practice, second language writing research in China can get a breakthrough, in order to guide the teaching practice and promote the reform of the second language writing instruction.Although the present study has provided some insights into second language writing research in China, limitations are inevitable. First, the data are the articles on second language writing in 16 applied linguistic journals both in China and abroad from 2010 to 2014. They cannot represent the whole picture of second language writing situation. Secondly, due to the limitation of the researcher’s academic ability, there surely remain uncovered dimensions of analyzing articles. It is expected that implications can be made for future second language writing studies.