A Case Study Of Chinese Efl Student Writers' Identity Development In Overseas Academic Environments

Identity refers to the position that people identify themselves in social interactions.Identity research has become a hot topic in linguistics and its related disciplines in both domestic and overseas academia.Recently,the concept of identity has been increasingly applied in the study of writing.Since more and more Chinese college students have been choosing to study abroad after they finish their undergraduate studies,scholars in the relevant fields of linguistics have started to pay attention to issues like the experiences of overseas students studying academic English writing,the difficulties and challenges students confront during their time overseas,and the construction and development of writer identity.Research on writer identity at home and abroad mainly focuses on the investigation of writer identity,the construction of writer identity,and other aspects related to writer identity.However,there are few studies about the effects of studying abroad on the English writing ability of Chinese learners of English and the development of their writer identity.Therefore,this study investigates Chinese students' writer identity construction in overseas studying environments from the perspective of the students.The purpose of this study is to summarize the difficulties encountered by Chinese students writing academic English under the context of overseas academia,writing strategies to solve these issues,and the factors which influence students to construct their ideal writer identity.This study adopts a qualitative research method to explore the academic English writing experiences in different academic environments of five Chinese master's degree students in Australia through in-depth interviews and data collection.This study focuses on students' English writing experiences during their study abroad period.These interview questions concentrate on the development of writer identity in academic English writing,including language knowledge,writing skills,awareness of cultural differences,etc.After the conduction of the interviews,this study collects students' coursework and teacher feedback from two separate courses in their first and second semesters in Australia.Through the analysis of data,it is found that these five participants encountered problems in academic English writing to different extents such as lack of ability to search relevance literature independently,improper citation formats,inappropriate academic expression,etc.This study uses Hyland's interactional model to compare the assignments of the five students based on the interview and data.The results show that students can consciously adopt some language sources as writing strategies in their academic writing,such as using hedges,boosters,attitude markers,and self-mentions.These strategies help students construct their expected writer identity to some extent,like learners in certain academic fields,researchers with rigorous attitudes,or writers offering compelling arguments.In addition,this study finds that there are some factors that influence students in constructing their ideal writer identity,including writing motivation,motivation for studying abroad,reader expectations,and personal language competence,etc.These factors have affected students' critical thinking,academic writing ability,and self-learning ability to a certain extent.Compared with the first semester,students in the second semester were able to use these strategies better and with less overuse or misuse.This study also finds that these Chinese students did not have a rich experience or adequate training in academic writing before studying abroad,and they all experienced difficulties and challenges to construct writer identity in varying degrees at the early stages of their academic writing.However,with training and practice,which the students received during their study abroad period,students improved their writing skills,and this helped them construct a writer identity that met the basic requirements and expectations of teachers.It indicates that these training and practice have a positive effect on Chinese students in their English writing,and shows it is conducive for them to accumulate academic writing experience and explore writing strategies.Above all,in analyzing the construction and development of Chinese students' writer identity in academic writing when studying abroad,this study presents the situation of their identity construction and explores the significance of the reform of English writing teaching in Chinese universities.First of all,this study provides academic English teaching with some specific cases and writing strategies in practice,which can help students construct their expected writer identity in academic English writing.In addition to expressing personal attitudes,stance,and opinions in the discourse,interaction between the writer and the readers through the text is also an important way to construct writer identity.Therefore,raising awareness for students to understand the writer-and-reader interaction is beneficial to construct writer identity.Secondly,the problems that students encountered in academic writing summarized in this research can provide suggestions in developing students' critical thinking,academic expression,and standardization in citation.College English teaching can appropriately strengthen academic writing training,which,in effect,can improve students' academic writing abilities in practice.Furthermore,since studies related to the impact of overseas academic environments on writer identity construction is rare in China,this study provides relevant research experience and promotes the future study of the construction of writer identity in the process of English writing learning for English learners in different environments,stages,and backgrounds.