The 9th International Conference on English Language Teaching (ELT) In China (ELT2020)

399 / 2020-01-23 13:25:59

Problematizing the Construct of College-Level Writing in English: Implications for China’s Belt and Road Initiative

College-Level Writing, Local Standard, Belt and Road Communication (BARC)

Insight and Foresight: English Language Teaching for a Community of Shared Future for Humankind > Insight and Foresight: English Language Teaching for a Community of Shared Future for Humankind

What is college-level writing in English and how does it need to be taught? This paper presents the results of in-depth interviews with community college faculty members employed at a Midwestern community college in the United States. The researcher used the qualitative approach of transcendental phenomenology to examine the data to identify key traits of college-level writing, as described by the interviewed 10 faculty members. The results of this study suggest great tolerance among faculty as a group for a variety of ways to define college-level writing. These results complement and extend those of an earlier study of faculty perceptions of college-level writing in English by Thais and Zawacki (2006) at George Mason University in the United States. Both studies, considered together, problematize the construct of universal standard in college-level writing in English. The researcher suggests that local English educators and scholars may need to define the construct of college-level writing locally, without reliance upon external, often corporate or foreign, influences. What are the implications of this study? Given the problematic construct of universal standard in college-level writing in English, local Chinese scholars may choose to cooperate with leadership in the central government to formalize alternative, streamlined, locally defined forms of written communication in English to facilitate international written communication among participants of the Belt and Road Initiative.