Graduating on the Installment Plan

Because Internet technologies allow for increased access to information, translating tools, and search capabilities, researcher Paul Stapleton observes that Web-based research and composition are essentially different than traditional methods of writing. Stapleton, a professor who studies academic writing at the Hong Kong Institute of Education, analyzed questionnaire responses related to Web-based research and the resultant composition from Japanese undergraduates studying English as a foreign language.

Stapleton found that because nearly 70% of Web content is in English (Japanese is a distant second at about 6%), L2 writers studying English are encouraged to interact with concepts and doctrines that are distinct from those in their native languages (178). L2 writers may therefore have difficulty in assessing a source’s appropriateness for use in research. The study found that Web-based research affected student writing in the following ways:

• Despite the lack of rigorous review that traditional library-based sources require in order to prevent bias, most respondents believed that Web-based sources were adequate for research and composition. This may be because respondents had faith in their own abilities to evaluate Web sources for reliability (183). Unfortunately, students still selected sources for their composition assignments that were deemed unacceptable or inadequate for academic writing.

• Respondents often preferred researching online and frequently through sites that presented information in their native language. Many students preferred researching on bilingual sites maintained by native Japanese speakers who composed in English and Japanese (184).

• Although most students reported that they did not plagiarize text from online sources, the researcher’s cross-reference of composition assignments and sources revealed that some students “did succumb to the temptation” to easily transplant text from online sources into their own composition (185).

The findings point to some interesting issues surrounding L2 composition in context of modern writing and research technologies. Although L2 students are now able to access a wide variety of sources online, they may not have the proper tools to determine the credibility and bias of Web sources. Furthermore, Stapleton remarks that Web-based sources give L2 writers access to English ideologies that are not necessarily coincident with those prevalent in their native languages, and keyword searchers have a tendency to produce sources that support writers’ pre-existing agendas (187). As a result, L2 writers’ positions may be affected by the amount and type of research that they perform online. This notion certainly deserves further research.


A note on genre
Stapleton defines domain designations such as .com, .gov, and .edu as genres with “various underlying motivations ranging from the simple dispersal of information…to the promotion of commercial and ideological agendas” (177). Framing domains as specific genres is interesting, and, if Stapleton’s assertion that L2 writers are at increased risk of falling victim to biased sources due to language barriers is true, it may be a useful taxonomy for helping L2 (and L1!) writers to assess the nature of their sources. Here’s a quick example of how the same idea is represented in three different Web genres:

Search Term: Language Acquisition

• .gov: Office of English Language Acquisition

• .edu: Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition

• .com: Dr. Goodword’s Alpha-Dictionary

Citation:
Paul Stapleton. “Using the Web as a Research Source: Implications for L2 Academic Writing.” The Modern Language Journal, Vol. 89, No. 2 (Summer, 2005), pp. 177-189