Abstract:
This paper presents a detailed examination of learning transfer from an
English for Specific Academic Purposes course to authentic disciplinespecific
writing tasks. To enhance transfer practices, a new approach in
planning writing tasks and materials selection was developed.
Concerning the conventions of studies in learning transfer that
acknowledge different learning preferences, the instructional resources
were designed to be multimodal to engage all participants in construing
the principles of academic writing. To promote the relevance of writing
practices and their transferability to future professional settings and to
ensure the success of the multimodal presentations, a practice of teamteaching
between the English Language and content lecturers was
rigorously embraced. A sample population of 28 postgraduate medical
students from Jondi Shapur University of Medical Sciences in Ahvaz
participated in this research. The data were collected through interviews
and writing samples throughout a whole semester and were subsequently
analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively based on James' (2009)
checklist of writing outcomes. The results indicated that the instruction
did stimulate transfer from the course to the authentic tasks notably in
the skills associated with organization and language accuracy; however,
the transfer of some outcomes appeared to be constrained particularly
the use of punctuation marks. Implications of the findings for theory,
practice, and future research in discipline-specific writing practices are
discussed.
Machine summary:
Keywords : academic writing, ESAP, learning transfer, multimodality,team-teaching Received: 05/09/2016 Accepted: 15/01/2017 Corresponding author Academic writing has long been recognized as an indispensable skill university students need to master (Baily, 2010; Swales & Feak, 2012); however, it has grown to be a concern because the postgraduates are following higher education to undertake more specialized tasks (Gimenez, 2008; Staples, Egbert, Biber, & McClair, 2013).
Looking at the variety of critical approaches to academic writing practices commenced in the educational contexts of Iran, many researchers have so far attempted to investigate different facets of writing practices (Abasi, Akbari, & Graves, 2006; Aidinlou, 2011; Baradaran & Sarfarazi, 2011; Jamalinesari, Rahimi, Gowhary, & Azizifar, 2015; Memari Hanjani & Li, 2014); however, studies on transfer of academic writing skills and its challenges are rather scant mainly in the area of medical sciences.
Research Questions Considering writing as a major concern for postgraduate learners (Baily, 2010; Hüttner, 2008; Swales & Feak, 2012) and stimulated by multimodal pedagogy and the significance of future transfer of instructed skills, this study sought to provide postgraduate medical students with the space to engage and interact in moments of meaning-making via writing tasks.
Next, this research effectively ensured the relevance of the multimodal discipline-specific presentations and the corresponding writing tasks via a collaborative practice between the English language and specialized lecturers, an approach that is yet to be explored either in the domain of learning transfer or ESAP studies.