Kari Kunst
12.10.2012
LIS 522
Resources for Non-Native English Speaking University Students in the Writing
Collection
Introduction
UW libraries’ Odegaard Undergraduate Library is working in partnership with the
Odegaard Writing and Research Center to develop a circulating writing resource
collection to serve students, writing center tutors and library staff. Currently, the writing
center has a small collection of writing resources available for students and tutors to use
while in the writing center. This collection has developed organically over the past
several years with all of the titles being selected and purchased by the writing center
director as needs arise and with her personal funds. Over the next several months we will
be evaluating the current writing center collection noting titles that should be moved to
the new collection, titles that are no longer needed, and titles that are relevant but need to
be updated to newer editions. We will also be selecting new titles for purchase that will
fill in gaps in the collection.
The scope and timeline of this project is greater than the constraints inherent in
our class assignment. For that reason I have chosen to focus on a small section of the
collection that my colleagues and I at Odegaard have identified as one of a few areas of
need, international students for whom English is not their first language. While the
existing collection does have a few of titles specifically for international students, there is
a need for more material most specifically those related to the topics of:
-Academic writing for an American audience
-Effectively and correctly using and citing sources
-Resources for developing and Academic vocabulary at various levels
It is important to note the diversity of needs and backgrounds with this audience
of students. These students come from all over the world, speak many different
languages, and have studied in a variety of different educational cultures that value
different rhetorical styles. Students are also at various stages in their education. While the
Odegaard library aims to serve the curricular needs of undergraduate students, both the
library and especially the writing center serve all students including those in postgraduate
programs. For this reason I have devoted some attention to looking for resources to meet
the writing needs of upper level international students. The same is true when it comes to
disciplines and majors of study. Though I aim to find writing resources general enough
that they are useful to students across disciplines there is some need to identify resources
for students in majors with specific writing styles and tasks such as in the sciences.
There is no shortage of books about writing, including style guides, handbooks on
how to write a winning fill-in-the blank, grammar and usage manuals and countless other
types of books aimed at helping students and aspiring writers succeed. For international
students whose first language is not English there are publishers such as Pearson ELT,
who put out the Longman brand of products, who specialize in English language teaching
and offer a variety of resources on academic writing skills. Beyond English learning
specific publishers, there are many other publishers and authors who offer materials
aimed specifically at the non-native English speaking student. The challenge in selecting
for this audience lies not with a lack of materials but with making sure that the resources
are at the appropriate level for the intended audience and cover the needed disciplinary
writing skills. For the purposes of the Odegaard Collection specifically, it is important to
select with balance in mind. With the wide variety of users’ of both the library and the
writing center, this small collection needs to be specific enough to be useful and
accessible but general enough that it covers the range of needs.
The Selection Process
The selection process for the international student writing resources part of this
project started with establishing the goals of the overall collection project and identifying
key resources and people within the UW libraries that may help in identifying useful
starting points and gaps in the current collection. Through meeting with librarians at
Odegaard, familiarizing myself with the current collection in the writing center and
through meeting with the center’s director, I developed a set of criteria to use in selection.
I am primarily concerned with finding materials that meet the writing needs of
non-native English speaking international students at various points in their academic
careers. Their primary needs as observed by the writing center director are for materials
that discuss how to write for an American academic audience, how to use and cite
sources effectively and accurately, and those that help to develop and put into context
academic vocabulary. There is also a need for texts that deal with specific types of
writing such as writing at the graduate level and writing in the sciences. The criteria for
selection follow those needs.
The goal was to evaluate the current collection and identify books that should be
moved to the new collection based on their usefulness to the intended audience, and to
make suggestions for the purchase of several books that address the needs of the audience
as stated above. There will inevitably be crossover of materials that could fit for both a
general audience of students as well as for international students and those texts will be
evaluated and selected during the process of the larger writing center project. In the case
of this assignment I focused on texts that are of particular interest to the international
student audience. Though not all of the selections are written solely for international
students, all of the have been identified either by the author of the text, a reviewer, or be
other colleges as being well suited for that the chosen audience. In the case of selected
texts that are not written primarily for an international student audience, special attention
was used to ensure that the language is of an appropriate and accessible level.
The first step in selecting materials was to evaluate the materials in the current
collection using the established selection criteria. I photographed the 3 shelves of
materials in the writing center and used those images to search for titles that would be
useful to add to the new collection. I noted several texts that could be useful based on
their stated content coverage and set about checking for reviews of the resource, newer
editions if applicable and alternate materials that cover the same topics. At the same time
I was also able to gain access to a list of materials in the UW Tacoma libraries writing
collection. This collection was suggested to me by librarians at Odegaard as one to use to
get selection ideas. I scanned UW Tacoma’s holdings for potential candidates, weeding
out titles that were obviously not of interest such as resume guides, creative writing
guides and general style manuals. Once I identified a list of possible titles I used the same
evaluation tools as I did with the writing center collection.
I evaluated both sets of materials using several resources. I checked for reviews in
ACRL’s Choice reviews online, through UW WorldCat, and occasionally through a
general Google search of the title of the book followed by the word review. In the case of
Google I looked for reviews written in academic journals or those listed on colleges
websites. I also used Amazon.com, which proved particularly helpful when several
reviewers identified a resource as too difficult or easy for the intended audience or
pointed out when a resource was more useful as a textbook for a classroom versus a
handbook one could use on their own. Once I had identified a potential resource I set
about locating a copy so that I could personally evaluate it. I had no difficulty with books
in the writing center collection, as they were readily accessible. I was able to order many
of the texts from the Tacoma library collection. A couple of titles were checked out
meaning that I had to rely on descriptions and reviews to make my decisions. My last
source for finding titles for evaluation within the system was to make sure that Odegaard
didn’t already own the text. I made sure to check the catalog and also visited the libraries
ESL collection, which mostly holds books on English fluency exams and leveled readers.
I was able to locate one of the texts I decided to select a newer edition of in the ESL
collection, The St. Martin’s Guide to Writing.
Once I had exhausted the selection resources available to me through existing
collections, I began looking to outside resources. I used some of the same selection tools
as discussed above. I searched ACRL’s Choice reviews online resources matching the
criteria writing and narrowed the search to only reference sources. Through this search I
found a few titles to look into for the general writing collection and one review that was
strongly recommended for its good discussion of using sources, The Rowman Littlefield
Guide to Writing with Sources. I also searched other universities and colleges LibGuides
for guides about international or E.S.L students. I looked for any recommended titles on
those pages and then searched for reviews of those titles through WorldCat, Amazon.com
and Choice. Lastly, I looked at two different publishers catalogs to see what was on the
market, Pearson (Longman) and the Bedford/St. Martins English Composition Catalog.
As with the titles evaluated from the UW’s collections I made an effort to locate a copy
of each resource candidate.
Selected Titles With Annotations
All in all I selected 3 titles from within the writing centers current collection to be
prioritized for addition to the newcollection and selected 5 additional individual titles and
one series of 4 titles to be purchased. Short annotations of each of the resources follow.
Resources to be prioritized:
Langosch, Sydney L. Writing American Style: An Esl/efl Handbook. Hauppauge, N.Y:
Barron's, 1999. Print.
The clear language, illustrative examples that include full essay and research
papers, and breadth of topics covered make this guide to writing specifically for
ESL/EFL students particularly useful. This handbook covers the basics of
academic writing for an American audience from constructing sentences and
paragraphs to organizing essays and writing research papers. While the chapter on
computer-based research is dated especially in its discussion of cd-roms the rest
of the book holds up well. Writing American Style is an appropriate and useful
addition to any ESL writing collection.
Graff, Gerald, Cathy Birkenstein, and Russel K. Durst. "They Say/I Say": The Moves That
Matter in Academic Writing : with Readings. New York: W.W. Norton & Co,
2012. Print.
They Say I Say is used in University of Washington’s introductory composition
courses and noted in several colleges’ LibGuides for international student writers.
Though it is not written exclusively for an international audience it’s reputation as
an accessible source that explains American academic rhetoric and style makes it
an appropriate choice for this audience. They Say I Say is unique because its goal
is to help students join the academic conversation both in their writing and in a
classroom environment, something that is especially difficult for international
students that come from cultures that don’t emphasize student involvement in
academic discourse. This edition contains a selection of essays useful as examples
and for discussion.
Summers, Della. Longman Language Activator: The World's First Production
Dictionary. Harlow, Essex, England: Longman, 1993. Print.
This dictionary offers a unique structure aimed at helping intermediate-advanced
English language learners use the language in context. The format means it’s of
particular interest to our audience when compared to other usage dictionaries such
as The Oxford Dictionary of American Usage and Style. The dictionaries 2000
keywords, selected for their accessibility, are followed by a listing of all meanings
both formal and colloquial and alternate words and/or phrases that express that
meaning. The Longman Language Activator is an important writing reference tool
for college level English language learners.
Resources to be purchased:
Axelrod, Rise B. and Charles R. Cooper. The St. Martins Guide to Writing New York:
Bedford/St. Martins, 2013. Print
Though an early edition (1986) of this guidebook is currently available as part of
Odegaard’s ESL collection, the newest edition offers many helpful updates and
should be considered for purchase. This guide is broken up between chapters on
writing activities that explain different types of writing (reporting information,
analyzing literature, etc.), writing strategies, research strategies, and a particularly
helpful section on exam writing that can help non-native English speakers prepare
for and quell the stress of timed writing. The newest edition offers even better
design structures with callout boxes to help readers identify needed sections
quickly and is updated to include sections on Internet research and e-books.
Shulman, Myra. In Focus: Strategies for Academic Writers. Ann Arbor [Mich.:
University of Michigan Press, 2006. Print.
A review in The Journal of English for Academic Purposes by P. Rosenkjar
describes this text as “a very good writing text that should work well with
advanced pre-undergraduates in intensive English programs and first-year
undergraduates enrolled in freshman composition courses.” Its clear writing style
and culturally diverse example essays will appeal to international students and its
7 appendices offer tools for less advanced students to gain vocabulary and
understand content. In Focus fills the need for writing strategy resources at the
intermediate level.
Davis, James P. The Rowman & Littlefield Guide to Writing with Sources. Lanham, Md:
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2012. Print
This concise guide to using sources effectively and accurately in academic writing
comes recommended by reviewer J. M. Piper-Burton in ACRL’s Choice Reviews
Online. In comparison to other source guides such as Cite It Right: The SourceAid
Guide to Citation, Research, and Avoiding Plagiarism which aims to give
students one guide to use for the most popular citation styles, the Rowman and
Littlefield guide offers a more nuanced yet still clearly written discussion of how
to know when one needs to cite not just how to create citations. Advanced
international students struggling with using and citing sources will find this guide
accessible and helpful.
Swales, John, and Christine B. Feak. Academic Writing for Graduate Students: Essential
Tasks and Skills; a Course for Nonnative Speakers of English. Ann Arbor, Mich:
Univ. of Michigan Press, 2012. Print.
This well respected guidebook serves nonnative English speaking students at the
graduate level. A review in College Composition and Communication points out
that the book covers writing topics important to graduate students and discusses
essential writing topics such as “data commentary” and “writing critiques” in a
way that shows the authors’ “extensive experience.” Also useful to new graduate
students is the appendix section that deals with reading and understanding
academic articles. With its wide range of disciplines covered, this guidebook is
important for any writing collection that wants to serve a diverse audience of
graduate writers.
Swales, John M. and Christine B. Feak. Telling a Research Story: Writing a Literature
Review. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011. Print.
--. Abstracts and the Writing of Abstracts. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,
2011. Print.
--. Creating Contexts: Writing Introductions Across Genres. Ann Arbor, Mich:
University of Michigan Press, 2011. Print.
--. Navigating Academia: Writing Supporting Genres. Ann Arbor, Mich: Univ of
Michigan Press, 2011. Print.
This series of texts serves as a revised and expanded version of the chapters in the
authors’ acclaimed title English in Today’s Research World. The series picks up
where the above-annotated Academic Writing for Graduate Students leaves off
teaching specific writing skills and giving examples of writing at the advanced
graduate and professional research level. Breaking the sections of the earlier text
apart gives students the ability to pick a title that best serves their needs and
allows the authors to go into more detail and provide more examples. The fourth
volume, Writing in Supporting Genres, offers non-native speakers (and likely
many native speakers) useful help in writing statements of purpose, graduate
application essays and other professional writing tasks.
Glasman-Deal, Hilary. Science Research Writing for Non-Native Speakers of English.
London: Imperial College Press, 2011. Print.
While there are many books available that deal with writing in the sciences very
few are written for a non-native English speaking audience. Glassman-Deals’
book details each part of a science research paper from the introduction through
the conclusion with a final section on writing an article abstract. Each section
includes excerpts from example reports and a breakdown of key vocabulary and
grammar conventions. The appendix on the singular and plural forms of Latin and
Greek words is a particularly useful reference. Science Research Writing is a
practical reference tool important for any intermediate-advanced English learner
writing in the sciences.
Works Cited:
Piper-Burton, J. M. Rev. of The Rowman and Littlefield Guide to Writing with Sources,
auth. David P. James. Choice Reviews Online (May 2012). Web. Dec 5, 2012.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/358319
Rev. of Academic Writing for Graduate Students: Essential Tasks and Skills by John M.
Swales; Christine B. Feak. College Composition and Communication 47.3 (Oct.
1996): 443-444. Web. Dec 5 2012.
Rosenkjar, Patrick Rev. of In Focus: Strategies for Academic Writers, auth. Myra
Shulman. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 6.2 (2007): 186–188. Web.
Dec 5 2012.
http://dx.doi.org.offcampus.lib.washington.edu/10.1016/j.jeap.2006.11.002