Across Boundaries : Outside Practices for EFL Writing of University Sophomores

Across Boundaries : Outside Practices for EFL Writing of University Sophomores

  This study aims at investigating writing practices, focusing on the nature of university sophomores’ outside writing and the relations between the out-of-classroom writing and formal assignments for a writing course in the Korean context. The data comprise questionnaires from forty students, interviews with six students, and the collection of students’ writing samples about outside and inside classrooms. The findings revealed that students generated ideas for their assignments from a variety of sources such as experiences, books, discussion with others, and internet. The types of outside writing were mainly memos/notes, internet chatting/messages, and e-mails. Students preferred private locations to do outside writing. Most of the students, 90%, applied their outside writing to their university assignments by using vocabulary, getting ideas, and ensuring grammar. This study concludes that the linguistic repertoires and the construction of multiple types of discourses in students’ daily lives provide a rationale for establishing EFL writing programs that should be linked between students’ learning and use and between education and everyday lives in society.