Native and non-native students’ interaction with a text-based prompt

The present study aims to continue in a vein of research which examines the effects of essay prompts on examinees’ writing performance by closely investigating 40 student essays produced from a university-wide reading-to-write test. Quantitative and qualitative results of this study show that native and non-native writers at different proficiency levels exhibit variety in their selection of lexical items and propositional material from the background reading. Among other things, it is found that the higher-rated native group outperformed the other groups in their ability to identify topical information and in a better sense of what details from the source text to include. The two non-native groups, although able to locate superordinate propositions of the source text, lack native writers’ ability to readjust their selection of material according to the author's epistemological stance. The lower-rated native writers paid little attention to the source text and merely used the substance of the text as a “springboard” to elicit their own opinions in response to the topic. Possible explanations for these results and their implications for writing pedagogy and assessment are also discussed.

► We investigate 40 essays produced from a university-wide reading-to-write test.
► L1 and L2 writers of different proficiency levels perform differently on this task.
► Their use of lexicons and propositional units from the source text are compared.