Critique

Article Critique
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Article Critique
In the article “Undergraduate ESL students’ engagement in Academic Reading and Writing in Learning to Write a Synthesis Paper” published in Reading in a Foreign Language in 2015, Zhao and Hirvela’s main argument is simply stated as “synthesizing offers rich opportunities to explore the connections between reading and writing” (Zhao and Hirvela, 2015). The author’s research on how the sources and the synthesis play the role in influencing two students practice their writing of synthesis and their perceptions regarding interaction between the writing of the synthesis and reading strategies.
To begin with, I agree with the authors regarding the statement that it requires complex knowledge and literacy skills to handle the intertextuality activities during academic composition. Moreover, I acknowledge that the authors base their arguments about writing in for academic reasons, which is important to help absolve other writers from the results of the study.
Moreover, the authors delineate their confines early enough by stating that other determinants control the analysis on the students’ ability to compose a synthesis paper. For instance, most writers learning how to do synthesis writing are at the same time learning the target language and its complicated nuances of the literacy conventions. This calls for narrowing down the scope of study into deeper aspects that are vital in the engagement of the students in synthesizing.

The authors also state that their choice to study on synthesizing was because the other alternative- summarizing, which is also important in source-based writing tasks, had received extensive attention. With such a strong foundation on the background and motivation of the study, the authors can capture a reader’s attention with the need of knowing more regarding the phenomenon surrounding the ESL students and the possible solutions to help them adapt better. Also, the authors provide a clear design of their study early in the article by stating that their study would entail two ESL undergraduate students subjected to an assessment on the influence of their understanding on the actual practices of synthesis writing.
However, I disagree with the authors’ choice of the subjects. Zhao and Hirvela (2015), state that the subjects for the study would be two Chinese students. Selecting two subjects for a study is limiting and thus not sufficient to substantiate the results as a representation of the entire population of ESL students. It would have been more prudent to conduct the study with a larger sample of students. Additionally, the fact that the ESL students were specifically Chinese limits the use of the study to the Chinese students only based on the assumption that they are the fastest growing international students group in the world. Selecting Chinese students limits the use of the study in areas where the demographic representation is different. For instance, there are ESL students where the English language has had more or less influence in their native country compared to China. This would result in a different outcome in the assessment of how understanding influences synthesis writing.
The authors also failed in their literature review by considering articles as old as 35 years. Use of articles published in the 80’s tends to misguide the reader concerning the real situation on the ground. For instance, an old article will provide difficulties faced by ESL students that are no longer valid due to the solutions offered by technological advancements such as the Internet. For instance, the ESL students are more exposed to the Internet than they were 30 years ago. Such factors need to be clarified in the review of the literature. For instance, the authors quote Haas and Flower (1988) and Flower et al. (1990) who were interested in the way undergraduate students represented their source-based assignment tasks and their impacts in their reading to write performance. The outdated sources are unable to create a clear picture for a modern-day reader who understands the infinite availability of information sources and different interpretations on the Internet that could help overcome the previously encountered barriers to reading for writing performance.
The data collection method employed by the authors was appropriate since they employed the services of Ms. Perry who was not only speaking English as a native but also a holder of a master’s degree. Despite her inexperience in synthesis writing, Ms. Perry would offer the learning environment needed by the researcher to assess the reading-writing relationships as well as the learning and teaching of synthesis learning by ESL students. Moreover, Ms. Perry helps in analyzing the data collected from her students who were best known to her.
The analysis of data was also elaborate in that it involved the collection of draft synthesis papers for assessment, verbalizing of student thoughts, as well stimulated-recall interviews about the student’s writing process. The expectation was to create a sure way of assessing the influence of the students’ understanding on the writing of the synthesis papers. Finally, the authors present their findings in a few tables and a lot of prose text. More graphical representations of the study results such as graphs should have been used to help the reader better understand the findings as well as ease their interpretation.
Nevertheless, the authors can complete their study and conclude detailing that synthesizing is an essential tool for ESL students engaging in source texts as well as those involved in the interplay between writing and reading which is vital in English academic literacy.
Reference
Zhao, R., & Hirvela, A. (2015). Undergraduate ESL students’ engagement in academic reading and writing in learning to write a synthesis paper. Reading in a Foreign Language, 27(2), 219.