Using the Web as a Research Source: Implications for L2 Academic Writing

Using the Web as a Research Source: Implications for L2 Academic WritingAuthor(s): Paul StapletonSource: The Modern Language Journal, Vol. 89, No. 2 (Summer, 2005), pp. 177-189Published by: Wiley on behalf of the National Federation of Modern Language Teachers AssociationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3588679 .

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Using the Web as a Research Source: Implications for L2 Academic Writing PAUL STAPLETON Kita 17 Nishi 8 Institute of Language and Culture Studies Hokkaido University Kita-ku

Sapporo 060-0817

Japan Email: pzaulstapleton @gmail. corn

As scholars increasingly view the World Wide Web (the Web) as a legitimate research resource in academic writing, questions remain regarding how Web sources, as new media, influence the writing of second and foreign language (L2) learners. Via a 17-item questionnaire and an analysis of the references to 243 Web sources in the essays of 43Japanese undergraduate English as a foreign language writers, this study examined whether (a) Web-based research influenced the writers' topic choice; (b) their choice of Web sources was appropriate for an academic essay; and (c) using an online, electronic environment would lead writers to use new language- related strategies. The findings suggested a possible shift towards more internationally oriented topics as a result of the predominance of English language sites on the Web. In addition, a considerable portion of the participants' references came from Web genres of questionable suitability for an academic paper. In a similar vein, working in an electronic environment was an enticement for some L2 writers to take ethically dubious shortcuts in their writing.

THE IMPACT OF NEW TECHNOLOGY ON THE

writing of second and foreign language (L2) learners has received considerable attention in recent years. Whereas early research studies ex-

plored the effect that word processors had on the

writing process, more recent studies have focused on writing arising from previously unavailable

technologies, such as asynchronic email exchange (Greenfield, 2003; Sotillo, 2000), synchronous online text chat (Toyoda & Harrison, 2002; Tudini, 2003), and electronic portfolios (Pullman, 2002), in other words, types of writing and archiving that have been stimulated by the existence of the Internet. Another aspect of writing increasingly influenced by the Internet is the rapidly advanc-

ing availability of information on the Web.' The Web, with its largely unfettered receipt of new material (Web sites) and its various new tools, for example, search engines and online transla-

The Modern LanguageJournal, 89, ii, (2005) 0026-7902/05/177-189 $1.50/0 ?2005 The Modern Language Journal

tors, appears to provide, and even encourage, a

fundamentally different way of approaching the

researching and writing process as compared to traditional approaches.

A largely unregulated venue for dispersal of information, the Web offers any author/Web site builder the opportunity to reach a very wide audience with few content restrictions. This lack of

regulation means that, as a research source, the Web must be treated with considerable caution because it has not received the vetting and edit- ing that conventional sources found in libraries

historically have (Kirk, 2002). In addition, Web domains, such as .com, .org, .edu, and .gov, rep- resent differing genres with various underlying motivations ranging from the simple dispersal of information for the general good to the pro- motion of commercial and ideological agendas (Stapleton, 2003). With the growth of this new medium, L2 learners in particular may be predis- posed to take on issues and adopt positions that reflect the Web's greater accessibility and open- ness. In other words, the Web may be having pro- found effects on both what students choose to



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write about and the process by which they make such decisions, as well as the research and writing strategies they use in creating the final product.

Current statistics show that 68.4% of the Web's content is in English with the second most common language, Japanese, at 5.9%.2 This finding may mean that on the Web, L2 learners are in-

creasingly exposed to topics, texts, and ideolo-

gies in English that differ from those in their native language. However, as stated above, the Web serves a different function from that of conventional research sources which are filtered by editors, publishers, and librarians. The breadth and scope of information available on the Web, coupled with its open nature, suggest that learners may be exposed to a wider range of issues, as well as information undergoing less rigorous scrutiny, than they would encounter in conventional sources found in the library.

L2 LEARNERS AND USE OF THE WEB

Librarians began noting the need for a height- ened level of critical awareness early in the Web's existence, and now there are dozens of sites detail-

ing the skills required for critical Internet literacy (see Auer, 2002; and Humphries, 2002, for com-

prehensive lists). This awareness soon spread to the first language (LI) writing field as signaled by studies on Web- versus library-source usage patterns (Burton & Chadwick, 2000; Sorapure, Inglesby, & Yatchsin, 1998) and Web-genre evaluation (Sidler, 2002). In an English for Aca- demic Purposes (EAP)-centered, questionnaire- based study of 786 undergraduate and graduate students across 25 departments at a British univer-

sity, Slaouti (2002) highlighted the broad need for critical Internet literacy while also underscoring the specific importance of Web site evaluation. In the L2 field, Shetzer and Warschauer (2000) stressed the need for a more critical mindset when

using Web resources; however, few, if any empiri- cal studies have focused on how this new medium

may be affecting the issues that L2 learners choose to explore, the sources of information that they select, and other subtleties of electronic texts that

may be influencing L2 writers in their writing process. In a study ofJapanese undergraduate writers

(2003), I reported that although the participants had an informed awareness of the quality differ- ences between conventional and Web sources, the citations in their writing did not always reflect this awareness. These studies point to a need for further investigation of the effect that the Web may be having on undergraduate L2 academic writ-

ing. Effect, here, refers to three important aspects

The Modern LanguageJournal 89 (2005)

of L2 writing: (a) the topic that learners choose to write about, (b) the Web sources that learners choose to use, and (c) the language-related strategies that arise as a result of using Web-based sources and tools, as well as electronic text. Specif- ically, it appears that the Web, as a new medium, may be steering learners toward issues prominent in the United States, or more broadly, the West (when they have a choice). In addition, because Web sources are often motivated by commercial and ideological agendas, unlike the conventional sources of a library whose biases are evident to a much lesser degree, student researchers may be

arriving at these sources and adopting positions, or at least citing sources, that are less objectively grounded. Finally, writing and researching in an online, electronic environment allows students to search and research in their own language no matter where they are studying. Moreover, with the help of online translation sites, they can com-

pose in their own language and convert their

prose into English, while easily copying chunks of text found in Web sources. The present study addressed these three issues-topic choice, sources used, and Web-prompted language strategies- with a group of Japanese undergraduate English as a foreign language (EFL) students.

TOPIC CHOICES FOR L2 ACADEMIC WRITING

Before considering how the Web has affected the content of undergraduate student writing as-

signments, it is instructive to determine the genre and types of essay topics they now often select. Per- suasive writing, arguably the kind of prose most

frequently required from undergraduate univer-

sity students (cf. Reid, 2001), requires an issue for which there are at least two, and preferably a

range of, alternative positions. There are topics with various touchstone themes that repeatedly appear in persuasive writing textbooks because of the abundance of alternative views they offer. A study by Ramanathan and Kaplan (1996) of 10 first-year university L1 composition textbooks in the United States revealed the types of themes often discussed in undergraduate writing classes. An analysis of the topics listed in each of the 10 textbooks, revealed the themes in Table 1, listed from most to least frequent. To a certain extent, these themes may also reflect the

type of topic prompts for essay writing to which L2 writers are frequently exposed in the United States.

Although it is difficult to develop an inven- tory of touchstone topics that frequently serve as



TABLE 1 LI Themes and Topics in Textbooks for Undergraduates

Theme Topic

High Frequency Life and Death Capital punishment, euthanasia, abortion/right to life Gender Issues Women's rights, sexism, sexual harassment, gay and lesbian rights, pornography Civil Liberties Censorship, freedom of speech, civil disobedience Environment Nuclear arms, global warming, endangered species, animal rights, animal

experimentation Minority Issues Affirmative action, melting pot, prejudice, multiculturalism Right to Bear Arms Gun control

Low Frequency

Note. Classifications based on textbooks chosen by Ramanathan and Kaplan (1996).

prompts for L2 writing in international settings (i.e., outside the United States, or even in other Western countries), it is questionable whether the themes cited in Table 1 are well represented outside the West because many of these sorts of issues tend to elicit relatively little public discussion in non-Western contexts. For example, in Japan, which was the setting for the present study, although the environment and, more re-

cently, gender issues, have become topics of discussion in the public domain, the topics of gun control, affirmative action, censorship, and abortion receive relatively little attention in the media.3 Unlike the situation in the United States, during elections in Japan, a candidate's position vis-a-vis abortion rights is a non-issue. Given this

point and the recognition that learners perform better when they have greater prior information (Glaser, 1984) and knowledge about a topic (Brinton, Snow, & Wesche, 1989; Carrell, 1987), many of these popular U.S. topics are difficult for L2 writers. They prefer topics that are mainstream issues in their own locality because these local topics offer them an increased number and sophisti- cation of arguments (Stapleton, 2001). The lack of accessibility of sources further compounds the

difficulty of using mainstream American topics for L2 writers who are outside the United States (or, more broadly, the West). Until recently, without online materials, finding research resources cov-

ering these issues was difficult. However, with Web access, this situation may be changing.

The present study was an attempt to reveal whether the Web's pervasiveness plus its bias toward the English language have made issues previously difficult to research in EFL contexts both more accessible and more attractive as areas of discussion and debate in academic writing.

RELIABILITY OF WEB SOURCES AND L2 ACADEMIC WRITING

The use of Web sources for research appears to be still in its infancy, at least in L2 academic

writing circles. In an earlier paper (2003), I uncov- ered concerns about Web sources among students who claimed to rank paper-and-ink sources higher than electronic sources in terms of quality. How- ever, citation systems that include Web sources in- dicate their increased use and growing legitimacy. Such a shift from conventional to Web sources

points to the emergent need to distinguish between good and poor quality Web sources.

Among the assessment considerations mentioned in several sources (Barker, 2004; Branscomb, 1998; Cooke, 1999; Grassian, 2000; Hartman & Ackermann, 2001;Jarvis, 2001; Jones, 1996; Kirk, 2002; Pasch & Norsworthy, 2001; Smith, 2002; Tillman, 2000), the following are most frequently cited: (a) authorship (Who are the authors?); (b) authority/reputation of Web site creators (Are they trustworthy?); (c) audience/purpose (What agenda do the authors have?); (d) accuracy and objectivity of content (Are there elements of bias?); and (e) currency and transparency (How recent is the publication date? Are elements such as the date, authorship and sponsors clearly indicated?).

One way to derive answers to these questions is to examine a site's genre. Some of the more common site genres include commercial (often with a .com domain), government (often with a .gov or .go domain), interest group (often with a .org domain), education (often with a .edu or .ac domain), news, professional association, and personal. Via an examination of the genre, a Web site's legitimacy, objectivity, and overall reliability

179 Paul Stafpleton



180

as a source of information can be established to some extent, albeit far from entirely.

WRITING TOOLS AVAILABLE IN ELECTRONIC MEDIA

The availability of new electronic tools raises

questions within the academic writing community about what changes these tools will bring to L2 writing pedagogy. Quickly advancing information

technology has resulted in new possibilities not available to language learners as little as 5 years ago. One such advance is online machine translation. Although machine translation technology began in the 1950s, progress was slow (Slocum, 1988); recently, however, many free translators with improved accuracy have become available on the Web. This technology allows users to choose their base and target languages and simply enter text into a window and click for the target language translation. Sites such as AltaVista's Babel Fish (http://babelfish.altavista.com/), although still challenged by complex sentences and idiomatic language, can often generate a

comprehensible translation at no cost to the user. This new technology represents just one of several enticing shortcuts to L2 writers and has prompted some observers to suggest that the

viability of L2 teaching as a profession may be

challenged in the future (Cribb, 2001; Crystal, 1997). Although such an observation may be an extreme prognosis, it reflects a growing awareness of the potential effects that technology may have on the language teaching profession, and on L2

writing pedagogy specifically. The Web, coupled with word processing soft-

ware, also offers tempting opportunities to "lift" text from a Web site and claim it as one's own

(DeVoss & Rosati, 2002). Plagiarism has long been a problem for university instructors, and the ease with which students can find text on the Web, copy it, and claim it as their own has made the problem even more pervasive.4

Other aspects related to working in an electronic environment that do not involve cheating or deception concern whether the search engines and Web sources that students use are in their LI or L2. Popular search engines now offer services in many languages that produce results in accordance with the language of the keywords that users enter. For teachers of academic writ-

ing for L2 learners, the question of whether to demand that all references be in the target lan-

guage becomes an ethical matter because, on the one hand, the deliberate exclusion of non-English

The Modern Language Journal 89 (2005)

sources discourages the inclusion of potentially valuable research information that may exist in other languages. On the other hand, if students were to perform Web research exclusively in their native language, some of the benefits of EAP- oriented learning would disappear. Thus, these nuanced questions about language study that have arisen with the arrival of new technologies beg for

deeper exploration.

METHOD OF THE PRESENT STUDY

The present study had two primary features: (a) an attitude questionnaire consisting of 17 items on Internet usage for academic writing (Ta- ble 2) issued to 43 EFL students, and (b) an assessment of essays received from the same 43 participants, which entailed the compilation and classi- fication of all Web references used, and the identification of the writing topic chosen for each es-

say. In addition, 6 selectively chosen5 participants were interviewed for the purposes of triangulating the questionnaire and documentary data. Their comments served only as a means to corroborate and illustrate findings pertaining to the questionnaire and their essays.

Participants

The participants were studying at a large national university in Japan generally regarded as

being within the top quartile in overall quality. The 43 second-year students came in roughly equal numbers from four faculties: medicine, den-

tistry, law, and education. Their average age was 21 years and 2 months, and the group had a 3 to 2 male-female ratio. All participants had studied English for 6 years in junior and senior

high school, and some participants had studied extra years in preparatory school. Apart from 3 students who had spent 8 years, 1 year, and 6 months, respectively, in English-speaking countries, the students had spent no appreciable time in an English-speaking environment. Out of all

participants, 18 provided Test of English as a For-

eign Language (TOEFL) scores, which ranged from 430 to 587 (paper test) and averaged 499 (SD = 43). This rather low average score may not reflect the actual writing ability of the participants,6 however, becauseJapanese high school

English education focuses more on reading and translation, in preparation for university entrance exams, than on some of the skills assessed on the TOEFL, notably listening.



TABLE 2 Mean Scores, Standard Deviations, and t Test Results for Questionnaire (N = 43)

Item Question M SD t

1 I chose my topic because I have a personal interest in the subject. 2.07 0.87 .00 2 I chose my topic because there were many Web sites discussing it so 2.93 1.29 .00

information was easy to find. 3 Writing this report was inconvenient because I could not use the library or 3.42 1.22 .03

other non-Web sources. 4 I would not have used the library or other non-Web sources, even if I was 3.67 1.29 .00

allowed to. 5 I found my sources by using a keyword search with a search engine, such as 1.44 0.97 .00

Google. 6 Before starting, I had no strong opinion about or interest in my topic. 3.58 1.21 .00 7 If I couldn't use the Web, I would probably have chosen a different topic. 3.19 1.19 .31 8 When I first arrived at a Web site, I seldom had any idea about the biases of 3.09 1.10 .58

the site creators. 9 I seldom checked who the Web site creator was in order to choose sites that 3.47 1.15 .01

were unbiased and objective 10 I looked closely at the Web genre, e.g., newspaper, non-governmental 2.28 1.00 .00

organization, university, personal Web site, etc., to make sure the source was reliable/credible.

11 Some of the Web sites I arrived at were obviously biased. 2.44, 1.30 .00 12 It was quite easy to detect the biases of the Web site creators. 3.40 1.20 .03 13 My keyword searches were always in English. 3.53 1.19 .00 14 It was easier for me to find information atJapanese Web sites than at English 1.56 1.11 .00

Web sites. 15 The Web sites I used for my research were in: Japanese = 1/English = 5. 3.12 1.17 .51 16 I wrote some of the sentences in my report in Japanese first and then used an 3.58 1.42 .00

online Japanese-English translation Web site to translate it into English. 17 Some of the sentences that I included in my report were copied exactly from a 3.65 1.33 .00

Web site but I did not use quotation marks and references to show this.

Note. 1 = strongly agree; 5 = strongly disagree. p < .01.

Context and Design

All of the students were attending a credit- bearing class called English Writing, which they had self-selected from among classes on each of the four language skills. The author taught the course, which focused on writing argumentation- style essays, Internet research skills, and critical thinking. The course ran for 15 weeks and took place in a computer lab. All students were familiar with computers, word processing software, and the Internet, as a result of a course they had taken in their first year at the university.

During the semester, the students were assigned several short essays that related to issues of perceived local interest toJapanese EFL students, for example, whale hunting, import restrictions on rice in Japan, and low TOEFL scores. They also received instruction in critiquing essays with falla- cious reasoning. Lessons dealing with the critical evaluation of Web sites, with a special focus on the detection of bias, were also part of the course.

As a final assignment, the students were asked to select a controversial topic and write an essay of 700 to 1,000 words. The essays were supposed to be persuasive in nature and had to include a minimum number of citations from at least five different sources. The students could use only Web sources and had to identify the Web genre for each of their references. The instructor first had to approve the topic to ensure that it was suf- ficiently controversial to allow a position to be taken. Aside from this restriction, the students were completely free to choose their topics. It is important to note that the students' topics were not restricted to issues that would force them to use English-only Web sites. This lack of restriction had consequences: Several students' references were exclusively in Japanese, which is a situation that EAP courses may wish to avoid.

The participants completed the questionnaire anonymously on the final day of class, 1 day after the deadline for the submission of their final assignment. The timing coincided with a period

Paul Stapleton 181



182

when their researching and writing choices were freshest in their minds. The 17-item questionnaire consisted mostly of statements of an attitudinal nature with accompanying scales in the Likert for- mat. Items clustered in three categories: (a) how the students chose their topics; (b) their attitudes towards Web sources as research material, with a focus on objectivity issues; and (c) how the students worked in an electronic/online research environment. All 17 questionnaire items are listed in Table 2. Some items in the questionnaire may appear to be redundant; however, the repetitive items provided a means to check the reliability of the student responses.

In the essay-assessment phase, I assessed each of the 43 essays and accompanying 243 Web sources for topic choice and Web genre, among other criteria. I then determined the topic choice of each

essay after an initial reading and assessment of the main arguments. In addition, I visited each Web reference and assessed it for its genre via an examination of its domain name, content, and its self-definition (often as stated on the "About us" or the "Mission Statement" pages).7 When these

procedures still did not provide a clear indication of the genre, I made further searches within the site, such as visiting other internal links and subdomains. I also noted the language and country of origin of each Web site; to determine the latter, a look at the URL or homepage was usually sufficient, but in some cases further investigation of internal links and different subdomains was

necessary. In order to assess how an online, electronic

environment, with its associated search engines, translators, and ease of copying text, influenced the participants' writing, I noted specific areas of linguistic inconsistency while reading through each essay. These areas included instances of un-

expectedly native-like prose, and unusual usage characteristic of translation software.

RESULTS

Reliability of the Questionnaire

Useful questionnaires require high reliability. Some participants may not necessarily answer

honestly, or even earnestly. Indeed, in any group of respondents, there is always a chance that some may not even read the questions. Fortu-

nately, there are indications from the results of the present study (see Table 2 for questionnaire results) that the participants read each item care-

fully and responded in a manner that showed a

high degree of internal consistency. One indica-


tor is the mean scores for reversely worded items. If the means are roughly equidistant on either side of the neutral response, 3, where 1 is strongly agree and 5 is strongly disagree, then it becomes more convincing to believe that respondents are

reading items and understanding equivalent ones in the same way regardless of wording. Two such

paired items, Questions 1 and 6 (M = 2.07 and 3.58, respectively), and 9 and 10 (M = 3.47 and 2.28, respectively), although not worded exactly in reverse, provided evidence that the respondents were replying in a reliable manner. The co- efficient (Pearson product-moment) for the first

pair, -0.48, indicated a significant correlation (at p < .01), as did the index (-0.93) for the second pair.

Another concern was the possibility that the

responses would be tainted by the course content. Given that the questionnaire specifically addressed concepts covered in the course, the participants could have replied to questionnaire items

(specifically Items 3, 4, 9, 10, 11, 16, and 17) in a manner that accorded with what they perceived to be the "correct" answers. Mitigating this concern was the anonymous nature of the questionnaire. The students had nothing to gain by responding in such a manner. In addition, some surprisingly frank interview responses (see Discussion) indicated a willingness to answer candidly.

In the following description of the questionnaire results, it is important to note the extent to which the mean scores from the 43 respondents varied from a theoretically neutral response of 3.00, which is halfway between strongly agree and

strongly disagree. The level of confidence was set at .01. A Student's t test was used. The results fell into three categories: (a) choice of topic, (b) re-

liability of Web sources, and (c) use of support tools when writing a L2 English language essay in an exclusively electronic environment. Of the 17 statistical tests, 12 proved to be significant at the

relatively conservative level of confidence chosen for this study, which makes it doubtful that the

findings are attributable to chance even when in-

dependent tests were used (see Table 2).

Choice of Topic

The respondents displayed a significant ten-

dency to choose a topic based on personal interest (Item 1; M = 2.07), corroborated by the data for the reversely worded Item 6 (M = 3.58), while expressing ambivalence (M = 2.93) toward the suggestion (Item 2) that the ease of locat-

ing Web sources influenced their choice of topic. Likewise, they showed ambivalence toward the



Paul Stapleton

FIGURE 1 Topics Chosen by Students for Their Essays (N= 43)

0 5 10 15

Life and Death

Other

Environment

Education

Gender

Civil Liberties

I ENumber of Instances of a Chosen Issue I

suggestion that using the Web influenced their choice of topic (Item 7; M = 3.19). The respondents also exhibited a tendency (M = 3.42) to

disagree with the statement that writing the es-

says was inconvenient because they could not use the library for source materials (Item 3), but this tendency was not statistically significant. However, they disagreed significantly (M = 3.67) with the idea that they would not have used the library if they had been permitted to do so (Item 4). It is

interesting to note that the standard deviation for this item was higher than for most of the others, indicating large individual variability in the re-

sponses. The strongest viewpoint (M = 1.44) among all 17 items was the response to the statement regarding how sources were found (Item 5). From the data, it appears that keyword searches

using a search engine were the preferred method, if not the only method, used to find sources.

In the essay-assessment phase, findings revealed that the students chose a total of 21 separate topics, 60% of which fell within the broad themes ap- pearing in Table 1 and based on Ramanathan and

Kaplan's study (1996). Prominent among these

topics were those related to life and death (Fig- ure 1). One-third of the students wrote about topics in this area including: euthanasia (5), human

cloning (3), capital punishment (2), surrogate mothers (2), and abortion (2). The second most

commonly chosen topics that fit within the earlier noted themes concerned environmental matters. Of the students, 19% wrote about these topics, including nuclear power (4), vegetarianism (3), and animal testing (1). A third theme was gender issues, and 5% of the students addressed topics

in this area, including sexual discrimination (1) and gay marriage (1). Finally, 2 students, or 5%, wrote about informed consent in medical decisions, which falls under the broad theme of "civil liberties." The remainder (roughly 40%) of the broad themes chosen can be categorized as fol- lows: current social issues, educational issues, and international issues.

Reliability of Web Sources

Items 8 to 12 were designed to illuminate the students' perceptions regarding the objectivity of their Web sources. The respondents had a strong collective belief in the rigor they applied to their own research process. For example, for items 9 (M = 3.47 reversely worded) and 10 (M = 2.28), the respondents expressed significant agreement with the view that they had evaluated the Web sites for objectivity and genre. However, they showed no collectively strong feelings regarding their im- pressions of a Web site's bias upon first visiting it (Item 8; M= 3.09). The participants believed that some of the Web sites they visited were obviously biased (Item 11; M = 2.44), but they tended to disagree with the notion that this bias was easy to detect (Item 12; M = 3.40). In the latter case, however, the result was not statistically significant.

When the Web citations from the essays were assessed, the genre of each Web site was usually obvious from a simple glance at the URL and the content. Occasionally, however, distinguishing among genres, such as among interest groups, professional associations, and personal Web sites, or between a journal and an e-zine (online

183



FIGURE 2 Web Sites Used by Genre (N = 243)

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70

Government

News

Interest Group

Company

Academic

Personal

Professional

I Number of Citations by Web Genre I

magazine) was difficult. In addition, referenced sites sometimes consisted of an article reprinted from another source.

A system of categorization was developed dur-

ing the process of determining the genres of the 243 sites and is shown in Figure 2 which also shows a breakdown of the different genres and the number of visits. Government Web sites had the high- est frequency of visits followed in order by news sites, interest groups, companies, academic, personal, and professional sites. It is important to note also that although the 243 Web sites were reviewed within 2 weeks of the essays' due date, at the time the essays were analyzed, 7 of these Web sites were already inaccessible via conventional means.8

Language-Related Strategies in an Online Electronic Environment

In the final section of the questionnaire, the students reported on their use of writing tools available in an online electronic environment. It is perhaps not surprising that they showed a preference for performing keyword searches in their native

language, Japanese (Item 13; M = 3.53 reversely worded). An even stronger tendency for research-

ing in the native language surfaced in responses to Item 14 (M = 1.56) in which the participants reported a distinct preference for information in their own language, a finding that they corroborated in later interviews. By contrast, a review of the 243 Web sites, the collective total visited by

the 43 students, revealed that 53% of the citations in the essays were for English language Web sites as compared with 47% for Japanese Web sites. For Item 15, concerning the language of the Web sites visited (where 1 corresponded to English and 5 corresponded toJapanese), the mean (3.12) was consistent with the almost 50-50 split revealed by the review of all the sites (which further supported the questionnaire's reliability). It is interesting that a further review of the country of origin of each of the Web sites in the study showed that students visited many bilingual (Japanese-English) sites created by Japanese Web authors. In addition, among the 130 English language sites visited, roughly half originated in the United States, and the remainder were divided among 13 other countries.

The final two items probed pragmatic areas of

creating text in an electronic environment. Item 16 related to whether the participants used online translation software to convert their written text from Japanese to English. Although the negative response to this item was statistically significant (M = 3.58), the high standard deviation suggested that a small group of respondents relied on this technology. Follow-up interviews confirmed that weaker students in the group (established via

grades awarded in the class) used translators not

only for vocabulary help, but also for translating sections of text.

Responses to the final item aimed to reveal the extent to which the students plagiarized from Web sites in light of the enticing ease with which

184 The Modern Language Journal 89 (2005)



Paul Stapleton

electronic media make this borrowing possible. Again, as with Item 16, Item 17 revealed that most students reported that they did not copy from the Web sites (M = 3.65). However, a detailed check turned up some plagiarized text. More- over, a relatively high standard deviation figure suggested that a few students did succumb to the

temptation.

DISCUSSION

In this section, the results from the questionnaire, the data derived from the participants' references, as well as other aspects that arose during the analysis of the students' essays, will be discussed in relation to the three central research issues.

Choice of Topic

Academic writing courses often do not allow students to select their own topics as the present study did. Nevertheless, it is instructive to note the attitudes and selection behavior of the participants in this study. It is not surprising that the participants tended to choose topics on the basis of their personal interests, a tendency that was confirmed by a cross-check of topics against the faculty in which each student was enrolled. A

preference for medical issues (informed consent, abortion, euthanasia) was evident among medical and dental students, whereas education majors leaned toward pedagogical issues. However, the extent to which these topics mirror those in writ-

ing courses at American universities is also note-

worthy, especially in light of the fact that all of the

writing topics for class assignments prior to the final assignment focused on local issues. Indeed, fully 60% of the topics fell into broad categories familiar to American students, which suggests that the Web may be providing international students access to issues to which they previously had less

exposure, or less opportunity to research. In this sense, the Web may be serving as a determinant of students' interests. This possible shift points to a

potential need for writing instructors in EFL contexts to be aware that the Web allows and even

encourages students to explore a wide range of issues.

In addition, there is evidence that keyword searches led the participants to the English language Web sites that they cited in their papers. Furthermore, the stated preferences of the participants in this study revealed both a familiarity with and a preference for Web-based research, which, again, may have influenced both the topics that the students selected and perhaps their

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opinions on them. Despite having the freedom to use sites in their native language, and despite their clearly stated preference for usingJapanese Web sites, the participants still cited more English language sites (130) thanJapanese language sites (113). Such a finding may be indicative of the

overwhelming dominance of English on the Web. However, there were strong indications that the

topic choice largely determined the language of the Web source because internationally oriented

topics were generally in English and local issues were presented in Japanese.

As mentioned earlier, these findings raise a new issue in EAP. Students now have ready access to sources of information in their own lan-

guages. In English as a second language contexts where conventional sources are largely available only in English, students can do research in their native language via the Web, which

poses a dilemma for teachers of EAP courses. Should students be allowed to search the Web for the most pertinent information, regardless of the language in which it appears? Or should citations be made only to sources in English? In the former case, students are being encour-

aged to hone their research skills to the possible detriment of improving their English, whereas in the latter instance, in some cases, potentially good sources of information existing in the student's native language are made unavailable. In EFL contexts in which conventional sources are

mostly in the students' native language, it may be advantageous for teachers of academic writ-

ing to encourage their students to use the Web as

part of an English-language enhancement strat-

egy that takes advantage of the prevalence of

English-language Web sites. Regardless of the decisions that teachers of L2 academic writing make with respect to Web referencing requirements, an understanding of the potential language- associated repercussions discussed here appears to be essential.

Selecting and Citing Web Sources

The responses to the questionnaire revealed that although the participants, as a whole, would have liked to use the library, they did not appear to feel overly inconvenienced by being pre- vented from using conventional sources for their research. This finding accords with that of another study (Burton & Chadwick, 2000) in a LI context conducted in the United States which indicated that ease in locating and using a research source were more important determinants than whether the source was housed in a library or



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on the Web. However, the participants in a similar questionnaire-based study in the United King- dom (Slaouti, 2002) claimed uncertainty about whether citations to Web sites have equivalent sta- tus to conventional references. Such diversity of attitudes may be signaling a period of transition

regarding perceptions about the reliability of electronic sources in academic research.

The possible shift toward a greater acceptance of Web sources suggested by this study, while not

unexpected in view of the growth of the Web as a source of general information, raises new

questions about the quality of these sources (see Barker, 2004; Kirk, 2002, for excellent advice on

evaluating Web sources). Specifically, this growing acceptance of Web sites as research sources comes at a time when some concern is being expressed about the legitimacy of certain Web genres (Sidler, 2002; Sorapure et al., 1998; Stapleton, 2003).

Related to this point is the striking variety of

genres and sources that the participants were able to access via the Web. Although the extensive reach of the Web has become widely appreciated and perhaps taken for granted, the results of the

present study highlight the extent to which the Internet has made vast quantities of information available. The fact that students used 15 source countries, plus seven different genres, indicates that doing research for academic writing has become much more complex and raises concerns about the degree to which students are aware of the sophisticated agendas of persuasion found in Web sites more often than in conventional sources of information.9 Although many of these concerns are similar to those that exist when one uses conventional means of research-that is, the need to seek out primary sources and identify and avoid unreliable sources (Hairston & Ruszkiewicz, 1996)-the plethora of new information on the Web, coupled with the nuances of Web-based research suggests that the Web represents a new era which requires fresh initiatives to help student writers better understand the concerns about the

reliability of the sources they use for academic

writing (Jarvis, 2001). Highlighting this concern was the participants'

misidentification of a considerable number of Web site genres, despite specific instruction in

genre identification. Confusing a government Web site for an academic site, a common mis- take among the participants, may not appear to be

problematic in terms of the level of objectivity and

quality, given that one might assume similar levels of rigor and integrity of the material contained in sites of both these genres. More worrisome was the participants' frequent misidentification of


Web site genres with nonparallel levels of rigor and objectivity; for example, they often identified electronic magazines asjournals and personal Web pages as university sites. These two examples illustrate the difficulties learners may have in de-

termining the extent to which a Web site provides information that is acceptable in an academic paper. Indeed, distinguishing between an e-zine and an online refereedjournal can sometimes be time-

consuming because it requires the researcher to find and read a site's mission statement and search for key indicators, such as an editorial board. Like- wise, personal pages posted under the .ac or .edu domain can easily be misconstrued as rigorous, refereed, academic research, when, in fact, they are simply unrefereed and unedited pages posted by individuals using a university's Web space. Fur- ther compounding the situation are Web sites that are intentionally misleading or erroneous (Mintz, 2002).

Figure 2 lists seven Web genres that the participants used in their citations. The information found at four of these genres, government, news, academic, and professional association/journal sites, can generally be trusted to be as reliable as that found in conventional sources. However the information found at the other genres of Web sites, company, interest group, and personal, may not have the same rigor or objectivity due to the commercial motives or ideological agendas that such genres encompass. These latter three genres comprised 38% of the 243 references in the

present study. Although references are highly con- textual and, for example, can serve as an exemplar of an undesirable model of a given phenomenon, in the present study, none of the references to

companies, interest groups, and personal Web sites were used as exemplars. In other words, these sites provided factual or opinion-oriented information that the participants used to support ar-

guments in their essays. Although not all sites in these three Web genres were advocacy-oriented or

ideologically driven, a considerable number were, which is a cause for concern, because they consti- tuted such a large proportion (38%) of the total number of sources referenced in the participants' essays.

Interestingly, and similar to what I reported in an earlier study (2003), despite the participants' collective tendency to believe that they had evaluated the Web sites for objectivity and bias, they still included citations to Web sources whose agendas and quality were questionable. Given that Web research skills had been emphasized during the

semester-long course, it is likely that the participants would have been even more cavalier in



Paul Stapleton

their choice of Web sources had these skills not been highlighted. This mismatch between stated and actual behavior received partial confirma- tion in follow-up interviews, which revealed that some students used the information from Web sources as long as it agreed with the thrust of their arguments, without regard to the site's genre or perceived quality. Although this substandard

approach to research is not unknown among un-

dergraduate writers, the Web makes such an in-

judicious way of gathering and supporting ideas

considerably easier and more attractive to students than conventional sources do. Specifically, rather than read from a variety of sources as part of the knowledge-gaining and opinion-forming process, Web users develop a much enhanced ability to type keywords into a search engine and arrive at sites that accord with their own beliefs on a topic, whether these sources are credible or not. This

finding, similar to that of a study by Burton and Chadwick (2000), suggests that teachers of academic writing (and this suggestion could apply to L1 just as it does to L2 students) may need to in- troduce the notion of Web genres and stress that not all types are suitable for citation in academic

writing. Other subtle problems related to using Web-

sourced materials appeared during the assessment of the 243 sites. Perhaps the most important was the need to take the participant author's context into account for each particular citation.

Specifically, whereas a citation to a certain Web source may be appropriate in one case, the same source may be inappropriate in another. For example, statistics found in a news source would generally be considered acceptable in an academic paper; however, opinion-oriented information from the same news source may not be appropriate. Ag;ain, students need to be encouraged to select carefully among sources according to their reliability and appropriateness.

Another important aspect of Web-sourcing concerns the duplication of information (Barker, 2004). In the course of reviewing the 243 Web sites, it became apparent to me that several sites were actually reprints, in other words, fully- acknowledged duplicates of material existing else- where on the Web. The student references, however, were to the secondary, rather than to the primary sources. For example, they cited commercial sites that had archived stories from news Web sites, or they listed academic sites that had reproduced journal articles. Although referencing rules exist for cited articles that are reproduced on the Web, the participants in this study failed to follow these rules, and may not have even realized that their

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sources were reprints. Peculiarities such as this one may appear to be trivial compared to issues such as plagiarism, but the failure to recognize and cite reprinted Web sources appropriately reflects poorly on the overall written product.

Researching and Writing in an Electronic Medium

As stated earlier, the participants in this study claimed to prefer working (keyword searching, visiting Web sites, etc.) in their LI, even though over half of their Web references were to English- language sites. This preference dovetails with in- creasing opportunities to manipulate text elec- tronically by using online tools, such as translators, and copy-and-paste functions.10 Online machine translation has continued to prove in- capable of consistently producing adequate trans- lations, but the quality appears to have reached a stage where some strings of words can be trans- lated accurately. Interviews with 6 of the participants who had a range of ability (as indicated by their grades in the course) revealed that these sites are attractive to most students, although the stronger students tended to use them only for translation of individual words, whereas the weaker students tended to use the sites to translate strings of words. Likewise, the ease with which text can be copied and pasted from a Web source to a student's essay resulted in several plagiarized sections in a number of essays. Indeed, in rather

surprising confessions during the interviews, 2 weaker students admitted to plagiarizing.

These two rather new conveniences are especially attractive to L2 writers, and although plagiarism has long been a concern for teachers of LI students, the new electronic possibilities available online renew the need for teachers to stress the unethical and damaging nature of translators and electronic "lifting."

CONCLUSION

As the Web continues to grow as an alternative, if not primary, research source, issues will increase concerning its reliability, as well as its ca- pacity to influence the writing of L2 learners in both positive and negative ways. This study points to the need to alert learners to the pervasiveness of ideological agendas on the Web and the ensu- ing concerns about the reliability of information at certain Web genres. The findings have also suggested that the increased use of Web sources for academic writing may be leading L2 learners toward an interest in discussing and writing about issues that are controversial in Western countries.



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In turn, these Web sources may also influence students' opinions in these areas and the language in which they choose to pursue their sources. Fur- ther research in this largely untouched area may establish more clearly the direction of this influence. Finally, working in an electronic environment has brought new tools that both enhance the writing process and entice student writers to use them in less than ethical ways. Awareness of the possibilities and pitfalls of this environment by both teachers and learners can lead to

an improved written product that is not ethically

compromised. The current concern about the quality and eval-

uation of sources, as well as the ethical issues, may diminish as conventions and tools of Web usage become mainstream. Already, standardized link terms such as "About us (me)," "Mission State-

ment," and "Last updated," have become uniform for many Web sources and serve a function similar to the title page of a book, which further regular- izes the new medium. In this era of transition, the

present study draws attention to new issues in elec-

tronic literacy and the consequent pedagogical

implications for L2 learners in their researching and composing processes.

NOTES

1 For the purposes of this article, the Web is assumed to be the "surface" Web, in other words, the Web that is accessible by all those with access to the Internet. Other layers of the Web, which include pay sites and sites that require passwords or special memberships are not included in the present study's use of the term Web.

2 Percentage of people online by language (2004 esti-

mate; 940 million users): English 35.2%, Chinese 11.9%,

Japanese 10.3%, Spanish 8.1%, German, 6.5%. Source:

http://global-reach.biz/globstats/refs.php3#overlap (Retrieved: September 15, 2003).

3 I include two pieces of evidence here to support this assertion. (a) According to one source (http://web. guncite.com/gun-control gcgvinco.html), the firearm homicide rate in Japan is less than 1% of that of the United States which strongly suggests that the issue of

gun control inJapan receives less attention than in the United States; (b) when the word abortion was entered as a keyword in the search engines of both the Japan Times and the New York Times, archived articles including this word appeared 17 times more frequently in the Amer- ican newspaper. In addition, many of the archived stories in theJapanese newspaper referred to non-Japanese contexts.

4 Search engines, such as Google, can be used to enter

strings of words (in the keyword window) suspected of

being lifted from other sources. Search engines can find matches to these strings exposing plagiarism. Services


such as turnitin.com (not used in this study) offer a more sophisticated checking on a fee basis.

5 The 6 students included 2 who had received top grades in the course, 2 with midrange grades, and 2 who had received the lowest grades (among those who

passed). Each participantwas asked to elaborate on each of the 17 questions in the survey (Table 2) and their

responses were noted. The interview was conducted in

English for the students who received higher grades and in Japanese for those with lower grades.

6 Students were not asked to provide a breakdown of their scores according to skill area.

7 Government Web sites encompassed sites produced by any government or quasi-governmental agency re-

gardless of country or level, whether international (e.g., the United Nations), national, or local. News sites included newspapers, online magazines, Internet provider news, online data sources, such as encyclopedias, and libraries offered by Internet providers. Interest groups included any nongovernmental organization whether the site was motivated by advocacy, charity, or information

dispersal for the public good, or any mixture of the three. Companies were defined as any site whose primary reason for existence was commercial. Academic sites included any institution of education. Personal sites were those that appeared to be created by individuals. Profes- sional associations and journals were organizations with

expertise in a given area. 8 It is possible to access sites that have disappeared

via a backdated search using web.waybackmachine.org Such searches, however, were deemed unconventional in this study.

9 Although this study identified seven genres, a case could be made for several more, even within the con- fines of the same 243 Web sites surveyed. For example, interest groups could arguably be subdivided into different genres, such as, advocacy interest groups, information dispersal interest groups, and so forth.

10 This discussion does not refer to the purchasing of academic papers via the Internet, a sore point among teachers of undergraduates. Essays of this nature found on the Web are generally written to a native-speaker standard. The participants in this study, as L2 writers with an average TOEFL score of about 500, did not

possess a strong enough writing ability to be able to pass off such essays as their own.

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Using the Web as a Research Source: Implications for L2 Academic Writing

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