Assessing Writing 8 (2002) 31–46

Learner perspectives of success in an EAP

writing course
Helen Basturkmen∗ , Marilyn Lewis
Department of Applied Language Studies and Linguistics, The University of Auckland,
Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand

Abstract

In teaching academic writing to learners of English as a second language, success is

generally understood to be a measure of the extent to which students have achieved course
objectives and learned what was taught. Success is usually evaluated in terms of external and
objective measures, such as grades. There is, however, a need to focus more on subjective
understandings and to try to understand how students assess their own success, not least
because students’ understandings may be at odds with those of their teachers. The article
reports an exploratory case study examining notions of success in an English for Academic
Purposes (EAP) writing course from the perspectives of three non-native students and their
teachers. The study was set in the framework of ‘socio-cultural theory of second language
learning’ (Lantolf, 2000) and aimed to investigate how the individual learners constructed
activities and their own success in the course. Email dialogues were used to elicit the
learners’ perceptions of what constitutes success and the reasons for it. The dialogues shed
light on the highly individual nature of the learners’ perspectives. It is argued that dialogue
with learners can offer valuable insights otherwise unavailable to teachers. These insights
can provide a basis for discussion between teachers and students about how writing is
assessed, and can help teachers provide feedback to students on aspects of writing that
concern them.
© 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Inc.

Keywords: Academic writing; Socio-cultural theory; Learner perspectives; Second language

∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +64-9-373-7599x7809; fax: +64-9-308-2360.

E-mail addresses: h.basturkmen@auckland.ac.nz (H. Basturkmen), mn.lewis@auckland.ac.nz
(M. Lewis).

1075-2935/02/$ – see front matter © 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Inc.

PII: S 1 0 7 5 - 2 9 3 5 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 0 3 2 - 6
32 H. Basturkmen, M. Lewis / Assessing Writing 8 (2002) 31–46

1. Introduction

Generally, research into the assessment of second-language learning has

focused on teacher and outsider views of success. Ferris (2001) investigated the
academic writing of non-native writers and looked at what kinds of teacher com-
ments on students’ work lead to ‘effective’ revisions. Hamp-Lyons and Zhang
(2001) examined how Chinese and English first language background university
EAP teachers assessed differently the rhetorical patterns in Chinese students’ writ-
ing of an essay assignment in English. In English for specific purposes, assessment
may make use of ‘indigenous criteria,’ that is, criteria used by subject specialists
themselves to evaluate the communicative abilities of novices in academic and
vocational fields (Douglas, 2000). Elder (1993) reports on research showing that
subject specialists may assess success more in terms of communicative achieve-
ment than quality of language.
There is growing recognition of the need to understand English as a sec-
ond language learners’ perspectives of their own language learning experiences
(Barkhuizen, 1998; Kumaravadivelu, 1991). Leki (2001) reviews studies in L2
writing research and finds relatively limited interest in trying to understand learner
perspectives. Leki (2001, p. 18) states, “I was struck by the fact that so many of
these studies talked about the students but never gave any evidence that the re-
searchers spent any time talking to the students, never asked them one on one what
all this (whatever feature of L2 writing was under study) meant to them.”
There is also growing recognition that the perceptions of teachers and their stu-
dents may vary. For example, Block (1994, 1996) reports that teachers and students
operate according to quite different systems for describing and assigning purposes
to classroom tasks. Barkhuizen (1998) in a study of high school ESL students and
teachers in South Africa found that teachers were surprised that their students’ per-
ceptions of classroom activities did not match their own. In a study investigating
student and teacher perceptions of task outcomes, Lewis and Basturkmen (2000)
found limited correspondence between students’ and their teachers’ interpretations
of the tasks used in the study. A study investigating the views of students and their
teachers of the most useful language learning strategies in a university in Hong
Kong (Peacock, 2001) also found little match between the ideas of the students
and their teachers.
In regard to teaching, recent research has focused on teachers’ ‘personal
theories,’ that is, subjective understandings that motivate their thoughts and prac-
tice (e.g., Borg, 1999; Golombek, 1998). Grotjahn (1991, p. 188) used the term
teachers’ subjective theories defining these as “complex cognitive structures that
are highly individual, relatively stable, and relatively enduring, and that fulfill
the task of explaining and predicting such human phenomena as action, reaction,
thinking, emotion, and perception.” Woods (1996) investigated the relationship be-
tween teachers’ beliefs and practice and found that teachers ‘interpret’ a teaching
situation in the light of their beliefs about what learning and teaching a second lan-
guage consists of. In a case study of teachers, Burns (1996, p. 154) concluded that
 H. Basturkmen, M. Lewis / Assessing Writing 8 (2002) 31–46 33

“the thinking and beliefs teachers hold are fundamental in motivating classroom
interactions.” If these links are true for teachers, how do learners’ beliefs (e.g.,
criteria for success) affect their decision-making and practice within and beyond
the classroom?

2. Activity theory

In recent years, a number of second language learning researchers and thinkers

have given impetus to the socio-cultural theory of learning proposed by Vygot-
sky (see Lantolf, 2000), which focuses on individual learners and their intentions
(Roebuck, 2000). One important socio-cultural concept is activity theory. This the-
ory holds that the properties of any activity are determined by the socio-historical
setting and by the goals and socio-cultural history of the participants (Leontiev,
1981). Activity theory sees individual learners as constructing learning activities
in unique ways. Activities are differentiated one from another not by their con-
crete realizations as action but by their objects and motives (Roebuck, 2000). Two
individuals may set about the same ‘task’ and engage in the same activities as
seen from the outside. However, if the motives and goals of individuals for doing
the task and carrying out the action differ, then the activity means different things
to them and different things will be learnt. That is, they will not be engaged in
the same ‘activities’ because the motives and goals underlying their behaviour are
different (Platt and Brookes, 1994; Roebuck, 2000). This relationship between the
objectives of the individual and actions is explained by Donato and McCormick
(1994, p. 455) as follows:

An object, in the sense of a goal, is held by the student and motivates his or her
activity, giving it a specific direction [. . . ]. To achieve the objective, actions are
taken by the student, and these actions are always goal-directed [. . . ]. Different
actions or strategies may be taken to achieve the same goal, such as guessing
meaning from context, reading foreign language newspapers, or using a bilingual
dictionary to improve reading comprehension.

According to this view, learners, through their individual orientations, shape the
ultimate outcomes of tasks set for them by their teachers. Thus, to understand
learning, we need to understand how individual learners engage with the task, that
is, we need to try to understand their perspectives of the objectives of tasks and
criteria for success in them.
In line with activity theory, van Lier (2000, p. 246) argues that the perceptual
and social activity of the learner are central to an understanding of second lan-
guage learning, stating that these activities “do not just facilitate learning, they are
learning in some fundamental way.” van Lier compares a learner to an organism
in the environment of a forest. The organism uses different aspects of this envi-
ronment depending on what the organism wants and does. The same ‘affordance’
(e.g., a leaf in the forest) can offer different ‘affordances’ to different creatures
34 H. Basturkmen, M. Lewis / Assessing Writing 8 (2002) 31–46

in the forest. One creature may use it for shade whilst another uses it for food.
The properties of the leaf do not change but “it is just that different properties
are perceived and acted on by different organisms.” So in language learning, the
same affordances (learning opportunities and tasks) will be perceived differently
by different learners and used for different forms of linguistic actions. So, for ex-
ample, a writing course offers a number of ‘affordances’ (pedagogical tasks and
activities) to the learners. The learners’ perceptions of success will lead them to
pursue different objectives and learn different things from them.
In order to understand learning behaviour and learners’ perceptions of their
behaviour (e.g., their writing) as successful or not, we need to explicate individual,
insider understandings. To get a fuller picture of learning, we need to understand
students’ own perspectives, especially their criteria for success, as these represent
their goals.
The remainder of this paper reports an exploratory pilot study in the form of
a case study investigating how three individual students assessed and constructed
their own success and the reasons for it in an academic writing course. Seliger and
Shohamy (1989) characterize exploratory study as “the discovery or description
of the patterns or relationships yet to be identified in some aspect(s) of second
language [. . . ]. The objective may be to describe what happens or to gather data
and generate hypotheses about the phenomenon studied [. . . ]. An effort is made to
avoid preconceptions about what good language learners do” (Seliger & Shohamy,
1989, pp. 29–30).
The study attempted to compare the students’ own assessments and perceptions
of success with those of their teachers. Horwitz (1998) argues the need to inves-
tigate the relationship between the ideas of teachers and learners about the same
course, claiming that if learner ideas differ significantly from teacher ideas, then
learners’ satisfaction with the course, confidence in the teacher, and achievement
may be affected.
The study set out to investigate the following questions:

1. How do three students conceptualize and assess their ‘success’ and the reasons
for it on an EAP writing course?
2. How do the students’ perspectives relate to the perceptions of their teachers?

3. The study

The research was conducted in a specific course, an on-going academic writing

class at a university in New Zealand, because we argue that notions of success are
best understood in relation to specific contexts. Three students (all female) and
their two teachers (one male and one female) participated in the study.1 Student 1,
Carla, was from Mainland China. She had spent 1 year in New Zealand studying

1 The participants have been given pseudonyms for the sake of confidentiality.
 H. Basturkmen, M. Lewis / Assessing Writing 8 (2002) 31–46 35

general English. She planned to pursue a post-graduate degree in teaching at the

University and was taking some courses in language teaching at the same time as
the English writing course. Student 2, Yumi, was from Japan and was majoring in
psychology. Student 3, Alex, was German and was majoring in linguistics. Both
Yumi and Alex had been in New Zealand 2 years. All three were mature students,
had some work experience and a fairly advanced level of proficiency in English. At
the University, students are generally required to have an IELTS2 score of 6 or more
for undergraduate degrees, and postgraduate degree programmes often require an
IELTS score of 7 or more although the requirement can be discretionary. Because
their IELTS scores were confidential to the University, we are not able to specify
the entry level of these three students except to say they would have an overall
IELTS score of at least 6.
One of the teachers participating in the study (Carol) had taught and worked
as a translator in the UK and Italy before coming to the University a year earlier.
She was the teacher of Carla. The second teacher, Andrew, had spent several years
teaching ESL in Japan and Saudi Arabia before coming to the University 2 years
earlier. He taught Alex and Yumi. Both teachers have postgraduate qualifications
in TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language).
The academic writing course lasts 12 weeks and is designed for non-English
speaking background students. It is non-subject specific and is designed for stu-
dents from a range of academic disciplines. This course (one of a number of
credit-bearing English language acquisition courses offered at the University)
meets twice a week for two-hour sessions. The course attracts undergraduates
and some postgraduates and aims to help them with their academic writing needs.
The course is based on principles of process writing but also includes the study of
exemplars. For example, students examine the format of an essay: its introduction
and conclusion, the way a thesis sentence develops into a paragraph, how ideas
are linked at the level of the paragraph and the whole essay. The topic of refer-
encing and the related issue of plagiarism are dealt with through discussion and
examples.
Students complete weekly journals to which teachers respond. In these
journals, they are encouraged to reflect on their learning. In the class tasks, there
is an emphasis on cooperation with peers through joint planning and through peer
feedback at various stages as well as on the final product. There is a handbook
containing course information and instructional materials compiled by the course
convener and teaching staff. Students are assessed by four major essay assign-
ments, one in-class test and a final examination as well as through various other
pieces of writing which they must complete but which are not graded. The as-
signments are: (1) brainstorming and essay outline, (2) an expository essay, (3) a
referenced expository essay and (4) an argumentative essay.

2 International English Language Testing Service: a test of academic ESL under the University
of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate (UCLES) and the International Development Program
(IDP). Scores are reported as ‘Bands’ 1 (low) to 9 (high).
36 H. Basturkmen, M. Lewis / Assessing Writing 8 (2002) 31–46

The stated objectives of the course as printed in the handbook are for learners
to:

1. learn how to write expository and argumentative essays;

2. learn to think more critically about their writing;
3. improve grammatical accuracy and general language proficiency.

Both teachers participating in the study were asked to state their personal views
of the instructional objectives for the course and what they themselves emphasized
in attempting to achieve them. In regard to the first objective, Carol reported that
she stresses the importance of a number of planning elements (thinking, having
a recognizable essay structure) as well as content, and that she also emphasizes
the importance of having many drafts and of asking someone else to read the
essay over. In regard to the second objective, Carol stated that she considered this
“noble and necessary” but that she was impeded here by lack of time. Of the two
main course activities targeting this end (peer review and journal writing), Carol
reported emphasizing the former. Carol felt objective three was “necessary, but
difficult to incorporate in the course.” Again, time was the main enemy, along with
students’ very different needs and experiences. Because of these constraints, Carol
tries to foster students’ development of autonomous strategies. For example, she
helps students identify their own areas of weaknesses and work out a remedial
strategy.
Andrew saw the first objective as the ‘principal’ one and stated that, in particular,
he puts emphasis on how to structure essays, how to plan essays by developing
outlines and on becoming aware of the ‘conventions’ of academic English writing.
In relation to the second objective, Andrew reported seeing this as “empowering
learners to be able to help themselves.” To this end, he stresses helping learners
judge their own writing. Finally, Andrew, like Carol, felt that the third objective
was somewhat unrealistic because of time constraints.
The procedure of the study was as follows:

1. Midway through the academic writing course, all six teachers in the English
Academic Writing Programme were invited to participate in the study and
to nominate students they considered were particularly successful learners in
their writing classes, with definitions of ‘success’ left to the teachers. The
researchers were teaching similar classes on the same university program and
thus were familiar with the teaching context, but did not participate in the study.
Two teachers and three of the students they nominated agreed to participate in
the study and provided us with their email addresses.
2. Email dialogues with the students were initiated using the open-ended ques-
tions shown in Appendix A. The questions asked the participants to identify
ways they had been successful and reasons for this success. Email dialogue was
chosen in preference to more conventional means of data generation, such as
interviews or one-stop questionnaires, for three reasons. Firstly, it was hoped
 H. Basturkmen, M. Lewis / Assessing Writing 8 (2002) 31–46 37

that writing emails would provide more opportunities for students to reflect on
their experiences and ideas than face-to-face interviews. Secondly, dialogue
provides for the negotiation of meaning between researchers and subjects and
this enables subjects to develop their ideas. Thirdly, email recognizes how busy
students’ lives often are. An earlier attempt we made to carry out research via
interviews failed for this reason.
3. The students entered into email dialogues with the two researchers by respond-
ing to the initial email. Students sent their emails to one of the researchers.
Both researchers read these and together devised the responses to them. The
dialogues continued until a clear understanding of what constituted success for
the subjects was reached. This turned out in all cases to be a six-turn dialogue;
(1) sending of the open-ended questionnaire, (2) initial response by student,
(3) request for clarification and expansion by researchers, (4) further response
by student, (5) request for further clarification and expansion by researchers
and (6) final response by student.
4. As already indicated, the email dialogues involved a process of negotiating the
meaning of the initial responses and also of prompting the students to reflect
more deeply about their own notions of success by asking them to explicate
more fully points in their initial responses. Fig. 1 shows an example of one
email dialogue to illustrate the process whereby ideas were negotiated between
the researchers and participants to reach a more in-depth and unambiguous
idea of the participants’ notions of success. The student initially expressed an
idea in general and implicit terms but through interaction came to express it
explicitly, thus identifying the constituents of the construct of success from
their own point of view.
5. For the analysis, we followed ‘analytical induction’ procedures as suggested
by Leki and Carson (1997), that is, we revisited the data a number of times,

Fig. 1. Sample email conversation.

38 H. Basturkmen, M. Lewis / Assessing Writing 8 (2002) 31–46

individually and together, looking for salient themes and patterns which we
then commented on in our own words.
6. At the same time as we initiated email correspondence to the students by
sending them the student questionnaire (Appendix A), we sent the teacher
questionnaire (Appendix B) by email to the teachers. The teachers emailed us
their responses. These were clear in the first instance and our email correspon-
dence with them was closed down on receipt of their responses. Later on, we
also emailed the teachers asking them for their personal views on the course
objectives and what they stressed most in trying to achieve them.
7. When the email dialogues with the students were complete and we had iden-
tified the themes in their correspondence, we compared the ideas of the three
students with one another and also with those of their teachers.

4. Findings

In reporting our findings, we deal with each student’s assessment of their suc-
cess. Next we consider the teacher’s views on the same student.

4.1. Carla

Although Carla ranked herself at level 4, her teacher ranked her as 5 (most
successful) in the writing course. In her first correspondence to us she described her
success in the words of the course outline: “[I think I’m successful in . . . ] learning
the forms of sentences, paragraphs and a whole essay; knowing the strategies of
writing essays such as paraphrasing, cohesive device, reference (summary and
quoting).”
However, when prompted and asked to clarify her view of success, her own
ideas began to emerge more distinctly. She commented on her sense of increasing
ease with writing: “Although I still feel difficult, writing is getting better for me
than before.” In a follow-up email, she mentioned her three measures of success
— she was taking less time writing an essay, she had a greater variety of ways of
expressing her meaning and the flow of her thoughts was smoother “although I
also feel that it is still difficult to state an idea clearly in English.”
What emerged from the dialogues was that Carla described her success in the
writing course as stemming from her developing ability to express her ideas. She
repeatedly mentioned this idea. At one point in regard to the academic writing
course she stated — the purpose of it is just for pouring your ideas, the vocabulary
should not be the barriers to stop your thinking stream. She saw the goal of
language learning as the development of fluency, stating: language knowledge
is not language competence . . . improving the language competence needs many
mechanical imitation and memorizing. In order to develop fluency, Carla used
memorizing. Memorizing, Carla stated “can build up language feeling, which
is . . . important . . . in second language learning.”
 H. Basturkmen, M. Lewis / Assessing Writing 8 (2002) 31–46 39

Carla initially attributed her success to three reasons — the quality of the text-
book, the teacher’s methods, and her own hard study. Later she elaborated on the
teacher’s role saying that she felt the teacher gave good instructions for essay
writing and used particularly clear language to explain the essay tasks.
She also attributed her success to her own strategies, such as the importance of
reading aloud and being selective in the items to be learned. She stressed the role of
models of writing in her learning stating “Some models also gave me many useful
helps. I like read (loud) these models to get the feeling of English, and also learnt
the words, phrases, sentences I’m interested in.” Here she highlights a learning
strategy highly regarded in her country of origin, China: memorizing.
It is interesting to note that Carla sees the models of writing as a means to her
goal of memorizing words and chunks of ready-formatted language. During the
course, models of writing are often presented to the students as a means to develop
their explicit knowledge of aspects of language use, such as schematic structure
of academic writing, but this is not how Carla sees this pedagogical activity at all.
Carla’s teacher, Carol, attributed Carla’s success to her personal goals (She is
aware of her own objectives) and her awareness of course requirements (under-
standing what is required of her). The teacher felt Carla had a number of useful
strategies, such as conscious application of learning, identifying her own weak-
nesses and asking for help: Attempting to apply aspects of writing looked at in
class to her own writing, Aware of where she has difficulties and Asks questions
on things she is not clear about. The teacher also noted a social strategy: Relating
actively to all other students in the class and the fact that she never misses any
class time.

4.2. Yumi

Yumi assessed her success as between a 4 and 5. Her teacher assessed her as a
straight 5. Yumi started off by describing her success as being good in organizing
essays. She later added that she measured her success in terms of greater confidence
and enjoyment and by whether she could transfer the learning from the writing
class to her other studies: This course helps me for doing my assignments for other
papers as well and [In Psychology] it used to take long time to finish, and also
I couldn’t enjoy writing reports. However, I feel like it takes less time and I can
enjoy it now. She also referred to her need to do research for her “academic goals”
and the fact that the writing course had helped her with that.
What emerged from the correspondence was Yumi’s goal for the writing course
as the development of confidence in writing. She believed that this confidence stems
from the acquisition of explicit knowledge about the conventions of academic
writing. When prompted to say why she thought she had been successful, Yumi
commented: Since I learned some English writing techniques and methods I [am]
now more confident in my essay writing . . . As I know what to do more I can enjoy
writing much more than before. When asked in what ways she had been successful,
she stated: I can tell that I am better at this by feeling more confident and being
40 H. Basturkmen, M. Lewis / Assessing Writing 8 (2002) 31–46

more enthusiastic. At several points she referred to explicit knowledge saying, for
example: I know what to do more, I am clear what to write in the introduction and
conclusion parts and I am now clear what to write.
Yumi’s teacher, Andrew, commented on Yumi’s success in terms of linguistic
criteria: Her writing is very coherent . . . Ideas are linked clearly . . . She has a wide
vocabulary and has obviously made decisions in choosing the right word . . . The
writing generally displays a logical progression of ideas that are easy to follow.
He saw Yumi’s success in terms of knowledge of academic genres: She is able to
write in the type of English, academic genre, that we expect in this course.
To what did Andrew attribute this student’s success? One factor was the amount
of planning time. More than any other student she ponders what to write about,
i.e., finding the right topic and discusses it thoroughly with me both in class and
through email, . . . It is obvious from her work that she has spent a lot of time in
producing the task and Her pre-essay planning is thorough.

4.3. Alex

Alex rated her success as 3 (lower than either of the other two students). How-
ever, Alex’s teacher rated her success as a 5.
Alex commented that successful aspects of her work were that her writing
was becoming more fluent and that she was good at following strictly the essay
structure. She later elaborated on this point about structure: I focused mainly on
the structure of the essay parts . . . especially on the paragraph.
In accounting for her success, Alex gave credit to the course itself: Although
nothing of the lecture content has been completely new to me . . . the course has
helped me to focus on the essentials of academic writing. The point about nothing
new was modified in a later message when she said that the course had made
explicit aspects of writing she had encountered previously but not considered: I
had never heard about the terms topic sentence, closing sentence, etc. Although I
have read a lot of English essays . . . I never realized that most of them have this
structure.
What emerged from the correspondence was that for Alex the function of the
writing course is analysis and learning about how academic writing is structured.
She states that her focus in the writing course is on the structure of academic writing
saying, I focus on form not content. She expresses her belief that knowing what
is expected in academic writing will give her confidence: I think this knowledge
(about form/essay structure) is important because it gives me security for my essay
writing. For Alex, the writing class is largely about learning what elements need
to be gathered and organised for creating pieces of academic writing. She reports
that she has made a conscious decision to focus on forms. She refers to this in
terms of knowing what she ‘needs’ to learn or ‘pay attention to.’ Her criterion for
success is knowledge of academic language forms. She emphasizes how she has
attempted to develop her perceptual knowledge about language forms. In addition
to course-related factors, Alex attributed success to three specific strategies. At the
 H. Basturkmen, M. Lewis / Assessing Writing 8 (2002) 31–46 41

stage of gathering content: I know that I need a certain number of pro-arguments

and counter-arguments and when I’m reading material for my essay, I look at it
in regard to this essay structure. I think OK this is a counter-argument, I could
use this myself, and this might be helpful for a pro-argument. Then there was the
preparation stage: I use a clear outline and a lot of structuring devices now. I
always try to make it as easy as possible for the reader to comprehend my writing.
A third strategy related to seeing other people’s essays (peer review is a task used
in the writing course): When I’m reading other people’s essays now, I also pay
more attention to their essay structures. I have a look at how they started off their
essays, and whether this is an interesting beginning.
Alex’s teacher, Andrew, measured Alex’ success in terms of overall perfor-
mance: Achieving a high standard in all assignments set and more specifically to
the “tone” of her writing: Changing writing style to a more academic neutral tone.
The teacher attributed Alex’s success as partly due to attitudinal factors: Being
willing to do a number of drafts and drastically change her original writing and
Being conscientious and persistent. Andrew mentioned the pre-writing planning
done by Alex: Thorough planning of the essay with a solid outline and evidence
of real brainstorming.

4.4. Discussion

Table 1 gives a summary of the measures of success in the academic writing

course from the perspectives of the three students and their teachers. The definitions
of success provided by the students show that there is a limited overlap between
their views.
The table suggests a possible framework for a larger study, which could investi-
gate relationships both between the comments of teachers and their own students
and within each group: teacher and students. For example, affective elements (con-
fidence in writing and enjoyment of writing) are mentioned by two students but not
by their teacher. One teacher mentions being able to use academic language style,
a point not mentioned by that teacher’s students. A larger study would uncover
patterns such as these that can only be hinted at here.
These three students share some similarities but mainly differences in their
constructions of their own success. For Carla, success equates largely with the
ability to express her ideas in writing, whereas for Yumi success is about her
growing confidence and enjoyment of L2 academic writing. For Alex, learning the
conventions of English academic writing has been her most significant achievement
on the course. It is interesting to compare Carla and Alex. Carla has been concerned
with self-expression, the flow of her ideas, while Alex’s concern is largely with
outsider expectations — the academic community and their writing conventions.
The findings suggest that despite having attended the same course with the same
textbook and assignments (and in the case of two of the students the same class with
the same teacher) the three students’ individual interpretations of what constituted
success varied, suggesting that they were pursuing different objectives. This would
42 H. Basturkmen, M. Lewis / Assessing Writing 8 (2002) 31–46

Table 1
Comparative constructs of success
Carla Carol on Carla’s success
Being able to express ideas in writing Being aware of personal goals and
course objectives
Writing more fluently Consciously applying writing strategies
Having memorized chunks of language to use Being aware of own weaknesses
and seeking help
Being selective in what to learn Relating positively to writing class
and other students
Spending less time to do the writing
Having more ways to express ideas in writing
Good teaching and textbook
Working hard at writing
Yumi Andrew on Yumi’s success
Being more confident Writing coherently
Enjoying writing more Linking ideas
Organizing writing Selecting the right words
Having a structure for Having a wide range of vocabulary
writing (academic writing conventions)
Transferring learning to own field Writing that is easy to follow
Spending less time to do the writing Using appropriate academic genres
Spending time on pre-writing planning
Choosing good topics
Alex Andrew on Alex’ success
Having a structure for writing (academic Adopting an academic language style
writing conventions)
Writing fluently Revising and re-drafting writing
Doing pre-writing planning Being conscientious about writing
Gathering content selectively Doing pre-writing planning and
brainstorming
Being more confident
Using structuring devices
Having a good outline
Being aware of the reader

seem to support the premise of activity theory that the same activity means different
things to different people.
We note what has been left unsaid. None of the students used the words ‘marks’
or ‘grades’ in speaking about their success, although they had already received
a number of grades when the correspondence was in progress. This finding is
surprising given the commonly held perception that students are more concerned
with grades than with what and how they are learning. In fact, the three students’
final course grades were either A or A+. None said they had been successful in
the content of their writing, although Carla felt it important that she was able to
express her own ideas. Indeed one student, Alex, actually said that she focused on
form not on content. Only one student, Carla, explicitly attributed her success to
 H. Basturkmen, M. Lewis / Assessing Writing 8 (2002) 31–46 43

external factors (the textbook and the teacher), although the various elements in
the course are referred to also by the other two students.
We note also that the students’ constructions of success differ from those of the
teachers. These differences are perfectly understandable. The teachers reported on
visible signs, such as Carla’s asking for help and the number of drafts produced
by Alex, while learners reported on what happens behind the scenes. Carla spoke
of her selective learning, Yumi reported being able to transfer her learning in
this course to other courses and Alex has developed a sophisticated strategy for
gathering content strictly in relation to the essay requirements. It is not surprising
that the teacher does not know about out-of-class strategies such as Carla’s reading
aloud and memorizing or her beliefs about how languages are learned. Neither is
the teacher likely to mention, as the student did, the good teaching qualities. The
teachers attributed success to the students’ efforts alone. On the other hand, one
teacher was able to note strategies that were visible in class: applying advice,
asking questions and relating to others. None of these were mentioned by the
student.

5. Concluding remarks

Generally, research into the assessment of the writing of ESL writers has centred
on students’ performances in tests as measured by teachers and outsiders. The
study reported in this article is an attempt to widen the scope of research in this
area to include a focus on how students assess their own achievement. Learners’
perceptions, we argue, and we believe our data show, offer insights into their views
of language learning otherwise unavailable to teachers and researchers.
In our study, three students articulated their ideas of success in an English aca-
demic writing course. They revealed that they did not perceive success in terms
of external objective measures such as grades or teacher feedback, the quality of
the ideas and information they had written or in relation to certain stated course
objectives. What emerged from our comparison of the reports of the three stu-
dents was the highly individual nature of their ideas of success in the academic
writing course. Although the three students were following the same course, their
views of success in it differed in many respects, as did the connections they made
between the constituents of their success and the factors leading to it. This sug-
gests that the writing course offered differing ‘affordances’ (van Lier, 2000) to the
students.
We also see that teachers’ perceptions of their students’ success vary in many
respects from those of the students. This may be no surprise given that in life
people rarely have the same perspectives. Nevertheless, the findings remind us
that as teachers, we cannot simply assume that our perceptions of success (and
assessment criteria) match the students’ thinking. As Leki and Carson (1997) argue,
to understand what is going on for the students in our writing classes, we need to
listen to the voices of our students and their interpretations of the activities they
44 H. Basturkmen, M. Lewis / Assessing Writing 8 (2002) 31–46

are engaged in. The findings from the present study support those of other studies
of student and teacher perceptions (e.g., Barkhuizen, 1998; Block, 1996; Leki and
Carson, 1997), indicating that teachers and students often perceive instructional
activities differently.
In the context of assessment, learner perceptions are important. The more shared
understandings between students and teachers about what constitutes good writ-
ing the better. Shared understandings can help students know how their work is
assessed and can help teachers provide feedback to their students on aspects of
writing that are important to them. In the present study, a measure of success for
one teacher was the ability to use an academic language style but neither of that
teacher’s students mentioned this point. Two students mentioned the importance
of knowing how academic writing is structured but their teacher did not comment
specifically on this aspect of these students’ writing. Although we are not sug-
gesting that assessment criteria should be driven by student perceptions, we do
believe that gathering insights into student perceptions can be useful as the basis
of discussion between teachers and students about those criteria.
The findings from this exploratory case study of just three students in one par-
ticular context cannot be over-generalized. How these students understood success
cannot tell us how other students in the same course or students on other writing
courses would understand it. Our findings do however provide a basis for further
research and directions for a larger study. First, how varied are the views of the
students? If we were to correspond with more students in the academic writing
classes, would similar ideas of success emerge or are many more definitions of
success waiting to be explored? A second question relates to the selection of stu-
dents for this study. Although we stressed in our initial contact with the teachers
that success need not equate with good grades, in fact all three students chosen
were achieving good grades. Would students with lower grades provide different
definitions of success or lack of it? Thirdly, how do the different orientations of
individual students to a writing course impact on what they learn from it? We
can hypothesize that the major influence on the academic writing of an individ-
ual will be his or her own orientation. And finally: how could a larger study into
students’ constructions of their own success feed into writing assessment research
in order to provide expanded perspectives and possibilities for centralized, reactive
decision-making about student ‘success’?

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Appendix A

Appendix B