How to Better Serve EFL College Writers: An MP Implication for L2 Literacy Teaching

Abstract

This study, based on what Minimalist Program (MP) would suggest for English as a foreign language (EFL) college-level learners, was an attempt to suggest an effective way concerning how to respond to the students' needs as they would improve English writing proficiency. In addition, the study agreed with a principled guideline that "there is a critical need to promote the teaching of academic literacy skills much earlier in the educational sequence" (Snow & Kamhi-Stein, 2003, p. 180. The study employed a meta-writing activity, that is, metacognitive activity of writing, to examine what kinds of linguistic and cognitive experience the students would have in the process of producing an academic essay, and attempted to provide suggestions about how to accordingly reflect their needs in the syllabus for the composition course. The study suggested that the composition course should be able to take advantage of the adult learners' high cognitive level and use it as a leverage to raise up their linguistic skills rather than lowering down the demand of activities and assignments considering their linguistic skills. It should be an objective of the composition course to challenge the adult learners to be able to function in academic and professional contexts.