How different are they? A comparison of Generation 1.5 and international L2 learners’ writing ability

Comparing Language Use in the Writing of Developmental Generation 1.5, L1, and L2 Tertiary Students

“…Doolan and Miller (2012) investigated the developmental writing from a Central California community college and found significantly more verb errors, prepositional phrase errors, word form errors, and total identified errors in Generation 1.5 writing compared with L1 writing. In studies of entrance exams at a northeastern university where the participants had already been preselected for L2 training based on survey information, di Gennaro (2009, 2013) compared international L2 (IL2) and Generation 1.5 student writing using a many-facet Rasch analysis. Findings from di Gennaro (2009) suggest comparable grammatical (accuracy) scores between the two groups, while findings from di Gennaro (2013) indicate that grammatical (accuracy) control was a greater strength in IL2 writing than in Generation 1.5 writing.…”

Searching for differences and discovering similarities: Why international and resident second-language learners’ grammatical errors cannot serve as a proxy for placement into writing courses

“…The first stage of the study builds upon a previous study (di Gennaro, 2013), which included 134 participants, equally divided among international and resident groups. All were undergraduate students at a private university in a northeastern US city and all had indicated on writing placement surveys that English was not their first language.…”

“…di Gennaro, 2012;Harklau, Losey, & Siegal, 1999;Reid, 2006;Roberge, Siegal, & Harklau, 2009). Initial claims, based primarily on anecdotal accounts, have been followed by empirical studies, some supporting and others disputing original assertions of differences across the two groups of learners in terms of their writing ability (di Gennaro, 2009(di Gennaro, , 2013Doolan, 2013Doolan, , 2014Doolan & Miller, 2012;Levi, 2004). While such discussions may seem esoteric outside the L2 writing community, findings from this body of research have direct implications for how students' writing is assessed for placement into college writing programs and, in turn, affect the type of support and services students are offered during their college careers.…”

The Importance of Cross-Cultural Capabilities for Chinese Immigrant Entrepreneurs in Australia

“…The Finally those individuals who immigrated to a new country between the ages 6 and 12 were labelled the "1.5 generation" (Rumbaut, 1991;Rumbaut, 2004). This "decimal" system was used in assessing differences in immigrants' adaptive outcomes, mainly in language capability (e.g., di Gennaro, 2013;Doolan, 2013;Oropesa & Landale, 1997). The relevant findings and discussions are displayed in the next section.…”