2023 Volume 45 Issue 1 Pages 180-190
This study aims to clarify the effects of learning support on the writing skills and learning strategies of student athletes. First, four student athletes who were admitted to a private university in Japan took a writing skill course and received advice from a writing tutor of the university writing center when they were first-year students. Second, when they were in their sophomore year, we collected conversational data about 1) the correlation between current learning in curricular classes and past learning support, and 2) the changes in writing skills, motivation to study writing, and approach towards further study following past learning support, based on semi-structured interviews. Finally, to schematize the classification and relationship between writing skills and learning strategies, we extracted segments from interview data, coded, and categorized them using grounded theory methods.
The interview data yielded 250 segments, and ten core categories were identified. The correlation between current writing skills, learning strategies for academic writing and past learning support was identified by analyzing the theoretical connections between categories and comparing core categories. For example, a student athlete answered, “I studied the difference between academic reports and essays,” “now I write reports quoting references.” It suggests that the student athletes currently remember writing skills learnt about a year ago and transfer them to writing in their curricular classes.
The results indicate that the current writing studies of the student athletes were affected by the features of their curriculum. For example, a student answered, “I almost never write more than 300-character reports.” It suggests that the features of their curriculum produced a bias towards writing studies, and the student athletes can take risk of lack of their writing skills. However, the student athletes who reflected on their writing skills compensated for the lack of them by studying outside their classes, for instance, by using the university library. These results indicate that past learning experiences (lectures and advice from the writing tutor) increased the student athletesʼ learning transfer with regard to academic writing.
