The Importance Of Academic Writing

1737 Words7 Pages
INTERODUCTION : Academic writing plays an essential role in learning a foreign language. Non-native speakers of the English language should be familiar with writing processes, elements, and features like formality, objectivity, and complexity in order to use the language precisely and accurately. Due to the great value of writing skill, a considerable number of researchers have demonstrated various views regarding how to teach academic writing. For instance, there has been an argument over whether to consider the product approach (focusing on the final product and generating grammatically correct texts) or the process approach (paying more attention to the underlying process of writing). Badger and White (2000) suggest that the later…show more content…
Academic writing is not an easy skill to be achieved especially in a second language. Mohan and Lo (1985) confirm that, generally speaking, a lot of ESL learners find academic writing problematic. A research conducted by Bacha (2012) in an EFL context has revealed that teachers find students' academic writing weak. It is assumed to be specifically difficult for those of "non-Anglicized linguistic and cultural and backgrounds" (Al Fadda, 2012, p. 123); for example, Asians are believed to face more problems in academic writing (Casanave & Hubbard, 1992). This is also emphasized by Rabab'ah (2003) who states that learners coming from Asian universities usually face difficulty in getting use to the requirements of English academic writing. A considerable number of studies have projected the common problems faced by ESL or EFL learners and the reasons that could be behind those difficulties as shown in the literature review…show more content…
9). Al Fadda (2012) found out that the main challenges ESL students encounter are differentiating between written and spoken words and phrases, reviewing grammar including subject-verb agreement and joining sentences together to make a coherent paragraph. Generating ideas about their topics could be also a obstacle that hinders students to move on in their writing (Al Murshidi, 2014). Another concern is to read and then to write in their own words. This could lead to grammar mistakes which may make students unwilling to paraphrase and summarize other's work (Amin & Alamin, 2012); instead, they just copy and paste.As for teachers,they encounter some challenges such as difficulties to motivate students and the differences in students levels. Factors causing the academic writing difficulties Chou (2011) has listed a number of reasons students studying encounter a lot of stress and obstacles when writing their assignments. Firstly, students might come from different cultural backgrounds where they are fully dependent on teachers. They also have not been trained to be critical thinkers and they might have lower expectations than those of their teachers as they consider themselves second language

More about The Importance Of Academic Writing

Open Document