A Study Of Students Academic Writing In Response To Instructors Expectations At Aau Four Departments In Focus

It is obvious that the English courses (College English and Sophomore) offered in AddisrnAbaba University are based on the assumption that what is taught and learned in thesernclasses would help students overcome their previous writing problems and write well inrntheir subject area courses.rnHowever, what may not be clear is how well students are able to use what they havernlearned from writing courses into their content courses writing tasks or what exactlyrnsubject area teachers expect of their students. This being the case, it will becomernnecessary to examine the academic writing practices, features, and expectations of thernAddis Ababa University subject matter instructors and their students to obtain thernfeatures of academic writing instructors require and expect.rnThe purpose of the study reported in this thesis, therefore, was to investigate thernstudents’ academic writing in relation to the instructors’ expectations in the context ofrnAAU. Focusing on four departments of the university and adopting a descriptivernapproach, the study set out specifically to (a) determine the features of good academicrnpapers instructors expect from their students and in this regard whether the students'rnwriting reflect the instructors’ expectations, (b) whether the students’ awareness of whatrnconstitute good academic writing approximate (match with) their instructors’rnexpectations, (c) if the instructors help the students meet the writing requirements andrn(d) to see the extent to which instructors actually look beyond content to languagernerrors in the students' writing. In addition, the study attempted to look at the order of thernseriousness of the problems, if any, in terms of content, writing skills, and language asrnnoticed by the instructors and experienced by the students.rnTwo techniques of data gathering were employed in order to obtain the data required forrnthe study. One was a questionnaire, which was designed and distributed to both subjectrnarea instructors and their students in the selected departments. The other was interviewrnby which information was gathered from the instructors and the students. The datarngathered from the instructors and their students were then analyzedrnThe results of the study tend to indicate that the students were actually less successfulrnin meeting or reflecting their instructors’ expectations of good academic papers in theirrnwriting. The results also appear to show that what the students perceived as elementsrnof a good academic paper in most cases, agree with their instructors’ expectations.rnHowever, even though, the students were aware of the qualities their papers shouldrnsatisfy, both the instructors and the students themselves witnessed that they hadrnserious problems in fulfilling or demonstrating these features in their papers.rnIn

Get Full Work

Report copyright infringement or plagiarism