A Study of Students’ Academic Writing In Response to Instructors’ Expectations at Aau: Four Departments In Focus
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Date
2003-07
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Key Words
Students’ Academic Writing
Instructors’ Expectations
It is obvious that the English courses (College English and Sophomore) offered in Addis
Ababa University are based on the assumption that what is taught and learned in these
classes would help students overcome their previous writing problems and write well in
their subject area courses.
However, what may not be clear is how well students are able to use what they have
learned from writing courses into their content courses writing tasks or what exactly
subject area teachers expect of their students. This being the case, it will become
necessary to examine the academic writing practices, features, and expectations of the
Addis Ababa University subject matter instructors and their students to obtain the
features of academic writing instructors require and expect.
The purpose of the study reported in this thesis, therefore, was to investigate the
students’ academic writing in relation to the instructors’ expectations in the context of
AAU. Focusing on four departments of the university and adopting a descriptive
approach, the study set out specifically to (a) determine the features of good academic
papers instructors expect from their students and in this regard whether the students'
writing reflect the instructors’ expectations, (b) whether the students’ awareness of what
constitute good academic writing approximate (match with) their instructors’
expectations, (c) if the instructors help the students meet the writing requirements and
(d) to see the extent to which instructors actually look beyond content to language
errors in the students' writing. In addition, the study attempted to look at the order of the
seriousness of the problems, if any, in terms of content, writing skills, and language as
noticed by the instructors and experienced by the students.
Two techniques of data gathering were employed in order to obtain the data required for
the study. One was a questionnaire, which was designed and distributed to both subject
area instructors and their students in the selected departments. The other was interview
by which information was gathered from the instructors and the students. The data
gathered from the instructors and their students were then analyzed
The results of the study tend to indicate that the students were actually less successful
in meeting or reflecting their instructors’ expectations of good academic papers in their
writing. The results also appear to show that what the students perceived as elements
of a good academic paper in most cases, agree with their instructors’ expectations.
However, even though, the students were aware of the qualities their papers should
satisfy, both the instructors and the students themselves witnessed that they had
serious problems in fulfilling or demonstrating these features in their papers.
Description
Keywords
Students, Academic Writing Instructors, Expectations