scholarly journals The interplay between academic writing abilities of Dutch undergraduate students, a remedial writing programme, and academic achievement

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Folkert Kuiken ◽  
Ineke Vedder
Keyword(s):  
Academic Achievement ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Remedial Writing

scholarly journals Association of COMT Polymorphism and Academic Achievement among Female Undergraduate Students

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 90-101
Author(s):  
Norsuhaila Rosmimi Rosli ◽  
◽  
Tengku Shahrul Anuar engku Ahmad Basri ◽  
Mohd Ilham Adenan ◽  
Roziah Mohd Janor ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Academic Achievement ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Grade Point ◽  
Dopaminergic Pathway ◽  
Allele Specific ◽  
Hardy Weinberg Equilibrium ◽  
Comt Polymorphism ◽  
The One

Academic achievement may be influenced by catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) polymorphism. A common functional polymorphism of COMT, the rs4680 is consistently being involved in the modulation of dopaminergic pathway and prefrontal cortex function which may predominantly affect cognitive functions. A total of 197 female participants were recruited in this study. The score of student’s grade point average (GPA) from the latest previous semester was used as the measurement of academic achievement. The COMT polymorphism was genotyped using tetra primer allele specific polymerase chain reaction. The findings indicated that there were 8 (4.1 %), 72 (36.5 %), and 117 (59.4 %) participants harbouring Met/Met, Met/Val, and Val/Val genotype for COMT polymorphism respectively. All the genotype distributions of COMT polymorphism were consistent with Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium (χ2 = 0.495, p > 0.05). The one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) result demonstrated that participants bearing Met/Met genotype had a better achievement in GPA as compared to the other COMT genotypes (p = 0.001). These findings support evidence that the affective role of COMT polymorphism might overwhelm cognitive abilities in measures of academic achievement like GPA.

scholarly journals Statistical Analysis of the Factors Affecting Academic Achievement of Undergraduate Students A Case Study of Faculty of Arts and Science Kufrah -Benghazi University

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 50-59
Author(s):  
Muna H. Ali
Keyword(s):  
Academic Achievement ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Process Data ◽  
Family Learning ◽  
Arithmetic Means ◽  
Factors Affecting ◽  
Determining Factors ◽  
Study Population ◽  
Difference Test

This study examined the factors affecting the academic achievement of undergraduate students at the faculty of Arts and Science Kufrah -Benghazi University as a case study. This study seeks to identify and analyze some determining factors that influence students' academic achievement in the study area. Four factors namely: psychological, family, learning facilities, and economic; were considered. The sample was randomly selected from the study population. A questionnaire was administered to 240 (90 males,150 females) students as a sample of this study. The responses of the students were analyzed to meet the objectives of the study using (SPSS) and displayed in forms and tables. After collecting the required data on the variables of the study, they were encoded to be entered into the computer to extract the statistical results. Statistical methods within the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) were used to process data obtained by the field study of the sample. To analyze the data mean difference test is used. Results of arithmetic means of the psychological, family, learning facilities, and economic factors were medium. Furthermore, there were no statistically significant differences in the factors affecting academic achievement among the participants due to some demographic factors such as gender and marital status. following recommendations were made; provide proper learning facilities to the students and also improve the environment of the faculty. Furthermore, the students would perform well if they are properly guided by both their parents and teachers.

scholarly journals A Study of University Students in Japan: Learning and Application of Academic English Writing

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
James Graham McKinley
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Social Constructivist ◽  
Academic English ◽  
Writing Classes ◽  
Writer Identity ◽  
Writing Courses ◽  
English Writing ◽  
Written Texts ◽  
The Rich

<p>This study investigated Japanese first and second year undergraduate students learning English academic writing in their compulsory English composition courses in a Japanese university. The thesis takes a social constructivist approach to investigate the aspects of critical argument and writer identity in these students’ classes and their writing.  The data for the study include classroom observations and teacher and student interviews, all conducted monthly throughout the academic year-long course. In total there were six courses, four teachers, and sixteen student participants. The observations were analyzed using an adapted version of Ivanič’s (2004) Discourses of Writing framework, which focused on aspects of identity construction in the writing classroom. The linguistic data included a selection of one major piece of writing from each student, analyzed using an adapted Appraisal framework within Systemic Functional Linguistics (Martin, 1997; 2000). In order to maintain a focus on writer identity in the analysis, Clark and Ivanič’s (1997) selves were identified through this analysis. In addition, the texts were analyzed for use of Casanave’s (2002) writing game strategies, in order to further establish the students’ approaches in writing their texts. The objective was not to generalize about how Japanese students learn to write academic English, but rather to provide, from a social constructivist, Western researcher’s perspective, an analysis of what happened in these students’ writing classes and how it affected their writing for those classes.  Teachers’ general practices in the observed courses mainly focused on two aspects of writing: 1) as a communicative act (writing for a reader), and 2) as an exercise in critical thinking (developing a thesis). These two aspects emerged from the observation and interview data collection. The four teachers used very different approaches in designing their courses, and the students in the same classes responded in different ways, mostly depending on their ability to understand their teachers’ intentions and to form appropriate academic identities in an attempt to meet their teachers’ expectations. The analysis of the students’ written texts revealed that students often did not meet the teachers’ expectations of writing objectively and using a genre-appropriate voice as students often resorted to the same authorial voice to push their thesis.  This investigation was designed to inform pedagogic practices for university teachers of academic English and curriculum designers in Japan to establish effective English writing courses. The rich description of classroom practices and resulting written texts and the focus on differences in cultural expectations between teachers and students provide significant contributions to this area of inquiry. The main pedagogical suggestions are standardizing course objectives and goals, assigning more reading as a part of writing, and teaching students how to write authoritatively.</p>

scholarly journals The Prevalence and Frequency of Authorial Identity among Undergraduate Students in Fiji

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (6) ◽  
pp. 136
Author(s):  
Jasbir Karneil Singh ◽  
Ben K. Daniel
Keyword(s):  
Academic Success ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
First Year ◽  
Esl Students ◽  
First Year Students ◽  
Student Writers ◽  
Authorial Identity ◽  
National University ◽  
Authorial Voice

Expressing an authoritative voice is an essential part of academic writing at university. However, the performance of the authorial self in writing is complex yet fundamental to academic success as a large part of academic assessment involves writing to the academy. More specifically, the performance of the authorial self can be complex for English as a Second Language (ESL) student-writers. This research investigated the extent to which ESL first-year students at the Fiji National University perform their authorial voice using interactional metadiscourse in their academic writing. The study employed a quantitative analysis of corpus produced by 16 Fijian ESL undergraduate students enrolled in an EAP course. The research found that the ESL authorial voice was predominantly expressed through boosters and attitude markers, with relatively little usage of other interactional metadiscoursal elements such as hedges, engagement markers and self-mentions. Further, the research showed that this particular cohort expressed their authorial voice and identity through boosted arguments and avoiding language that directly mentions the authorial self. The study concludes that the ESL authorial self for this cohort manifests itself in a selected range of selected interactional metadiscoursal elements, requiring the need to raise the awareness of self-reflective expressions for ESL students. The study also encourages further exploration of ESL authorial identity construction in academic writing at undergraduate level and beyond.

scholarly journals The influence of interactive and static infographics on the academic achievement of reflective and impulsive students

2021 ◽  
pp. 147-162
Author(s):  
Dina Ismaeel ◽  
Ensaf Al Mulhim
Keyword(s):  
Academic Achievement ◽  
Cognitive Style ◽  
Learning Environments ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Significant Interaction ◽  
Cognitive Styles ◽  
Learning Resources ◽  
Information Presentation ◽  
E Learning ◽  
Presentation Methods

This article examines the influence of static/interactive infographics on reflective/impulsive students’ academic achievement. The study sample consisted of 80 undergraduate students who were divided into two groups according to their cognitive style (reflective/impulsive). Each group was further divided into two sub-groups based on the type of infographics (static/interactive) to be evaluated. The findings showed that interactive infographics are more effective than static infographics in improving academic achievement. Reflective students outperformed impulsive students in terms of academic achievement, and there was a significant interaction between interactive infographics and reflective students. This study may serve as a guide for educators and designers of learning resources in selecting the most appropriate forms of technology conforming to students’ varying cognitive styles. Implications for practice or policy: The designers of e-learning environments must focus on the cognitive style of each learner. The design of those environments must take into account the diversity of information presentation methods to meet the various cognitive styles. Students' academic achievement can be improved by the use of interactive infographics due to their richness in material, multimedia approach, and interactivity that stimulate and communicate with learners’ senses and positively affect their acquisition of information.

scholarly journals A Discourse Analysis: Cohesion of the Introduction Section of Research Article

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Anis Firdatul Rochma ◽  
Sulis Triyono
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
English Language ◽  
English Language Teaching ◽  
Research Articles ◽  
Semantic Meaning ◽  
Lexical Cohesion ◽  
Research Article ◽  
English Academic Writing ◽  
Writing Competence

<em>As an effort to give contribution to the existing knowledge, it is expected for the undergraduate students to compose an engaging research article in order to convince the readers about the importance of the research article. However, there is only a little attention given to the articles written by the undergraduate students although it is considered very critical to examine whether the exposure of English academic writing has significantly enhances the writing competence of the students. Furthermore, as it is also very crucial to build a meaningful semantic meaning among the sentences in order to disclose the worthiness of the research article, it is essential to analyze the cohesion of the research article written by the undergraduate students. Henceforth, the present research is projected to investigate the cohesion of the research articles written by the undergraduate students of English Language Teaching. As the introduction section of research article is likely to be an area to portray the logical explanation of the research, the present research solely focuses on examining the cohesion of the introduction section of research article. By adopting a qualitative design and involving several steps to analyze the introduction section, it is revealed that the grammatical cohesion is considered to be the most utilized type of cohesion in writing the introduction section. Still, the lexical cohesion is also necessary to build an eloquent semantic meaning about the topic as well the importance of the research article.</em>

Need Analysis for Developing Writing Skill Materials Using Facebook for English Undergraduate Students

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 542
Author(s):  
Geminastiti Sakkir ◽  
Syarifuddin Dollah ◽  
Safnil Arsyad ◽  
Jamaluddin Ahmad
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Writing Process ◽  
Lesson Plan ◽  
Teaching Writing ◽  
Needs Analysis ◽  
Visual Aids ◽  
Need Analysis ◽  
Online Social Media

This research is aiming at giving a contribution to the lecturers’ knowledge on the design materials in using social media Facebook in teaching writing process to English Department students. Before conducted the developing module for Facebook-based writing instructional course, we surveyed and explored the student’s need. The stages of this research consisted of need analysis and document analysis. We conducted needs analysis to 141 English students and 2 lecturers of writing. Data were collected using need analysis questionnaire and interview. The analyzed documents in this research were lesson plan, syllabus and the existing textbooks. The data from questionnaire and interview were analyzed in quantitative and qualitative methods. The results concluded that: first, needs analysis is the basic of developing module for Facebook-based writing instructional course, in order that the material can be related to the students’ needs, levels and lecturers’ perception. The result of students need found urgent to develop module for facebook-based writing instructional course through the following criteria of interactive, self-contained, user friendly, online supporting, online social media, authentic, environmentally friendly, formal and informal environments, online evaluation, presented in visual  aids, support  and facilitate the students’  academic and non-academic writing activities, topics of the materials should be interesting which provides a cultural background of students, the materials should be implemented by applying vocabulary, reading texts, grammar and basic skills in writing process, implemented in beginner level (Writing 1), used in class and out- class and the materials globally/ international context. Second, the lecturers’ desires in teaching writing are to improve the students’ skill to comprehend the materials. Third, the existing materials are unsuitable for the students, they prefer learning facilitated by electronic social media, Facebook, so they will more motivate in write.

Creating a Support Structure for Academic Writing and Publication Support

2015 ◽  
pp. 21-37
Author(s):  
Tonette S. Rocco ◽  
Lori Ann Gionti ◽  
Cynthia M. Januszka ◽  
Sunny L. Munn ◽  
Joshua C. Collins
Keyword(s):  
Graduate Students ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Writing Center ◽  
Writing Centers ◽  
Scholarly Writing ◽  
Support Structure ◽  
Writing For Publication ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
The Way

Although research and writing for publication are seen as important responsibilities for most graduate students and faculty, many struggle to understand the process and how to succeed. Unfortunately, writing centers at most universities do not cater to these kinds of needs but rather to course-specific needs of undergraduate students. This chapter presents and explains the principles underlying Florida International University's establishment of The Office of Academic Writing and Publication Support, an office specifically designed to aid the scholarly writing efforts of graduate students and faculty. In doing so, this chapter aims to describe strategies and programs for the improvement of scholarly writing, provide insight into the kind of learning that can take place in a university writing center, and reflect on successes and missteps along the way. This chapter may be especially helpful to educators who seek to create similar offices or services at their own institutions.

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