Improving Academic Writing Skills of English Language Teacher Trainees through ICT

2020 ◽  
pp. 149-164
Keyword(s):  
Academic Writing ◽  
English Language ◽  
Writing Skills ◽  
Language Teacher ◽  
Teacher Trainees

scholarly journals Beliefs and Practices Concerning Academic Writing among Postgraduate Language-Teacher Trainees

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-49
Author(s):  
Carl Edlund Anderson ◽  
Liliana Cuesta-Medina
Keyword(s):  
Academic Writing ◽  
English Language ◽  
Theory Approach ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Writing Difficulties ◽  
Language Teacher ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Teacher Trainees ◽  
Grounded Theory Approach ◽  
Remedial Strategies

This paper reports on the initial stages of a larger study on plurilingual rhetorical communicative competences.  Experiential evidence indicated a mismatch between the academic writing competences desired from and those displayed by the participants—adult bilingual (L1 Spanish, L+ English) English-language teacher trainees in a postgraduate program at Colombian university.  We examined participants’ beliefs and practices concerning academic writing to identify the sources of their challenges and develop the evidential basis for identifying appropriate remedial strategies.  This was a mixed methods study, in which we analyzed data from semi-structured interviews, questionnaires, and student artifacts through the grounded theory approach and descriptive statistics.  The results suggest that participants’ challenges with rhetorical aspects of academic writing stem from a lack of training.  However, participants were relatively successful with aspects of writing in which they had been trained: discrete language skills and purely descriptive prose.  We conclude their academic writing difficulties are fundamentally non-linguistic and hypothesize they would face similar academic writing challenges even if writing in their L1.  There is an urgent need to address these challenges, not only because rhetorical competences are increasingly important in a knowledge-driven society but also because teachers need to be able to train their own students in such competences.

scholarly journals The level of awareness and production of English lexical stress among English language teacher trainees in Malaysia

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernie Adnan ◽  
Stefanie Pillai ◽  
Poh Shin Chiew
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
English Language ◽  
Acoustic Analysis ◽  
Intermediate Level ◽  
Lexical Stress ◽  
Language Teacher ◽  
Stressed Syllable ◽  
Teacher Trainees ◽  
Systematic Pattern ◽  
Second Language Teacher

The realisation of lexical stress among Malaysian speakers of English is likely to be different from other varieties of English. In spite of this, there is a preference for a native pronunciation model in the teaching of English in Malaysia. In relation to this issue, this paper focuses on lexical stress among a group of Teaching of English as a Second Language teacher trainees. The objectives of this paper are to assess the overall level of awareness of lexical stress among them, to examine their production of lexical stress, and to determine the link between their level of awareness and production. The method used to elicit data for the first objective was a Lexical Stress Awareness Test (LSAT), completed by 104 teacher trainees. Data for the second objective were obtained by recording the trainees reading sentences containing test words. The findings from the LSAT indicate that most of the trainees have an intermediate level of awareness of English lexical stress. They were generally unable to describe the characteristics of a stressed syllable. In addition, the findings from the acoustic analysis of the recordings suggest that they did not have a systematic pattern of stressing syllables with the main correlate of stress being vowel lengthening. In contrast, most of them chose ‘higher pitch’ as the characteristic of a stressed syllable. Hence, there is an inconsistency between their awareness and production of lexical stress in English. We discuss the implications of these findings in relation to the teaching of pronunciation in the classroom and the effect of lexical stress placement on intelligibility. Our general conclusion is that more attention needs to be given in teacher education to how lexical stress is used in English, and also to the characteristics of stress in the Malaysian variety of English.

scholarly journals A Systematic Review of the Challenges and Solutions of ESL Students‟ Academic Writing

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (5C) ◽  
pp. 1169-1171
Keyword(s):  
Academic Writing ◽  
Teaching Methods ◽  
English Language ◽  
Writing Skills ◽  
English Language Teaching ◽  
Teaching Writing ◽  
Esl Students ◽  
Learning Collaborative ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
Malaysian Students

Research studies on ESL writing are more interested in providing operational writing strategies for academic writing. However, there are not many studies on challenges faced by students and their solutions. The main aim of this paper is to provide a systematic literature review of academic writing studies which focused on investigating students’ academic writing challenges and their solutions. The papers used in this study were published from 2010 until 2019. A systematic search of literature proposed in this paper employs the exploratory approach for identifying and evaluating twenty-seven articles published in the authentic Journals. The themes of the review are divided into two categories, one which is related to ESL Malaysian students and another category is regarding non-Malaysians, this is due to the context of the study which will be conducted in Malaysia and therefore a review of studies done on Malaysian student academic writing is justified. The review shows there is a broader context of ESL students’ academic writing challenges and factors influencing students’ academic writing skills. In addition, as mentioned above, the review clearly shows the highlight of previous studies was on strategies which help improve students writing skills. As a conclusion, the review signifies that there are three major enormous challenges faced by ESL students in academic writing, such as teaching methods, students’ attitude towards English, and language ability. And the solutions to the challenges are to employ active learning English language teaching methods, for example, Task-Based learning (TBL), Blended learning, Collaborative learning and cognitive approach, in teaching writing.

scholarly journals An Error Analysis of Research Project Abstracts Written by Thai Undergraduate Students

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 13
Author(s):  
Wirada Amnuai
Keyword(s):  
Error Analysis ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
English Language ◽  
Writing Skills ◽  
Word Choice ◽  
Writing Ability ◽  
Writing Courses ◽  
Sentence Level

Errors in writing are unavoidable while students are trying to develop their writing skills. There have been several studies on identifying writing problems or errors in students’ writing. It is believed that identifying students’ written tasks is an effective tool to explore the difficulties involved in learning language. This helps teachers’ awareness of the serious problems which occur in students’ writing and allows them to pay closer attention to their errors. The aim of the present research study is to pinpoint writing errors in English abstracts written by Thai undergraduate students. Forty abstracts of research projects were collected and analysed. The error analysis was conducted at the sentence level, word level, and mechanics aspect. The five most frequent error types ranking from the most frequent to least frequent were word choice, preposition, sentence construction, singular or plural forms and quotation marks. The findings of the present study have shed light on the students’ writing ability and give an insight into what the problems students face when writing their abstracts. Also, the errors found in the abstracts in the present study have pedagogical implications concerning English language learning, particularly with writing courses. The findings will be helpful for teachers to develop teaching materials to assist their students from committing errors when writing English abstracts and to improve academic writing skills.

scholarly journals The Effects of Task-Based Process Writing Approach on the Academic Writing Skills among Second Language Tertiary Learners

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Siti Katijah Johari
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Academic Success ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
English Language ◽  
Writing Skills ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Process Writing ◽  
Group Project ◽  
Important Place ◽  
Higher Institution

Academic writing occupies a very important place in the English language syllabus at tertiary level. Where higher institution writing is concerned, it is not enough that students have to write in traditional essay or report formats; their writing must be appropriate to the discipline – yet deal with the multitude of genres expected of them. Additionally, academic writing skill is considered an essential skill for academic success and a requirement for many occupations and professions. However, it is a skill that a number of second language tertiary students find most difficult to acquire and only a few of them fully master it. This study, therefore, embarks on the theory that task-based approach together with the exposure of process writing would have a significant influence on the development of students’ academic writing skills. In this study students were made to work in groups on real-life tasks which relate to their field of study or future employment. In the midst of pursuing the group project, the students will have to write their group proposal and individual writing assignment. This will be the stage where the process writing techniques are put into practice. This paper will illustrate an eclectic pedagogic intervention in the teaching of academic writing skills to second language tertiary students.  Keywords: academic writing, task-based approach, process writing approach, tertiary learners

scholarly journals EMPOWERING ACADEMIC WRITING SKILLS IN MILLENNIAL ERA: THE ROLE OF ENGLISH PROGRAM FOR BIDIKMISI STUDENTS

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sri Wahyuningsih
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
English Language ◽  
Language Skills ◽  
Academic Literacy ◽  
Writing Skills ◽  
State Institute ◽  
Islamic Studies ◽  
English Program

This study aims at exploring how BIDIKMISI students at the State Institute for Islamic Studies (IAIN) Kudusperceive the empowerment of their academic writing skills through English programs undertaken by the campus.The study anchors in a qualitative research. Personal interviews, observation and documentation were used togather data. The result reveals that the strategies and ways of empowering academic writing cover developingcognitive skills of students by giving them academic literacy, activities of problem solving, and innovation thatwill attract them to use writing as systems of representation and communication. Another way of empoweringacademic writing done by lecturers is by collaborating to other English lecturers particularly those who teachReading in enhancing the academic writing skills of students at IAIN Kudus. Thus, the role of English programsis considerably meaningful for the acquisition of English language skills of BIDIKMISI students particularly inacademic writing skills. Furthermore, they are able to elicit a number of materials and information related toacademic writing including writing foundations, writing stages, writing elements, accuracy in writing, researchingand writing, academic reality, and articles publication. Interestingly, they are pursued to do a research and writejournal articles. This study suggests that lecturers should actively use technology and social media in millennialera such as Facebook, Blog, Instagram, and Youtube to engage students in the process of teaching academicwriting.

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