Supervisors’ Perspectives on Graduate Students’ Problems in Academic Writing

<p style="text-align: justify;">Writing is very important for learners; it is a dynamic and creative skill. Although studies on students’ problems when writing a dissertation among Native Speakers (NS) are widely done, studies on English as a Foreign Language (EFL) are limited, especially those which examine problems faced while writing dissertations among Ph.D. EFL learners, in particular, Jordanian Ph.D. candidates. Studies on the supervisors' perspectives of writing a dissertation are scarce among EFL learners, particularly Arab learners. This study aims at focusing on supervisors' perspectives of writing dissertations among Jordanian Ph.D. students who are studying abroad. This study is a qualitative case study. The researchers interviewed nine Malaysian supervisors who supervised 21 Jordanian Ph.D. candidates. The results show that six main themes emerged from the supervisors' perspectives, and they are grammatical mistakes, lack of vocabulary and verbs reporting, personal effects, lack of motivation, writing apprehension, and the problem with generic thesis structure. This paper contributes with a comprehensive analysis of the theoretical perspectives on problems Ph.D. students face when writing a dissertation. The study also fills in the gap in the field of supervisors' perspectives of writing a dissertation. Based on the results found, the researchers suggest a number of recommendations and further research that might help supervisors understand the reasons behind such difficulties.</p>

Writing Apprehension in the Online Classroom: The Limits of Instructor Behaviors

In response to COVID-19, educational stakeholders are transferring traditional, face-to-face instruction to the online learning environment. The purpose of this study was to determine if business instructors’ use of immediate behaviors and clarity, which have been found to help business students overcome their writing apprehension in the face-to-face learning environment, can also be used to help business students to overcome their writing apprehension in an online learning environment. Findings indicated that instructor immediate behaviors and clarity are not interventions for writing apprehension in the online learning environment. The instructional strategies business instructors rely on in the face-to-face classroom did not have the same meaning or effect on the online classroom.

CYCLE OF WRITING PROPHECY: EXPLORING BELIEFS AND FEAR IN ACADEMIC WRITING

The fear of writing stems from many reasons. Some fear the process, some fear the product, while others fear the reaction given towards their writing product. Past researchers have done many studies that investigate many angles of writing. When it comes to writing, the self-imposed belief (positive or negative) is dependent on other imposed expectations (positive or negative). This in turn affects the end result of the writing assignment. This study is done to investigate the cycle of writing prophecy and explore how this cycle is influenced by the writers’ beliefs and fear. 108 participants were purposely chosen from a few groups of students who registered for an academic writing course, they were asked to respond to the instrument. The instrument used is a survey (table 1). The survey has 5 sections. Section A is about demographic profile. Section B has 9 items on Beliefs. Section C has 15 items on Writing apprehension. Section B has 7 items on Behaviour, and section E has 25 items on result. Findings bear interesting pedagogical implications towards the teaching and learning of writing. <p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0852/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

How Teacher Comments Influence Students’ Motivation for Writing

Developing students’ writing ability is known as one of the major goals to be achieved in English teaching and teacher comments are an essential aspect of the English writing course. According to social-cognitive theory, people’s self-efficacy beliefs in their skills and ability to complete tasks influence their motivation. However, there is an inconclusive discussion about the effectiveness of teacher comments on student essays in L1 classrooms; and there is an obvious lack of research about the effects of teacher comments on the motivation of EFL students for writing. Primary data for this study are the subject students’ answers to questionnaires, their responses in the interviews, their essays, and the teachers’ written comments on the students’ essays. The researcher finds out that the teacher should affix much attention to their immediate comments, both written and verbal, which can affect writing apprehension and students’ self-efficacy beliefs toward writing.

Writing Apprehension Among English as a Foreign Language Postgraduate Students

Although many studies have investigated writing apprehension among students of different education levels during the last decades, several of its aspects have remained uninvestigated in different contexts. One of these contexts is North Cyprus. For this reason, this study aimed to measure the level of writing apprehension experienced by English as a foreign language (EFL) postgraduate students at this particular context when writing in English. The study also tried to explain whether variables such as age, gender, academic level, and socioeconomic status were correlated with writing apprehension. To achieve these aims, the researchers adopted Daly and Miller’s questionnaire called Writing Apprehension Test. A total of 37 EFL postgraduate students belonging to different ages, genders, academic levels, and socioeconomic statuses took part in the study. The collected data were analyzed using the SPSS program to reveal whether there was a significant correlation between the aforementioned variables. Mean scores, standard deviations, Pearson correlation, frequencies, and percentages were employed to reveal the results. The study demonstrated that, though almost nearly half of the students were highly apprehensive, the majority of them experienced a moderate level of apprehension when writing in English and the relationship between writing apprehension levels and the variables was not statistically significant, that is, the results showed that age, gender, academic level, and socioeconomic status did not have any influence on writing apprehension.