tailieunhanh - Developing Learners’ Academic Writing Skills in Higher Education: A Study for Educational Reform

The Skills framework for 3 to 19-year-olds in Wales (Welsh Assembly Government, 2008) makes it clear that teachers need to respond to learners where they currently are in their learning, not where they think they ought to be according, for example, to their age. Effective assessment procedures (formative, diagnostic and summative) will provide teachers with the necessary evidence for them to tailor the specific teaching of writing skills to meet individual needs within the class. This teaching should take place, however, as a support for the writing of whole texts rather than as discrete lessons out of any context. Learners need to be encouraged to see writing as a process. | Developing Learners Academic Writing Skills in Higher Education A Study for Educational Reform Nahla N. Bacha Lebanese American University PO Box 3Ó Byblos Lebanon L2 writers are known to face problems in developing their writing skills at the university level. These problems are even more accentuatedwithL1 Arabic non-native speakers of English in required English composition courses. Some researchhas shown that with low motivation levels the process can further be a very difficult and unrewarding one for both the learner and the teacher. However students need to develop their writing skills in order to cope with their university coursework in the medium of English. This necessitatesthe searchfor learning tasks that meet student needs in a wider educational context. This paper outlines some of the writing theories proposed by researchers that have contributed to current L2 teaching learning classroom methodologies. Drawing upon the insights gained from these theories one EFL freshman composition classroom learning experience in doing practical research with L1 Arabic non-native speakers of English is described. Results indicated that the experience was not only a very highly motivating basis for developing students writing skills but also a valuable one for students in acquiring necessary academic researchknow-how. Implications are made for the teaching learning of writing and programme development in light of the post-war educational reform in Lebanon. Introduction Developing learners writing skills in L2 has been of concern for a long time in tertiary education Belcher Braine 1995 Jordan 1997 . Students studying in institutions of higher learning in the medium of English which may not be their native language have been found to face problems mainly in writing making them unable to cope with the institution s literacy expectations. However these disadvantaged students may be able to develop writing skills significantly with positive instructional attitudes .