Enhancing ESL students academic writing skills through the term-paper

• 出版年: Pertanika Journal of Social Science and Humanities
• 第一著者: 2-s2.0-84876917759
• フォーマット: 論文
• 言語: English
• 出版事項: 2012
• オンライン･アクセス: https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-84876917759&partnerID=40&md5=78cb8e5951ded8004920243c23420f18

Tertiary ESL students find writing the academic term-paper a complex process as they grapple with issues about academic writing conventions and ethics. This paper examines tertiary students thoughts and perceptions in co-constructing knowledge about academic writing and how multi-drafting and feedback strategies enhance their academic literacy skills through term-paper writing. In particular, we examine the use of the term-paper as a pedagogical instrument incorporating the process approach to writing for developing academic writing skills among tertiary level students in Malaysia including the importance of multi-drafting, where students reflect on the writing of the multi-drafts and evaluate their learning while working in groups. The respondents are 38 Diploma in Business Management students from a Malaysian university enrolled in an academic writing course. Focus group interviews, group observations and respondents reflective journal entries provided the qualitative data. Our findings show that group multi-drafting and feedback processes enhanced students understanding of writing as a recursive process and sharpened their academic writing literacy knowledge in the areas of referencing, planning, idea generation, editing and revising. We conclude that the multi-draft term-paper approach as a pedagogical tool seems to be a feasible solution to heightening the academic writing skills and confidence of tertiary students. © Universiti Putra Malaysia Press.